9 Video Game Franchises That Never Beat Their First Instalment

2. Dead Space

"Dead Space versus Dead Space 2" is the "Alien versus Aliens" of gaming.

Visceral saw the potential limitations of corridor-crawling horror, and elected to uproot the IP - not unlike what Capcom did with Resident Evil 4.

However, while Dead Space 2 is a fantastic space shooter - a punchy-as-hell mix of curb-stomping Necromorphs while thundering through an environment looking for the next piece of story - it is not anywhere near as effective as a horror. Pockets of body-horror, sure, but depending on which wing of the fandom you speak to, there are ardent defenders of the original's slow-burn exploration, that were thoroughly put off.

Afterwards, well, things went completely south. Dead Space 3 saw EA mandate microtransactions into a single-player horror game. A game that now had a completely unnecessary co-op component, and that saw the aliens firing back at you, because the whole thing had become a Gears of War clone.

EA would then put Visceral to work churning out Battlefield: Hardline, before shuttering them altogether.