Worst gaming sequels?

[happyninja42]

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
It took everything that I loved about the first game, and tossed it aside for some "dark and gritty" death metal, angsty piece of crap. I couldn't even finish the tutorial. Seriously my last image of the game is the FULL SCREEN CLOSEUP of the villainess' metal thonged ass as she walked up from the bowels of the ship. I shut it off at that point and never looked back. Totally terrible piece of crap.

 

[Pikey Mikey]

Worst sequels is a hard one. But I will give some that really disappointed me (I'm kinda picky with my games so there aren't a lot of bad games I've played) =P

Dragon Age 2:

Spoiler

I thought the story was shite, because it hacked the story into bits (you do this, flash forward two years, Hawke is now rich because of reasons, do this, flash forward another six months, the Qunari are angry because these three things happened (and WHY couldn't I side with the Arishok!? I WANTED to side with him, because he was right, Dunwall WAS just a rancid cesspool filled with pricks)) but I do think that the combat was better because, and this is pretty much the most annoying bit of Origins, the characters didn't run/jog around like hunchbacks in battle and the targeting was better (in Origins if you went too close or too far away the character spend five seconds just positioning themselves in order to swing at a guy.)

Mass Effect 3:

Spoiler

...I can't describe how disappointing this game was for me, I LOVED the first game and the second was really good (in my opinion of course, I can only speak for myself), although the second game lacked Carnage (the Shotgun skill) which is basically what makes the first game my favorite...and fuck off all of you, I LIKED the Mako =P (I really don't understand why people DESPISE it so much, with capital letters and maybe an exclamation point). ME3 not only ruined Carnage for me (what the fuck was that *pew* red missile shit anyway? That's NOT Carnage, Carnage is a MISSILE of red energy that sends Shepard reeling back two steps whenever he fires it!) but the story and the ending...I was so confused by it, it made such little sense and the last bits just...Fuck ME3.
I think this is saying more about me than the game, but whatever, I spent a day or two barely feeling emotions, two weeks just apathetic about the game and two months pissed off at it. Actually, it was to the point that four of my classmates played all three games just too see what the fuss was about =P They agreed with me that, yes, ME1 was really good, ME2 was good/really good and that yes, the ending in ME3 was absolute gash.

Quick mentions:

Spoiler

Thief 4: Sucked, it sucked so bad, I've played A mission of Thief 1 (but I liked Garrett so I watched all the Thief 1/2 cutscenes =P) and I wanted that guy. Who the hell is Garrett in Thief 4? And that FUCKING ghost-girl-sidekick-person... This was the same as the whole ME3 ghost-child thing. I see that annoying as fuck person at the start of the game, hope that "Please don't let that character be re-occurring, please let him/her (respectively) die! Do it now! Before they survive the tutorial!!!" They die, I feel relief...and then two missions later the psychedelic visions/nightmares begin and the joy of any eventual game gets crippled because yes, the game designers WERE that stupid.

Darksiders II: Not as good as Darksiders I, which was basically God of War-Xbox edition...Filled with two(three?) sections of shitty puzzles (you instantly saw the solution but just moving shit took forever).

Hitman: Absolution: Yeah, not as good as Blood Money, and they changed a lot...Story was weird and (I thought) didn't really fit into the whole 47-assassin thingy. Actually, it was just a shittier version of Hitman: Silent Assassin's story. 47 has A (one) friend who gets kidnapped (or in H:A, killed and wants to protect some other person, basically same thing "this person matters to me now,I must perteckt dem") and the whole game is 'find the person and kill everyone involved'. Minor complaint, Hitman: Absolution isn't a bad game per se, just not as good as Blood Money.
Final note: My ranking of Hitman games:
1. Blood Money, 2. Hitman:Codename 47 and Silent Assassin (The first game is really good and the dialogue is horrendously bad :3, the second game is just good and has like A HUNDRED missions! (21 compared to 13 in the first game)) 3. Absolution and last, Contracts...I just didn't like that game. It had so little customization, you couldn't mod anything, you couldn't buy anything and getting Silent Assassin ratings on mission (at least the first two times) rewarded my stealth with, a .357 Magnum and a sawn-off shotgun...Piss off!

EDIT: Oh good lord that is a massive text-wall. I'll put it in spoiler boxes to make it smaller.

 

[hermes]

God of War 3: They really pushed the characters and the story thin. By the end of 2, you almost kill the bad guy, but he escapes... In the first 30 minutes of 3, you are close to killing him again, but he throws you from a cliff and the entire game has you trying to get back up. Also, big battles they spent a lot of time in marketing were really, reaaaaally poorly executed.

 

[G00N3R7883]

My first thought when I saw the thread title was "Assassins Creed 3" but I swore I wasn't going to waste any more of my life on that franchise (I had also been less than impressed by Brotherhood and Revelations), and that includes complaining about it on a forum. So instead I'll go with ...

KOTOR 2 - just a buggy, unfinished mess. Loads of content was cut out to meet a rushed release deadline, which left many plot threads unresolved or at best in a state of confusion.

Bioshock 2 - I can't really describe why, because I can't remember much about it now. I normally play single player games at least twice if I enjoy them and I've only played B2 once. I've played B1 at least 3, maybe 4 times and I've already played Infinite for a 2nd time. I just remember feeling really disappointed by B2. I think everything just bored me from the story to the level design to the lack of new plasmids.

Fallout New Vegas (controversial pick) - the player character was just an empty shell, no personality, no connection to the world, no reason for existing. None of the factions made for interesting villains, and even though I waited a couple of months after launch (because I remembered Obsidian's work on KOTOR 2), I still suffered from lots of technical problems.

Xcom The Bureau - not sure if it counts because its more of a spin off than a sequel, but absolutely everything about it is terrible. Everything.

Edit: in response to OP - I finished Fallout 3, I liked it but it was my first Fallout game so I would have a different view to a long time franchise fan.

 

[Frezzato]

You kids and your complaints. Try going from the impeccable side scrolling animation in Flashback to the horrible 3D sequel Fade to Black.

 

[Frezzato]

Burnout Paradise. Showtime mode can't ever hope to come close to what crash mode was. In crash mode, you not only had a damage tally, but a replay so you could watch it again. Revenge and Takedown also had the awesome crashbreakers. Burnout Paradise? No such thing. There is no reason it needed to be open world, and it seems to have suffered a lot of cuts for it. I still like it because you can crash your car all day without losing any gold medals or stars, but it lacks the spirit of the two games that came before it. And that's a shame.

Actually, you bring up a really good example. And that damn tiny map on the right never helped a damn.

Also, it was stupid of them to make it so you can't immediately restart a race at will. You always had to drive back to the starting point.

 

[1Life0Continues]

*builds impenetrable fort and locks self in*

Assassin's Creed II.

I'll be the first to admit the original Assassin's Creed was far from perfect. But I am of the opinion that it was better than it's follow up. Because you had to work for it. You had to gather intel, find out about your target and then make your way to them. Yes, the ways you did were repetitive, but at least you HAD to do it. You could opt out entirely in AC2 which just felt lazy. The redemption story of Altair was better (but the Apple subplot was admittedly rubbish), hell, I think the character of Altair was superior to Ezio 'I killed this man. Me. Ezio. I'm an Assassin' Auditore and while there were awful missteps (Flags anyone? Awkward free running?) I think it managed to build a beautiful and indepth world where what you were doing made some sense.

And it did all that in one game, not bloody three. A singular, encapsulated experience that I was sad to see butchered for reasons I'm still not sure of.

 

[bug_of_war]

Payday 2. Holy shit, this game just fucking sucked for me. The first game was pretty good, long open missions with a nice large map, fun and fluid game mechanics. The first game was just a really nice heist game, then the second one had to go and fuck it all up by creating too much hype and then telling people off for having certain expectations. We were promised 30 heists, we got 8-10. We were promised custom hideouts, we were then told that it was all coming later in an update. Then all the horrible updates to the game that nerfed certain abilities/weapons/approaches to missions. One of the great things about the first game is that you could unlock every perk, but not every perk would be useful for situations so you were able to swap around. Payday 2 has made it so you can only really fully level up 2 skill trees, and even then most the skills are pretty lackluster.


Payday 2 is the only game I have EVER regretted purchasing.

 

[EHKOS]

In the middle of Mass Effect 3 and having the spirit crushed out of me. Four members to take out on every mission, your love life sucks, and while somewhat expected, it killed off two of my favorite characters already. The whole war terminal thing seems a bit of a clusterfuck, if I don't know how many troops would make for a plausible victory, the numbers don't really mean much to me. It feels like I shouldn't partake of the sidequests because the story makes me feel like I'm in a rush, which I am, but is very bad for this kind of game.

Bioshock Infinite. My gosh what a let down. I don't think I ever traveled by sky-hook from one main island to another. The gear seemed so weird after having a gene bank, and the story -and subsequently the DLC story- was terrible. Not to mention the false advertising of having it show what Rapture looked like before the fall. You mean the three minutes before we met Cohen and were then condemned to a single building what looked like any other part of Rapture that was just full of department stores? I feel like I should just add the bit about the two weapon limit.
I feel like I have more hate for this game than it deserves, but I certainly don't consider it, or the DLC ending, cannon.

 

[Casual Shinji]

*builds impenetrable fort and locks self in*

Assassin's Creed II.

I'll be the first to admit the original Assassin's Creed was far from perfect. But I am of the opinion that it was better than it's follow up. Because you had to work for it. You had to gather intel, find out about your target and then make your way to them. Yes, the ways you did were repetitive, but at least you HAD to do it. You could opt out entirely in AC2 which just felt lazy. The redemption story of Altair was better (but the Apple subplot was admittedly rubbish), hell, I think the character of Altair was superior to Ezio 'I killed this man. Me. Ezio. I'm an Assassin' Auditore and while there were awful missteps (Flags anyone? Awkward free running?) I think it managed to build a beautiful and indepth world where what you were doing made some sense.

And it did all that in one game, not bloody three. A singular, encapsulated experience that I was sad to see butchered for reasons I'm still not sure of.

I will say this, AC2 marked the beginning of Ubisoft adding stuff for the sake of stuff. 'Here's money which you can invest to get more money to invest.' And it didn't just stay with AC, Far Cry 3 also suffered from Ubisoft drowning out the game with stuff to collect. AC4 is generally a fun game with the pirating and all, but whenever I upgrade my ship to my satisfaction I'm instantly hit by a feeling of not even wanting to continue the game. All that was apparently keeping my attention was gathering stuff, and not the main game.

 

[1Life0Continues]

I will say this, AC2 marked the beginning of Ubisoft adding stuff for the sake of stuff. 'Here's money which you can invest to get more money to invest.' And it didn't just stay with AC, Far Cry 3 also suffered from Ubisoft drowning out the game with stuff to collect. AC4 is generally a fun game with the pirating and all, but whenever I upgrade my ship to my satisfaction I'm instantly hit by a feeling of not even wanting to continue the game. All that was apparently keeping my attention was gathering stuff, and not the main game.

Oh geez, I think you might be right. I never made that connection before (admittedly, Ubisoft's practices causing me to refrain from buying most of their games is to blame for that one) but it fits.

I really wanted to follow the story of Desmond as it seemed interesting (if immensely stupid) but after AC2, I just couldn't bring myself to care anymore.

 

[runequester]

I think the Resident Evil stuff has been mired in too much mediocrity and too little reason to actually feel invested for several games.
Sometimes the worst isn't the stuff that's painfully bad. It's the cloying void of apathy when you realize the series has lot you completely.

 

[EmperorZinyak]

Hitman Absolution wasn't an awful game, but it comes no where close to Blood Money in terms of level size, interesting environments, and creative methods of killing your targets. There are waaaaay too many times where your target dies in a scripted way in Absolution. Hoping that 6 fixes things.

 

[AkaDad]

After reading the comments, I'm disappointed with all the reasonable and civil comments when we easily could be in the middle of a flamewar. Well, you can't win them all.

I'm a very picky gamer, which means all the sequels I've played have been improvements on the original. I'll edit if I can think of something I missed.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Resident Evil 5. I never bothered with RE6 so I don't know how bad it is. But damn, RE5 is so boring and the inventory mechanics still makes me cringe.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Dragon Age II.

...wait, no, I prefered it to Origins.

My vote would go to---

Oblivion - even if it doesn't quite count as a sequel to Morrowind. It was a follow up in the same series, and I think it sucked the soul out of TES and turned it from art, into nothing but a simple game. Yes, I have a possibly pretentious angle on this, but whatevs... Oblivion set the stage for Fallout 3 and Skyrim, two similarly simplistic games lacking in any real creative identity or depth.

(disclaimer: I still put a ton of hours across those games, and still greatly enjoy Skyrim. but for me, Bethesda spiritually died a little death with Oblivion, in that nothing like Morrowind will perhaps ever be seen again. at least not from them)

Tomb Raider 3 - the point I bailed from the original series. An ugly, messy, disjointed Lara-goes-on-holiday mishap, that arguably began Lara's and TR's decline in cultural and gaming relevance.

The Force Unleashed 2 - the original remains one of my highlights from this/last gen, but the sequel I avoided like the plague based on the horrible demo and poor reviews and fan feedback. I watched the story cinematics on You Tube, and it seems to have messed up everything the original did so well with its treatment of Star Wars.

Halo Reach - there is a lot to admire about it (my favourite Halo MP, customisable campaign Spartan with gender select, a squad of Spartans was a great idea, etc), but I think it's a largely irrelevant entry that added absolutely nothing to the series, the lore, or the gameplay (barring the great tweaks to MP). Superb presentation, a few nice levels, and classily made, but for Bungie's last Halo I thought they went out with a puny whimper (Halsey's journal from the limited edition was awesome, however, and ended up being far more interesting than anything in the game itself).

 

[Racecarlock]

Burnout Paradise. Showtime mode can't ever hope to come close to what crash mode was. In crash mode, you not only had a damage tally, but a replay so you could watch it again. Revenge and Takedown also had the awesome crashbreakers. Burnout Paradise? No such thing. There is no reason it needed to be open world, and it seems to have suffered a lot of cuts for it. I still like it because you can crash your car all day without losing any gold medals or stars, but it lacks the spirit of the two games that came before it. And that's a shame.

Actually, you bring up a really good example. And that damn tiny map on the right never helped a damn.

Also, it was stupid of them to make it so you can't immediately restart a race at will. You always had to drive back to the starting point.

Actually, it has this thing that it never tells you about once called easydrive that you bring up with right on the D-pad that has a "Retry last event" option.

But I can see how you missed that seeing as how I did too at first because it never fucking tells you.

 

[Frezzato]

Burnout Paradise. Showtime mode can't ever hope to come close to what crash mode was. In crash mode, you not only had a damage tally, but a replay so you could watch it again. Revenge and Takedown also had the awesome crashbreakers. Burnout Paradise? No such thing. There is no reason it needed to be open world, and it seems to have suffered a lot of cuts for it. I still like it because you can crash your car all day without losing any gold medals or stars, but it lacks the spirit of the two games that came before it. And that's a shame.

Actually, you bring up a really good example. And that damn tiny map on the right never helped a damn.

Also, it was stupid of them to make it so you can't immediately restart a race at will. You always had to drive back to the starting point.

Actually, it has this thing that it never tells you about once called easydrive that you bring up with right on the D-pad that has a "Retry last event" option.

But I can see how you missed that seeing as how I did too at first because it never fucking tells you.

Goddammit...that...so aggravating.

I might revisit Burnout Paradise now.

Maybe.

 

[Racecarlock]

Burnout Paradise. Showtime mode can't ever hope to come close to what crash mode was. In crash mode, you not only had a damage tally, but a replay so you could watch it again. Revenge and Takedown also had the awesome crashbreakers. Burnout Paradise? No such thing. There is no reason it needed to be open world, and it seems to have suffered a lot of cuts for it. I still like it because you can crash your car all day without losing any gold medals or stars, but it lacks the spirit of the two games that came before it. And that's a shame.

Actually, you bring up a really good example. And that damn tiny map on the right never helped a damn.

Also, it was stupid of them to make it so you can't immediately restart a race at will. You always had to drive back to the starting point.

Actually, it has this thing that it never tells you about once called easydrive that you bring up with right on the D-pad that has a "Retry last event" option.

But I can see how you missed that seeing as how I did too at first because it never fucking tells you.

Goddammit...that...so aggravating.

I might revisit Burnout Paradise now.

Maybe.

I wouldn't. Get ridge racer unbounded. It's made by bugbear, the guys who made flatout, and while it doesn't have a crash mode, it does have a track editor. All you have to do is make a complete circuit in that editor, and the game will let you save a track with a straight up wall across it. I'm not even kidding.

It's far more satisfying to destroy cars in that game.