A few:
-Though it pains me to say it, Civilization. The games had never actually been especially complicated- once you read the manual, you'd understand enough to play the game, though perhaps not to play it well- but the way that each game in the series added new, expanded things to the core formula (even the offshoots), had built it into a surprisingly wide game that was still shallow enough to be easily accessible. Then 4 (the seventh game, if you don't count the sort-of spin-off Colonization) came out and changed a LOT. But the changes were (for the most part) positive, and expanded the scope and functionality of the game. Then came the push to the consoles, and the stripping out and dumbing down that so-often entails. You'd think a proper strategy game, a TURN-BASED strategy game wherein you don't need the perfectly speedy precision of a mouse and keyboard, would be a natural fit, but I guess Firaxis figured that holding a controller somehow makes you incapable of understanding any kind of strategic complexity. A worrying sign. Then came Civ 5, another bold experiment like 4 had been, that showed us that Firaxis was unafraid to try out bold new ideas that might lead them straight over a cliff. That's actually a good thing- a really good thing. A thing as good as Civilization 5 was bad; a "willingness to innovate" is not the same thing as a "total apparent lack of a QA department". I don't hold the experiment turning out badly against Firaxis; but when things go bad, you need to learn from them. What you do not need to do is keep making the same mistakes and calling them victories. Revolution was an underestimation, 5 was a failed experiment, Beyond Earth was... well, remember how it felt when 2K announced that they were finally remaking X-Com, and then added "as a first-person shooter"? Remember how you (and by "you", I mean "me"), when you finally managed to pull your face out of the wince, thought "well, there is some good news here; at least now I can explain to people who've never felt it what a vicious kick in the balls feels like"? That was what Beyond Earth was like. I don't lightly toss aside two and a half decades of joyful experience, but Firaxis has made it clear that the future of the series has no place for me.
-Mass Effect. I thoroughly enjoyed the first one; a game that took its one conceit (the titular effect) and a few secondary ones (the properties an "element zero" would have) and kept the rest of its sci-fi fairly hard (biology aside) was an interesting possibility, and it made for an interesting game (DRM nonsense and limited level designs aside; I'm certainly not claiming the game was flawless). The second game gave us "be nice to people and your scars will heal faster; be nasty and they'll get worse". The third gave us a space ninja. The actual gameplay, too, got weaker with each game, until by the third, I found myself thinking "if this game doesn't have a good, satisfying ending, I think I'm done with Bioware". I don't think I need to say any more about that.
-Final Fantasy. FF7 is a truly rare thing: a ludicrously overhyped game that is actually very good. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, like many who played it; I was thoroughly baffled by the advertising campaign that depicted it as an endless, wandering trek through a wasteland of broody angst, like many who played it; and I'm very tired of retrospectives that treat it as though it was the second coming of Christ (six was better, anyway). And then I played eight, and that was that.
