With Rockstar clearly set to announce something in the immediate future, it’s almost certain that Rockstar will return to the highly-anticipated Red Dead series. However, there are many other brilliant Rockstar franchises that we’d love to see more of.
The one and only Bully originally released exactly 10 years ago on PlayStation 2. Like many other Rockstar games, Bully is an open-world, action-adventure game. Although, in my opinion, Bully was one of Rockstar’s more realistic and down to earth titles. You played the role of high school student James Hopkins and took on various types of high school students, including but not limited to the bullies, nerds and jocks.
Bully was incredibly popular for many reasons, but it particularly hit a soft point for many gamers who identified with the highschool battles and hardships the main character faced throughout his time at Bullworth Academy.
The game only sold about 1.5 million copies, which is incredibly modest by Rockstar’s standard, but many key members of Rockstar have stated that they have a number of ideas for a sequel. It’d be interesting to see just how Highschool life has changed in the last 10 years.
Manhunt is the most unique Rockstar game ever released. It’s a stealth-based survival horror game which pushed all the boundaries as you play prisoner James Cash, who is on death row. You’re forced to participate in a bunch of snuff films for an underground director, in which you pull off a number of gruesome kills.
The game was controversial around the world, but more specifically here in Australia for being pulled off the shelves a year after release, despite only carrying an MA15+ rating.
In 2007, the game became more widely known for its alleged involvement in a murder in the UK, in which a 17 year old murdered his 14 year friend. Police found a copy of the game in his bedroom and his friends testified that he was obsessed with the game. Manhunt 2 released in this same year, and outside re-releases on the PS4, there hasn’t been too much else said about the series. Whilst being quite controversial, I’d be interested to see what Rockstar could do with the series.
Rockstar’s Table Tennis, which released on the Xbox 360 almost 10 years ago, is without doubt the best (and possibly the only) Table Tennis game ever released. It was the most left of field announcement to come out of Rockstar, but I honestly put just as much time into it as any other Rockstar game. It had the same level of incredible polish and was chock full of content.
In all honesty, I highly doubt we’ll ever see a sequel, but it’d be cool to see Rockstar do something obscure again. I could see them doing something left of centre on a VR platform, which they’re yet to develop any games for.
L.A. Noire will always hold a place in the many Australian gamers’ hearts. The game was primarily developed by the Australian developer, Team Bondi and used some incredible facial expression tech, which allowed the developers to tell a story like no game could be able to previously.
Set in 1947 in Los Angeles, you took the role an LAPD officer to solve a range of cases across five divisions. It was far less action-packed than most other Rockstar titles, but just as influential in the gaming scene.
The game went on to sell millions of copies and Rockstar has previously gone on the record saying that L.A. Noire as a franchise is incredibly important to them and they may look to do a sequel in the future.
Okay, so it isn’t a proper sequel in its entirety, but the 80’s-flavoured adventure had us pulling out our pastel clothes and cruising the streets to Phil Collins in a neon-soaked Miami knockoff. AND IT WAS SO GOOD!
Considering that Grand Theft Auto IV took us back to a modernized Liberty City, and then followed up with Grand Theft Auto V’s new and improved San Andreas, it would be awesome to take a trip back to Vice City and see how things have progressed – or stayed the same (and quite stale) if they were stuck in the 80s. Plus the portable outing Vice City Stories were released years ago, so it would only be fair.
