10 Intense Shifts In Gameplay That Came Out Of Nowhere
Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" hits just as hard today.
Generally speaking, when players throw down their hard-earned cash for a new game, they like to have a good idea of what they're getting themselves into. With current-gen games now costing up to £70, that's a totally reasonable stance.
But at the same time, it probably isn't fair to expect games developers - who, at the end of the day, are mostly artists rather than business-folk - to keep playing the predictable hits forever for fear of alienating less-adventurous gamers.
While developers are often savvy enough to carefully massage tonal, aesthetic, and gameplay shifts into their games, sometimes they, for whatever reason, decide not to do that.
Perhaps the developers intentionally wanted to blindside players with a shocking, sudden burst of intense new gameplay, or maybe the jarring switch between styles was a result of problematic or rushed development.
Whatever the reason, these 10 video games all switched-out the expected gameplay for something completely different, to the slack-jawed surprise of players who had no idea quite what they were getting themselves into.
Whether it worked or not, these games changed-up the experience on-the-fly, and players are still talking about how damn weird it was today...
10. The Descendants - Uncharted
For the overwhelming majority of its play-time, the original Uncharted is a heightened-yet-mostly-realistic action-adventure romp that, while fundamentally silly, is still tethered (mostly) to some semblance of our own tangible reality.
But in the late-game chapter "The Heart of the Vault," Naughty Dog decided to take a sharp and totally un-telegraphed left-turn into supernatural survival horror territory.
This chapter introduces the descendants, a fleet of feral, undead, demonic monsters descended from Spanish colonists.
The terrifying set-piece that follows sees Nate and co. desperately fending off the attacking creatures, which can make short work of you if you're not paying attention. For a game that's otherwise a pretty breezy time, it left many scratching their heads.
Now, that isn't to say supernatural nonsense is totally out of place in a series very clearly inspired by Indiana Jones of all things, but it was an unmistakable shift in genre and tone from the more grounded controlled chaos of what came before.
Despite the divisive response, though, most subsequent games in the series also featured a noted supernatural element.