Jumping the shark is a fun thing that happens in media when something just forgets in its entirety what the point of a series was, and goes so far off the rails that the track is no longer in the rearview mirror. It all started with the TV series Happy Days, where in one episode, The Fonze literally jumped over a shark on water skis for some reason.
Video games have had their own moments comparable to that, and no matter how great a series once was, they can also have a few slip-ups and jump the shark themselves. Whether this is with a game that misses the tone entirely, a character who takes things in the wrong direction, or just moments that take you out of the experience, sometimes a game just loses the figurative and sometimes also the literal plot.
We’re going to check out a handful of video game series that have gotten far away from what they once were.
Spoilers for some of the games below.
10 Assassin’s Creed
Revenge is Cold and Boring
You can take your pick when it comes to when Assassin’s Creed jumped the shark, but for me, it’s without a doubt, Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game feels like it’s sleepwalking through the most boring revenge story I’ve seen in a game, and things get worse with the split narrative between two characters.
The jumping the shark moment here is when you’re playing as Yasuke, and in combat, a bizarre fusion of hip-hop and traditional Japanese music plays. It’s just a feeling of “What are we doing here and who is this for?” It naturally offended everyone under the sun and was just a further reason Ubisoft shouldn’t ever be dealing with matters that feel this delicate to begin with.
We’ve also got Yasuke running full speed through walls and gates like he’s the Juggernaut and being about 3 feet taller than everyone he encounters in the game, making him feel like a legitimate monster, but not in the good way. It’s all just so ridiculous and so far from the place this series once was.
9 Far Cry
Pets Gone Wild
Far Cry is a long running series that started off as an extremely serious game and then got a bit darker with subsequent entries like Far Cry 3, and specifically the fantastic Far Cry 5. But starting in Far Cry Primal and 5, we started getting animal companions. In Far Cry 6, it just stops feeling like reality you’re playing in, which is an issue when you’re trying to tell the serious story its going for.
We’ve got animal companions like an alligator wearing a shirt, a panther, and a robot dog, and while they’re fun and all, it’s clear that this series is nowhere close to the somewhat serious series it once was, which really made you feel alone in a foreign place. These days, it’s just a wacky, open-world Ubisoft special that cares little about maintaining any sense of realism and, instead, is all in on as many over-the-top gimmicks as possible, even while committing the terrible sin of wasting Giancarlo Esposito as your villain.
8 Silent Hill
Not My Silent Hill
This one may come as a shock as Silent Hill F has been a decent success, but man, it does not feel anything like a Silent Hill game for me. That feeling of complete terror of being in an unknown town all alone is there somewhat, but certain aspects of the game ruin that feeling for me.
The biggest jump the shark moment is when you acquire the Beast Arm. This ridiculous weapon basically turns you into a half monster, and not only does it look stupid and control like garbage, but it also completely ruins any possible scares that the game has left.
It made no sense in a game that has generally based at least its protagonist in reality while the rest of the game world delved into the supernatural. Image if in Silent Hill 2 you could become a Pyramid Head and just swing that terrifying sword all over the place at any enemy you wanted. Does that sound scary? No? Well, that’s what Silent Hill F provides, and it just doesn’t feel like the same series after a while.
7 Dynasty Warriors
Just Be Yourself
Dynasty Warriors has been a series that’s been pretty comfortable making the same game, more or less, for the past 25 years. Now, change is good and all, but in 2019, the series went open world for some reason with Dynasty Warriors 9, and since then, the series has just lost its identity.
While Dynasty Warriors bounced back with Dynasty Warriors: Origins last year, even that game completely lost the point of why Dynasty Warriors is such a fun series. We go from having a massive set of characters to play as, to having one; One single character and not a particularly well-designed or interesting one.
He is, for all intents and purposes, John Dynasty Warriors. He’s that boring, and while the gameplay occasionally lets you moonlight as one of the famous generals, the majority of the time you’re playing as this bland nobody that feels so separated from the conflict that he might as well not even exist.
And despite that, it appears that every single character is absurdly attracted to him. Good for them. But for me, this series has left the shark long behind and needs a serious rethinking. Maybe Dynasty Warriors: Rome or something going forward could be interesting. It’s time for some new ideas while keeping the spirit of the old.
6 The Legend of Zelda
Link Doesn’t Feel Like Link Anymore
The Legend of Zelda is one of gaming’s longest-running franchises, and with that comes the understanding that the series will change a little bit over time. But The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom felt unlike any other title in the series and for all the wrong reasons. The shark-jumping moment here was the building system. It’s one thing to have it in the game, but it’s another to require the player to play Minecraft while trying to enjoy a Zelda game.
It’s just egregious how much you need to use the system to get anywhere or find any cool secrets throughout the game, and you can tell Nintendo was super proud of it the way it’s implemented, but it’s just too much. In place of great dungeon exploration, we have segments where you need to build a boat out of a plank and a tree, and it just stopped feeling like Zelda after a bit, and instead felt like some survival game that starred Link.
The next Zelda needs to rediscover its roots and become a full evolution of the game it once was on Nintendo consoles all those decades ago.
5 Gears of War
The Cool Kids Suck
Gears of War was a series that maintained its tone and gameplay very well for the first four entries in the series, for the most part, but Gear of War 5 just felt wrong. The first half was decent enough, but as soon as you start playing as Kait, it stopped feeling like Gears of War. We’ve got an open world with side activities, and it just felt so incredibly unneeded. It was like someone spilled their cereal on my pizza. Get your damn cereal out of my Gears of War pizza, please. It tastes like garbage, and it doesn’t belong here.
Iconic characters are sidelined so the kids could shine, but the problem is JD and Kait can’t hold a damn candle to the greats of the series. Kait’s crew is a painfully cringeworthy bunch, and JD just disappears after the first half of the game and is barely involved from that point on.
All the grittiness, the desperation, and overall pseudo-horror feel is gone in Kait’s segment of the game. She’s also just allowed to go AWOL to deal with personal issues, during a literal war. I don’t know what they were going for here, but jumping the shark is putting it lightly. Thank god that Gears of War: E Day is coming soon to get us back to the mad world we’re used to.
4 Call of Duty
War Is Stupid
Call of Duty started out as a super serious and realistic first-person war drama that gave a type of Band of Brothers-style presentation to WW2. These days? Where do I begin? We’ve fought against Jon Snow in space, we’ve got Homelander incinerating Nicki Minaj, and, in general, this series has become the Fast and the Furious of video game series.
There are so many ridiculous things in this series these days that you can’t take an ounce of it seriously. It’s a big, stupid, Michael Bay movie that plays out while you have a controller in your hand. It’s jumped the shark so many times that the shark has gotten bored, and while that may affect players like me who prefer their action a bit more on the serious side, it doesn’t affect the millions worldwide who flock to this name like a bee to honey year after year after year.
3 Saints Row
Tarnishing the Name
Saints Row is an interesting series as it started out as a plain GTA clone and slowly evolved into something completely off the wall nuts, but comfortable in its own skin. So how do you jump the shark when your series has made a living of jumping the shark? Interestingly enough, they did it with Saints Row 2022 by un-jumping the shark. They never even saw the shark with this game, let alone the ocean.
Instead, they created a painfully unfunny, poorly thought-out reboot of sorts that shows the saints being reformed by people who use the phrase “I’m pretty much a literal murder party,” and it makes me yearn for the moments where I was skydiving onto a penthouse while Kanye West is blaring in the background.
The game just didn’t understand at all what made the series so fun to play, and it instead went with atrocious 2020s humor, a sterilized take on the saints, and nothing remotely in the way of the amazing mission variety that made the series so compelling for years.
2 Batman: Arkham
Lost in Gotham
Batman: Arkham City is one of the best games ever made, but after that game, the series went downhill hard and fast. The big jumping the shark moment came with Batman: Arkham Knight. We’d been waiting to use the Batmobile for ages, and when we finally got a chance to do so? Well, they overdid it and then some.
So much of Batman: Arkham Knight takes place in the Batmobile, and they went way too far in how it’s implemented. Instead of the great boss fights that the series has had in the past, we get Batmobile fights, including one against the Arkham Knight that is so aggressively stupid and nonsensical that it pretty much defines jumping the shark.
This showdown happens between you and him in an underground tunnel where he has somehow acquired this monstrous drill machine out of literally nowhere for no purpose other than to fight you in this battle.
There are plenty of other stupid moments involving the Batmobile, but that’s the one that stands out the most alongside the return of Deathstroke, who (surprise) fights you while in a tank instead of a sequel to the incredible boss fight in Batman: Arkham Origins.
1 Dragon Age: The Veilguard
How to Kill a Franchise
Dragon Age: The Veilguard may be a decent game on its own, but as a Dragon Age game, it fails epically. The first three games in the series were not the most consistent, but the tone generally stayed the same. It was dark, serious, and incredibly mature. From the first moment you lay eyes on The Veilguard, you can tell that’s all gone. It suddenly felt like a Marvel movie, complete with awful quips during battle, painfully generic dialogue, and nothing resembling the maturity of the original trilogy.
It all gets worse when the villains are revealed, and instead of the intimidating and interesting presences of the past games, they are over-the-top, Power Ranger-type villains with all the depth of a fountain. The series was largely considered dead following the game’s release.
- Security Camera Installation – indoor/outdoor IP CCTV systems & video analytics
- Access Control Installation – key card, fob, biometric & cloud‑based door entry
- Business Security Systems – integrated alarms, surveillance & access control
- Structured Cabling Services – voice, data & fiber infrastructure for new or existing builds
- Video Monitoring Services – 24/7 remote surveillance and analytics monitoring
Author: 360 Technology Group
.jpg?format=1500w&ssl=1 "The best Los Angeles events for the week of April 13 - April 19")
