15 Video Game Sequels That Totally Defined Their Franchises

9. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

You have to be one mighty self-assured developer to take a pretty big left turn from cutesy platformers like Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter to 'a dude in a shirt and jeans' as your next iconic protagonist. Under any other team it would've fell flat on its face - and to be honest the first Uncharted didn't take off as Naughty Dog hoped - but come the second game's unveiling at E3 and that scene of the building collapsing as you played, and it was off to the races for the franchise overall. Not content with only wowing people at one point in their game, Uncharted 2 was suitably rammed with phenomenal moments you just wanted to scream about; the extended real-time physics train sequence, the 'bit with the moving jeeps', even the game's intro asked you to precariously get out of a cliff-dangling train before Tarantino'ing the story back to how you got there in the first place. Naughty Dog were one of the first developers to pioneer and nail motion-captured cutscenes, really bringing about the whole 'films vs. games' debate that titles like The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption have since hammered home - but the spark that lit the touch-paper has always been right here.