9 Video Game Sequels So Bad They Killed The Series
8. Alone In The Dark (2008)
The original Alone In The Dark is credited as one of the first Survival Horror games, but the series never reached the popularity of rivals like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. The New Nightmare briefly made the series cool for modern audiences, only for the critically panned Uwe Boll movie and the glossy 2008 game reboot to undo the goodwill.
The 2008 game was a big budget, balls-out affair that tried to do many things, and failed at every one of them. Its big selling point was that players could start the game from any chapter they wished, and Lost style recaps would fill them in on what they missed. This groundbreaking feature was panned across the board, and the much hyped real-time fire mechanics were intensely annoying to deal with. The inventory system wasn't much better, where you could combine various items from the main characters jacket, like combining ammo and lighter fuel to make fire bullets (the science sounds dodgy), was needlessly cumbersome.
The game was ultimately just awkward to play, and Alone In The Dark's chance of becoming a major franchise were dashed. There was a spin-off game called Illumination in 2015, but there's a reason you haven't heard of it.