Whether due to corporate greed, rushed production, lack of passion, or plain negligence, there are some mighty great game series out there that have unfortunately suffered some real stinkers. Many of these franchises managed to bounce back on their feet, while others have remained stagnant and unrecovered to this day.
Here is a list (in no particular order) of the 10 worst video games from the most popular franchises:
1. Banjo Kazooie: Nut & Bolts
I don’t wanna hear it. “No, it’s actually fun if you give it a chance—” I don’t care. This game hurt me (Mikhail).
We were promised Banjo-Threeie, and instead we got a boring car-building game with our dual protagonists begrudgingly stapled onto it.
This game is one of the biggest disappointments to me in all of gaming, personally. Banjo-Kazooie is my favorite video game of all time, and I’m also a huge fan of its sequel, Banjo-Tooie… But THIS? This is just a straight-up middle finger to fans. Talk about an identity crisis.
2. Devil May Cry 2
Wow, what a total piece of garbage. If you are planning to binge the Devil May Cry series for the first time, I can say with full confidence that you can, and absolutely should, skip this one. Devil May Cry 2 is awful at almost everything it tries to be.
The villain is as generic as it gets, a mustache-twirling nobody. The game itself is so brain-dead easy that you can probably beat most of it just by using Dante’s guns. And speaking of Dante, he has none of the personality or swagger that makes him great in the other games. The bosses are forgettable, the visuals are ugly as sin, but hey, at least it’s short.
3. Resident Evil Zero
I honestly dislike this game more than Resident Evil 6. At least RE6 has co-op, so you can laugh while you suffer together. This game is just so cataclysmically boring. The crafting system is whack, and the levels are way too samey and repetitive. The idea of a prequel sounded cool on paper, but ultimately, it just wasn’t executed well.
I hated switching between Rebecca and Billy, specifically because a lot of the puzzles require each character to be placed in a specific spot. So you’ll end up figuring out the puzzle, but then have to waste time swapping them into the correct positions. It’s maddening.
4. Halo 5: Guardians
Halo was a cornerstone of my childhood. The fanbase, the endless Custom Games, Forge Mode, the lore, it truly was legendary. So watching what 343 cough cough I’m sorry, HALO Studios has done to my poor boy… It’s shameful. The absolute disrespect they’ve shown this once-beloved franchise is a tragedy.
Halo 4 was bad, but Halo 5 is disgusting. It feels like everything from Halo 4 onward was made by people who never had any passion for the franchise. They never cared. They never believed.
5. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
This might be a bit of a hot take. Most people would put Mind Over Mutant or Crash of the Titans as the final nail in the coffin for this franchise. What gives those games even the slightest bit of grace is that they at least tried something different. The idea of hijacking enemies and using their powers is interesting, just poorly executed.
What gives Wrath of Cortex absolutely none of that is that it does absolutely nothing new with the series. It’s literally just a carbon, and woefully inferior, copy of Warped.
Crash in this game moves like he has cinderblocks in his shoes while simultaneously having helium in his head. Lazy levels, okay boss fights, and awkward character movement are what earn this game its seal of disapproval.
6. Mortal Kombat 4
The first, and painfully awkward, step into the 3D era. Mortal Kombat 4 is an awkward, janky, ugly, poorly designed, and frustrating entry in the series.
For a game whose whole gimmick is its shift to 3D, the design feels extremely flat and dull. The voice acting, even for the time, is simply atrocious. The only saving grace is the hilariously bad cutscene endings, the most infamous being Jarek’s. Look it up on YouTube, you will not be disappointed.
7. Silent Hill: Downpour
This game needs no introduction. It’s what killed the franchise for close to a decade. This is, bar none, the most uncreative, soulless, and hollow husk of a game in the entire series.
The world is way too big for a game where the map can be missed so easily. You’ll wander around looking like a fool until you return to the area with the map just to figure out where you’re going. Not to mention, the monsters in this game look horrendous. They’re basically Condemned 2 clones.
And I don’t know whose bright idea it was, but having monsters drive a cop car and ambush you is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. This game is so abysmal, it makes Homecoming look like Silent Hill 2. Please, for your own sanity, skip this POS.
8. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Despite this long-running franchise having plenty of bad entries, what makes Sonic 06 stand out is that it’s the perfect storm of everything that was wrong with AAA games at the time. This game is not just bad, it’s fundamentally broken. Even games like Devil May Cry 2, while mind-numbingly dull, are at least functional. This game is barely playable.
Every level feels unfinished, like an early prototype. The animations are clunky and stiff, and for a character who is supposed to be faster than the speed of sound, this game feels slower than a turtle with arthritis.
Lastly, even by Sonic standards, the story is painful to sit through. This game shattered the character’s reputation, and I don’t think he ever fully recovered from it.
9. Metal Gear Survive
Can Van Halen survive without David Lee Roth? Debatable. But can Metal Gear survive without Hideo Kojima? Evidently not.
This game took one of the greatest stealth franchises ever and reduced it to just another generic zombie survival experience. It strips away everything that defined Metal Gear: the storytelling, the tight stealth gameplay, the iconic soundtrack, and replaces it with soulless, cash-grabbing filler that crashed and burned.
10. Mass Effect: Andromeda
The OG Mass Effect Trilogy is beloved for its cast of squad characters, the real emotional consequences from your decisions throughout, and strong narratives. Andromeda is a huge step down from all of this.
The game replaces engaging side content with a bloated world full of copy-paste objectives. Many of the planets feel empty, and most missions boil down to boring fetch quests. Fans of the trilogy widely see this game as a complete waste of time.
Final thoughts
Even the biggest and most respected franchises aren’t immune to failure. What makes these entries stand out isn’t just that they’re bad, but that they fall so far below the standards their series worked so hard to build. When expectations are high, the disappointment hits even harder.
Some of these games came from experimentation that didn’t land. Others were clearly rushed or lacked the creative direction that made their predecessors special. While a few of these franchises have since recovered, others are still dealing with the damage years later.
Whether you agree with every pick or not, one thing is certain. These titles didn’t just miss the mark, they became cautionary tales. They show how quickly things can go wrong when a series loses its identity, and why fans never forget when it does. dislike all of these games, there’s no denying they’re widely seen as inferior and fall short of the standard their franchises have set.
