Things sequels did worse than their predecessors

[northeast rower]

Title is fairly obvious.

Mass Effect 2: facial animation. In the first game everyone looked fairly normal. In the second, whenever Shepard speaks he blinks uncontrollably and tilts his head back and forth while raising his eyebrows and using other muscles for inexplicable reasons. For some reason, this doesn't seem to happen with the other characters.

Dead Space 2: zero-g combat. I loved the zero-g in 2, but I just felt that in 1 it was SO much better. full 360 degree movement and jets may make combat easier, but jumping from wall to wall was just so damn cool and disorienting.

Gears of War 2: pacing. Everything was better... except that Epic didn't know when to quit throwing absurd situations in your face. It was like catching a shark only to find out that your next goal was a megalodon.

Yours?

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

 

[Irridium]

Dragon Age 2 - Bioware kind of went crazy with this whole "simplifying" thing.

Mass Effect 2 - I've ranted enough about this game. But fuck it, once more can't hurt. Its more railroad-y than the original.

Fallout 3 - Tried to be serious. Fell on its face before the tutorial(your time in the vault) was even finished. And it didn't get any better from there. Story wise mainly.

Unreal Tournament 3 - A story in an Unreal Tournament game? Really? People often complain about developers shoving multiplayer into everything, but there are some games that simply do not need a story mode. Unreal Tournament is one of them.

Bad Company 2 - Went from a story about a quest for gold with plenty of shenanigans happening to a "super serious and gritty" tale about Russia invading the US. ZZZZzzzzz(thats me snoring). It might have been fine if the story was good. But it wasn't. Bad Company 1 got a bit of a pass because it wasn't trying to be serious. And that was actually one of its strengths, it didn't take itself seriously and just had fun with itself. Bad Company 2 tried to go all serious, but it was just... not that good.

F.E.A.R. 2 - They changed the scares from creepy, decent scares to QTE events. Developers, if I'm in complete control, I am not afraid. At all.

 

[Space Spoons]

Kingdom Hearts II: Combat. The graphics were improved, the in-game universe and concepts were expanded upon, and Sora's catalogue of Keyblade abilities quadrupled, but none of this makes up for combat that values style and being cinematic over function. Half the time, you're mashing the triangle button to trigger a "Reaction Command", which amounts to a glorified Quicktime Event that does the fighting for you, and when you aren't doing that, you're mashing the attack button and making stuff fly all over the screen so quickly that you can barely see what's going on. Is all that flipping around, shooting beams of light and blasts of energy, filling the screen with who knows what, really necessary?

 

[Mr. Gency]

Kingdom Hearts II: Combat. The graphics were improved, the in-game universe and concepts were expanded upon, and Sora's catalogue of Keyblade abilities quadrupled, but none of this makes up for combat that values style and being cinematic over function. Half the time, you're mashing the triangle button to trigger a "Reaction Command", which amounts to a glorified Quicktime Event that does the fighting for you, and when you aren't doing that, you're mashing the attack button and making stuff fly all over the screen so quickly that you can barely see what's going on. Is all that flipping around, shooting beams of light and blasts of energy, filling the screen with who knows what, really necessary?

Yes, and you better fucking like it!

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

Lol, easy choice. Surprisingly, if I look past how much this game did wrong that the first game did right, it's actually a pretty fun game on it's own.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

Lol, easy choice. Surprisingly, if I look past how much this game did wrong that the first game did right, it's actually a pretty fun game on it's own.

Yeah, but it was not a Deus Ex game.

 

[Saxm13]

Resident Evil 5 - Horror

Great game, really intense. But NOT scary in the slightest!

 

[Saelune]

Oblivion. Variety, skills, spears, depth, guilds, quests, PLOT (-I- am the Hero and everyone knows it by the end of Morrowind, how is Martin dying enough to put him above me?)
Most who favor Oblivion over Morrowind played Oblivion first and cant get over the older graphics and lack of physics.
I hope Skyrim fixes alot of this.
(Been back for little more than an hour, and most of my posts mention TES...)

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

Lol, easy choice. Surprisingly, if I look past how much this game did wrong that the first game did right, it's actually a pretty fun game on it's own.

Yeah, but it was not a Deus Ex game.

I'm actually not totally sure how to respond, in what I THINK you're saying I agree but I'm not really sure I DO know what you're saying...

If you are saying what I think you are, then yes, it would have done better if it was a different title instead of trying to play off of Deus Ex's popularity as many failed sequels do.

 

[mireko]

Fallout 3.

Not Fallout, not 3.

[sub]Okay, it is 3. I just didn't think it would look right if I wrote "Not Fallout, BUT BOY HOWDY IS IT A 3~"[/sub]

 

[Tdc2182]

Bad Company 2 - Went from a story about a quest for gold with plenty of shenanigans happening to a "super serious and gritty" tale about Russia invading the US. ZZZZzzzzz(thats me snoring). It might have been fine if the story was good. But it wasn't. Bad Company 1 got a bit of a pass because it wasn't trying to be serious. And that was actually one of its strengths, it didn't take itself seriously and just had fun with itself. Bad Company 2 tried to go all serious, but it was just... not that good.

Agreed in full

F.E.A.R. 2 - They changed the scares from creepy, decent scares to QTE events. Developers, if I'm in complete control, I am not afraid. At all.

And they changed the nice satisfying engine from the first game to the glow in the dark "look at how realistic our fighting is" gore animations.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

Lol, easy choice. Surprisingly, if I look past how much this game did wrong that the first game did right, it's actually a pretty fun game on it's own.

Yeah, but it was not a Deus Ex game.

I'm actually not totally sure how to respond, in what I THINK you're saying I agree but I'm not really sure I DO know what you're saying...

If you are saying what I think you are, then yes, it would have done better if it was a different title instead of trying to play off of Deus Ex's popularity as many failed sequels do.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was saying. Invisible War would have made a decent game on it's own, but the expectations that came with the title from the arguably best PC game of all time weighed it down, and ground it down in the mud.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

Lol, easy choice. Surprisingly, if I look past how much this game did wrong that the first game did right, it's actually a pretty fun game on it's own.

Yeah, but it was not a Deus Ex game.

I'm actually not totally sure how to respond, in what I THINK you're saying I agree but I'm not really sure I DO know what you're saying...

If you are saying what I think you are, then yes, it would have done better if it was a different title instead of trying to play off of Deus Ex's popularity as many failed sequels do.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was saying. Invisible War would have made a decent game on it's own, but the expectations that came with the title from the arguably best PC game of all time weighed it down, and ground it down in the mud.

Indeed, indeed. It's a pretty standard case of a game trying to sell based on initial sales from first-game hype and failing because after people realized it WAS in fact riding on the first's popularity the comparison hits really heavily.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

It was a better first person shooter than the first. It was certainly more mechanically sound and polished. The trouble was, even though the game that was Invisible War was competent and, in many ways quite good, it simply wasn't the game I wanted it to be.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The humor in Viewtiful Joe 2 wasn't as good as the first one, if you ask me. It just seemed more forced and contrived, relying more on the hackneyed "the girlfriend doesn't approve" schtick. By comparison, the first game went about with a gleeful sense of parody and tongue-in-cheek humor that I found far more entertaining.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Deus Ex Invisible war.
Do I really need to say anything more? Well fine. Everything. It did everything worse.

It was a better first person shooter than the first. It was certainly more mechanically sound and polished. The trouble was, even though the game that was Invisible War was competent and, in many ways quite good, it simply wasn't the game I wanted it to be.

I disagree. The shared ammo pool is just plain stupid, and having a loading screen every 50 yards is not "mechanically sound". Polished... maybe, but Deus Ex had terrible graphics, pretty bad even by the standards of when it was released, and that's the ass-old Unreal 1 engine's fault.

 

[Nedoras]

Devil May Cry 2's setting was pretty bland compared to the first game. In the first game there was a castle, a garden like area, a pirate ship, some caves, a colosseum, a bizzaro world, and the demon world. Each were also colorful and well designed (for the most part). In 2 there's a city and some ruins, and later in the game the city basically starts to look like the ruins. Everything is brown, dull, and uninteresting. Some of the bosses are pretty pathetic too compared to the first game. I mean a demon helicopter, really? Lastly there's no variety in melee weapons. There's three swords that all have the same move set, and have very little difference other than how they look (one swings a bit faster but is a bit weaker, one's balanced, one's a bit stronger but swings a bit slower).

 

[northeast rower]

This is going to sound like heresy, but I think that in terms of actual effect, Mass Effect 2 did combat worse than Mass Effect 1. Don't get me wrong, it was improved, but the problem comes from 3 main things:

1) Shepard moves like a tripod with wheels. When you turn, he turns his entire body so that the reticle may remain in the center of the screen.

2) Oversimplified combat. Look on Youtube at the different class "trailers". In the first game, not only is it more visceral as Shepard's screen is constantly rocking and blurring/depth of field is everywhere, but each class seems to handle certain situations differently with a smorgasbord (spelling?) of powers. Look at the Adept: instead of using one power, you get to see several showcased and used in a variety of ways. In Mass Effect 2, each time I played I found myself spamming one power consistently and using guns more than anything to win. A big part of this is because the pistol is overpowered, another big part is because of the cooldowns, which essentially force you to keep alive by shooting. A big push for more "aggressive" combat has resulted instead in more "sterile" combat. Oh yeah, not to mention that you really can't upgrade your weapons. By removing attachments that have both a good and bad side, the game was forced to replace them with generic "more damage" upgrades done in steps. This forces you to mine (which is boring as hell), but also makes it so that there is no real reason to not use an upgrade as you have essentially infinite resources. I remember that my shotgun in Mass Effect 1 was upgraded in a way that it would disintegrate just about any enemy it came across, but would overheat with one shot. Mass Effect 2 really doesn't have anything like that- every upgrade works exactly the same.

Video for reference:

Spoiler

3) Cooldowns and ammo packs. Cooldowns for everything, as mentioned before, force you to run and gun or wait in cover rather than really use your powers because they take so damned long. I remember in Mass Effect 1 that when I had to wait for my Lift to cooldown, I would often Warp to soften up an enemy or Stasis to slow them down and protect my Allies. In 2, there isn't any reason to not spam your most powerful attack repeatedly. Also, ammo packs are a big contribution to why I feel that the combat is so stale. Not only is there a huge number of them in any one place (making it so that accuracy doesn't count for shit), but also, they tend to lead to scenarios where the gunplay takes over for the powers. This is an RPG, don't try to make it "Gears of War".

Don't get me wrong, I love Mass Effect 2. It's just the combat and Shepard's facial animation that I found so offputting. My response: script the combat more (see "Lair of the Shadow Broker" while giving more freedom in how to handle situations, as well as variety in missions, which in Mass Effect 2 boiled down to either "hack/bypass" or "shoot". Also, script the conversations less: I was dismayed on my second playthrough to find that many different responses led to the same outcome.

 

[SalamanderJoe]

Bad Company 2 did may things better, but completely messed up in terms of story. What happened to the tongue-in-cheek story about four renagade (and brilliant)soldiers fighting mercs over gold bars? Then they had to change it into another sodding 'weapon of mass destruction USA is dominate' story.