No Man’s Sky. Shenmue. A solid fifth of Double Fine’s output. Gamers love a good flop — especially when said flop turns into a surprise redemption ark. But for every flop that turned it around, countless more have fallen into the dustbin of history.
This isn’t the way it should be. The apparent 7/10s of the world deserve just as much love as the lavish first-party PlayStation tentpoles. In fact, some of the most interesting games of the past few years exist in a purgatory of underappreciated gems. They posit an alternative to the trends of the moment, present something a bit outside the typical mold, and what are they rewarded with? Middling review scores, poor sales, scrapped creative plans, and in the most egregious cases, studio closures.
Today, in honor of Turkey Day, let’s honor some games that deserved better. For one reason or another, you might call them flops. Me? I call them masterpieces.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (2015)
Woe betide to describe anything affecting a multinational corporation as “unfair,” but… What happened to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate was unfair! Following Assassin’s Creed Unity’s disastrous 2014 launch, Syndicate caught the flack. After Syndicate’s 2015 release, Ubisoft admitted in an earnings call that series sales had fallen off a cliff year over year, and pointed at Unity’s reception as the reason. Syndicate broke Assassin’s Creed’s then-annual release schedule. When the series ended up returning two years later, Ubisoft shed its focused structure for open-world RPG bloat (to mixed results).
But in a vacuum, Syndicate was a highwater mark for Assassin’s Creed. The Industrial Revolution (with a brief WWII vignette) proved a fertile ground for the series’ signature historical tourism. And a wide variety of missions clustered in a tight recreation of London resulted in an environment as dense-feeling as the actual city. Also: That grappling hook ruled.
Eternal Strands (2025)
Eternal Strands debuted on Game Pass, and since Microsoft doesn’t make player numbers public, it’s tough to say one way or another if it counts as a flop. But also, how many people have you heard talking about Eternal Strands? Reminder: It came out this year. Yet, it rocked.
Eternal Strands, the debut of Yellow Brick Games, a studio composed of BioWare and Ubisoft veterans, was billed as an action-RPG, and its developers dared to innovate within that long-staid genre. The game’s magic system leaned on elements for tangible environment effect, allowing you to use ice spells to create bridges or fire spells to clear new pathways. Its boss fights lifted liberally from Shadow of the Colossus, tasking you with scaling and hacking away at behemoth creatures or ancient machinery. And leveling up had nothing to do with earning XP or allocating skill points and all to do with how many resources you could collect. That’s right. Eternal Strands made, for perhaps the first time in history, fetch quests feel fun.
Forspoken (2023)
Yes, yes, we all know the memes. (“I’m talking to a cuff?!” et cetera.) But Forspoken’s hokey, Whedonesque dialogue was ultimately a distraction from the truth: that Forspoken is as cool as it gets. Forspoken was more ambitious than many of its open-world contemporaries, giving players a dizzyingly complex combat system featuring literally more than 100 different magic abilities. And you don’t traverse its high-fantasy landscapes with something boring like horses. You parkour. Dashing around landscapes straight out of Game of Thrones, casting spells and molding the elements to your whims? C’mon! Frankly, it’s about as close as we’ve ever gotten to a proper Last Airbender video game. Audiences never clicked with it, though. Shortly after its release, Square Enix called Forspoken’s sales “lacklustre,” and folded its developer, Luminous Productions, back into the company’s broader corporate structure.
Fuse (2013)
Fuse arguably wins the superlative for Most 2011 Game of 2013. It hit all the marks of the era: Third-person cover shooter. Four-player co-op. Near-future sci-fi. Its story was about — stop me if you’ve heard this one elsewhere — a small but skilled spec-ops squad tasked with preventing an unchecked corporate entity from acquiring sensitive technology. On paper, nothing about Fuse stood out, but those who did play got to mess around with a truly inventive arsenal. One character came with a shield that allowed you to absorb bullets and shoot them back at enemies. Another used a crossbow that somehow melted enemies and skewered them at the same time. A third wielded a sniper rifle that fired literal black holes. Fuse ended with an MCU-ified stinger clearly meant to tee up a broader franchise (before such things were cool). Alas, a sequel is likely not in the cards. Total sales figures for Fuse aren’t public, but in its launch week, it charted as the 37th-best-selling game in the U.K..
Immortals of Aveum (2023)
Immortals of Aveum should’ve revitalized the first-person shooter genre. Its gimmick was straightforward but catchy: What if instead of shooting guns, you shot magic? In practice, yes, that turned out to be exactly as cool as it sounded. Immortals backed it up with cred in spades. Its developers brought Call of Duty pedigree to the shooting. And its cast included legitimate star power in Darren Barnett (Never Have I Ever) and Gina Torres (Firefly). But the biggest surprise of all? Immortals of Aveum was smarter than your average first-person shooter, with a semi-open world built around Metroid-style exploration, and puzzles that actually required some thought. Low review scores and high PC systems requirements hampered it, though. Shortly after Immortals of Aveum’s release, Ascendent Studios laid off roughly half of its staff, citing poor sales as the cause.
Marvel’s Avengers (2020)
Marvel’s Avengers was one of the tougher casualties of the GaaS era. It had all the bad stuff: repetitive missions, daily challenges, overpriced cosmetics, a confusing array of modes, a basic color-coded loot hunt, and a brutal grind (that only got worse with time). All of those faults drew attention away from the game’s legitimately excellent campaign. Campaigns in live-service games are often afterthoughts. Not so with Avengers. Developer Crystal Dynamics used the campaign to show off its talents, with a sprawling main story that focused on Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) reassembling an estranged Avengers crew. Setpieces abound, and actors like Nolan North and Troy Baker got as good an excuse as any to turn in their best impressions of MCU snark. It was like Uncharted with superpowers — or what we in the biz call “extremely freakin’ cool.” Sure, Avengers is an uneven, messy game. But it certainly didn’t deserve the digital delisting.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns (2022)
OK, so Marvel’s recent video games have been hit or miss (except for games about heroes whose names start with “Spider” and end with “Man”). But Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a turn-based tactical game developed by the XCOM folks, was more of a bullseye than Daredevil’s archnemesis. Its riveting combat system combined deck-building with positional tactics, and drew on its wide cast of superheroes for some inventive abilities. Midnight Suns’ biggest surprise, though, was a social system that lifted inspiration from the likes of Fire Emblem or Persona. Between battles, you could stroll around your base (an abandoned Gilded Age mansion with Sleepy Hollow vibes), talking to the various heroes on your crew, improving your bonds with them, and, yes, getting into the hot tub. And that ending cliffhanger! A shame it’ll likely go unresolved. While a sequel has never been announced, and thus can’t officially be canceled, Midnight Suns creative director Jake Solomon left the studio a few months after release, and a planned Switch port was canned shortly after.
Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)
Some people point at Mass Effect: Andromeda as the reason Mass Effect went on ice. That’s fair — following the cool reception to Andromeda, there hasn’t been a new series entry in nearly a decade. A legendarily tumultuous development cycle led to a bug-filled launch. Once those issues were patched out, though, it was clear Andromeda had the sauce. Compared to previous games, the action was tighter, its RPG systems allowed for more flexibility, and its story was steeped in mystery, going places the original trilogy never explored (literally, a whole new galaxy). But the damage had been done. Developer BioWare moved on to Anthem, and then Dragon Age: Veilguard, and Andromeda’s lingering plot threads have been dangling ever since (though a forthcoming Mass Effect game could address some of those). Let’s face it: Like the rest of the games called out here, Mass Effect: Andromeda deserved better.
