All of these games ended up representing a bit of a nadir for their respective franchises, in terms of critical and/or commercial relevance. Even though they did well enough, in the longer term, the series' developers recognized that these franchises were getting tired, and needed a full fledged structural and mechanical reboot in order to survive. Each of these franchises then proceeded to get that reboot, which went on to be wildly praised.
But which one do you think was the most harmful?
But which one do you think was the most harmful?
- Assassin's Creed Unity remains one of the most high profile failures of this generation. Wildly ambitious, it ended up coming out entirely unfinished, with so many glitches it became a meme. It represents the final hurrah of the old style of Assassin's Creed; we got Syndicate after this, sure, but the series' fate was sealed, and Ubisoft would go on to reinvent Assassin's Creed in the style of the open world action RPGs that they are today
- Resident Evil 6 did well enough commercially (though it still ended up missing initial expectations), but critically, represents the worst period for the franchise. Reviews mauled it (including a memorable sub-5 score from GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd), and the game itself represents the worst of the action game tendencies the franchise had picked up on over the preceding years. For a series that had put out a game widely considered as one of the greatest of all time, Resident Evil 6 was a horrific misstep. Capcom would go on to reinvent Resident Evil with Resident Evil 7, and then find the perfect balance between all its styles with Resident Evil 2
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on paper did well enough, at least critically-it's a 93 on Metacritic, and won over 40 Game of the Year awards. Nonetheless, the game represents the only true "flop" Zelda as a series has had. It was Nintendo's most expensive game at the time of its release, and ended up selling a series' low on the largest install base the franchise has sold to. Fan and retrospective critical response ended up being largely negative as well (especially since the game was compared unfavorably to the contemporaneous Dark Souls and Skyrim on multiple fronts), causing Nintendo to go back to the drawing board and rethink the series top to bottom with A Link Between Worlds and Breath of the Wild
- God of War Ascension is... not a bad game at all. The issue is it was the sixth game in the same template, trying to milk a story that was already told from start to finish, with none of the spectacle or graphical pizzaz that people usually bought into the games for, and a tacked on (albeit surprisingly fun) multiplayer mode. It ended up bombing critically and commercially, and not even the included The Last of Us demo could really help sell it. The failure of Ascension would cause Sony Santa Monica, led by Cory Barlog, to take a good look at where they saw the series going in the future, delivering God of War 2018 as a fresh new take on the franchise.
