Most disappointed sequel?

[HellbirdIV]

Mass Effect 2
I was so mad at bioware, ruined the trilogy for me.

Most fans consider ME2 the best in the series, so I find this one very odd without any kind of explanation provided.

Myself, I can't say I've been deeply disappointed by game sequels beyond Mass Effect 3's story failiure (it was still fun to play and had enough good character and story beats to make it a 'Recommended' game, in my book) - but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has to be on the list I guess.

Not only was the story terrible, contrast with the excellent stories of CoD4 and MW2, but the gameplay provided nothing new, instead rehashing the best bits of the previous games, with worse level design and weapons. Multiplayer also proved vastly inferior to the sweet simplicity of MW2.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

As a lover of fighting games, Street Fighter IV is the pinnacle of heartbreak. Fighting games aren't for me anymore. They're for Xbox Live ten-year-olds and their mommies' money, and Street Fighter IV is responsible. What kind of fucking fighting game rewards you for losing. Honestly.

In its defence, before Street Fighter 4, Fighting games were more or less dead.
Arcades were gone, no one thought a AAA Fighting Game could work and it gave the whole genre a huge boost.
It's not it's fault that a lot of the players online were pricks.

As for "Rewarding you for losing", which game is this?

 

[The Jovian]

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. Command & Conquer is, no it was one of my favourite franchises of all time. But this game sucks so many cocks it now requires daily spunk transfusions to stay alive and is worse than a regurgitated deep fried tampon. I'm 100% certain that there's a parallel universe version of Yahtzee that loves RTSes and named it the worst game of 2010. It is the shittiest RTS that has ever existed with Halo Wars in a close second and the greatest contender for the Zero Punctuation's "Cloning Elvis to make him sing Rebecca Black's Friday" Award for biggest waste of potential. This game could've been a great finale to the series if EA actually cared about the franchise anymore. Instead it is a dumbed down, multiplayer focused, strategy-less disaster with an insanely abysmal plot and an insufferably short singleplayer campaign, I've played RTS expansion packs (StarCraft: Brood War, Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, Generals: Zero Hour) with more singleplayer content than this game.

 

[Glongpre]

Mass Effect 2
I was so mad at bioware, ruined the trilogy for me.

Most fans consider ME2 the best in the series, so I find this one very odd without any kind of explanation provided.

I played the crap out of Mass Effect 1. I was expecting them to fine tune the experience but instead they rip out all the interesting things, all the things that haven't been done before, and create a mediocre third person shooter. Everyone always says that "well, the mako sucked", or "the elevators are too long". But that doesn't mean you ditch it, cause they sure weren't broken.

 

[Manoose47]

Any call of duty title after united offensive... What happened? it's not that all the following CoD games sucked.. but they really didn't rate as sequels. after that we have every fantasy game that's considered itself a successor to baldurs gate 2s throne, NwN, ToEE, DA, go home, you're not even close.

finally for a more contemporary response: hitman absolution, way to damage the franchise guys!hitman was never about action and gunplay it was about pulling off the perfect hit undetected, whether that meant using poison, explosives, piano wire or pianos the hitman series always struck a fine balance between serious and down right loony, absolution however was just one michael bay approved set piece after another.

...sigh

good sequels are often great for adding interesting new features, but when devs change the core mechanics of a series they shouldn't be surprised if it ruffles a few feathers.Honorary mention to Might and Magic: Heroes VI changing the levelling system? WHY?

 

[Zetona]

LittleBigPlanet 2.

All Media Molecule did was add new features, and yet the game had none of the original's charm, whimsy, and magic.

 

[Feylynn]

You are right that the combat needs quite a bit of tactic (right skills on your chars, using CCC's etc.) and at times even seems slightly harder that Origins, but its just so ridiculously unbalanced (Assassin's, damage beats everything, Arishok duel) that I can't call it good.
Out of curiosity whats the "Aveline exploit"? And how do you exploit Healers? I found all the Healing spells utterly useless with their insanely long cooldowns compared to how fast damage is dealt in that game.

You are right about Assassin for sure, especially with Shadow perma crits.
Avaline could get body guard and battle synergy in order to take ~75% of the damage off your Assassin and then use Immovable to become a damage sponge statue that blocked all of it. I personally didn't use the healers because I didn't really have any use for them but I heard no end of others saying they couldn't fight without one at some point and gave them the benefit of the doubt I guess.

Back on the Avaline note, after circumstances removed Fenris from my party the game became far to easy, I could just face tank encounters with Hawke.

 

[Olas]

Honestly it's hard to think of many.

If you can call them "sequels" Zelda Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks were disappointments compared to Windwaker, not necessarily terrible mind you, but they both felt way more restricted and linear to me, none of this is helped by weird fully touch controls.

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2. The first was an addictively fun RTS with visuals that closely resembled the movies and a huge campaign that followed the main story and all it's iconic moments.
The sequel was a bloated Warcraft clone.

 

[Chris Tian]

You are right that the combat needs quite a bit of tactic (right skills on your chars, using CCC's etc.) and at times even seems slightly harder that Origins, but its just so ridiculously unbalanced (Assassin's, damage beats everything, Arishok duel) that I can't call it good.
Out of curiosity whats the "Aveline exploit"? And how do you exploit Healers? I found all the Healing spells utterly useless with their insanely long cooldowns compared to how fast damage is dealt in that game.

You are right about Assassin for sure, especially with Shadow perma crits.
Avaline could get body guard and battle synergy in order to take ~75% of the damage off your Assassin and then use Immovable to become a damage sponge statue that blocked all of it. I personally didn't use the healers because I didn't really have any use for them but I heard no end of others saying they couldn't fight without one at some point and gave them the benefit of the doubt I guess.

Back on the Avaline note, after circumstances removed Fenris from my party the game became far to easy, I could just face tank encounters with Hawke.

So its not really a Aveline exploit just Aveline. I have to say I always felt tanking is kind of useless, since the mobs just drop out of nowhere and all over the place it was much more of a hassle to grab all their aggro, than to just kill them. Especially since taunt only affects mobs that are not further than arms reach and only for a few seconds untill your damage dealers made up the threat it causes through damage.

On the "Healers", they dont really deserve that name since the one Heal-Spell they can use, what feels like, every three years never made any difference for me. It was again easier to kill the enemy instead of trying to absorb the damage.

 

[neppakyo]

The xbone! haha haha!

But Dragon Effect 2: Medieval Time Shepard, Mass Effect 2 and 3 are pretty horrid sequels. Right up in the top 10.

 

[Ieyke]

The Xbone, obviously. XD

Can't believe it took 21 posts to get there.
So obvious.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Have no doubt it's already been mentioned, but Diablo III.

I don't think I've ever seen a game where the developers so thoroughly removed almost everything that made the previous game great.

Oh, and Resident Evil 6, though admittedly I thought 5 was a huge disappointment too so this wasn't really an enormous shocker.

 

[ChanTheNoob]

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. I'm fairly sure that Core were just trolling TR fans by that point, Angel of Darkness was borderline unplayable due to its horrible controls, and other gameplay design choices

 

[MorganL4]

This can be answered in two words. Fable 3.

Huh, for me it was the same series, but earlier on. I loved Fable, and the expansion that went with it. I spent hours playing that game, even ran through it three separate times. But then they released Fable 2. One of the aspects of the original fable that I loved were the combat mechanics, something that received a complete and in my opinion inferior overhaul, to the point where I had to force myself to finish the main story. I never even bought Fable 3, since 2 left such a bad taste in my mouth (of course, my friend knew I loved the first game so he bought me the 3rd as a Christmas gift. I still haven't finished the tutorial)

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

Well, since people mentioned Metroid Other M enough times, and it deserves all the hate it gets, I'll go with Devil May Cry 2 (can't be disappointed with DmC since reading an article about how Capcom wanted to appeal to a more western audience before the game was revealed killed my enthusiasm for the series). The amount they get wrong in this game is so baffling, I don't know where to even begin. The lackluster combat, the boring levels that you jump between without any idea as to why your there? Reusing a boss fight from the previous game? Making the main character as dull as possible and giving him a pointless Two-Face coin toss gimmick? Making in brain-dead easy?

 

[Greni]

And now for something completely different.

FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction

Ultimate Carnage was so fun at LAN parties (ah how I miss those), just having a laugh driving like crazy with your mates. How do you fuck up a mindless chaotic derby car game in this day and age you might ask?

Well the fine fucktards at Team6 Game Studios found a way. It's broken in every way:

You could go mad trying to rationalise Flatout 3. It is not bad in the way that a game like Boiling Point is bad, where things coalesce into a kind of awful greatness. This is a tacky and technically incompetent production with no redeeming features whatsoever, devoid of fun and an insult to the name it bears. Flatout once burned bright, but now is gone - and if there is a driving hell, this is surely it.

Just look at it

 

[Kallindril]

Ninja Gaiden 3. Then they remade the game entirely by way of apology, and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge was very good (to me, anyway).

 

[Zeraki]

Mega Man X7: Wow, talk about a major dip in quality. I mean, X6 was pretty bad but... X7 was just a slap in the face. X5 pretty much marked beginning of the decline of the series. When they started breaking the flow of the game to have some annoying support character tell you things you already knew("Whoop! Mega Man, Mega Man!" shut up, I don't NEED you!), it started taking the fun out of it. That and the games became horrifically slooooooow. One of the things I always loved about the Mega Man X series was how fast paced the games were.

Mass Effect 3: It was nowhere near what it should have been. It was an unpolished and buggy mess. Which is telling of how rushed it was. And it had one of... no the most disappointing ending I've ever seen in a video game series. Yet, I can still enjoy the game... it just saddens me with all that wasted potential.


Devil May Cry 2: Boring level designs, boring enemy designs(I'm fighting a helicopter... meanwhile in the first game I fought a giant-magma-spider-scorpion-thing, a giant chicken that shoots lightning and the freaking god of the underworld). And no signs of the fun loving, wise cracking Dante from the first game in sight.