Do you feel a bad entry in a franchise cheapens the series?

Ehh a bad entry is just a bad entry, it doesn't have to destroy what the previous games have built up before it. Dead Space 3 was average, not terrible but not as good as the games before it, but it didn't somehow cheapen the entire franchise for me. It's low sales did lead to the ironic death of "Dead Space" but thats more of a crazy EA thing than anything else. Lord knows plenty of mediocre games keep trucking along just fine. As much as I hate to admit it and as a fan of Assassins Creed, that franchise has seen some ups and downs, but Ubisoft keeps on making them. FarCry Primal wasn't especially great but it's not taking anything away from FarCry 3. Fallout 3 was abominable compared to the previous two RPG masterpieces from the 90's yet it's one of Bethesdas best selling games along with Fallout 4 which against all odds managed to be even worse in basically all ways yet people still put thousands (yes thousands..) of hours into it.

So nah, I don't think a single bad entry in a franchise is enough to write the whole series off. You get two or three bad apples in a row and then you can start to get worried.

Nope, I can happily pretend like certain games dont have anything to do with other games in the series even if it's part of the "main line" DMC 2, Ninja Gaiden 3, RE6 etc etc. Generally when a developer knows they fucked up they tend not to reference the bad game in later sequels, which helps.

I've always thought the series keeps its status as very good until the bad entries outnumber the good entries. At that point it becomes a specific call out of the individual entries in the series as being good.

I wonder where the "other" choice was. Because yeah, this is a weird choice.

Personally, it depends on the nature of the franchise: is it a narrative continuation (say Uncharted or Mass Effect) or mechanical continuation (Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest).

• In the first case, a narrative continuation, yes, a bad entry could kill the appeal of the entire franchise. For example, Assassin's Creed: for me, what Ubisoft did with the series after the Altair / Ezio games. killed my interest in the series. Also, what Bioware did with Mass Effect after ME3.
• For the second kind, it'll have to take multiple bad entries to sour me on a series. For example, I did not care for Final Fantasy 7 and 9. I still kept playing Final Fantasy games after those entries, and will probably keep playing them.

Also, the easiest answer would be... it all depends on how invested in the franchise you were before the "turn for the worse". Simply put: yeah, I played the 5 previous games, I can handle a bad entry. Or: I played just two games and they're already messing up the formula? No thanks.

It requires multiple bad games in a main line. If the idea of a game is good, there's always a chance of a comeback. Like i think a Space opera RPG is just a solid idea. Mass Effect Andromeda might be bad, but that doesn't mean that Mass Effect holds no appeal anymore. Now if they decided to move Mass Effect to mobile and made bad mobile games, the franchise would be tainted and not worth caring about anymore.

I sort of started to feel that way about Assassins Creed. But the inherit idea behind that game, ' go back into time and assassinate historical guys' is pretty solid. Maybe they can win me back with the new one.

If you mean cheapens my view of future titles within that franchise it definitely does, even in terms of sales you can see subsequent effects they have on sequels. Hitman Absolution sold exceedingly well for that franchise and it was ultimately a disappointing game that contributed to the reduced sales of the far superior sequel. Another example for me personally is if they announce another Evil Within game where Sebastian is the main character I will certainly be less interested in it than I would be otherwise.

Unless you simply mean, 'cheapens how I feel about the franchise as a whole' then I'd say no if I look back on DMC I absolutely love that franchise despite DMC2.

F.E.A.R. comes to mine the original PC version was ahead of it's time and in my opinion still has the best firefights of any game. The sequels however where dumbed down in everyway possible it still bothers me the series deserved better. The sequels should of been built from the ground up on PC like the first game and push the series forward instead of going backwards it cheapen and hurt the series in my view.

@kingbonesaw: I love Sunshine, but Mario Galaxy prevented me from playing Mario Galaxy 2. Not because I hated it and gave up, but because I've been struggling for a decade off and on to complete Galaxy 1 before I can start Galaxy 2. Does this make Mario Galaxy a bad game?

I'd never say Galaxy is a bad game, but I'd put it at my least favorite mainline Mario game. Although I am still working on beating Super Mario World. The 2D Mario games are a different story because in those days my ambition was never to beat a game. N64 and onward I wanted to 100% complete my favorite games. Mario and Zelda namely. I am now adjusting this point of view. Twilight Princess was a struggle, but I got there. It's time to put Galaxy aside and play Galaxy 2... I mean sometime after I'm done with 100%ing Mario Odyssey.

ON TOPIC:

I don't think the word "bad" belongs in real critical discussions. It's used far too often dismissively and doesn't address any real thought given to a game or your individual experience with it. Especially around here.

I can't say I've ever hated an Assassin's creed game, but I didn't finish Revelations and I rushed through AC3 to reach the end and didn't enjoy it as a result. I can't recall why I fell off the former and I think the way I played the latter was informed by the opinions I had heard about that game. At any rate, those experiences didn't prevent me from enjoying Black Flag (the best in the series) and Syndicate.

Not watching The Simpsons regularly for over a decade doesn't change that the first 9 seasons are my favorite TV show of all time.

Metroid: Other M' s existence doesn't make me like Super Metroid less.

However, if we're talking about a series with an overarching story, it get murkier. If getting a conclusion to the story of a great first entry means playing through a mediocre second and terrible third, I might be less likely to replay the first.

That's all hypothetical because I cannot, at the moment, think of an actual example.

I chose yes in regards to the idea of a series and not the idea of worsening previous entries. A bad entry won't make me like games before it worse, but a bad entry does affect the series as a whole because it is a part of that series--it lowers it's average.

Important to remember that the question asks whether a bad entry cheapens the series. Not a specific game that you love in the series, but how you look at the series on a whole.

I don't know that it cheapens a series per se, but it will divide it into pre- and post- periods. For example, I divide Mass Effect into Pre- and Post- ME3, since I think that's where the series took a quality nose-dive. Same thing for Assassin's Creed. That's pre- and post- Brotherhood. It doesn't make me retroactively like the prior entries less.

Only in the rarest of cases. And cheapens isn't really the right word. Lessens maybe? I dunno.

There's been a few franchises out there that basically trade on being transformative jumps with every mainline release.

Stuff like Grand Theft Auto, Mario, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Halo, Metal Gear have been that to name a few. When one of those gets away from that and gets more annualized or starts recycling assets or does excessive spinoffs for the first time it feels a little off.

Final Fantasy for instance I think has definitely been harmed reputationally-wise by all the iterative sequels and spinoffs in the last 15 years or so. Each Final Fantasy release used to be an event, now not so much. I still love the series, but I the brand has definitely been diluted.

A bad game can really sour me on a franchise after being very disappointed with Zelda Wind Waker I never bought another Nintendo console never mind Zelda, having loathed Halo 4 so much I went into H5 hating the game and could only see H5 faults, and Final Fantasy is dead after 13.

I think there are two ways the question can be interpreted so I understand some debate over the answer. For me, I've never believed that a bad game in the series in any way damages the game(s) that came before it. FF13, for instance, doesn't make me love other Final Fantasy games any less, and doesn't make them any less great just by its existence. However, I think successive mediocre entries in a series can absolutely damage how I view the franchise - FF13's all over the place trilogy with the disaster of FFXIV's 1.0 release combines to completely tank any expectations I have of the series and my ability to recommend it going forward.

But even so - one bad game doesn't make a separate good game any less good. But obviously I understand why some people would be hesitant to dive into a franchise of shit for a single great game.

No, "bad apples" in games don't spoil this tree in this case since the other games a franchise can usually stand for are the ones that are associated with the brand. The Mario franchise has a lot of different bad games attached to the name yet I can't see why would come to believe that some of those games that may be considered bad somehow drag down the whole from what Mario usually stands for.

You can reverse this, imagine the new Bubsy being revolutionary in a sense. Bubsy as the brand would still be considered bad games from what they're associated with.

@slag: That makes sense but I think thats also because the video game industry changed quite a lot in the last lets say 20 years or so when FF was at its peak. Also I assume that having so many different games of the similar name can be seen as tiresome. Imagine Mario getting the roman numeral treatment.

I think Andromeda hurts the Mass Effect series a lot mostly because its the most recent entry and the last main line had a ton of controversy with it too

Personally I think each entry can stand on their own. The franchise is then an average of those entries. I dont think one game can make previous game worse.

Opeth finished making music in 2008, Kendrick Lamar's final album was Butterfly, the final Call of Duty was Modern Warfare 2, and the final Assassin's Creed was Brotherhood.

That's how I think about it - the artist/franchise aren't cheapened by what came after, they are separate from what came after.

My answer is no, but the question reminded me of my long-standing disdain for the way game dev business (and many kinds of projects in general) operates as this "set a budget, throw shit at a wall until it sticks or you run out of money, then ship it and move on regardless of whether it's anywhere near its ideal state" operation, instead of actually refining the product until it's damn near perfect. Like, why let definitively shit games in a franchise people care about continue to be shit? Why are there so many bad Sonic games when SEGA could've just kept working on Sonic Adventure or something, continuing to refine the mechanics until they figured out how to make the blue hedgehog handle in a satisfying and robust manner?

I guess this is actually more of a gripe with the way capitalism incentivizes work than with the existence of bad games per se. Dev shops need a revenue stream, and the only thing that keeps revenue flowing is the outputting of new content which the player hasn't already paid money for. As with everything: people usually have to focus on churning out more stuff rather than refining things. As such, this post isn't meant to express an anti-dev sentiment, because I think it's pretty clear that they don't have a choice.

I think if it ends up being the last thing in a series it can or if the follow ups are just as bad. DMC 2 is so forgettable that when DVC 3 came out all was forgiven because that game was so great at the time. Final Fantasy 13(while it did end my enthusiasm for new entries in the series) doesn't really cheapen the older games because they are all so different from each other story and gameplay wise. Street Fighter 5 is mechanically a great game but wrapped in a dirty paper towel picked up off the floor, but also it's not making me remember street fighter 2 and 4 any differently.

Depends on how long the series had been great beforehand and how bad the offender in question is. Usually it takes multiple entries to knock long running series off of great, but one bad entry can take a series off the "bulletproof" category.

FF13 was bad enough to make me never want to play any future FF games going forward. It didn't cheapen the games before it, which I still like and/or respect, but it's certainly done something to the way I view the series. Like, by all accounts FF15 was at least a solid game, but I just can't bring myself to play it.

It can hurt a series in the sense that it might kill off the chances of getting another entry in the series (see Mass Effect Andromeda), but the old games are still there and unless you're one of those "runied my childhood" types those earlier games in the series are still as great

It doesn't ruin it retroactively. I am not going to start hating on God of War because 3 and 4 sucked, but it can make me question whether I would play the next game in a series, even if it was my favorite one at some time. So, I guess, in a way it does tarnishes a series...

It never bothers me too much. I often will even feel the same about bad parts of a game: if I've loved 95% of a game but it has a bad ending I will still say, "I love this game but didn't care for the ending" where I know some people who feel soured on the whole experience as a result. I'll quite happily write off a game that doesn't click for me and still enjoy the parts of a series that I like.

Incidentally I actually like all three of the games you gave as examples :p

History shows that a bad entry in a series can kill the whole thing or put it on hiatus.

@justin258: What's up, its my car cigarette lighter burnt finger brother.

While I agree, Other M being terrible didn't cheapen super metroid itself.....

I definitely feel it cheapened the legacy games like Super Metroid and metroid prime made.

Even though most games in the series didn't reach the high bar of super or prime, they didn't fall far from it, before other m and ff, the 'worst' games in the series like corruption and fusion were still of incredibly rare quality... We still talked about them, how the changes could eventually result in something like other m....

But post other m... Metroid lost a lot of its prestige as a franchise. It was no longer one of the rare series that had done no wrong... We could no longer know with 100% certainty that the next game in the series would be 100% awesome because we had complete and absolute trust in the franchise. The trust had been fractured... Especially when it was done in a way that just showcased such a huge misunderstanding of what made the franchise what it was.... AMD that misunderstanding was further showcased in federation forces.

Now not only did we have a cheapening of the franchise thanks to several bad games, but we also had the realization that Nintendo either:

A: No longer understand what Gave metroid its now legendary and iconic appeal.

B: Wanted to cash in on the brand built off of that legendary appeal, by changing it into something easier and cheaper to make, and more accessible to a larger audience to buy, who recognized the prestige of the brand, but never wanted to invest in the more esoteric nature of what gave it that prestige. IE exploration adventure is boring to them. They don't want to learn how to use their moves and abilities to get to new areas and acquire new abilities, and then learn those new abilities and remember where they need to go back to to progress. They want to shoot bad guys, and when all the bad guys are dead move on to the next level. That group is much larger, and will always be much larger, than the dedicated group that enjoys metroid like game design.

So either way, we had little hope for the future, and the metroid brand had clearly ended up in the mud.

However, the opposite of this is true as well, as successfully pulling off the 'Return to its roots' move can add value back into a franchise (or genre) as Samua Returns shows. No its not one of the greats like super or prime, but its actually metroid, and it wiped off some of that tarnish.

Now if Prime 4 manages to 'get it' as well, and gibes us metroids equivalent of breath of the wild (no, not a gigantic open world metroid, a metroid that understood what metroid originally meant) even if it ends up as half finished as breath of the wild, will go a huge ways to restoring the value of the franchise to its former glory.

A lone entry can't do that much damage. A series can course-correct. It doesn't become a problem until a trend forms. But the good ones don't stop being good.

I wouldn't say one bad game "cheapens the series", that's a bit too dramatic. It does give me pause however, because you don't know if the next entry is going to be one of the good ones or another bad one. Conversely, if all the games in a series have been great, I will mostl likely buy the next one sight unseen. Most game series though, even the truly great ones, don't knock it out of the park every time they take a crack at it, so in terms of a series' legacy it takes more than one bad apple to spoil the bunch.

Absolutely. Do I think a new, bad entry retroactively hurts older, better games in the franchise? No, that's obviously insane. However, I don't think anyone can seriously deny a bad entry in a series has real chances to affect sales of the next entry, assuming there even is one.

Andromeda was this fucking year. If they announced a new Mass Effect tomorrow, no one in the right mind would go "aw fuck yeah, take my money!" Everyone would be skeptical as shit. Hell, ME3 was like 4 years ago or something and that still did enough damage to the series' reputation that even before it was clear Andromeda was a trainwreck, people were extremely skeptical of a new entry. So yeah, I think bad entries can cheapen a franchise. Is it impossible to recover? Absolutely not, but people aren't going to forget.

The CD-i Zeldas are a bit of an extreme example (ie. it wasn't even on a NCL console), but even I think they tarnish the series a tiny bit. If there was a 'best series ever' list. I still Zelda's right up there, though.

FF on the other hand, well.

It doesn't destroy my love of earlier games in any particular series but it does mean I can't necessarily expect that I will automatically like any games in that series going forward. So as a series it is tarnished.

If the lacklustre entry continues or connects to the original entries in a way that makes me unable to seperate them fully, then it does tarnish my opinion on the series as a whole. Otherwise I can mentally quarantine the black sheep of the series and view the 'real' entries in a vacuum.

For me at least the Assassin's Creed series as one or two not so great games, but the vast majority of titles I've had fun playing. So no I don't think one or two bad games can really hurt a solid strong franchise.

Normally it doesn't for me but it also depends on how bad that game is verses how much I like a franchise. Example: I used to like Ratchet and Clank but after playing Size Matters I have ho intention of ever playing a Ratchet game ever again. It really soured me on it.

If it's an offshoot or standalone story then no. If it's a mainline part of a series' story then yes. If you have to slog through one portion to get the full story of a trilogy then that is definitely held against it because you have to play through that to get the full story.

I think Mass Effect Andromeda is a great example of this phenomenon. After me finishing that game i never wanna touch one again in the next 10 years. Goodjob EA !

Not if the series rebounds well. I hated Assassin's Creed III and Unity, but both of those games were followed with surprisingly great entries. Same with Twisted Metal III and IV, which were followed by the best in the series in Black. Or Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. It's all just a matter of who has the reins and how much they're willing to learn from past mistakes.

I wasn't too high on Halo 4 and 5 but I loved the first 3 games as well as Reach to have at least some interest in seeing what they do in Halo 6

For me it doesn't change the impact of the other games in the series but it does lessen my interest in later entries. Then again It can also mark the end of the series.

In my opinion Dead Space 3 was a mess compared to the first game and marked the end of the franchise and started the path to closure for Visceral Games, a studio I very much admired. The original Dead Space remains a masterpiece and the follow up Dead Space 2 too is excellent. The spin off puzzle game Dead Space Ignition is completely throwaway and does no harm to the franchise while the other spin off Dead Space Extraction is a enjoyable.

I suppose after some thought that a few bad entries in a series does damage the reputation of the series as a whole but only in the:

"What you never played Dead Space. That game is incredible!"

"Oh so I should play through the series?"

"Well.. absolutely play the first. The second game is more of the same but slightly less horror focused. Think of Dead Space as Alien whereas Dead Space 2 is Aliens. Avoid the spin off puzzle game. The on rails shooter's short but a fun ride. I would avoid Dead Space 3 at all costs. It takes everything the series was and sands down all of the rough edges to the point where the cube has been filed down into a sphere."

I meant more from my own personal perspective.

However, I feel like Metroid Prime and especially Super Metroid are so revered at this point that, even if Metroid goes the way of Sonic the Hedgehog and never recovers, those two games will still be held up as classics by practically the entire gaming community.

Besides, does anyone remember Metroid Prime Hunters? If any game was going to soil the Metroid name, it should have been that one, that thing was one big block of repetitive, uninspired tedium.