10 Video Games That Were Basically One Big Apology

Sometimes game developers get it wrong. Horribly wrong. To be fair to them, most of the time they have a herculean task on their hands: to be able to satiate fans, who, with advances in technology and increasing demands of excellence, have ever growing expectations on what they expect from their favourite franchises.

The weight of expectation (I'm looking at you Cyberpunk 2077), tight deadlines, or a complete misreading of what the fans actually want, can leave people feeling p*ssed off and frustrated with the final product.

You only have to look at the disastrous re-release of XIII and the developers PlayMagic's subsequent grovelling apology to fans, who said, "In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players' frustrations."

Therefore, when working on a follow up game, it is up to the developers to give fans what they want, whilst still maintaining their creative integrity.

Here we discuss the many ways in which developers, fresh off of the 'must do better' feeling on one of their games, have strived, with mixed results, to give more of what the fans actually want with follow up games.

Whilst the majority of Wolfenstein titles have been a byword for quality, and is some of the most fun that can be had in video games, this gaming juggernaut ground to a halt with the release of Wolfenstein in 2009.

It received middling reviews, predominantly being criticised for being dull, and having promising features not expanded upon. A prime example is its open world setting, which on first glance seems expansive, but in reality was linear (and not in a good way) and extremely limited in scope and size.

The game performed poorly in sales, resulting in MachineGames being given the franchise in 2010.

The new developers took a fresh approach to the direction of the franchise, which mostly succeeded. The game went back to a more 'on the rails' style, which was accentuated with intense gunplay and hedonistic, gory visuals.

The narrative was a particular highlight, Wolfenstein's trademark alternate history of World War 2 taking BJ Blazkowicz on a tour of Nazi occupied earth.

It is no surprise then, buoyed by the success of the game, that the template for The New Order was almost certainly used as inspiration for id Software to create Doom (2016) , one of the best shooters of its generation.