10 Awful Video Game Spin-Offs That Insult The Original

9. Call Of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified

Metal Gear Survive
Activision

What would you rather play: a spin-off handled with care by an offshoot studio from its parent company, or a thinly-veiled cash-in phoned out to an external developer?

Were it not for Guerilla Cambridge's Killzone: Mercenary, maybe, just maybe, Nihilistic's Black Ops: Declassified could have escaped some of the criticism it attracted for being an ugly, full-priced and incredibly buggy Vita title, but such is the quality of the former that Declassified's faults are made all the more prominent by comparison.

But then, Activision's just as accountable for the disastrous spin-off as its developer. Maybe it was arrogance - that Activision believed the slimmed-down, diluted Call of Duty formula would sell like hotcakes thanks to the brand name alone - or something else entirely. Either way, Declassified is the epitome of half-baked and deserves nothing more than the bargain bin treatment.

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.