15 Most Headscratchingly Awful Video Game Redesigns

An iconic franchise in gaming doesn't just become a household name out of thin air. Lovable characters, a unique gameplay twist - or just being a damn good game - are what make people crave more, giving way to hype, sales and hopefully, a devoted fanbase.

Thing is, there's a misbegotten idea in many entertainment industries that a given time period's "appeal" can and will age. What's cool becomes uncool, what's popular then won't be popular now, and so on.

So sometimes, an executive looking at market trends or a rambunctious game developer wanting to make their mark on a storied franchise, takes an old dog and decides that they're going to be the one to teach it a new trick or two.

Then once it hits the market, everything falls to hell, because it's not what anybody wanted at all.

Whether it's taking a beloved franchise and retooling/rebranding it for "the modern market" - a nebulous, hard to describe demographic that if it could speak, would never endorse anything, anyway - or taking an iconic series and giving it an unconventional new style, there's always the one game that makes everyone look at it and think "What the hell happened here?".

This is a list of the top 15 most headscratchingly awful redesigns in gaming history. God help you, if you thought these were the originals...

One of Konami's most iconic franchises, Silent Hill, has been scaring the bejesus out of people ever since the PlayStation 1, preferring psychological horror, deeply personal stories, and the player's weakness against enemies over jump scares.

So when Konami released the Vita game Book of Memories, and it turned out to be hack and slash multiplayer RPG designed by indie darlings WayForward? A couple heads turned, and people were understandably confused.

Credit where credit's due: Book of Memories has semblances of it's lineage. The story and setting, detailing the protagonist taking a book that holds their past and can rewrite their future, can take some truly twisted turns.

Nothing about it is scary, though. It's impossible to be scared in a game when you have three friends with you and you're hacking through enemies, collecting loot, and getting new powerups and abilities.

Once you remove the horror from the setting, all that's left is a bland traipse through a typical multiplayer dungeon crawler.