9 Video Game Franchises That Never Beat Their First Instalment

9. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Arguably the best Marvel game that deals with groups of heroes rather than specific characters like Spider-Man, the original Ultimate Alliance had its heart in the right place, and was ludicrously enjoyable to play.

Seeing you on a location-spanning trek visiting everywhere from Stark Tower to Murderworld, Atlantis to Asgard, it's still super recommendable today thanks to developer Raven being an all-time great studio.

Afterwards, things only got worse.

Following Raven suffering various layoffs as they attempted to development Wolfenstein and the immaculate Singularity, development on the sequel went to Vicarious Visions, who removed many things that made the original so charming.

Gone were character-specific grapple finishers, gone were the more cool-looking team-up attacks, and gone were things that let you know the developers truly cared about the source material, like pop trivia quizzes you could play in between missions.

Ultimate Alliance 3 ditched everything that made the IP recognisable, seeing Team Ninja turn in a solid enough combat model, but with insanely boring level design, character animation and overall storytelling.

This was "Ultimate Alliance" in name only.