8 Video Games Built To Kill The Competition (That WON)

Making a video game that succeeds both critically and commercially is a basically Herculean feat, especially if the genre in question is already stacked with celebrated tentpole titles.

No matter how good a new game might be, there’s no guarantee it will find an audience and thrive when there are only so many games that players can actively engage with.

And so, it goes without saying that new games trying to compete with existing franchises are often saddled with lofty, arguably unreasonable expectations, such as them killing the current king of their genre.

We’ve all heard about the countless games that were positioned to kill the most successful entries into their respective genres, only to underperform and be swiftly forgotten.

Less common, though, are the killers that actually Did The Thing - going out into the market, dethroning the ruling franchise and taking its place as the new cream of the crop.

It’s rare because it’s so damn tough to pull off, and yet, these games all managed it against tremendous odds - wiping the floor with the competition and becoming synonymous, standout titles in their genre…

It's fair to say that the Call of Duty franchise didn't merely eat Medal of Honor's lunch - it took breakfast and dinner too, leaving the once-peerless FPS franchise emaciated and begging for scraps.

Throughout the early to mid 2000s, Medal of Honor was the military shooter franchise, driven to enormous success by the popularity of 2002's iconic Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in particular.

But soon enough key personnel from the Allied Assault team left to make their own company, Infinity Ward, and launched Call of Duty the very next year, which they internally nicknamed "MOH Killer" during development.

And even though the first three Call of Duty games were well-received, they didn't seem to put a serious dent in Medal of Honor's market share.

But hoo boy, that all changed in 2007, when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out. Beyond its refreshing contemporary setting, Modern Warfare boasted a thrillingly cinematic campaign unlike any the military FPS had seen before, and a brilliant multiplayer suite bolstered by a fiendishly addictive progression system.

Granted, Medal of Honor had already diluted its brand by this point with a number of so-so releases, but by the time 2010's gritty reboot flopped critically and commercially, it was painfully clear that the franchise had basically become irrelevant.

The last mainline, non-VR Medal of Honor game came out way back in 2012, while Call of Duty has remained a commercial juggernaut ever since Modern Warfare's release.