10. Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness
Tomb Raider is a great series because the concept is a fairly basic one to grasp, as ever since Indiana Jones stole that golden idol and escaped the boulder trap we've fallen in love with tales of action-adventure, and Lara's iconic seriess was one of the first to successfully capture that in a video game. With a mix of great platforming, intelligent puzzling and exciting combat, it's a series that remains in the hearts of many. So why did they try to change that basic formula so much with The Angel Of Darkness? Mixing RPG elements into a new genre can lead to some exciting games (look at the Mass Effect series as an obvious example) but it's not always guaranteed to work. Levelling up Shepard's abilities to add a dynamic range of skills to use on the battlefield? Great. Moving wardrobes so that Lara feels a bit stronger? Not so thrilling. Telling the game's story through conversations with NPCs also backfired for the soon-to-be defunct Core Design; it just became far too tedious. Adding in more obvious gameplay revisions like awkward stealth sections (again, an unnecessary addition to a series which was highly successful without them) also proved to be a bad idea. The backlash to this game was so huge that Core Design lost control of the Tomb Raider franchise (despite having developed every game up to that point) and the second film in the Lara Croft series - Cradle Of Life - flopped at the box office with Paramount firmly blaming The Cradle Of Darkness for causing a backlash across the entire franchise. Way to kick Core Design when they were down guys.