10 Video Games That Were Sold On Stupid Gameplay Gimmicks

2. Dog Levels - Call Of Duty: Ghosts

Although it's bounced back over the past couple of years, in the early 2010s the Call of Duty franchise was in dire straits. After Infinity Ward lost most of its core staff and released the underwhelming Modern Warfare 3, it attempted to follow it up with a completely different sub-franchise that almost single-handedly killed the entire series.

The problem was that, despite being given free reign, the developers had essentially nothing new to bring to the table. Sure, there was a new, near post-apocalyptic plot they brought to the forefront, but from a gameplay perspective there was only one major new addition the great minds left at Infinity Ward could come up with: dog levels.

Shown off over and over again in pre-release trailers, the ability to play as a dog was - for some reason - championed in the months leading up to the game's release.

Presented as being the next big thing for the franchise, these dog levels ended up amounting to little more than a couple of poorly-controlled distractions in the main campaign. Now, they're only remembered as an embarrassing reminder of how out of steam the series was in the final years of the Xbox 360 era.