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00:00So, there are few things more frustrating than when a beloved game series with thousands of
00:04fans just doesn't get treated with the amount of respect that it deserves. Sometimes it also
00:09seems to happen for no reason. The games get fantastic reception and a loyal following,
00:13only for its developers to just throw it away. Of course, creating games and managing a franchise
00:17is definitely hard, and anyone on the outside looking in probably has no idea what goes into
00:21all of it. But sometimes the mistakes seem so obvious, you have to wonder what the hell they
00:25were thinking. So, let's take a look at them today. As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:29and these are 10 Thoroughly Mistreated Video Game Franchises.
00:3310. Rayman
00:34By all accounts, Rayman should have been the face of Ubisoft. Perfect as a mascot,
00:39the series had some incredibly beloved games starring the Limbless Wonder,
00:42as he platformed his way through several really fun adventures. But then,
00:46Rayman hit a roadblock that he just couldn't get past for the longest of time, and that was
00:49The Rabbids. Created as the main enemies for a mainline Rayman game, it got cancelled and reworked
00:54into a Wii minigame collection, and that started the full-on Rabbids takeover of the series.
00:59Rayman was barely seen for years as the Rabbids invaded everything they possibly could,
01:03with their own games, cameos, and even their own cartoon series. Eventually, though,
01:07Rayman did come back in glorious 2D platforming form, earning high praise as some of the best of
01:12the genre. However, that glory didn't last long, as after two games Rayman was regulated to mobile,
01:17with auto-runners and a brand new adventure of the hero being miniaturised. The mobile games
01:21themselves are fine, but with how beloved the character is, it's a shame that Ubisoft seemingly
01:26refuses to do right by him.
01:289. Star Wars Battlefront
01:30So how do you take a fan-favourite series and almost destroy it? Well, you give the license
01:34to EA, apparently. The original Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 were beloved, seen by many fans as some
01:40of the best Star Wars games ever made, and were some of the most popular games to play during the
01:44early days of online console gaming. Unfortunately, the original series would never see a third game,
01:49as it went through a lot of development issues. There were even plans for a fourth game on top
01:53of that, but of course, that was never going to happen. Eventually, the game was cancelled,
01:56and Disney would give the license to EA, where they created a new Battlefront game that was
02:01bare-bones at release, but you know what, it was fine enough. But then they made that second game,
02:05and almost killed the series before it released due to their loot box implementation. Basically,
02:10putting in a pay-to-win mechanic and making them almost mandatory if you didn't want to spend
02:1340-plus hours unlocking Darth Vader, the blowback was seething, giving them the most downvoted
02:18comment in Reddit history, and then having the controversy appear in mainstream news and forcing
02:22them to remove loot boxes 24 hours before launch. And now it seems that there won't be a third game
02:27again, leaving the series in limbo once more.
02:308. Metroid
02:31Now I know what you're thinking, didn't we just get Metroid Dread in 2021? Yes, we did,
02:36but the series as a whole has gone through a lot of ups and downs, so much so that Simon Miller is
02:41actually suing them. While most games are critically acclaimed, so few come out that a lot of people just
02:46kind of forget about the series until that next release. Being a Metroid fan is basically
02:50frustration incarnate. You have fantastic 2D games, and then the Prime series that reinvented what
02:55Metroid could be, and then you have Other M, which had some weird design choices and a story
03:00that was the definition of character assassination for poor Samus. And the thing is, is that if you
03:04want a new Prime game, well too bad, have a spin-off with Metroid Prime on it that actually has nothing
03:08to do with Samus and doesn't have the gameplay of the original. Want a new 2D game? Well here,
03:12have some remakes while they spend two decades trying to make Dread. Still want Metroid Prime
03:174? Well, they restarted development, so you'll have to wait even longer. It's a series that
03:21should be bigger than it is, but thanks to some baffling decisions, the series has been held back
03:25from its full potential. 7. Sonic the Hedgehog
03:28You would think that with being the biggest franchise in Sega's library, that Sonic Team
03:32would know what to do with the series, but as it turns out, they haven't got a bloody clue,
03:36and they haven't for a very long time. Of course, we have the original and iconic trilogy
03:40back on the Genesis, and the fun Sonic Adventure duology, but afterwards the series started to
03:45take a nosedive that it never really recovered from. The developers just have no idea how to
03:49make Sonic appealing, adding in more and more gimmicks. While Sonic Heroes and even Shadow
03:53the Hedgehog were fine, I guess, the fact that they felt like they had to give Sonic's darker
03:58twin a gun should speak volumes, and that's not even going into the mess that was Sonic 06,
04:02the Werehog, and also Sonic Forces. The only game that got any widespread acclaim for the
04:07Blue Hedgehog in the modern era was Sonic Mania, a game which, lest we not forget,
04:11was created by die-hard fans of the series. With how great everything else in the world of Sonic
04:16is right now, we just hope that the games will match up with that quality eventually.
04:196. Metal Gear Solid
04:21Not too many games are dependent on one man, but Hideo Kojima isn't just any man. Kojima helmed the
04:27Metal Gear Solid series and knocked it out of the park with every entry. With political intrigue and
04:31storylines about the horrors of war predicting the state of the world with eerie accuracy,
04:35Metal Gear Solid is rightfully considered one of the best game franchises ever. However,
04:39Kojima and Konami started to clash during the production of Metal Gear Solid 5, and that led
04:43to the very ugly and very public divorce of the two before that game was released. While 5 definitely
04:48had its issues due to this, it was still critically acclaimed due to its open-world and free-form
04:52gameplay, and then the series immediately tanked so much that it might as well have been dead.
04:57The first game without Kojima behind it, Metal Gear Survive, came out most likely as a way to test
05:01the waters within the franchise after the breakup. It was a spin-off game, not having anything to do
05:05with any version of Snake, and having the player get transported into a zombie dimension. The
05:09gameplay was tedious, the story completely lacking, the world bleak and boring, and everything was
05:14just so terrible that most of the fanbase have written off the franchise entirely. You're more
05:18likely to see a pachinko machine for Metal Gear than a new game anytime soon.
05:215. Conker
05:22Arguably the property that has suffered the most from Microsoft buying Rare, Conker has had more
05:27than one bad day at this point. The squirrel made his debut on the N64, and while it didn't sell
05:32all too well, it was praised thanks to its solid platforming and raunchy adult subject material,
05:37being a perfect mismatch with the kid-friendly visuals. A sequel was planned, but was scrapped
05:41once it went over to Xbox, and a remake of the first game was made instead. Then they tried to
05:45make a multiplayer-only game, but that never materialized. Conker kind of disappeared after that,
05:50with no real news about the series coming out. But then, in 2014, almost 10 years after the remake was
05:55released, it was announced that Conker would make his triumphant return in a game creation title
05:59called Project Spark. Obviously just a shallow marketing tactic, Project Spark shut down very
06:04early into its life, cutting any new experiences with Conker short. Afterwards, something called
06:08Young Conker was announced for the Microsoft Hololands in 2016, and unsurprisingly, fans hated
06:13this idea, and Conker hasn't been seen since.
06:164. Devil May Cry
06:17Now, before I begin talking about this one, let's just get it out of the gate. The actual game,
06:21DMC, if you're playing it from a gameplay perspective, is brilliant. But, the redesign,
06:25ooh, that was not loved. And this is the thing, Capcom wanted to do Call of Duty-sized sales
06:29numbers, and figured that the best way to do this was to reboot some of their franchises to appeal
06:33to Western audiences, and Devil May Cry was one of them. Changing Dante's iconic look, making his
06:38brother Virgil act like he'd call you m'lady, and having a story try way too hard to be cool and edgy,
06:43and also actively mocking things that previous fans liked of the series, the reboot was not looked at
06:48favourably. Years later, Capcom kind of admitted that they'd made a mistake, and made Devil May Cry 5,
06:53going off the original series continuity, and giving a very fitting end to the Sons of Sparda.
06:58And hopefully, they'll keep it up.
06:593. Diablo
07:00Is this an out-of-season April Fool's joke? Those nine words are the best way to show how hilariously
07:06out-of-touch Blizzard was with what people wanted. Diablo 3 was released in 2012 to positive reviews,
07:12with fans of the series loving pretty much everything about it. But then, years passed,
07:16fans were anxious to see what new entry would be to the series. Rumours of Diablo 4 were swirling,
07:20so at their convention in 2018, Blizzard announced that the next entry into the Diablo series was
07:25going to be Diablo Immortal. It was a mobile game, and then they announced nothing else.
07:30In their infinite wisdom, they decided to have a QA session about the game,
07:33which led to the Immortal ha-ha-ha quote above. It also had the crowd booing when the developers
07:38announced that there would be no PC port, and one particularly terrible retort from a developer
07:43that went to the tune of,
07:44Do you guys not have phones?
07:49Now, while the fourth game was officially announced a while later,
07:52this whole thing felt like an absolute farce.
07:552. Mega Man
07:56So Mega Man 11 was released in 2018 to pretty favourable reviews, making fans of the series
08:01very, very happy. But the iconic character wasn't always in such a good place. For all intents
08:06and purposes, Mega Man was dead in the 2010s. Several games for the Blue Bomber were announced
08:10in 2010, but every single one of them was cancelled, and Capcom just didn't do anything
08:14with the character for a long time. The Great Mega Man drought happened, and fans were in despair
08:19for something, anything from the franchise. In the gaming world, the best they got was a wacky DLC
08:24guest spot in Street Fighter X Tekken, and it wasn't even the Mega Man that everyone loved,
08:28it was the Mega Man from the box art of the first game. You know, the one that made him
08:31look like an out-of-shape middle-aged man? Now, things seem to be a bit better for Mega Man
08:35right now, with 11 and his spot in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinity, but, uh, I mean, the quality
08:39of that game aside, showing a renewed interest to include him in Capcom's plans, so hopefully
08:43the character won't vanish again. But seriously, Capcom, where's my Mega Man Legends follow-up?
08:47Come on, let's go, let's go.
08:481. Silent Hill
08:50Ugh, this series just cannot catch a break, can it?
08:53Silent Hill is one of the most iconic survival horror franchises ever, with the first three
08:57games in particular really standing out. Dealing with demons, both literal and personal, these
09:02games were artistic and horrifying masterpieces. But it seems that they lost track of why these
09:06games were so good, because they just kept on making follow-up games, and not a lot of
09:10them were any good. Homecoming and Downpour in particular focused more on action than horror,
09:15ignoring story beats from previous games in order to try and appeal more to wider audiences,
09:19and just clearly being rushed games of poor quality. But then, the series was given an
09:24unexpected second breath. The mysterious demo dropped on the PS4 called PT, a game where
09:29you walked down a hallway over and over and over again as you dealt with a terrifying ghost
09:32that was stalking you. It was horrifying, it was tense, it was everything that fans wanted
09:36from a horror game, and it turned out to be a new Silent Hill game, starring Norman readers
09:40of all people and being created by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. But you all know where
09:44this is going. Kojima left the company, effectively killing Silent Hills. Konami snuffed out the
09:49second breath almost as quickly as they gave it, and Silent Hills seems to be dead as a
09:53franchise. Now, I know that there is rumours of the reboot coming out soon or soon to be
09:57announced, but still, that is going to be revisionist. That is going to be Konami putting
10:00their stamp on their own history, and to be honest, with their track record at the moment,
10:04I'm not too hopeful. Prove me wrong, Konami. Prove me wrong.
10:07And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 thoroughly mistreated video game franchises. I hope that
10:11you enjoyed it, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section
10:14below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Twitter, at RetroJay,
10:18but the O is a zero, and it'd be great to see you over there. But before you go, I just want to say
10:23one thing. I hope that you're treating yourself well with love and respect, because you deserve
10:27all of the best things in life, like love, happiness, and success. And do not let anything
10:31or anyone else tell you otherwise. You are a massive ledge, and I want you to go out there
10:35and absolutely smash it today. As always, I've been Jules. You have been awesome.
10:39Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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