Image via Complex Original
Change is hard, especially when it comes to the games we love. There's nothing quite like a good sequel; one that expands on and improves the gameplay of the original, adding new mechanics and juicing up the graphics, while maintaining what made the game before it so compelling.
That last part is crucial, and it's what most often gets lost between a good game and a disappointing sequel. Franchises can recover from a bad sequel, of course—but some don't.
Other shouldn't, even if they do, because odds are nothing short of a ten-year hiatus and a complete reboot nothing will redeem them in the eyes of gamers. And once a franchise has lost the goodwill of gamers, it's as good as dead.
Fortunately, it's not all doom and gloom over here. Some of the series we selected for this list really are coming back, despite past missteps. But no matter how good their predecessors and follow-ups might be, nothing can redeem the following ten games and their respective franchises.
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Final Fantasy XIII
2010
Metacritic: 82/100
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That expression was practically invented for Final Fantasy XIII. One of the most beloved franchises in video games became one of the most disappointing with this entry, which tasked pink-haired Lightning and her friends with running down linear corridors for several dozen hours of gorgeous but empty environments. Combat, on the other hand, involved mashing one button over and over until your thumb fell off or the game ended, whichever came first.
It was all flash; unfortunately, it wasn't a flash in the pan, as Square Enix followed it up with, of all things, a direct sequel—despite hardly any Final Fantasy games, much less the worthy ones, getting those—and another follow-up called "Lightning Returns." Because everyone was dying for that to happen.
And then there was Final Fantasy XIV, which was so bad they had to cancel it post-launch so they could finish developing it. Now who's excited for Final Fantasy XV/? Square Enix cannot take a hint.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
2012
Metacritic: 53
This is as literal as the term "franchise killer" gets. Medal of Honor was a long-running war shooter series, having begun on the original PlayStation in 1999. It even got the Guinness World Record in 2008 for the best-selling first-person shooter franchise ever. So what happened?
Medal of Honor went the way of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is what happened. And by that we mean the traditionally World War II-era franchise made the jump into modern times, but with exponentially less success than its rival series.
The 2010 Medal of Honor was not well received by anyone, but in a shocking twist the sequel, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, was much, much worse. We'd have thought that impossible, but they did it. They really did it. And with the series "out of rotation" at EA it could be quite a while before we see another Medal of Honor.
Bionic Commando
2009
Metacritic: 70
Bionic Commando is that rare franchise that actually had a chance of being successfully rebooted more than two decades after its original release, but sadly it was not to be.
The 2009 version of Bionic Commando was unrecognizable to fans of the original 1987 game. That was to be expected; what was more disappointing was that it was mostly crap. That fact was made even worse by the existence of Bionic Commando Rearmed, an "enhanced remake" of the original that set the stage for the reboot game. Ironically, it was excellent.
But the main game killed it, and Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, the poorly received sequel to the "enhanced remake," was the final nail in the coffin. Or so it seems at this point.
Contra: Legacy of War
1996
Metacritic: N/A
The Contra series is still around as handheld and downloadable games, but what was once a juggernaut among scrolling shooters is now relegated to eShops and bargain bins. And it's all thanks to one game: Contra: Legacy of War.
Konami handed off developed of Legacy of War, the first game in the beloved series for the PlayStation/Sega Saturn era, to Appaloosa Interactive, which proceeded to completely ruin everything about it that was great.
It was clunky and ugly, and for some reason it changed the series' classic 2D perspective into a top-down, isometric mess. New-fangled 3D graphics may have been all the rage back then, but even in 1996 no one thought this game was good. And as if that wasn't enough Appaloosa's sequel, C: The Contra Adventure, was even worse. Now Contra will almost certainly never return to its former glory.
Haze
2008
Metacritic: 55
Haze is not itself part of a franchise (thank goodness), but it's definitely a franchise killer. And unfortunately the franchise it killed was the beloved TimeSplitters.
The UK studio Free Radical had hits with the first three TimeSplitters games during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era. But through pure hubris (speculation there, but we're sticking to it) the studio decided to risk everything on Haze, a gimmicky first-person shooter that was more or less universally derided, thus killing any chance of TimeSplitters 4 seeing the light of day.
After the failure of Haze Free Radical was bought up by Crytek, which put the studio—now named Crytek UK—on Crysis duty. They've announced no plans to continue the TimeSplitters legacy. Hey, at least there aren't any more Haze games, either.
Dino Crisis 3
2003
Metacritic: 51
Many gamers today have probably never played a Dino Crisis game, and that's all thanks to the overwhelmingly mediocre Dino Crisis 3. Unfortunately, thanks to the disappointment of that game, Capcom will likely never revisit the franchise, and tons of gamers will miss out on shooting dinosaurs with a grenade launcher.
The original game was like Resident Evil with dinosaurs. Literally—it was produced by Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami. The second game dropped many of the survival horror elements, but it was still enjoyable. The third was utter crap, with just three non-boss enemy types and the worst camera in video game history. The wasted potential is strong with this one.
Red Faction: Armageddon
2011
Metacritic: 71
Poor Red Faction. What happened to you?
The ill-fated THQ got a lot of things right in its final years, but Red Faction was not one of them. It used to be nothing more than a competent, if slightly forgettable, shooter series. But Armageddon's predecessor, Red Faction: Guerrilla, propelled a second-tier franchise into the spotlight. Sadly it turns out it was more a fluke than anything.
Armageddon ditched everything that was great about Guerrilla, including the open-world gameplay, and focused on telling a nonsensical story and playing with gimmicky mechanics instead.
Nordic Games bought Red Faction after THQ's bankruptcy last year, but so far there are no known plans for another game in the series.
Perfect Dark Zero
2005
Metacritic: 81
What a massive, massive fucking disappointed Perfect Dark Zero was. But in retrospect it should have come as no surprise.
Betcha Microsoft thought it had scored big time when it purchased Rare, which previously had developed exclusively for Nintendo platforms, but sadly for gamers that was not the case. Zero had the initial advantage of being a launch title for the Xbox 360, but once that wow-ness wore off we were left with a complete dud.
The AI was crap, the graphics made every character model look like it had been dowsed in baby oil, and there were no aliens to be seen anywhere. After the ingenious campiness of the original's story, in which an alien named Elvis helps Jo save the world from some other aliens, this was a massive disappointment. It also tried to turn the formerly sensible protagonist into a weird, highlighted-hair seductress.
It's probably been long enough for a reboot at this point, but here's hoping the mediocre HD Xbox 360 port of Perfect Dark is the last we hear from the franchise.
Duke Nukem Forever
2011
Metacritic: 49/100
Ah, the prodigal son of '90s first-person shooter fans. Gone for more than a decade, Duke Nukem returned in the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever. It was in development longer than some of you were alive, and many would probably argue that it should have stayed there.
Forever's biggest problem may have been, well, its biggest problem: that it took so long to develop. It was worked on by so many different people and through so many generations of gaming that the final result came out like a casserole made of all the worst elements of FPS games from the last decade and a half.
And although Duke was always known for being a badass who doesn't give a fuck what you think about him or his strippers, it just wasn't as funny in 2012 as it was in 1995. We'll be surprised if he gets another chance at a comeback.