Which video game franchises no longer deserve the respect they receive?

[Spirit]

I noticed while watching a few BotW reviews that people made mention of Zelda being given a 'free pass' in recent years as far as critical acclaim went.

True SS didnt deserve the praise it got at the time but to justify their top marks for BotW many people said that recent Zelda games werent as deserving of the respect they were given at the time.

I do agree that there have been Zelda games which werent very good games that were given high scores largely just because it had Zelda in the title... but this doesnt begin and end with Zelda, there are arguably more franchises out there being given top marks just because of their stature in the medium.

So, which other franchises have been given too many free passes recently?

Which franchises need to re-prove their worth in the medium?

 

[Kylo Ken]

Assassins Creed
Final Fantasy
Mario Party

 

[trainerloganpoke]

Anything Ubisoft.
Mass Effect

 

[Aku]

Borderlands
Call of Duty

 

[Deleted member 84722]

I was going to make a list but I could not think of that many. There is, however, one series that stands out the most: Star Wars: Battlefront

If you have played the older games in the series before EA got the rights to it, you will know what I am talking about. The older games were designed with single player in mind, and online multiplayer was added for those with the hardware. The devs spent as much time as they needed refining every aspect of the games, and they made sure a lot of content was avalible right out of the box. This provided enough replay value to last for years.

Now lets fast forward to 2015 when EA released their reboot of the series. When they made this game, they focused on multiplayer, and made it like a star wars themed battlefield game. The offline modes are lackluster, and EA can kill this game at any time limiting the replay value you can get out of it.

Spoiler: Extra Bit

Now how does this relate to the topic of this thread. Take a look at the reception IGN gave to the newest game in the series, and a game relesed before EA took over:

Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) (7.0/10):
http://m.ign.com/games/star-wars-battlefront-ii-2005/ps2-737697

Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) (8.0/10):
http://m.ign.com/articles/2015/11/12/star-wars-battlefront-review

They legit just gave a better game in the series a worse review.

My point of all of this: EA does not deserve the respect they get for their "great" franchises. This small rant provides one example. The same probably applies to other franchises they have.

 

[the8thark]

Call of Duty - for obvious reasons
Mario Party - for obvious reasons
Sonic games - for obvious reasons (though the two new ones "might" be good)
Final Fantasy - I am talking about the main series, not the off shoots. This series died when it moved away from the fantasy setting. Now it's just a boring road trip with a few stops to kill a few things and do a few quests (FF15). I was never much of a Final Fantasy fan but now FF as a main series is in a deep hole.
Paper Mario - PM64 and TYD were amazing. SS and CS are terrible. Not complete garbage but not good at all either.
Star Fox - No thanks to Star Fox Zero. One game hurt the IP here.

 

[Dio]

There is just so much chaff in the Legend of Zelda series yet it is such a revered name still because of a few great games. If reviewers and fans were more harsh better products would get released. I dont know another series which is like this because when every other series that commands great respect puts out a bad entry the fans go crazy and the reviewers tend to point it out.

Halo for instance got what was coming to it. Halo 5's story was **** and was totally not what the fans wanted. The sales suffered immensely compared to Halo 4 as a result.