Sequels That Didn't Live Up To Their Predecessors

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Saelune

Trump put kids in cages!
Legacy
Mar 8, 2011
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Duke Nukem Forever
Oblivion
Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires (No death!?)
Neverwinter Nights 2
Dragon Age 2
Mass Effect 2
 

Folksoul

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Nuts&Bolts- Words cannot describe how mad I was. There's tonal or genre shift and then theres just slapping a franchise name onto a game you thought wouldn't sell either wise. Yah, the script was funny for the hour or two I played it but the gameplay, ooh the "design your own vehicle for the entirety of gameplay" mechanic. I may never forgive Rare for this.

Phantom Hourglass, mainly because of the Temple of the Ocean King, which to quote Yahtzee can "fuck right off."
 

AngryPuppy

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MercurySteam said:
Red Faction: Armageddon
Volition has proved time and again that they know how to make a great sandbox (Saints Row 1+2, Red Faction: Guerrilla) so when they decide to take a suburb sandbox game with endless fun supplied by demolishing building out in the open world and stick the it underground and make it a linear shooter, well they're essentially taking one step forward and two steps back. It's almost heartbreaking to see that everything that made the last game a suburb box of fun has been stripped away and replaced with a dark, linear alienfest. Yes, the Magnet Gun and destruction is fun to use but it doesn't nearly make up for the sad excuse for a game that Armageddon is. At least, not compared to Guerrilla anyway.
This was one of my answers. If they would have named it ANYTHING else I probably wouldn't have been so let down to be honest. Also...

Fallout 3 & New Vegas
I'm sorry but they really were a giant let down to me for way too many reason.

Dragon Age II
This let me down pretty hard. I wanted to love it. I tried to love it. I just couldn't.
 

Itsthatguy

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What

No Deus Ex:Invisible Wars yet?
Very little choice, no skills and some biomods are stupidly overpowered. And lets not forget the same-ammo-for-all-weapons system.
 

The_Blue_Rider

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Have to agree with a guy further up the thread and say Crackdown 2, I loved the first one but 2 was just boring as hell, the city was the same, the enemies were boring and it just felt like a huge grindfest especially since every damn mission was the same thing and there was no real plot
 

spartandude

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Mass Effect 2
Fantastice game, seriously its in my topten just behind Mass Effect 1 but i felt it lacked depth and was way too action focused rather than story, also all of the side missions were essentially loyalty missions

Bioshock 2
Again a good game but no where near as amazing as the first. being a big daddy took away most of the vulnerability i felt in the first one. It didnt really explain very well why the Proto bigdaddy was better than the refined ones. But also i felt it didnt touch on any political message, sure it kinda had communism but it would have made Marx eat his own beard and it turned out not to really be communism.

Dragon Age 2
Look at my description for Mass Effect 2 except this wasnt a good game at all.

Portal 2
Again an amazing fantastic game, but essentially look at the Zero Punctuation review
 

80Maxwell08

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Jul 14, 2010
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Ar Tonelico Qoga Knell of Ar Ciel. Yes that's the actual title. As someone who loved the first Ar Tonelico and didn't get a chance to play the second one when I heard of this I was insanely excited until I saw it. It makes me think of the Dragon Age 2 problem as well. Take a great strategic RPG and try to make it more "accessable". The gameplay resembles a Tales game if the entire development team just got amateur brain surgery via pickaxe. The result was awful gameplay, numerous copypasted areas, not as much as Dragon Age 2 but don't worry they evened the playing field with horrid graphics, and a terrible plot with so much sexuality the game was choking on it. The worst part if the only reason this wasn't the worst RPG I've ever played was thanks to Hyperdimension Neptunia which was published by the same company and came out the month before it. People if you see either of these titles on the shelf DO NOT BUY THEM PERIOD.
 

A Free Man

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imahobbit4062 said:
Assassins Creed 2.

Sure, it was amazing the first time, but so hard to reply. I've gone through AC1 about 4 times, AC2 twice.
If the only complaint you have about a game is that it is dificult to play after you have completely finished it. Perhaps it is time to stop complaining haha :p

Saelune said:
I guess you are right. But it is kind of unfair to compare to the earlier elder scrolls games since they are so amazing. Oblivion on it's own is still a good game I think, even if it doesn't manage to rise to the heights of the others.
 

War Penguin

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NOTE: The following game is a game I still loved, but in comparison to its predecessor, it could have done much, much better.

Fallout: New Vegas
Fuck the glitches, that was not the game's biggest issue for me. What I hated was that the side quests were so boring and uninspired. They usually consisted of "talk to this guy, then talk to that guy, then go here, then go back to the first guy for reward." There was no interesting back story to it, it was just "this guy wants that, so go get it for him." Sure, maybe they gave the quest a little story, but they were so forgettable that I couldn't remember what they were an hour after I finished them. Now, sure, there were a few good side quests here and there, and the companion side quests were really engaging. But that's only a few compared to so many bad and forgettable quests. They felt like chores than actual quests.

But quests don't matter as long as you have an immersive and engaging world, right? Well, that was another problem for me: The world didn't seem as alive as it did in Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, nearly every little area had a little story behind it. Sometimes it was an epic goose chase for a cache of loot and a story found through holo-tapes, sometimes it was just a couple of skeletons in a bed, living their last moments together before the bombs fell. I found almost none of that in New Vegas. There weren't any interesting characters to talk to, there weren't any stories that made me interested in the world. It was just boring. Plain little obstacles to get me some to some loot. Sure, Fallout 3 did that a bit, but not as flagrantly as New Vegas.

Another little side note that may be a little nit picking, but I feel is necessary to mention: Half the voice acting class seemed bored out of their minds. I'm not talking about the companions or the main characters. I'm talking about the voices that you'll hear again, and again, and again. People said the cast was better in New Vegas. I argue otherwise.

Now, before you get your panties in a bundle, I'd like to say this: There were a lot of things that New Vegas did right. The main quest was fantastic, fooling you into thinking that it was a simple search for revenge story, only to find out there were bigger things at hand [small](though, it was kind of obvious that it wasn't just a goose chase story. More would have had to happen)[/small]. It gave you much more freedom and control of how you want New Vegas to be ruled. I like Fallout 3's main story, but New Vegas took the cake with that.

So, yeah, I thought New Vegas wasn't as good as Fallout 3, but it still had redeemable qualities. Still a let down, though.
 

Byere

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Has to be said... Every Final Fantasy after X-2. While X-2 was in no way great, it's still a shitload better than XI onwards. Of course, I'm only talking numbered games, not like Tactics Advance 2 or such.
 

Genericjim101

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Dragon Age 2, enjoyable but not great. Metal Gear Solid 4 compared to MGS3 was scary bad in the story department, allright in the gameplay. Bioshock 2 was one big nostalgia trip of a game only 3 years before it.
 

Tdc2182

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imahobbit4062 said:
Assassins Creed 2.

Sure, it was amazing the first time, but so hard to reply. I've gone through AC1 about 4 times, AC2 twice.
I'm gonna be honest, Assassin's Creed 2 is one of the only games to expand upon it's predecessor in literally every single way. I have no idea where you are coming from.

Then again, it did take longer than to get into then the first one. But at least it didn't fall victim to that god awful "losing all your weapons" bull crap.
trollpwner said:
Matrix revolutions.

/thread.
Also this.

I think it had something to do with pretty much making Neo a cyber-Superman, which pretty much ruined all the tension from the fight scenes.

I couldn't help but tell myself "I don't care I don't care Idon'tcareIdon'tcare" throughout the entire story.

My choice?

Splinter Cell: Conviction.

I don't know what they were thinking, but they really fucked up an otherwise perfect stealth series.

The mark and execute was the most overpowered thing I have ever seen in a video game. It got up to the point where it literally gave you 6 executes on the easily upgraded guns.

And even if you chose not to use it, the game still was way to easy. It was very strange how it encouraged aggressive gameplay, but didn't really make any effort to make it seem smooth. What were they thinking?

Also, the got rid of probably one of the most innovative and genuinely fun multiplayer modes I've ever played. Spy's vs. Mercs was the shit.

The only real upside to that mess was the Co Op mode, but that relied on you taking out all the equipment and making sure your partner didn't use the Mark and Execute, and actually taking time to look through the different outfits you can put on your guy.
 

No_Remainders

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Khadplank said:
FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 FALLOUT 3 OH GOD FALLOUT 3 BY FAR!

It's a victim of what I hate the very most when developers do. "We're fans of the original" and "we just gotta make it more accessible". The fact that Bethesda is by far one of the laziest and most incompetent developers out there doesn't change that either. The story was uninspiring, the characters were boring and VATS was a terrible system that you could either choose to use or have to go through the worst combat in a game I have ever suffered through. They even had the same voice actors as in fucking Oblivion, but I suppose getting Liam Neeson to say a couple of lines is far more important than making anyone else in the game worth listening to. The wasteland was the by far most boring surrounding ever to explore, I couldn't bring myself to even try doing it for more than 5 minutes. Oh and while we're at exploration and surroundings, the fucking subways, they were fucking horrible to go through. Annoying, repetitive and just fucking boring.

Yes, I hate Fallout 3 with a passion. Gonna give New Vegas a shot once my friend who recently bought it has finished the game, I've heard that it's supposed to be alot better so thumbs crossed.
Pretty much exactly what he said. And yeah, New Vegas is more fun.

Apart from that? Hmm...

Bioshock (It's the virtual successor to System Shock 2, so I'm counting that!)
 

Vivi22

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imahobbit4062 said:
Assassins Creed 2.

Sure, it was amazing the first time, but so hard to reply. I've gone through AC1 about 4 times, AC2 twice.
I'm surprised to see anyone saying this actually. Not only that Assassin's Creed 2 is somehow disappointing compared to the original, but that anyone played the original more than once. The original will always be a game that had lots of potential but failed to deliver in almost every way. Combat and sneaking were usually annoying more than fun and the whole game was so repetitive that by the time I finished I wanted to toss the disc out a window. I got the second game just recently though, and even going in having heard all of the praise since it's release I was utterly shocked at how much better it was. I have never seen a sequel so completely and utterly improve on every aspect of the original. The series went from a game I will probably never play again because it's just too painful to slog through it to a game of the year quality title in the span of one sequel as far as I'm concerned.

As far as sequels which disappoint, I'll throw in Deus Ex: Invisible War as well. I haven't even played it that much yet. I got it last week on Steam for $2.50 and am only about a half an hour in and it's pretty bad. I was expecting it to not live up to the original as I've heard that being said about it for years, but I figured I'd check it out for under $3 and see how bad it really is. I'm not sure where to even start as it's objectively a terrible game so far. Itsthatguy mentioned some of the good ones, but I'll toss in that in the half an hour or so that I've been playing I have no real idea of what's going on or why I should give a shit about anything that's happening in this game. That to me screams poor writing and design.

I'll also toss in Gran Turismo 5. About the only thing they got right was having a large number of cars, and I'll even break from usual complaints and say that the majority of Standard vehicles actually looked quite good. But there is so little content in this game otherwise. Many tracks from older titles aren't there, the majority of the track count is made up of variations on a few different tracks, you can only win prize cars once, and there are so few race series to even do that you'll fly through them pretty quickly. At least until the leveling system cuts you off and makes you grind heavily in the late game to do anything new. Considering the length of development and the hardware they had to work with none of these things are acceptable. I believe there are actually fewer races to do in GT5 than there were in 3 and 3 was literally half the game that GT4 was.
 

War Penguin

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Jun 13, 2009
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Khadplank said:
I swear exactly everything you accuse Fallout New Vegas of doing, you could just as well say that Fallout 3 did as well. Uninspired voice acting is a trademark for games made by Bethesda, boring world to explore, quests that are incredibly forgetable.

But I dunno if New Vegas did that stuff even worse or something, since as I said in an earlier post in this thread I haven't played New Vegas yet. So for all I know the flaws could be even larger.
I have the feeling that we're going to have to agree to disagree in the end, but, well, I disagree.

Now, when you say that bad voice acting is a trademark for Bethesda games, I believe you: Oblivion's voice acting was hilariously bad: the elderly-ish human voice was boring and I wanted to punch the guy who played the elves in the face [small](smug little prick)[/small]! I read your earlier post and noticed that you said that Fallout 3 had the same voice actors. Well, true, but I did a little bit of research and found that there were only four members from the Oblivion cast that were in the Fallout 3 cast. Four out of thirty two, excluding the celebrity voices like Malcolm McDowell and Liam Neeson. Aside from that, brand new cast, much better than Oblivion's.

[sub]In case you want to check up on those actors, here are the links: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Voice_Actors http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Fallout_3_voice_actors[/sub]

Now, when you say the world is boring to explore, I have to disagree with you, again. I found Fallout 3's Capital Wasteland to be much more immersive than Oblivion's Tamriel or New Vegas's Mojave Wasteland. It was the little things that kept Fallout 3's land alive [small](or, really, dead, considering the fact that it was a wasteland)[/small]. Like I said before, almost every area had a story to tell. It wasn't a big story, but a story, nonetheless. I found holotapes [small](notes)[/small] of a family trying to get into a bunker but couldn't remember the pass code. Found a skeleton in a bath tub with a toaster in it, presumably because it was when the bombs fell and he killed himself so he didn't have to face the atomic fires. Outside of Evergreen Mills, there was a nest for a super mutant behemoth with a lone teddy bear inside [small](if you took it, the behemoth appeared and attacked you)[/small]. And, like I said before, I found two pre war skeletons in a bed together, living out their last moments side by side before the apocalypse. It was that kind of touching moment that made me feel like the Capital Wasteland was a place to explore. Oblivion suffered from copypasted areas, making it boring. Fallout 3 suffered a bit of that, too, especially in the metro tunnels. I agree with you, there, in your other post, those were a pain. New Vegas may not have suffered from copypasting as badly as the two, but it really was boring had nothing to get you exited for what you would see next.

Forgettable quests? I find that hard to believe. In New Vegas, maybe, but in Fallout 3? What about the town full of fire breathing ants? What about the ghouls who wanted access to Tenpenny Tower? What about the entirety of the Wasteland Survival Guide, a series of crazy quests held together by a madwoman? I don't know where you get the idea that Fallout 3's quests were forgettable, but I sure as hell remember them.

I probably derailed a bit, there, defending Fallout 3 more than I needed, so I'll just leave you with this final thought: New Vegas's flaws were more than noticeable. I guess everything I said about it could be said for Fallout 3, as well, but that just means that New Vegas screwed up even worse. If you didn't like Fallout 3, then you won't like New Vegas.
 

LiraelG

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Final Fantasy X-2, XII, and XII...
Basically, this series has gone downhill ever since they finished Final Fantasy X. The stories are the main sore-point; I enjoyed the battle systems in XII and XIII, and their worlds were both beautiful. (I should probably mention that my fondness for Final Fantasy has developed because of its stories.)

Zelda: Twilight Princess
It wasn't as original or endearing as Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker. The Twilight Realm grew repetitive, and the exploration wasn't as great as I'd hoped it would be. Furthermore, it appeared to use more elements from previous games than the others had! The structure combined Ocarina of Time with Wind Waker; the fire dungeon and water dungeon were not dissimilar to those in Ocarina of Time, and the use of statues and Link's ability to control them (in the earth dungeon) copied Wind Waker.

The producers of Zelda have always been able to provide their audience with something new and exciting. I feel that, sadly, they failed here. The game is still very good!! It just isn't AS good.
 

Dchao

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Folksoul said:
Nuts&Bolts- Words cannot describe how mad I was. There's tonal or genre shift and then theres just slapping a franchise name onto a game you thought wouldn't sell either wise. Yah, the script was funny for the hour or two I played it but the gameplay, ooh the "design your own vehicle for the entirety of gameplay" mechanic. I may never forgive Rare for this.

I have to agree with you on so many levels with the Nuts & Bolts, I loved the first two so much as a child. I had my little brother say the third one was really cool, granted he's never played the real Banjo but I still shed a tear.
 

Crazy Zaul

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[/quote]

Splinter Cell: Conviction.

What were they thinking?

[/quote]

This. Hope its not a new direction future games will go also go in.