10 Video Game Franchises Dying For A Comeback

The real suffering is waiting for another instalment.

By Adam Nicholson /

These days, the gaming industry seems intent upon remastering and even now remaking as many erstwhile successes as they can muster, with the touted remake of The Last of Us perhaps representing the most egregious example of this trend.

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That isn’t to say that revisiting past titles now that the technology has advanced is necessarily bad, but there seem to be so many well-deserving franchises being overlooked; especially titles who perhaps didn’t get quite a fair punt first time around, or those who, for one reason or another, have sadly faded away.

Even a cursory glance over the lists of past titles reveals the sheer number of games that were passed over for sequel treatment or simply stopped in their tracks and yet which have undeniable potential, especially now.

Rather than trying to take stale franchises and reinvigorate them, why not give these overlooked gems a second chance?

From major successes that seemingly just fell by the wayside to under-appreciated titles that could do with another swing, the recent history of gaming furnishes us with plenty of candidates to be given the reboot treatment.

10. Timesplitters

It's one of those dormant, if not dead, franchises that arouses the most wishful thinking amongst fans: what if TimeSplitters came back?

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Recent debacles around HD remastered code of the second title and other dubious Easter eggs have kept the flame fanned still, some sixteen years after the release of the third game.

It is baffling, on the face of it, why TimeSplitters should be absent from the gaming horizon currently, at least from a critical point of view. Consider the Metacritic scores for the three games of the trilogy on PS2: 81, 90, 84 - most franchises would be envious of such consistency of quality. Revisiting this trilogy is a must for anyone interested in the history of the medium.

Another key aspect why TimeSplitters needs a comeback, beyond simply deserving one, is how the incredibly ambitious time play and design could be executed these days. The technical potential a reboot of the series could draw upon is staggering to even consider idly.

One can only hope that murmurings of the franchise are indicative of work going on behind the scenes, despite denials from THQ Nordic to that effect.

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