10 Video Game Franchises With Only ONE Good Game
2. Crackdown
Crackdown was a sleeper hit for the Xbox 360 when it was released in 2007. The action-adventurer combines open-world exploration with superhero antics, allowing players to leap across rooftops while blasting everything in sight. It also offered a lot of flexibility, since you could take down gang bosses in any order.
Instead of evolving the formula, Crackdown 2 felt like an expansion pack. It reused the same city with minimal changes and replaced the imaginative gang battles with banal fights against mindless creatures. The game lacked a compelling antagonist, and the mission structure became formulaic. While the core gameplay remained the same, the innovation was virtually non-existent.
After years of delays, Crackdown 3 launched with a whimper. Due to its outdated single-player campaign, unpolished gameplay, and lack of mission variety, people wondered why this blunder spent so long in development. (Not even President Camacho himself, Terry Crews, could save this one.)
While Crews’ involvement added personality, Crackdown 3 failed to deliver anything new beyond what the first instalment achieved over a decade earlier.
Even though any gaming property can recover from a dud, Crackdown 3 may have killed the brand for good.