5. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
When the first Assassin's Creed was released, the reception was positive, but muddled. Ubisoft had a lot of problems to fix, which they actually managed to pull off with the superior Assassin's Creed 2. Then Ubisoft surprised everyone by announcing a sequel to be released just a year later without a numeral. When the news began to eke out, many analysts like myself were curious as to how good this game could actually be. The developers had spent about 3 years getting the second game ready, and Brotherhood was initially supposed to be an online/multiplayer-centric offering.
How did it succeed against the odds? We thought we were getting a stripped down side story akin to a direct-to-DVD sequel, but we instead received one of the best entries in the series, introducing the assassin's guild and providing what is still considered to be the series' best surprise endings.