Dynasty Warriors and Sonic games.
It honestly bugs me that despite the fact that (for the most part) DW improves with each iteration with new level designs and movesets, reviewers cry foul and give each new one a steadily decreasing score, claiming it's the same game and that expectations have changed. Meanwhile, certain other games retain their scores (or god forbid the scores go up) no matter how many times they're re-released with a minimum of added features.
(For sake of emphasis, I have heard a Mega Man fanboy claim that every Dynasty Warriors is the same game. I am dead fucking serious.)
As for Sonic games, Sega is seriously in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. The '06 game was given tons of shit despite that it had a similar gameplay style to the original Sonic Adventure (granted a lot of the shit was for other reasons, and from what I can tell in that case it's more well deserved). Sonic Unleashed plays like Sonic Rush (which played like Sonic Advance), and they say the game is a...
new step in the wrong direction. Please tell me how RUN REAL FAST is either new or the wrong direction. That's still there. I admit the werehog part is stupid, but RUN REAL FAST wasn't axed in favor of it, and dammit, that's still fun.
Now that both the 'staying to roots' ideas have been lashed on, surely what Sonic needs to do is innovate, right? Wrong. Critics tear each new concept for the blue rodent a new asshole, even though (in my opinion) the idea of Sonic kicking ass with a sword is awesome.
Then what happens? After all these games, people who all agreed that Sonic Adventure 2 was the shit are now hating on that game, saying it sucks
now. How the fuck does it suck
now as opposed to
when it came out? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the code on your CDs doesn't magically change over time.
Also, FFIX and Pokemon.