10 Groundbreaking Video Games That TOTALLY Missed The Mark
All the ambition, none of the innovation.
With more and more video games being released all the time, it's becoming increasingly difficult for a game to do something completely new. Back in the early days of gaming, developers essentially had a huge empty canvas to work with, making the majority of their first works unique and genre-defining.
Now, almost 50 years later, that canvas is one heck of a lot more crowded, and today's developers have to be extra creative in their pursuit of something that breaks new ground in the game industry.
Granted, there's an argument to be made that some game franchises don't really try to innovate all that much (not mentioning any names). But most do, and, in the case of the most ambitious of these, few succeed to the extent they had hoped.
This list singles out 10 such games: the games that set out to reinvent either their own franchise's formula or the formula of gaming as a whole, but ultimately, no matter how well they play, fell short of their own expectations.
10. Battlefield Hardline
EA's Battlefield series is one of the most successful long-running first-person-shooter franchises of the 21st century, and one of the main competitors of the Call of Duty series by Activision.
Like Call of Duty, the series chiefly focuses on historical battles, from World War 1 to the Vietnam War. So when 2015's Battlefield Hardline was announced as a 'cops and robbers'-style street shooter with heists and car chases, it's safe to say there were more than a few looks of confusion.
Developed by Visceral Games, known for their fantastic sci-fi horror series, Dead Space, this game was intended to breathe new life into the Battlefield franchise by breaking away from the conventional military formula it is known for. It may have been a good idea on paper, but upon release, the game's campaign and stealth gameplay were met with very little praise.
A textbook example of trying to reinvent the wheel, Battlefield Hardline tried to change up a series that fans were content with sticking to its roots, and as a result, is scarcely remembered five years later.