10 TERRIBLE Video Games (That Secretly Saved Franchises)

10. Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was the sixth mainline entry into the hit platformer franchise, and sought to effectively rejuvenate the series following Lara's fake-out "death" in The Last Revelation and consequent revival in Chronicles.

But many members of development team Core Design were tired of working on Tomb Raider by this point, to the extent that few key personnel from the earlier titles actually stuck around for The Angel of Darkness.

Elsewhere, poor management resulted in the game being scrapped at least once and the additional complexity of developing for PS2 hardware further hindered production, leading to an end product widely panned for being both glitch-riddled and blatantly unfinished.

Core Design reportedly submitted the game to Sony eight times before it was accepted, with staff later commenting that it needed around two more months of work to be satisfactorily completed.

The Angel of Darkness was not only blamed for killing the video game series' commercial prospects but also denting the box office performance of the Angelina Jolie-starring movie franchise, and led to Core Design head Jeremy Heath-Smith resigning in its wake.

All planned sequels were scrapped, and Eidos Interactive ultimately took the franchise away from Core and gave it to Crystal Dynamics, who released a string of critically acclaimed and commercially successful Tomb Raider games in the years that followed.

Most notably, they gave Lara Croft a gritty makeover with 2013's terrific reboot. Core Design burning out with The Angel of Darkness is ultimately the best thing that could've happened to the series, because it allowed a fresh, enthusiastic new pair of eyes to deliver a radical retooling.