My vote goes to Ace of Spades. I know that many people will say Halo 4 but the original Ace of Spades was legendary. It was a free indie game with a similar map format to minecraft (but all blocks have the same "health" and are only separated by colour. The rifle killed with one shot to the head so people built trench systems, fortresses etc to survive and undermine the enemy. Also if you destroyed the base of anything it collapsed so digging was a key part of the game.
Then JAGEX game along and bought the title. They introduced CoD classes, rocket launchers, sniper rifles and the jetpack. These editions made trench warfare and fortresses pointless because you could simply fly over them and thus, the game was completely ruined. You can still play the Classic version but the developer is no longer aloud to update an original game.
[b]TL;DR[/b] JAGEX bought the franchise and destroyed everything original about it, turning it into a crappy CoD clone.
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Edited by FoMan123: 6/30/2013 3:01:21 AMI've got to agree with a couple others in this thread and give my vote to Final Fantasy. We went from games that were cultural phenomena with every release (and I distinctly remember the box art with a quote from a critic saying that FF VII was "quite possibly the greatest game ever made," which is a sentiment I agreed with wholeheartedly at the time -- see pic above) to garbage reboots that aren't even worth a blip on the radar. Hugely disappointing, and the next installment for next gen isn't exactly getting me excited for a return to glory, either.