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#MyGAMERemastered

With the announcement of Skyrim Special Edition and Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection, remastered games are pretty hot right now. “There are so many remasters in this generation” I hear you cry, and while that is indeed true, there are some games that are definitely worth playing again. Whether you missed them first time around, want to see the enhanced graphical capability on your Xbox One or PS4 or just want to re-visit some of your favourite titles, there have been some incredible next generation remasters released in recent years.

Grand Theft Auto 5 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 was a must-have, along with Dishonored Definitive Edition, The Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls Collection and The BioShock Collection. Usually these games come with all the DLC included, which is a massive bonus as some of the best stories can be hidden within paid-for content: Burial at Sea from the BioShock series is a great example of this. A remastered game can really reinvigorate a series and introduce newcomers to a franchise. Here is my list of games that I would love to see re-released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Red Dead Redemption

A remaster of Red Dead Redemption has been heavily rumoured this year (insert excited *squeeee* here). And it was expected that Rockstar were going to announce a new title at The PlayStation Meeting a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, no new games were announced and the gaming community are on the edge of their seats, eagerly anticipating what will be next from the acclaimed publisher. Red Dead, though, is definitely worth a replay. Rockstar's classic tongue-in-cheek style and expansive world would be heaps of fun to explore again.

In Red Dead Redemption you play as John Marsten, a former outlaw who is forced into working for the government after his family are kidnapped. The massive open world spans 1911-era American West and Mexico, and you travel mostly via your equestrian companion (Grand Theft Horse, if you will). Reckless riding is pretty fun if you just want to mess about in the sandbox, and trotting across the dusty Mexican plains with streaks of an orangey-red sunset filtering the sky is flippin' gorgeous.

Rockstar tend to put a certain flair on their next-gen remasters. For example, when they re-released Grand Theft Auto V for PC they added first person and director modes, along with graphical improvements that elevated it to a level of brilliance, raising the bar for many games. If Rockstar could pull off something similar for Red Dead Redemption, it would certainly be a remaster not to miss.

Portal 2

Portal 2, is one of those games that is essential for any gamer to experience, but there are still people who have not even heard of it, let alone played it. The game released in 2011 to high critical acclaim and has since been named one of the best video games of all time. Yet, despite Portal 2 being one of the biggest fan favourites of the last console generation, there are still gamers out there who haven't had the pleasure of ascending through the labs of Aperture Science and trying to escape the malevolent technology trying to keep you there. Your workplace has become your prison, dilapidated though it is now after a time in stasis, trying to escape draws some humorous parallels to real life where the general idea is to escape work every day. (Not me, though. I loooove my job!)

The gameplay is simple but fun as well as being innovative. Your portal gun will shoot an entrance and an exit to a portal which you will then use to solve mind-bending puzzles and problems in your efforts to move ever closer to an escape. Your character, Chell, is joined at first by Wheatley, voiced famously by Stephen Merchant of The Office fame, who helps you to overcome GLaDOS, the evil software who killed all of your colleagues when it went mad with power. The tables turn, though, and you will find yourself in an unexpected position with your new artificial friends.

Developer Valve seem to be afraid of the number 3, never as of yet completing a trilogy of games (Half Life, anyone?) so a third instalment of the Portal series is unlikely. A remaster would be perfect to introduce younger gamers and those who missed out on it first time around. It's a genius, dark and funny story, as well as reminding us all that the cake... is a lie.

Assassin's Creed Rogue

2014 was a weird year in the Creed-verse; there were 2 games released in the franchise, one exclusively for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles, and the other only for the previous generation. Early adopters of the next generation in console gaming who traded in every console they owned to be one of the first to experience Xbox One or PlayStation 4, would have missed out on Assassin's Creed Rogue. A very different direction and an extremely bold move for the Assassin's Creed franchise because for the first time your character, Shay Cormac, was on the side of the Templars. Yes - those horrible, evil Templar scum have a story too, and it turns out, they sort of want the same thing as the Assassins, but are going about it in a way that prefers order over freedom. Shay becomes disheartened with the Assassin order when he sees their relentless hunt of Pices of Eden cause complete chaos, destroying a whole city when one is removed from its long-held hiding place. Shay falls in with the Templar Order after he is shot in the back, by who he believes was his best friend Liam (it wasn't). Shay meets with Black Flag hero Edward Kenway's son, Haytham (yes - another deflector from the Assassins), who shares his belief that the Pieces of Eden are not weapons but are in fact being used to keep the world together.

Rogue is a sequel to Black Flag, and a prequel to Assassin's Creed 3, which ends at the opening scenes of Unity. It is an essential tie-in for all 3 games, and the twist at the end - especially if you played Unity first (like yours truly) - was an incredible reveal. I was so excited to get stuck in to next-gen Assassination that I all but forgot about Rogue, but I am so glad I went back and played. Cormac's ship, The Morrigan, walks all over the Jackdaw in terms of power and speed which makes the pirating part of the game much easier to handle, so Black Flag naysayers need not be worried about the sailing sections of the game. It would be a crying shame to miss out on this instalment in the Assassin/Templar saga.

Deadly Premonition

Now bear with me here, I couldn't not include this one. With Deadly Premonition I'm talking more re-make than remaster, as the cult-classic game had so many development problems that it ended up being released a console generation after it was supposed to. The open world was not as fully realised as we had come to expect from our games by then and it was polarised by critics. Anyone who has heard of it, or played this game will know that it doesn't perform well graphically and the driving is terrible. But the story, oh, the story is incredible. Essentially Director Swery 65's love letter to David Lynch's cult TV show Twin Peaks, it had many of the same themes but culminated in a unique story which involved countless twists and turns - I was genuinely still playing it at 5am one time because I just had to see it unfold.

You play as FBI agent Francis York Morgan, sent by the bureau to Greendale to investigate the murder of Anna Graham and the presence of red seeds at the murder site, which links it to a string of mysterious killings York is chasing leads on. Most of this game's charm is in the conversations held between York and Zach, an invisible entity to whom York discusses his case, his suspicions as well as favourite films and memorable pop culture moments. You have to look after York too, in a nod to RPG's, you must wash, sleep, shave and eat or you will become a “stinky agent” and your low stamina will render you useless against enemies. Your main adversary is The Raincoat Killer, who has been murdering women all over town (and who is damn scary when he is chasing you!) but maybe, he is not what he seems. And do not go out after midnight, or when it's raining, just don't. Mysterious shadows come out in the night and literally try to crawl down your throat for a chance at living once more, not to mention the demon dogs and wall-scaling demon women that are reminiscent of Silent Hill you will encounter. Shudder.

There are endless fan theories surrounding this game. It has inspired so much passion among gamers who have explored the streets of Greenvale and met its backwards inhabitants. Imagine what a game like this could be with a little money and today's technology behind it. Vey few games have the gripping narrative that Swery created within this dark, magical world, it really is a must-play if you can get past the clunky controls and PlayStation 2 graphics. A sequel is very unlikely as Swery no longer owns the rights to the game, but a re-build would get past the graphical and technical horrors and bring the story to life to launch this in to the mainstream.

L.A. Noire

Another Rockstar title has made it on to my list. I regret nothing.

L.A. Noire was a great leap forward for graphics and an excellent example of storytelling genius. You play as L.A.P.D. Officer Cole Phelps, who joins the police after the war in 1947. You work your way up the ranks, solving morally ambiguous crimes and exposing corrupt cops. All of the crimes in the game were actually reported in Los Angeles in 1947, which is a great way to add a sense of depth, realism and historical accuracy to beautiful film noire world that Team Bondi and Rockstar created.

They used facial scanning technology to animate characters' faces in such a way that part of the challenge was to assess witnesses and suspects' expressions and body language to determine if they were lying or not in interviews. It really is a great mechanic and adds an extra dimension to the investigative process. There is plenty to keep you hooked in this expansive crime thriller, and there really isn't anything out there like it - certainly no investigation-based games of its calibre have been released since. The setting, story and gameplay were all excellent and really were a point of difference in the market. In the sea of shooters and zombie survival games I would love for there to be a sequel to L.A. Noire, but a remaster will keep me happily patrolling the streets of Los Angeles... for now at least.

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Written by Stephanie Lord