Nature Vs. Nurture: Series that are born great vs. series that become great.

As a huge fan of AC1, I'm so excited to see AC:B tearing up the sales charts and seeing core gamers and journalists lavishing praise on the title after an admittedly rough start to the franchise. I remember defending AC1 to my fellow gamers saying that yes, it was repetitive, but the world offered so much potential and what was there was worth playing and seeing to the end. Thankfully, enough people picked up the first iteration to allow for the universally praised sequel AC2. Would it have been better if AC1 had been a 5-star game out of the box? Hell, yeah, but it wasn't. Even Bioshock 1 had issues with all of its high scores.

I absolutely loved Mass Effect 1 and again heard all the criticisms about the janky combat and repetitive mission structures, but I saw the potential in the storyline and the game engine and was praying for a second one. Thankfully, they fixed a lot of problems in the once again praised sequel but to be fair, they threw in the "getting the gang back together'" storyline problem. And now we're slobbering over the announcement of ME3.

So what I'm asking is don't we have some responsibility as core gamers to seek out potential in new titles that could grow into fantastic franchises down the road? With as much money as is required to create a new engine, art assets, coding, and everything else, maybe we should go a bit easier on reviewing or dismissing new entries into our hobby.

I'm not saying throw money at horrible titles as if development was some sort of charity we have to sponsor or that capitalism doesn't work, but I am saying that titles like Scribblenauts, Enslaved, Epic Mickey, Saboteur or Just Cause 2 (basically a new iteration) sometimes deserve a champion so they might live on to become incredible franchises.