12 Great Video Games That Almost Single-Handedly Saved Dying Franchises

The first Doom game in 1993 established itself as not just one of gaming's first great first-person shooters, but also as a brand. According to Doom Eternal creative director Hugo Martin, the Doom brand has an irreverent, heavy metal sensibility that gives players a feeling of power. Doom II followed up its predecessor with more of the same in 1994. But by the time Doom 3 came around in 2004, it took things in a survival horror direction. It did have a robust 87% positive rating on Metacritic, but it was a departure from what Doom is all about. 

Developer id Software began work on Doom 4 in 2008, but ultimately scrapped the game when it was decided it just didn't feel like a Doom title. The company then shifted focus to work on the first Rage game. When it returned to the Doom franchise after that, it made sure not to make the same mistake as the first time around. The 2016 Doom reboot is essentially a remake of the first game, with tons of new features like “glory kills” to make it even more awesome. 

The original Resident Evil games pioneered the survival horror genre, offering some of the first 3D video games that were genuinely scary. But after Resident Evil 4, the games increasingly relied on combat and exotic locales rather than atmospheric horror. Resident Evils 5 and 6 might have zombies in them, but few find them scary. 

Luckily for fans, developer and publisher Capcom went back to the drawing board in 2017 with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. This game was all about the scares, and it even introduced a first-person perspective to make its scares more visceral and immediate. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard sits at an impressive 86% positive rating on Metacritic for PlayStation 4.

In 2021, Mortal Kombat became the world's best-selling fighting game franchise at over 72 million copies sold since its inception in 1992. Most games in the franchise have been successful, so it was never really “dying." Even so, Mortal Kombat did struggle to make the jump to next-gen consoles with 2008's poorly received Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Forced to share the screen with superheroes, Mortal Kombat had to tone down the gory ultraviolence that made the games so famous. 

But in 2011, developer NetherRealm Studios made the wise choice to give the fans what they wanted. The ninth game in the series, simply titled Mortal Kombat, was a reboot that combined fans' favorite elements and characters from the first three games in the series - including the blood and guts. It would go on to sell more than 3 million copies. 

The Alien video game franchise has been around since 1982, but in the 2000s, it hadn't produced any hits because they were all in the wrong genre. Aliens vs. Predator (2010) and Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) were first-person shooters, while Aliens: Infestation (2011) was a combat-heavy side-scroller. 

But the Alien films aren't action films, they're horror films. They provide scares by creating tense, claustrophobic environments and populating them with characters who are woefully unmatched against the Xenomorph. In other words, the films have the perfect ingredients for a survival horror video game. 

In 2014, Sega's Alien: Isolation took the Alien franchise in that direction, creating one of the scariest video games of the decade. 

The Tomb Raider franchise is a great example of how a video game franchise can adapt with changing times. Before the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, there were nine full console games, as well as three 2D handheld games, and the non-Tomb Raider 2010 title Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. While the games did offer plenty of swashbuckling, globe-trotting antiquities hunting and robust combat, they were also very much a product of their times. Lara Croft was almost always depicted in the most titillating way possible. 

But in 2013, developer Crystal Dynamics ditched the male gaze and reimagined Lara's origin story, casting her as a young tomb raider facing her first violent encounters. The new Lara headed up two more sequels in 2015 and 2018. 

Like Doom, the Wolfenstein franchise is credited as pioneering the modern first-person shooter. Although developer Muse Software did release two Wolfenstein games in the 1980s, id Software's Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 set the template so many other FPS games would follow. id Software also developed its 2001 remake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which was the first game in the franchise to get released on consoles. But its 2009 followup, Wolfenstein, sold barely more than 100,000 copies in its first month. After that, rights to the franchise passed from id Software to MachineGames. 

Usually, a new developer can spell trouble for a franchise, but in this case, it was an improvement. With 2014's Wolfenstein: The New Order, MachineGames kept the series' trademark action/stealth blend and Nazi-killing gameplay, but it also gave the games an actual story. Previously, protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz was really nothing more than an avatar who held the games' many guns. In The New Order, he was a fallen hero who'd failed to stop the Nazi takeover of the world, but still found a way to keep fighting. It's sold more than 1.6 million copies to date.