10. Mad Max

2015's Mad Max took the brawling, counter-based combat of the Batman Arkham and Shadow Of Mordor series and mixed it with a compelling depiction of the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Australia, along with fun vehicle combat. It's not the longest, deepest, or best open-world game, but it mixes the elements of the world of Mad Max and the WB Games' open-world formula well. It is also a game that did not do very well at launch either critically or in sales, but over time people have grown to appreciate the game. Despite launching with a Metacritic score of 73 on PC, 72 on Xbox, and 69 on PS4, it now sits at a user rating of 91% recommended all time on Steam. George Miller was allegedly so upset at how the game performed and portrayed his world that it soured him on future games, which is a damn shame given how over its 10-year lifespan the game has become so well regarded.

9. Dead Space

Dead Space is one of the best horror video games of all time and had one of the best remakes ever. The original trilogy sold well, and the remake was critically acclaimed when it came out in 2023. Still, despite over 40,000 positive reviews on Steam bringing it to a 91% positive rating and a Metacritic score of 87 the remake failed to meet financial targets set by EA. Once again Dead Space has been put on the back burner, and this time it may never return. Not only did EA put a 4th entry in the franchise on hold, but they are also rumored to have canned a remake of Dead Space 2. While the Dead Space remake was vastly superior in gameplay and writing, The Callisto Protocol (which was made by some of the original Dead Space team) sold roughly the same number of copies if not more. The two games were so similar that they cannibalized each other's sales, especially as Dead Space had the brand recognition, while Calisto had members of the original Visceral Studios team behind it, which is the studio that originally made the Dead Space trilogy and was summarily executed by EA’s push for multiplayer games. It's too bad that each failed to meet sales targets, ultimately killing both franchises.

8. Star Wars Dark Forces/Jedi Series

The Star Wars Jedi Knight series followed protagonist Kyle Katarn wage war against a series of baddies as he transformed from a lone merc to a Jedi Master training padawans at a new academy. In the early to mid-2000s it was the best way to experience lightsaber battles and still remains one of my favorite franchises. The series died after Lucas Arts wound down production in the late 2000s before closing its doors in 2013 (before eventually returning), and other than a remaster of Dark Forces in 2024 has shown no signs of making a return. It feels inevitable that more remasters are coming, but a new adventure featuring Kyle Katarn seems unlikely, especially after Disney killed most of the Star Wars Expanded Universe canon lore with the Force Awakens and its sequel movie trilogy- it just doesn’t seem likely.

7. Red Faction

Red Faction: Let's face it, sometimes it's fun to destroy things, and the environmental destruction in the Red Faction series was amazing. Volition did two things very well in the late 2000s and early 2010s: Make games that let us destroy everything, and make GTA ripoffs that were surprisingly good. Unfortunately for all of us, any hope of a future entry in the Red Faction series (or a new GOOD Saints Row game) was lost when Volition was closed by Embracer Group following the massive flop that was the Saints Row reboot. It astounds me that despite GTA V being 12 years old and fans craving a successor, Volition managed to stray so far from the path that they killed two classic franchises. Truly a shame.

6. Unreal Tournament

Money talks, and Epic Games makes a lot of money from Unreal Engine and Fortnite, so that’s where their focus is. It's not impossible that a new Unreal Tournament might come eventually, but Epic appears to have, at least for now, left that part of their past behind them. It's a shame because there aren't many arena shooters left, and they were once THE competitive shooters on the market before hero shooters and battle royales were all the rage. As for modern analogs, Quake Champions is the closest there is, and it’s as much a hero shooter as it is an arena shooter (also: dead game). There was an Unreal Tournament free-to-play game on the Epic Games store for a while, but it no longer appears when searched and all the servers have been shut down. Maybe someday Unreal Tournament will return, but today there's not a big market for its genre, and Epic has things to do that actually make them money.

5. Dawn of War

Dawn of War has changed so much from game to game because Relic wanted to make something special and unique. What started as "Starcraft but 40k" became a great small-unit tactical strategy game in Dawn of War II. Unfortunately, Dawn of War III strayed too far from the path when it tried to introduce MOBA elements into the game. It wasn't for a lack of effort, but after releasing to much excitement amongst fans the game died so quickly that it left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. RTSs are becoming a rarity, which makes the challenge of making one so difficult that at this point Relic, Games Workshop, SEGA, or anyone else are unwilling to take it on right now, and given how the last one went the demand for it is just not there.

4. The Evil Within

When Shinji Mikami, a legendary developer behind Resident Evil left Capcom to start his own studio in 2010 everyone had an inkling of what his Tango Gameworks studio would do- make interesting, bespoke, and really spooky games. The Evil Within was the game we thought he'd make, and it did not disappoint. The Evil Within and its sequel, The Evil Within 2, may not have lived up to the commercial success of his previous works, but they achieved a lot and were reviewed well by fans with Steam review scores of 84% positive for the first entry, and 91% for the second. However, they didn’t land as well with critics. The first game achieved a Metacritic score of 68, and The Evil Within 2 scored an 80. They found a niche but unfortunately didn’t do well enough commercially to justify a greenlight on a third game from Zenimax/Bethesda who acquired the studio in 2012. Since then Tango launched another horror title in Ghostwire Tokyo and a smash-hit rhythm action game in Hi-Fi Rush. The Evil Within games and Ghostwire have reviewed well, but not sold well. Even after Hi-Fi became one of Xbox's best first-party games ever the spreadsheet dictated that after Shinji Mikami left the studio in 2023 the studio was, to many's surprise, shuttered only to eventually saved at the last minute buy a buyout from publisher Krafton. However, The rights to Ghostwire and The Evil Within remain with Xbox. Ultimately, the games didn't sell enough to keep Tango afloat and Mikami has formed a new studio in Kamuy Inc., and it doesn’t appear that Xbox will be handing the title out for a third entry any time soon.

3. Shadow Run

Shadowrun is a classic tactical RPG series with roots dating back to the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, and is based on the fantasy cyberpunk tabletop RPG game by the same name. The recent entries Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Dragonfall, and Shadowrun Hong Kong were all developed by Harebrained Schemes, a studio headed by Jordan Weisman- one of the original creators of Shadowrun. Weisman's team created some of the best CRPGs (before the advent of Baldurs Gate 3) with their Shadowrun trilogy. They didn't sell insanely well but are highly regarded by fans of the genre. What lead to it living in limbo is its publishing rights situation. Harebrained doesn't own the rights, and neither does Paradox who published the games- Microsoft does. Microsoft acquired the rights to the IP in 2004 after filing a trademark for them. Frankly, it's not out of the question for Microsoft to buy Harebrained and have them make a Cyberpunk-themed Baldur’s Gate clone (which sounds amazing), but Harebrained is working on its own original IP now, and Microsoft has so many other teams it could hand the title to. Unfortunately for fans it’s unlikely they’ll be asking inXile or Obsidian to do so even though that would be amazing.

2. Middle Earth Shadow of War

Monolith Productions and WB found a formula that worked by combining combat similar to the Batman Arkham series with a huge open world and a serviceable story. It worked so well that WB attempted to replicate that with Mad Max. However, Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War had something no other game has been able to use (since WB patented it): the Nemesis System. The Nemesis system is what turned a pretty good open-world game into a game in which you could truly create your own story. The game features armies of Orcs that, depending on how they kill you, will rank up into captains and even war chiefs gaining new traits, abilities, weaknesses, and resistances which will impact how they will hunt you, run away from you, talk to you, and even how you combat them- especially at higher difficulty levels. It lent itself to a unique gameplay loop of hunting down Orc bosses to kill them (sometimes multiple times), recruiting them to work for you, sending them on missions, and in Shadow of War even leading massive armies of orcs into siege battles to conquer enemy fortresses. Unfortunately for us all, Embracer Group acquired the rights to the Lord of The Rings games, meaning Monolith is using its system in an upcoming Wonder Woman game (which is apparently in development hell) instead of a new LOTR game. So we get the likes of The Lord of The Rings: Gollum instead of getting to hunt down big orc chiefs as an undead wraith ranger.

Dark Souls

Elden Ring exists. Bloodborne is begging for a remaster or sequel, and we should get a Bloodborne sequel before worrying about a fourth Dark Souls game. That said, Dark Souls is a complete story Hidetaka Miyazaki was able to tell. Elden Ring might be FromSoftware's magnum opus of game design, but Dark Souls is their Bible- even if none of us can completely understand its story. From the first game, all the way to the final boss fight in Dark Souls III its interlinked worlds and wibbly wobbly timeline tell a tale so complex there are entire YouTube channels and books that have been created just to speculate on what it all means. Some people have made careers out of translating the original Japanese and comparing that to the English version of the game just to see how much of the lore we lost in translation. That's what we want more of! But that tale is told. Undoubtedly FromSoft will continue to make games in the "git gud" spirit of Dark Souls, and even now are taking characters from Dark Souls and introducing them into Elden Ring thereby muddying the waters of whether or not they are shared universes., We may never get a Dark Souls 4 in name, because FromSoftware doesn’t have to, and I'm not sure they want to.

BONUS ENTRY: Sonic Adventure

While you never know what Team Sonic is going to do these days, we would LOVE to see a third entry in the Sonic Adventure series. Maybe this time they just avoid any Hedgehog-Human relationships.

10 Sequels We’re (Probably) NEVER Getting