Forgotten Rockstar Series

GTA and Red Dead Redemption are the most famous Rockstar series. However, the company also released other projects that many people don’t remember. Their future seems unclear — most likely, the company won’t want to invest money in full-fledged sequels. In this article, we’ll remember what games Rockstar released and try to figure out why they weren’t continued.

Oni is a third-person action game in a cyberpunk setting with a charming girl in the lead role. The gameplay combines hand-to-hand combat with lively shootouts. In the early 2000s, games in a similar setting were popular, but Oni didn’t become a hit, and the planned sequel was canceled. However, its development was underway — you can even find a playable build online.

But let’s get back to the first part. It was developed by Bungie, or, to be more precise, the Western division of the company. Oni was originally supposed to be an Xbox exclusive, but it ended up being released on PC and PlayStation 2. Rockstar was the one who ported the game to PS2, but due to the console's technical limitations and awkward controls, this version is considered a failure.

Although Oni failed to sell, enthusiasts still release various modifications for it. History already knows an example when fan support motivated publishers to make a sequel, despite the failure of the original. We are talking, of course, about Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines. Rockstar retained the rights to Oni, but the company is clearly not interested in working on a sequel or remake.

Midnight Club: Street Racing was released in 2000, several years before Need for Speed: Underground. Let's remember that it was the one that popularized street racing. Rockstar was ahead of its time, and this played a cruel joke on it — the street racing project turned out to be unclaimed. Meanwhile, the company did not give up trying to occupy its niche in the world of arcade racing. In 2003, a sequel was released, and in 2005 — a threequel. We remember it for its really cool tuning. Its capabilities turned out to be much wider than in Need for Speed. The last part of the series with the subtitle Los Angeles appeared on store shelves in 2008.

Midnight Club has many advantages. For example, an open and free to explore city. Even during races, no one limits you to the corridors of the tracks — the main thing is to go through all the checkpoints. At first, you will probably get confused in the streets and make ridiculous mistakes. At the same time, the opponents are smart, drive well and know the city very well. The action of these games takes place in real megacities — New York, London and Los Angeles. The physics here are arcade, and the speeds are very high, so the controls take time to master.

Journalists praised the games of this series and gave them high marks, and the main criticism was related to excessive complexity. Perhaps it was this that prevented Midnight Club from becoming a hit. As in the case of Oni, poor sales discouraged publishers from releasing new parts.

The Warriors is a 1979 film that gained popularity in the United States, but remained virtually unknown in Russia. It tells the story of the events of the near future, where Brooklyn gangs wage an irreconcilable war against each other to establish control over New York.

The game of the same name from Rockstar was released in 2005. It very accurately conveys the atmosphere of the film. It offers to lead one of the criminal clans and defeat rivals. The project was praised for its well-staged team battles, attention to detail and adherence to the canon. Its action took place three months before the events of the film, so fans learned a lot about familiar characters.

Fans warmly welcomed the Rockstar project, and journalists were delighted. It was planned to release a spiritual successor to The Warriors called We Are the Mods. It could have been a game based on the 2009 film, which tells about the subcultures of England in the 60s, in particular, the confrontation between rockers and mods. However, its fan base was not as large as that of "Warriors". The publisher decided that it would not be possible to repeat the success and successfully canceled the project.

Bully is dedicated to the life of a teenager who studies at a boarding school. Players were offered to attend classes, build friendships with jocks and nerds, as well as play pranks and kiss girls. Exciting gameplay here is combined with excellent humor.

The project has received cult status and support from the fan base. However, information about the second part is limited to rumorsmi. For example, a hacker who leaked footage of an early version of GTA 6 in 2022 claims to have information about the second Bully. Whether to believe him or not is up to you.

While the first two parts of the Max Payne series were developed by the Finns from Remedy, the third was developed by Rockstar's internal studios. They retained the signature mechanics of slow-motion shootouts, added a modern cover system to it, and showed new adventures of a former police officer, this time in sunny Brazil.

In terms of mood, Max Payne 3 turned out to be even more evil than the original dilogy. The poetic notes disappeared, replaced by cynicism and rejection of the world around. Not everyone liked these changes, but if you consider the game solely as an action game, it turned out to be excellent. It is not surprising that the same shootout mechanics were used in GTA 5.

Will the fearless detective return in the fourth part? We think this scenario is unlikely. Rockstar is now trying to concentrate its efforts on the main series, and Max Payne is clearly not one of them. Therefore, fans should follow the news about the remake of the first two parts, which is being worked on by Remedy and Sam Lake personally.

Manhunt is a stealth action game in which you need to kill people in very bloody ways. The first part had a creepy atmosphere of snuff films, which was created due to the ripples on the screen, ominous music and incredible cruelty. The sequel could not get a rating from the ESRB for a long time — the developers were required to remove shocking moments from the game. But the second part disappointed fans, which directly affected its sales.

Today, the release of such a project seems simply impossible. And Rockstar clearly has no reason to invest money and effort in a game that few are waiting for.

This Team Bondi project seemed incredibly ambitious. It combines detective investigations, collecting evidence, driving around a big city, shootouts and chases. Not all the mechanics worked as they should, but the game competently recreated the atmosphere of post-war America, making you remember the classic noir films of the 40s.

Brendan McNamara's efforts were valued at millions. But it was not enough to recoup production costs. In the same 2011, when L.A. Noire was released, Team Bondi was closed. The project received a remaster and a VR version, but there is no point in counting on a full-fledged sequel.

Nowadays, many large publishers do not waste time on dozens of series, but focus on one important series. This is what Activision has been doing for many years, throwing all its efforts into Call of Duty, and now EA Games is following in its footsteps, sending several studios to work on Battlefield 6. Of course, there are exceptions in the form of Capcom, but Rockstar is not one of them. Now all the company's resources are directed to Grand Theft Auto 6. Even the remaster of the classic trilogy was entrusted to a third-party studio.

GTA Online has shown that it is more profitable to work on the multiplayer of a successful game than to invest money in new projects. This trick did not work with Red Dead Online, so the third part of the series is in question. Our concerns are related to the single-player mode of the sixth GTA. The story campaign will not bring additional profit, but if it turns out to be unsuccessful, this will seriously damage the reputation of the developers.

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What Rockstar games, besides GTA and Red Dead Redemption, do you remember? Share your opinions in the comments.

The material was prepared in collaboration with Misty.