15 Games That Ruined Great Franchises

Developer Crystal Dynamics tried to course-correct this series with 2003’s Legacy of Kain: Defiance, but the damage was done. That pure action game was significantly more entertaining than its predecessor, but ultimately only served to verify that The Legacy of Kain’s glory days had become a gaping, painful wound in the hearts of those that remembered them.

8. Splatterhouse (2010)

I’ll go to bat for the early Splatterhouse games whenever I have the chance to do so. Maybe they weren’t the best beat-em-ups on the market, but their willingness to embrace even the most absurd elements of the horror genre was genuinely refreshing at a time when most other developers shied away from anything remotely controversial. 

That’s the first of many problems with Splatterhouse’s 2010 reboot. Released at a time when more violent video games like the GTA franchise were becoming more and more common, Splatterhouse’s publisher seemingly figured that the time was perfect to revive one of gaming’s original violent franchises. Even if their instincts were right, their execution was all wrong. Deprived of the privilege of its more novel elements, the Splatterhouse reboot instead had to rely on the most generic 3D action beat-em-up gameplay you could ever be bothered to imagine. 

Though the faintest glimpses of a much better game occasionally shone through the darkness, 2010’s Splatterhouse killed the goodwill towards a franchise that honestly still deserves to be a part of the industry.

7. Dead Rising 4

The original Dead Rising was a big deal. It not only allowed horror fans everywhere to live out their dark dreams of surviving a zombie apocalypse, but it did so via advanced gaming technology that turned next-gen skeptics into true believers. As the series evolved, it largely retained the qualities that made the original Dead Rising as special as it was. Yet, around the time of Dead Rising 3‘s release, those who had followed the franchise since the beginning could start to see the wheels coming off.

To be fair, 2016’s Dead Rising 4 isn’t a bad game. It was just a game that tried to reach a much wider audience at the cost of the wants and requests of the franchise’s biggest fans. That gamble could have worked, but it certainly didn’t. Long-time fans were turned off by the game’s drastic change in tone, removal of foundational survival elements, and other changes that were seemingly made to make the whole experience more accessible than ever before.