I know that remakes and remasters are contentious, but let’s pretend whatever game in question you’re thinking of is handled with the utmost care by your favourite devs and they absolutely nail it.
Mine would be Shadow of Memories (called Shadow of Destiny in North America). It’s legitimately one of my favourite games of all time but it kinda flew under the radar and I haven’t met many people who know of it let alone played it. Seeing it get modern graphics, maybe some expanded mechanics, would be soooo cool.
Honestly, looking at how modern game development studios handle remakes, I wouldn’t want them anywhere near any of my beloved games. I haven’t played a single remake in the last 20 years where I felt like the studio that made it knocked it out of the park.
Also, I strongly believe good games should not be remade, and only remastered/ “deluxe remastered” (where even if the game is remade, its a 1:1 faithful recreation with additional features and gameplay mechanics being optional). Remake the games that weren’t great, give them another chance at big success.
The Resident Evil remakes have been really solid imho. Bloober knocked it out of the park with the Silent Hill 2 remake as well. I’ve also felt like the Pokémon remakes have been generally superior.
I only like the Resident Evil remake on the GameCube from 2002 (which was later ported and released as Resident Evil HD). It retained everything about the original that was iconic and made minor additions. I wish those were optional, but since the game came out in 2002 before options were really a consideration it gets a pass. I can’t believe I am saying this, because without Kojima it feels like sacrilege, but MGS3 Delta actually looks like it might be a good remake by keeping the original gameplay as an option.
As a Silent Hill fan, I disagree. SH2 remake is very mid, and misses the mark on many points IMO. Too much was changed just for the sake of being changed. It is filled with every “Bloober-ism” in the book: stupid, predictable jumpscares (which were not really in SH2 originally since it built up as a horror game in a different way from the first game which did use jumpscares), bad performance problems, etc. The game focuses too much on combat; in the original game the optimal way to play (and lore accurate way) was avoiding most combat, but the remake refuses to allow you to avoid combat like you could in the original game. Character designs are worse than the original IMO. I really wanted to love the game, but right when I start to enjoy whatever was happening, Bloober swooped in with some addition or change or -ism that immediately pulled me out and had me rolling my eyes. Also, swapping out the original’s camera for a boring, bland, copying-everyone-else over the shoulder camera without even giving the option for the original camera hurts my soul.
I don’t really care about Pokemon so I can’t comment on it. Never played it except the TCG game on GameBoy, and I never finished that game either. Just didn’t hold my interest.
Different strokes!