10 More Video Games That Sold Millions (Despite Being Terrible)

Poor Core Design.

While Sonic Team survived producing disaster after disaster, one bad game was all it took for Tomb Raider's original developers to collapse like the final levels of Tomb Raiders I, II and IV. (For a supposed archaeologist, Lara Croft is astonishingly bad at preserving her historic finds).

To be fair to Core, they realised that the Tomb Raider formula had become increasingly stale over the past five entries. Angel of Darkness was meant to be a new direction for the franchise as a whole, but said new direction came perilously close to turning the franchise away from the promised land and straight to the island of irrelevancy (Yes, that was a Bloodline reference).

Putting it kindly, Angel of Darkness was a brave failure. ???? of the new features worked - the RPG mechanics were half-baked, the controls were an unsatisfying halfway house between the d-pad focused classic Tomb Raiders and modern analogue stick controls, and the stealth mechanics would have been risible in the early nineties, never mind 2003.

Despite selling just under 3 million copies, Angel of Darkness' critical pasting meant the franchise was passed to Crystal Dynamics, who provided some impressive course correction with their own (highly under-rated) Tomb Raider trilogy. Core Design, meanwhile, were quietly shuttered a few years later.