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Writer's pictureRory Bailey

Five Gaming Franchises That Peaked At Their Second Installment

For this week's Top 5 list, I figured I'd try something a little different. There are a lot of videogame franchises that I think have peaked with their second title, which is what I'm going to tackle this week. This also applies to movies franchises such as Star Wars, Alien, Terminator, X-Men, Blade and more. This list is all in my opinion, feel free to debate in the comments section.


#5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare


This is a bit of a cheat one as the first installment of Modern Warfare was the fourth entry in the Call of Duty series. However, from this point onward they split the series into multiple franchises (dominated by Modern Warfare and Black Ops) but in my opinion the series peaked with Modern Warfare 2. The campaign was superb, the addition of spec ops was great and the online multiplayer was so good that if I fire up my 360, some 10 years+ after release, I can still find a match.


#4. Gears of War


Gears 1 was fantastic, Gears 2 was next level, Gears 3 was just kind of there...


Gears 2 improved on every aspect of the first one and showed us more than we expected in terms of the scope and scale of the locust's world. The story itself was an emotional rollercoaster, what with Dom's search for his missing wife, Maria, Tai's capture and decimation and the tragic death of Carmine.


#3. Metal Gear Solid


This is the one that's going to get me some flack as a lot of people prefered Snake Eater out of the two PS2 offerings and a lot of people hated MGS2 for its bait and switch of changing Solid Snake for Raiden after the opening mission but... I frigging loved it. The story was superb, gameplay was great and the overall look and feel of the game was everything you could want in an espionage action shooter. Even the naked Raiden cartwheels were acceptable in the confines of the story.


#2. Sonic the Hedgehog


While Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles was bigger, Sonic 2 is the pinnacle of the Sonic series for me. Every level was great and the addition of Tails and multiplayer was a welcome one! The soundtrack was great as every level's theme was catchy as hell and the bonus levels were frigging great. Plus the addition of Super Sonic gave you a good reason to go after all of the emeralds and completely changed the mechanics of the game.


#1. Assassins Creed


As mentioned on last week's column, the story of Ezio is the definitive flashback in the Assassins Creed series (with Desmond's modern day narrative being the driving force until the conclusion of AC3) but despite enjoying Brotherhood and Revelations, Assassins Creed 2 was the best entry in the series for me. I have hit the full gamerscore for this on multiple accounts on both the 360 and Xbox One as well as platinumed on the PS3 and PS4 versions. I absolutely love this game. In fact, I think I'm going to jump on eBay now to try and pick up the Ezio Collection again on the PS4!


So that's my list, thanks for taking the time to read it and please let me know what your top 5 are in the comments section!


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