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00:00Welcome to Mojo Plays and today we're taking a look at 10 games that gave their IPs a shot
00:11at redemption, only to crash and burn harder than before.
00:21Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to Mojo
00:25Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:29Medal of Honor
00:39By 2010, Call of Duty was dominating not just online gaming, but every video game scene.
00:46People just could not get enough of Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.
00:51EA was already trying to get a slice of the pie with Battlefield, but maybe it could get
00:56away with double dipping through a new Medal of Honor game?
00:59It could be a chance to revive the IP.
01:04Alas, nope.
01:10Medal of Honor wasn't the worst game that launched in 2010, but it was definitely lacking
01:14in quality.
01:15Why settle for a game that ran at a subpar level and wasn't visually impressive when
01:20you could be playing Modern Warfare 2?
01:22Again, it isn't a horrible game, but Medal of Honor needed to match COD before making
01:28a proper comeback.
01:37Disney Infinity 3.0
01:48Skylanders dominated the toys-to-life scene for so long while LEGO Dimensions was shut
01:52down after two years of toys.
01:56Infinity, well, it floundered every step of the way after the first game.
02:01Not only did users have to keep buying new waves of figures and power discs, they were
02:05also expected to pay for each new iteration of the game.
02:09After two years, things were just getting too costly for players, publisher Disney Interactive
02:14Studios and its manufacturing partners.
02:25Despite strong sales, maintaining Disney Infinity with content and server support was
02:30most likely getting too expensive for Disney to keep going, and so the 3.0 version was
02:36the last version.
02:37Now developer Avalanche Software is making bank with one of Disney's competitors through
02:42Hogwarts Legacy.
02:49Evolve.
02:57We could go on about the awful marketing and demand for pre-orders that came before Evolve
03:02even showed gameplay, but the real problem behind Evolve, the thing that really killed
03:07it was its poor balance.
03:09Every game was a sweat fest for both sides.
03:13You either got bullied as the monster, or you got trampled as the hunters.
03:17It just wasn't fun.
03:27There was an attempt to wrangle in more players in 2018 though.
03:31Evolve adopted a free-to-play model, but by this point, it was too little too late.
03:36The transition happened when Fortnite was poppin', and many had already forgotten
03:40about Evolve by the time 2K and developer Turtle Rock Studios announced that the game
03:45was shutting down.
03:56Alone in the Dark.
04:08Alone in the Dark has had several chances to make a comeback.
04:12The new Nightmare was nothing remarkable, nothing offensive, but nothing worth writing
04:16home about.
04:17The 2008 reboot was a disaster in its story, visuals, and gameplay.
04:23Then we had the equally atrocious 2015 game Alone in the Dark Illumination.
04:28And what about this new reboot, the 2024 iteration published by THQ Nordic?
04:33How is this fourth opportunity to make a comeback?
04:36It's nothing special, and it's certainly not too great either.
04:48The controls are a bit wonky, and the story is just not interesting despite the use of
04:53dual protagonists, and frankly, it's pretty damn messy.
04:57I have no idea what was going on in my time with the game.
05:00And wouldn't you know it, the developers shut down merely three months after the game
05:05launched.
05:06Mainly because of poor sales.
05:08Who knows if we'll ever see Alone in the Dark back in the limelight.
05:11We're not holding our breath.
05:12There's something cursed about this franchise, man.
05:26Shenmue III.
05:36One of the biggest complaints Shenmue fans had was that the second game left much of
05:40the story unresolved.
05:42However, because of how expensive it was to produce the games, Sega had no financial incentive
05:48to continue the story.
05:49Fans begged for at least one more game to properly bring Ryo's story to a close.
05:55Yu Suzuki had that chance when Shenmue III's Kickstarter launched in 2015.
06:01Four years later, the game launches, and it does nothing the fans wanted it to.
06:14If anything, Shenmue III created even more loose ends and left those untied.
06:20Even more infuriating was when Suzuki remarked about how he saw Shenmue going on for even
06:27more games.
06:28So after Shenmue II, we waited 14 years for a proper sequel to properly close out the
06:35story, only to get no progression, no ending, not even evolution and some gameplay.
06:42Great.
06:43I'll save it for later.
06:45Saints Row.
06:46Okay, so we got the name, we got the home base, we got the logo.
06:51So that means next step is to find people that can shoot guns?
06:54No.
06:55Though it didn't spend as long of a time being dormant as Shenmue did, Saints Row's
07:00return was just as upsetting.
07:02Some fans wanted the same crazy superpower nonsense we got in Saints Row IV, while others
07:07wanted the gritty GTA clones we got in the first two games.
07:11Neither fanbase was satisfied with the 2022 reboot.
07:23Saints Row had the humor of a tween boy discovering profanity for the first time, the writing
07:28of a lackluster Netflix comedy, and the gameplay of your average effortless open world game.
07:33There isn't much else here outside of the admittedly flexible character creator.
07:46Battleborn.
07:47Oh, poor Battleborn never stood a chance when it was launching so close to Blizzard's
07:59Overwatch despite being a MOBA with a PvE campaign.
08:04And it was a story campaign too, Blizzard.
08:07Sadly, so many wrongfully dismissed the game as a clone of Overwatch.
08:12Players and player count were so low that Gearbox wound up making a drastic shift to
08:16a free-to-play model despite once saying the move wasn't even being considered.
08:25Sadly, there was no saving the game.
08:30Battleborn would be removed from sale in November 2019, with its servers closing in January
08:352021.
08:36There is a community effort to get the game's PvE campaign available as an offline mode,
08:42but its functionality is super limited.
08:52Guitar Hero.
09:01Guitar Hero was once a thriving franchise, but quickly wore out its audience when Activision
09:06head developer Neversoft start belting out games every few months.
09:10The late 2000's were loaded with Guitar Hero handheld games, spinoffs focusing on
09:15specific bands, and more.
09:18Folks got fatigued, and so they stopped buying, and so Guitar Hero went away.
09:23Activision did try reviving the IP in 2015 with a new game and a new guitar controller,
09:29but audiences just weren't biting.
09:32Not when the game and controller were more expensive, and the controls were more complicated.
09:44Executives at both Xbox and Activision have expressed interest in giving the IP a third
09:49shot, but if the 2015 reboot couldn't find an audience, who would buy this one?
09:54It doesn't help that Fortnite now has its own Guitar Hero game mode, and it's surprisingly
09:59pretty solid.
10:05Overwatch 2.
10:08Oh, what do you know, Overwatch suffered a painful death too?
10:16Yeah, and it was by its own developer.
10:19In 2020, Blizzard dropped the last playable character, and announced that they were done
10:25updating the game with new characters and maps.
10:28Late when live service games were finding new audiences.
10:32Support ceased as the team aimed to finish development on Overwatch 2, but man, what
10:36a massive mistake that turned out to be.
10:39Activision Blizzard forced players to transition over to the sequel by shutting down every
10:43piece, every aspect of the original game.
10:55With nowhere else to go, fans had no choice but to see what all the hullabaloo was in
11:01Overwatch 2, only to find that the only new things here were a more boring UI, and maps
11:08that took place at different times of the day.
11:11Ooh, a shifted light source, how wonderful.
11:15Sure, thousands are still playing the game today, but we all know that more fans were
11:20burned enough to outright leave, yours truly being one of them.
11:32Marvel's Avengers.
11:42Through a few expansions, several updates, and even the removal of microtransactions,
11:47Marvel's Avengers had so many opportunities to make things right with players, and yet
11:52it didn't.
11:53Because it couldn't.
11:54With a lackluster story, boring gameplay, overly simplistic combat, and an annoying
11:59focus on gear and power levels, Avengers turned out to be a complete waste of everybody's
12:07time.
12:15Upon suffering a $60 million loss, Square Enix had no choice but to sell off developer
12:21Crystal Dynamics over to Embracer Group and go through a major corporate restructure to
12:26save itself.
12:27Marvel's Avengers received its final update in March 2023, before its servers were unplugged
12:34in September 2023.
12:42Which video game do you think failed at reviving itself?
12:45Did it make our list?
12:47Let us know down in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays for more great
12:51videos every day.