8 Iconic Video Game Franchises That Went Completely Off The Rails

2. Tomb Raider

When Crystal Dynamics were tasked with ‘rebooting’ Tomb Raider, the series really didn’t need too much doing. The instruction should’ve been clear: make the graphics better, ensure Lara Croft continues to excite gamers as a protagonist, don’t alter gameplay radically.

Typically, this wasn’t the case.

Instead of the cocksure, sarcastic femme-fatale we knew and loved; CD gave us a whiny amateur on her first archaeological job with no experience of weapons, no knowledge of history (it seems) and a group of friends who all had ‘going to die’ written all over them. It was a painfully predictable origin story that gave me a headache just from its outlying concept.

Making Tomb Raider an open-world experience that doesn’t focus on raiding tombs was a foolish move. Yes, you can hunt for artefacts during your quest, but the idea was almost definitely an afterthought. Crystal Dynamics focused too heavily on the story of this whiny soon-to-be hero being forced to grow up to escape a cursed island.

At times, Tomb Raider's scripted sequences and forced drama felt more like a film than a video game.