Worst Games in Great Franchises

[BrawlMan]

IDK, even in its time the original original was just a bargain bin rip off of Doom in a sea of them (literally we'd just call it an asset flip nowadays and consign into the bowels of Steam somewhere)

Despite the original's problems, it still did its own thing, despite people calling it "Asian Duke Nukem". The game has its own unique weapons, enemies, and creative level design. I can't speak too much of the original, as I only played it a couple of times at friend's house. The only thing that hasn't aged well is the original Lo Wang. Just watch Civvie's Pro Wang series, and see what the original series accomplished, even though it was another game on the Build Engine. You can do much worse than the original Shadow Warrior.

Shadow Warrior 2 is another open world shooter trying and failing at copying Borderlands. The game is way longer than it needs to be, enemies are damage sponges, the co-op is barely better than the single player, the weapons become just a stat increase race to DPS, and the game is just not fun and reeks of trend jumping FWH did not need to do. The only praise I can give this game is the story, and Wang's interactions with Kamiko.

Shadow Warrior (2013) is okay, but focused way too much on the sword melee and didn't feel good to me. Shadow Warrior 3 has the right balance of fast paced shooting, platforming, and keeps the melee to a minimum, but still fun to use. The quality of the weapons are so much better than either previous game, and has the best upgrades for the 6 weapons. I consider SHDW3 the best in the franchise.

 

[Worgen]

IDK, even in its time the original original was just a bargain bin rip off of Doom in a sea of them (literally we'd just call it an asset flip nowadays and consign into the bowels of Steam somewhere)

What the hell are you talking about? Its clearly a rip off of Duke3d you philistine.

 

[sXeth]

What the hell are you talking about? Its clearly a rip off of Duke3d you philistine.

I could be wrong, certainly my access to games was in unusual order, but I recall SW being before Duke3d. Not that it would really change much in the overall sentiment.

Despite the original's problems, it still did its own thing, despite people calling it "Asian Duke Nukem". The game has its own unique weapons, enemies, and creative level design. I can't speak too much of the original, as I only played it a couple of times at friend's house. The only thing that hasn't aged well is the original Lo Wang. Just watch Civvie's Pro Wang series, and see what the original series accomplished, even though it was another game on the Build Engine. You can do much worse than the original Shadow Warrior.

Shadow Warrior 2 is another open world shooter trying and failing at copying Borderlands. The game is way longer than it needs to be, enemies are damage sponges, the co-op is barely better than the single player, the weapons become just a stat increase race to DPS, and the game is just not fun and reeks of trend jumping FWH did not need to do. The only praise I can give this game is the story, and Wang's interactions with Kamiko.

Shadow Warrior (2013) is okay, but focused way too much on the sword melee and didn't feel good to me. Shadow Warrior 3 has the right balance of fast paced shooting, platforming, and keeps the melee to a minimum, but still fun to use. The quality of the weapons are so much better than either previous game, and has the best upgrades for the 6 weapons. I consider SHDW3 the best in the franchise.

2013'd probably get my vote out of the batch if we completely set aside the original. It tries to do stuff like the Katana and the "magic"... and woefully fails. Plods on forever. I literally can't recall more then 4 enemy types even being in the game (fodder dudes, flying dudes, big dudes, the worst FPS enemy ever designed in the teleporting ninja dudes) The boss fights were the epitome of tedium.


SW2 is a weird sidestep into trying to be Diablo or PoE (or Warframe to some extent). Designed by someone with no concept of how any of that works.It is cetainly not trying to be open world, running in self contained missions (most of the story ones aren't even procedural generations). The would-be Looter system does get in its way, but its fairly easy to just load Damage and push through the missions (Even in Co-op, any attempt to somehow cobble out another "class" didn't work). The main cardinal sin I'd give it would be that it has miss chances like we're back in 2002 with Morrowind.


3 was busy being the shortest of (probably all 4) the 3 games. And while it was cribbing notes from Titanfall and Doom. also really cribbed most of the negative notes. All those funny animations and unique kills get old quick no matter whether its SW or Doom, and all the parkouring stuff feels as on rails as yellow ledges in Uncharted games. I wouldn't necessarily take it down completely on this merit either, but it basically takes the slop of a barely coherent story and retcons even more of into incoherent nonsense too. Less notable because all 3 of them might as well exist in different timelines as while the names are the same, characters, events and everything else just wooshes around with vague handwaves indciaitng stuff happened between games.

 

[Worgen]

I could be wrong, certainly my access to games was in unusual order, but I recall SW being before Duke3d. Not that it would really change much in the overall sentiment.

You are wrong, Shadow Warrior is one of the build engine 3. First there was Duke3d, then Shadow Warrior followed by Blood.

 

[BrawlMan]

2013'd probably get my vote out of the batch if we completely set aside the original. It tries to do stuff like the Katana and the "magic"... and woefully fails. Plods on forever. I literally can't recall more then 4 enemy types even being in the game (fodder dudes, flying dudes, big dudes, the worst FPS enemy ever designed in the teleporting ninja dudes) The boss fights were the epitome of tedium.

More power to you on that one.

SW2 is a weird sidestep into trying to be Diablo or PoE (or Warframe to some extent). Designed by someone with no concept of how any of that works.It is cetainly not trying to be open world, running in self contained missions (most of the story ones aren't even procedural generations). The would-be Looter system does get in its way, but its fairly easy to just load Damage and push through the missions (Even in Co-op, any attempt to somehow cobble out another "class" didn't work). The main cardinal sin I'd give it would be that it has miss chances like we're back in 2002 with Morrowind.

Exactly why I hate it more than SHDW1.

3 was busy being the shortest of (probably all 4) the 3 games. And while it was cribbing notes from Titanfall and Doom. also really cribbed most of the negative notes. All those funny animations and unique kills get old quick no matter whether its SW or Doom, and all the parkouring stuff feels as on rails as yellow ledges in Uncharted games. I wouldn't necessarily take it down completely on this merit either, but it basically takes the slop of a barely coherent story and retcons even more of into incoherent nonsense too. Less notable because all 3 of them might as well exist in different timelines as while the names are the same, characters, events and everything else just wooshes around with vague handwaves indciaitng stuff happened between games.

3 is actually fun though. The animations I never found repetitive, and most don't go on that long. I actually prefer this game over Eternal at least when it comes to Doom. The platforming being on-rails I didn't mind and served as a nice pace breaker. There a few neat twists and some slightly challenging platforming sections. The platforming reminds me more of DmC 2013 than Uncharted. Story wise didn't bother me much. I enjoyed it for what it was and found 3 ended the story in a decent way. There are worst ways to end an FPS trilogy.

You are wrong, Shadow Warrior is one of the build engine 3. First there was Duke3d, then Shadow Warrior followed by Blood.

You got that right. Though I will say each game did follow the template of look through level, kill a labyrinth of monsters, find secrets, and collect keys/key cards. This was still the era when FPS games were mostly called Doom clones. Something that didn't really change until Half-Life and Deus Ex.

 

[Gatuno]

earthworm jim 3d
Street fighter 1
Sonic Blast master system
DMC 2

 

[sXeth]

To throw some of my own in:

Ultima (broken up because they might as well be different series despite the barest through-thread)

Origin Trilogy:
- Ultima 2. As the series starts to try and have a story... and inexplicably starts taking place on Earth (and other planets). The game was literally impossible to finish in a sane way due to a missing bit of dialog, and wasn't that great even setting that aside. Ultima 1 is a curiosity, Ultima 3 is the beginning proper of the story moreso. 1 and 2 may as well be 3 lines of intro text and 2 is near-unplayable.

Avatar Trilogy:
- Ultima 5 really doesn't do much with the base of Ultima 4. Ultima 4 was unique in that there wasn't an "enemy" or overarching threat to defeat. Just a world to explore and a final quest/pilgrimage to fulfill (the "boss" final encounter is just a large number of daemons). Ultima 5 goes totally the other way and immediately just throws "here is the big evil" at you out the gate. Gameplay its exacerbated by an invisible time limit, and also your previously unique characters have mostly smoshed into 3 basic classes down from 8. (6 and onward largely did away with classes but all the characters had unique talents)


A quick note that Ultima 6 is probably best in series. a fitting conclusion that works both directly off its two forebears and with the origin trilogy incorporated as much as you can incorporate experimental nonsense. It goes back to the Ultima 4 concept of not having a "villain" to defeat and instead needing to achieve a more "spiritual" victory, while also deconstructing some of the ideas of Ultima 4 itself. The gameplay is one of the last major examples of the top down party based tactical combat in CRPGs for ages onwards. And its also the first true open world game (in 1990) with no loading screens at any point, you just seamlessly walk between town, wilderness, into caves etc all on the same map and scale. Also, while the prior games were in their time and way revolutionary, their over-arching plot contributions could be summarized in a paragph or two and there wasn't much side-world building. Six goes fully the other way with tons of characters and side lore and stories (some that mix into the main quest some not) to flesh out the world.

Guardian Trilogy (which was actually 5 games but moving on..):
Ascension prettymuch by miles. Development helled and restarted and cobbled back together from bits and pieces with the transition to 3d. Some bits of the final product are just cinematics that get hurled in because they were already made and too expensive to ditch. The overall idea... or arching plot conclusion isn't awful, but everything to get there is and the gameplay is jankier then Gothic.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Silent Hill Shattered Memories is easily the worst in the franchise. At least Silent Hill Homecoming actually felt like and played like Silent Hill, but Shattered Memories is completely alien to the series in both story and gameplay. I hate horror games in general that don't give you a means of fighting against the monsters, I consider having to run and/or hide a lot anything but scary. The fact that I can fight back and yet they can still slaughter me fairly easily not only makes it much more frightening, but it makes it more fun when I manage to beat them.

The story? The story has absolutely nothing to do with the other games in the series at all. The only relation it has is that there's characters named after notable ones in Silent Hill 1. It doesn't expand the Silent Hill mythology or really have even the most tangential link to Silent Hill. It's pretty blatant that they took a completely different game that was never meant to be Silent Hill and slapped the license on it expecting that it would sell.

The real shame is that there was a good gameplay concept in Shattered Memories that, had it been implemented well in another more traditional Silent Hill or other game, would've been much better. The idea that what you decide to do on both a minor and significant level in the game tailors the game's world to match is a great one, especially for a horror game. Imagine a horror game that could design the scares to what scares you personally? Or that alters further sections based on what you show interest in? The issue is the mechanic was implemented poorly and even if it wasn't the rest of the game just didn't hold up to the promise it showed.

Supposedly, anything you look at can have an effect, but it's hard to gauge exactly what anything does and the changes are incredibly minor. If you look at say... sexually based objects in the game the meeting with a woman in a diner later on will have her show her cleavage, but big whoop, you still go to that diner and have the exact same conversation that you would have if she was more conservative. You still go through the same areas, talk to the same people, and run from the same monsters with superficial differences at best. None of it is actually used for the horror aspect, especially since the game seems to barely have any intent to be a horror game in the first place.

I normally like games that SPOILER deal with delving into someone's mind but this just fails on all levels.

 

[BrawlMan]

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GG Gore is arguably worse, as no lesson was learned, and they double downed on the bad platforming.