10 Video Games That Had The World's Attention (And Lost It)

5. Medal Of Honor

The death of Medal of Honor came not necessarily by its own hand, but by drowning in a sea of identikit titles. The 1999 debut and its two quasi-spiritual sequels confused the marketplace a tad, but then MoH: Frontline made such a monumental impact - redefining the very nature of playable cinematics in video games - the entire industry shifted to get in on the action.

It really can't be understated how phenomenal that D-Day landing sequence was, as even EA couldn't top it, trying with Rising Sun's Pearl Harbour recreation and then the experimental MoH: Airborne letting you drop anywhere and proceed to the next checkpoint. Alongside this feeling of diminishing returns was everything from the birth of Call of Duty to the disastrous Hour of Victory, whose selling point was that bodies would fly through the air more emphatically.

Speaking of CoD, 2007 saw Modern Warfare arrive and thermo nuclear-detonate the FPS landscape, immediately making Medal of Honor look and feel beyond outdated. When EA finally brought the series back in 2010 it was a shell of its former self, dogged by a controversy surrounding a playable Taliban faction, and ultimately feeling like it was chasing a Call of Duty from three years prior.

The last instalment was 2012's Warfighter, topping off a solid 11 years of EA not being able to outdo their initial efforts.