8 Video Game Trilogies That Went From Bad To GREAT

2. TimeSplitters

The original TimeSplitters is a quintessential console launch title - an entertaining multiplayer shooter for its time, albeit one that was also incredibly barebones.

The console FPS was still very much in its infancy in 2000 - GoldenEye and Perfect Dark excepted, of course - and this is evidenced by the game's simplistic presentation and gameplay, as well as its near-total lack of a story.

The multiplayer suite was its saving grace, and is likely responsible for TimeSplitters selling well enough for developer Free Radical Design to produce a sequel, which categorically blew it out of the water.

With its deeper campaign and mind-bogglingly addictive, diverse multiplayer, TimeSplitters 2 instantly established itself as the gold standard for goofy FPS mayhem in the PS2 era.

And then came TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, which offered some fantastic variations on the existing formula while introducing the one thing everyone wanted in the previous game - online multiplayer.

Though the franchise obviously wouldn't exist without the original game, it feels more like a sketchy prototype of the vision Free Radical would later realise, rather than a genuinely good offering in its own right.