11 Half-Baked Video Games That Totally Ruined Their Franchises

If Mass Effect 3 dropped the ball, Andromeda nuked it.

Mass Effect Andromeda
Bioware

Video games have a nasty habit of overstaying their welcome. Rarely ever going out with a bang on top form, for the most part studios are content to keep pumping out new entries into popular franchises without a regard for quality, or whether or not anyone actually enjoys them anymore. Hell, this is the same industry that gave us nine Assassin's Creed games over the past ten years.

But just because publishers continue to release new games, it doesn't mean their audiences will mindlessly gnaw on any old bone that's thrown their way. In fact, over the years we've seen new entries into once earth-shattering franchises kill entire series' dead, completely burning bridges with fans for good.

It takes a lot to get gamers to finally say enough is enough, but these half-baked duds were so bad, they managed to cause mass exoduses amongst players, ruining any future potential in the process. Even if the publishers continued to release new entries afterwards, these games marked the point of no return, forever going down in gaming history as the titles that completely tarnished otherwise great gaming names.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.