5 Video Game Franchises That Died This Decade (& 5 That Came Back To Life)

Technically, Mortal Kombat never really died, it held on by a thread during the PS2 generation. Titles like Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon made several changes to the formula, making the series unrecognizable from its roots except for the trademark aesthetic. After Midway closed its doors and the studio was picked up by Warner Bros., Ed Boon and his team became NetherRealm Studios and got to work on a return to form. 2011’s Mortal Kombat brought the battles back to a two-dimensional plane and added a story mode where bouts were divided up by detailed cutscenes showing the game’s soap opera-esque narrat

An easy contender for Microsoft’s biggest game for 2020, Halo: Infinite , returned to E3 this past summer and received a featured spot at the very end of its annual press conference. The new cinematic footage was more story-centric than the prior year’s atmospheric tease and revealed an unnamed UNSC pilot discovering Master Chief floating in space. After reviving the iconic hero, a mysterious yellow lightning strikes the USNC Pelican, prompting Master Chief to grab a gun and jump out of the ship. For fans wanting more, Microsoft is essentially putting Halo Infinite back on ice until E3 2020 ahead of its holiday 2020 launch on Project Scarlett. We’ll be ready for the next update whenever it arrives over the sum

Bug Fables is weaponized nostalgia. Moonsprout Games set out to make a game that would bring you back to the mid-90s and early-2000s, and if you played RPGs back on the SNES or N64, then this is going to unleash all the tingly feelings of your childhood stored at the back of your br

Blizzard revealed Diablo 4 with a very lengthy cinematic that puts the spotlight on the game’s main villains and the return to a dark, gothic-inspired tone. In the cinematic trailer, fans witness the villain Lilith summoned, complete with Satantic horns and what appears to be a huge (and disgusting) cape made out of human s

Sam Fisher has to be one of the biggest crossover characters in games right now, being featured in multiple events and various Ubisoft mobile games. When Ghost Recon: Wildlands ran an event featuring the Third Echelon agent, fans were almost certain that a Splinter Cell game was on the horizon. But, another year has passed and still no new game has been announced. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a rumor that no new Splinter Cell game is even in active development right

The Rabbids kind of kicked Rayman out of his own franchise for a while, and the last true Rayman game before the Wii party game, Rayman 3 , didn’t live up to its predecessors. 2011 saw a return to form, however, with Rayman: Origins . The 2D side-scrolling platformer brought back all the charm, difficulty, and engaging scoundrel Gameplay from the character’s debut. Origins and its sequel are often seen as two of the best in the genre from the past ten ye

Yet, there is one franchise within the Xbox’s library that could stand toe to toe with Sony and offer some significant star power if announced over the next few months. That is, of course, the heavily-rumored Fable 4 . Teased to be receiving a significant resurrection over at Playground Games – the developer of the Forza series – the rumors surrounding the fourth iteration of the popular British fantasy series have managed to drum up a lot of hype over the last few months. Some have claimed that Fable 4 will be a full reboot , stripping away the more industrial setting of Fable 3, while others claim it’ll be much more expansive than previous entries, with bigger worlds and more personalizat

Fable fans have been waiting quite some time for another entry in the franchise after Fable Legends was canceled by Microsoft. Even then, the canceled game wasn’t exactly what fans were hoping for, as it spun the franchise away from its RPG roots into a co-op direct

These spectacular showcases will be excellent outlets for both major console manufacturers to sell their upcoming new hardware, with Microsoft and Sony likely to announce tons of new games, reveal some stunning next-generation gameplay , and unveil some groundbreaking new entries in their most iconic franchises. For many, the latter of these prospects is without question the most exciting, especially as new consoles mean more expansive ways of tackling some of gaming’s most important

However, fans want the promise of fantastic games from innovational franchises as they look towards Xbox’s future and what better way to establish that than to show off an enhanced reboot of the Fable series running on next-generation hardware. No matter if it releases two years into the console’s cycle, the promise of a game like Fable 4 would do a lot to convince fans they should invest in Microsoft if revealed in the next few mon

Said to have a “small chance” at appearing during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, a Perfect Dark reboot would certainly be welcomed by fans of a franchise long-thought dead. Yet, if this does prove to be the case, it’s rumored to be in third-person and not developed by Rare Studios, marking significant changes from the original, so it remains to be seen how the reception of a reboot would stand up in compari