SiN (+ Emergence)
I have to give these games some awards, because I've had a very unusual relationship with this series ever since Ross introduced me to it.
[Could've Been Legendary] - Both the original and Emergence are unique to me in just how unbelievably close they come to being all-time favorites of mine... but they're not. They just have too many problems. The tone, the setting, the overall feel of the gunfights, the level design, just about everything feels tailor-made for my personal tastes (Well maybe not the horny stuff. But it mostly gets out of the way when Alexis isn't on screen so it's not a big deal). But in both games everything starts to fall apart once they start trying to add a bit of challenge. In the original, for starters every time they try to add puzzles relating to unkillable turrets, the game immediately becomes a huge pain in the ass. And then in the late game everyone gets rocket launchers and sniper rifles, which is just not fun at all (And no, the "deliver cleaning supplies instead of weapons" terminal doesn't change that. I don't even know what it actually does).
Meanwhile, in Emergence, the combat feels pretty consistently enjoyable (if a bit same-y) up until they start throwing the armored minigun guys at you, which again, immediately makes gunfights feel like a slog. They have way, WAY too many hit points, and the game's system of randomly spawning in enemy types for each encounter mean that they're never carefully implemented. They're just slapped in to artificially make fights harder. And Ross already mentioned that the personality of Emergence was being strangled, which absolutely doesn't help.
Again, I've never seen a series that feels like it caters so much to my own personal tastes before breaking its neck on the landing. I genuinely believe that if the SiN Episodes series had not been cancelled, it would have become THE all-time favorite of mine.
[Best Saturday Morning tone for Adults] - Unlike Ross's opinion on the writing of SiN (and Ninja Turtles), I actually really like this brand of goofy, straight-forward writing. Throw me in a world with a stupid villain who has a new crazy scheme every week, and is thwarted by some guys spouting one-liners and catch phrases, and I'll eat that shit up every time. In fact, I kind of lament the fact that this style of writing is very rare for stuff made for adults. Here's the recipe as I see it: It's the combination of heroic action, colorful characters, a stupid premise, and silly, overly-functional dialogue that really gives something a Saturday morning cartoon tone. And I think a lot of writers making stuff for mature audiences are afraid to put all of those things together. Funnily enough, probably the closest I've seen a game come to hitting this feeling outside of SiN is Call of Duty: Ghosts... if you can believe that. It obviously doesn't have the colorful characters, but it nails just about everything else, and as such always falls flat when it tries to take itself seriously.
[Best Main Menu Music] - Obviously I'm referring to Emergence here and not the original since that's the only one that has menu music... but I'm not kidding when I say that the main them of SiN: Episodes might be my favorite song ever made, bar fucking none. Bear in mind that I'm not the sort of person who goes out of their way to find new music, and most of what I do listen to is stuff that doesn't have lyrics. So it's not like it's competing with a host of music where the meaning deeply resonates with me. But even with that aside... this shit is amazing. And I actually think it really fits Blade's character. Like his backstory is that he founded his own mercenary company as a response to all of the other blatantly corrupt security corporations cropping up. And this song really speaks to that underlying feeling of hypocrisy towards using the same systems of violence used by those corrupt businesses to try and fight back against a world that allowed it to flourish. But he feels the need to keep pushing back anyway because participating in that system is the only thing that's allowed him to rebel in any meaningful capacity. Like the song bounces between feelings of disappointment, resentment, frustration, hope, and pure adrenaline. I dunno, maybe I'm reading into this too much, but this is just a fantastic piece of music.