10 Video Game Franchises That Never Got Better Than The First Instalment

4. Portal

The Franchise: A little bonus thrown in to pad out the package, Portal proved to be the standout of Valve's The Orange Box. A genuinely new idea in a landscape dominated by sameness, Portal was a three-dimension puzzle game that had working through twenty increasingly complex test chambers using the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin portal gun. A full-length sequel, released a few years later, continued the story and added even more dry humour, as well as introducing co-op levels (awesome and frustrating both at once). There's only one bit of unexplored potential. With Aperture, the company in the game, a part of the bigger Half-Life world there was speculation that the gun would appear in that series next game. We're still waiting. Why The First Was Best: Portal takes you at most a couple of hours to complete (more if you went looking for all the easter eggs literally behind the scenes that hinted at a larger story at play). Those two hours, however, was one of the best gaming experiences of the past-generation. A complete surprise upon release, Portal is the go-to example of lightening in a bottle; there was no flab on the game that needed to be cut and it was so fresh and unique any developer considering imitation has steered clear in sheer awe. How could a sequel, even one as good as the one Valve delivered, match that?