Ten Franchises That Need To Die Or Take A Break

Just because a franchise is dishing out one good game after another doesn’t mean that it’s a successful franchise. There are plenty of franchises out there right now, that while are giving out some good games for the past few years, have gotten a little stale. Such franchises, according to us, need to die, or at least need to go on a hiatus. It’s not that we don’t like their games, or those brand names in general. It’s just that we’ve started growing tired of them, however fun they might be.

Given below is a list of 10 such franchises, franchises we think need to take a break.

Leave behind your feedback in the comments section below.

The Legend of Zelda

We’ve waited for a long time for a Zelda game as good as this one.

Whoa, whoa, hold your horses there! We love Zelda. There’s not been a single Zelda game that we’ve ever disliked… other than the CDi ones of course. We even gave Skyward Sword a 9.5, and almost gave it our Game of the Year award. But here’s the problem- while Skyward Sword changed things up a lot, it still felt like Zelda. A lot like Zelda. That’s not a bad thing, not at all. But it definitely is growing tiresome. We’ve been playing Zelda games for over 25 years now, and in the last two and a half decades, they haven’t changed much. Sure, the formula, as it is, is pretty awesome, but we want change. We want growth. But we have had our fair share of Zelda this gen, what with four games having been released. I think it’s time the franchise took a break, and came back, say, 5 or 6 years later with a bang.

Call of Duty

I don’t think anyone will disagree here. Again, we love the Call of Duty franchise, and we loved Modern Warfare 3 too. Heck, we gave it a 10/10. Why, then, do we want to see it die? Because it’s virtually the same game we played back in 2007, or 2008, or 2009, or 2010. In the last 5 years, Call of Duty has not changed a bit. There have been a few refinements and tweaks to the formula, but for other franchises, that’s like DLC’s worth of content. I think Activision should take a break, take about a couple of years to develop an entirely new engine to rival the likes of FrostBite 2.0, think of some new ideas to shake up the current formula, and then release a game. Because frankly, if I play the same game for the next few years, I’ll lose it, and I’m sure you will too (if you haven’t already).

Need for Speed

With the release of Criterion’s Hot Pursuit in 2010, I got hopeful. It looked like the Need for Speed franchise was back from the dead, back with a bang. With Shift 2: Unleashed at the beginning of 2011, that believe strengthened. But it looks like Black Box, the handlers of the Need for Speed franchise, still haven’t learned from their mistakes. The Run sucked. Big time. And EA is milking the franchise way too much. Hell, we saw two NFS games in 2011. That’s a bit too much, I’d say. Take a few years off, EA, you’re making plenty of money as it is. Or if you don’t at least develop a proper NFS.