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Darkspore, The Blood-Drenched Sequel To Spore Nobody Asked For
2008's Spore wasn't the groundbreaking achievement in entertainment its developer, publisher, and certain comedy websites hyped it up to be. It was a game that let you take a single-celled organism and evolve it into a star-spanning civilization while having virtually no fun at any point during the journey. But as long as you didn't carefully design your Spore monsters to look like two men having sex or a swarm of penises (which of course we all did), it was a family friendly exploration of life and evolution.
So naturally, when it came time for EA to wring a sequel out of the game's unloved corpse, their first and only thought was "Let's make the cute little creations disembowel each other."
Electronic Arts"We're calling it Darkspore for now, but we can top that." -- the developers, who absolutely could not top that
Set years after the events of the first game, Darkspore sees countless Spore species transformed into violent, insane monsters that kill everything in sight. They have been infected with a virus called E-DNA that went from planet to planet, causing ... You know what? It's really not worth explaining. The point is, you're no longer building a cute monster and watching it develop; you are building a killing machine and watching it tear apart its enemies.
Darkspore is so miserable that it even retcons the first game to be miserable. It turns out that in Spore, you weren't a benevolent deity nudging life toward enlightenment. You were a part of the Crogenitors, a race of bored super aliens playing god to amuse themselves. They captured and experimented on less advanced species, and only kept the deadliest to be slaves. If you're a fan of the first game, you not only have to deal with every critic in the world telling you how wrong you were, but you also now find out you've been some space dick this whole time.
Shockingly, taking a kid-friendly game about creation and calling all of its players sadistic assholes didn't go over well. The game's servers were shut down in early 2016.
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Jak And Daxter Went From Wacky Action Romp To "Gritty" GTA Clone
Jak And Daxter was Naughty Dog's spiritual successor to Crash Bandicoot, and while it may have swapped out Crash for a space elf with a snarky sidekick, it was the same crate-hopping fun for all ages.
Sony Interactive EntertainmentIts working title was Mascot & Mascot: Mostly The Same Game.