It doesn’t matter how iconic a gaming franchise is. One bad game can ruin that legacy in the blink of an eye.
Star Fox Zero
The Star Fox franchise was once a hallmark for Nintendo, with my personal favorite being Star Fox 64.
Unfortunately, the series has been on a bit of a downturn since then. The disappointing Star Fox Zero seems to have put the franchise out to pasture.
It lacks the magic of the best Star Fox games while introducing a frustrating control scheme.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5
It turns out that all the Tony Hawk series needed was to go back to its roots. Literally.
There was a lot of hype surrounding Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, which is the first Pro Skater game since 2002. It was billed as a return to the glory days.
However, it was nothing like the original games. Developer Robomodo would later go out of business, and since then, all Tony Hawk games have been remakes of the original titles.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Believe it or not, there was once a time when Medal of Honor was the gold standard for the FPS genre.
1999’s Medal of Honor set the standard for the WW2 shooter, which would eventually be surpassed by the Call of Duty franchise.
Since then, Medal of Honor has been forced to play from behind. 2012’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter was a gigantic mess of a game: a bad story, technical glitches, and uninspiring gameplay.
Dead Rising 4
The original Dead Rising was a fun, albeit short and flawed, zombie sandbox game. Would I call it one of the best games ever? Most certainly not. Did I enjoy my time with it? Absolutely.
With the sequels, Capcom seems to have ventured too hard into making the games more serious, which ultimately led to the franchise’s downfall.
After two completely forgettable games for the PS4 and Xbox One, a planned sequel, Dead Rising 5, was cancelled by Capcom, and developer Capcom Vancouver was shut down in 2018.
Crackdown 3
The first two Crackdown games weren’t exactly innovative or revolutionary, but like Dead Rising, they were mindless fun.
After years of anticipation, Crackdown 3 finally released in 2019, but it wasn’t worth it. The game had more in common with the original Xbox 360 version than other similar titles on the market in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It felt outdated, bland, and uninspired.
Dead Space 3
With the success of the recent Dead Space remaster, you’d expect there to have been more demand for the continuation of the Dead Space franchise back in the day.
Well, funny story, that’s always been the case. There’s just one problem: Dead Space 3 leans less into the survival horror aspects that made the series popular and feels more like a generic action game.
As a result, long time fans were turned off, and now closed developer Visceral Games moved onto other properties. EA also turned down pitches for a possible Dead Space 4.
Mass Effect: Andromeda
While a new entry in the Mass Effect franchise is currently in development, there’s no guarantee that if it’s released that it will meet the same quality as past entries in the franchise.
The original Mass Effect games are some of the best modern RPGs you can play today, thanks to excellent writing, memorable characters, and fantastic third-person cover shooter gameplay.
Andromeda, however, is a mess of a game where everything falls short. The writing is awful, the characters are uninspiring, and the game was a complete mess at launch.
Turok
Originally released in the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Turok series were excellent console FPS games that did well to compare the likes of GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark.
For whatever reason, though, that success didn’t translate beyond the original trilogy. 2002’s Turok: Evolution was a good but not great release, while the 2008 reboot, simply titled Turok, failed to meet the mark. Despite selling over 1 million copies, developer Propaganda Games would shut down before a sequel could be released.
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
Command & Conquer used to be one of the premier real-time strategy games in the industry. Sadly, the genre as a whole became less and less popular as we entered the modern era.
That didn’t stop Electronic Arts from releasing Command & Conquer games, though. The last one in the series, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, missed the mark. It tried too hard to reinvent the wheel rather than improving on what made the franchise successful in the first place.
SimCity
Speaking of EA destroying iconic gaming franchises, that’s what they did with 2013’s SimCity.
I’m not going to lie: at first, I liked the idea of smaller cities working together in a larger metro area. There was just one problem. Well, lots of problems, actually.
First, you had to be connected to the game’s servers, even if you weren’t playing with friends, which meant the game was plagued with connectivity issues. Second, the cities felt disconnected and not part of a greater region, which made it feel like you were building up tiny towns, not a major city. It was better to stick with Cities: Skylines or past entries in the SimCity franchise.
Saints Row
The Saints Row franchise was a wonderful, over-the-top Grand Theft Auto clone that fully embraced the pop culture of the 2000s and early 2010s.
The franchise would see a modern day reboot in 2022 with the Saints Row, but for a series known for being far better than your typical GTA copycat, the 2022 reboot felt like a cheap cash-in rather than an AAA game. The characters are unlikable, the gameplay is boring, and there are more bugs and glitches than a QA team knows what to do with.
Metal Gear Survive
For some idiotic reason, Konami decided they didn’t need to be in business with Hideo Kojima anymore. Kojima is best known for his work on the Metal Gear Solid franchise, which offers some of the best games of all time.
It’s safe to say that when talking about great Metal Gear Solid games, Metal Gear Survive isn’t in the discussion. It’s not so much a stealth game as it is a, and I’m dead serious, a tower defense game that just happens to have the Metal Gear name stapled on it. We haven’t seen a Metal Gear game since, and sadly, I don’t think we ever will.
Duke Nukem Forever
I mean, we can all agree that Duke Nukem was already a dead franchise before Duke Nukem Forever released, right?
Sure, there was the chance that Forever would help birth a renaissance of old-school boomer shooters, but that wasn’t the case. The game plays like it was supposed to be released in the late 90s, filled with constant outdated pop-culture references that make you roll your eyes in disgust.
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