Before Alone in the Dark, Infogrammes only did buggy shovelwares, mostly Disney adaptations.
After Alone in the Dark they had a couple legit good games, a couple great ones.

I'm going to get flak for this, but Naughty Dog.
Crash Bandicoot was kind of terrible. Jak and Daxter and Jak II were okay (though I absolutely adore Jak 3). Uncharted 1 was awful, but 2 and 3 were quite good. And then The Last of Us was a masterpiece and Uncharted 4 was very good.

I can get on board with that. Although I still consider the original Jak and Daxter to be Naughty Dog's best game. But either way I think you can make a case for Naughty Dog getting better starting in 2001, although there were ups and downs in the 15 years that followed.

When the downs are Uncharted 1, a game that sits on a 88 on metacritics, sold over 5 million copies and is generaly liked by ppl who play it, and the original Crash that was quite revolutionary for its time (ppl didn't even know how to code a 3D game back them, keep that in mind) then you know the company is anything but mediocre. Someone did not get the concept of this thread it seens. Before Crash no one knew who Naughty Dog was, after it they became one of the most proiminent developers in the world and remained so troughout the years, theres absolutly no way to clain they went from mediocre to great only when they released the Last of Us cause the company was already considered one of the greatest in the business since Crash 1.

If you want to make a case for Naughty Dog being consistently great from beginning to end, I'm more than happy to entertain that.

But great scores and high sales do not a great game make. You're going to need to bring more to the table than "a lot of people like Naughty Dog games, so you're wrong."

And, for the record, the downs I was referring to don't include Drake's Fortune, a game I really like. But they do include Uncharted 3, a game that sits on a 92 on Metacritic and sold almost 7 million copies.

Naughty dog, Atlus, From Software.

Ok so it makes even less sense you can't say a game that has a 92 metascore, sold millions, pleased most gamers (most of the criticism the game gets is that it is not as good as one of the greatest games of all times) and won multiple game of the year awards is mediocre, sorry you just can't. You can say "I don't like it", but the thing is objectively well developed/made.

And realy I'm not making a case, its is a fact, the company was considered one of the greatest videogaming companies troughout the whole Playstation history, I'm not giving an opinion, thats not what I think or don't. Sony bought the company straight away after Crash 1 and ND served as a center for teaching other Sony devs how to code for the PS and later for the PS2. Crash became the face of the Playstation console and was way more sucessfull then Sony ever expected it to, even on their most optmistic predictions. You can't say the company was mediocre when it is considered one of the greatest by everyone in the business and it is having it's games laureated left and right, selling non stop and having critical and fan aclaim, it is not a matter of opinion.

Rockstar's early games were meh

Blizzard had a fun puzzle game in Lost Vikings but they really took off with Warcraft and then Diablo

Eventually you're going to have to show some faith in your own opinions and not hide behind critical scores or sales or popular opinion. When you reach that point I'd be happy to have a serious debate with you. Until then, enjoy the rest of the day.

Naughty Dog. They went from Crash to Uncharted. Not much more to say.