Worst gaming sequels?

[ABLb0y]

Little disclaimer: This comes from someone who actually liked Dragon Age 2 and thinks the reboot of Thief is enjoyable, if unpolished and poorly written.

Assassin's Creed 3. Boring character, plot which involves said boring character standing off to the sidelines whilst other people do stuff around him, dull missions (And the last one was outright terrible). The only thing I liked was the hunting and the sailing, both of which were brought back for the superior sequel Black Flag.

Oh, and I suspect Resident Evil 6 goes without saying, this coming from somebody who liked almost everything Resi Evil related up until this point.
Liked Sherry Birkin, though. She deserved to be in a better game.

 

[seris]

blinx 2: masters of time and space shat all over the original game, dumbing down the game and making it worse in general

 

[Sosa Star]

Dunno how many people will recognize this one but Mana Khemia 2 was a horrible sequel to Mana Khemia. MK was one of my absolute favorite RPGs and the sequel is the only game I completely regret buying.

Annoying characters, turning gathering points into aggravating mini games, uninteresting story and the worst voice acting I have ever heard. Even the japanese voices are grating. Nothing about that game was fun or interesting, and after how good the original was, it was such a let down

 

[LarsInCharge]

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II: The first Dawn of War was fantastic. You build a bunch of cool units up and then sent them to die against the enemy. The second game, tried to copy Company of Heroes and become more of a squad-based game. Unit caps were terrible, squads had a shit ton of micro-managing, and everything else was just shit. Not the sequel Dawn of War deserved.

If that comment was meant to imply the last expansion to Dawn of War did anything but break the game into a thousand tiny pieces, you are sorely mistaken.
Yup, my choice is Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Not a standalone game as such, but considering the other expansions, which added new factions, races, units and maps it was terrible. The only units it added was air units, which could ignore all the terrain and hard work in map design, along with a campaign with an open memory leak so that even 5 years later, a modern computer could take up to 10 minutes to load the campaign, which is the same campaign as the previous sequel, but with more terrible map design and voice acting.

Um... Soulstorm added the Dark Eldar, and my favorite faction: the Sisters of Battle.

Though the memory leak error is a pile of crap. Relic needed to fix that crap.

 

[Evonisia]

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).

Just so I don't go on my typical ***** fit over Halo 4 for the seventy billionth time, I'll just say "this". Besides the ending, Reach was a downer. The ending -was- pretty kick ass, though, even if fanboys couldn't accept that the cut to black was intentional. I also didn't like the multiplayer much and I feel that Reach was the beginning of Halo's art style becoming more quantity over quality. Everything became messy and muddy, and the colour was drained in places.

Reach also goes out of its way to be overly complicated. Why did we have to put Cortana in that room? What was wrong with just using any AI for this task? Cortana doesn't bring this encounter up at any other point in the series (not even in my reviled Halo 4), there was no point. Oh, it's for plot convenience so we can see the Pillar of Autumn for the final battle.

 

[Frezzato]

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.

Thanks for the tip! Frankly, I need more racing games. Well, I need more different racing games.

AC3, RE6, Fade to Black, TR: Angel of Darkness, and definitely FFX-2!

Fade to Black...grrrr. What an awful, shameful follow-up to Flashback.

 

[white_wolf]

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.

Thanks for the tip! Frankly, I need more racing games. Well, I need more different racing games.

AC3, RE6, Fade to Black, TR: Angel of Darkness, and definitely FFX-2!

Fade to Black...grrrr. What an awful, shameful follow-up to Flashback.

Oh yes it was! I was so excited to track that sucker down and so disappointed when I loaded it up I couldn't even force myself to play it for a week it was just to painful!

 

[DSD12]

Dragon Age 2

That was the worst freaking sequel I have ever played. Everything about that game sucked, the worst was how bad your party was and how boring the city you have to be in, the only character I actually liked was Varric everyone one else was terrible here's hoping Dragon Age 3 is is at least OK.

 

[Guerilla]

Resident Evil 5: It pretty much killed everything Resident Evil was about and made it a third person shooter. Resident Evil 4 killed a lot of the identity of RE but it gets a pass because it was a really good game. Can't say the same for #5.

 

[Folksoul]

My top three most disappointing sequels.

Nuts & Bolts. Fantastic vehicle based creativity toy. But it is not, in any way, the Banjo and Kazooie 3 I was promised.

Lightning Returns. As someone who ADORES the first two... that combat engine change....HOLY MOTHER OF GOD the schema system is a downgrade with a really uncomfortable visual representation. The Savior of humanity and Avatar of the goddess of death's main offensive skill? Playing dressup. UGGH! Also, least interesting character of original 6 gets top billing, Sazh has identical subplot for the 3rd game in a row, Fang gets sidelined again, and Hope was technically off screen for 90% of the game?!

Enter the Dragonfly. Obvious Beta is obvious.

 

[Asclepion]

Dino Crisis 2 - The first Dino Crisis was an excellent survival horror game. Resident Evil with Dinosaurs instead of zombies. Sadly they quickly took the direction that Resident Evil did eventually making it a run of the mill action game.

I'm gonna have to thoroughly disagree with you on that one.

With the first Dino Crisis (along with RE: Code Veronica) Capcom made the baffling decision to get rid of the prerendered backgrounds, BUT retain the set camera angles. Those camera angles and the tank controls in previous Resi games was the price we paid for the highly detailed and atmospheric backdrops. And then Capcom thought it was a good idea to take away the one benefit this play style had, and instead opt for you having to walk through poorly rendered cement-grey environments... with tank controls and a static camera.

And that freaking code disc nonsense... Oy...

DC2 thankfully went back to prerendered and just focused on giving you a good time blasting dinosaurs.

I felt that the flat textured polygonal backgrounds in the first Dino Crisis served the game's sterile, high-tech aesthetic well. It doesn't detract from the experience when most of the enviroment is metallic corridors. Dino Crisis 1 was the better game, in my opinion.

No, the real culprit is Dino Crisis 3.

 

[TessaraVejgan]

To many to count but here are some I recently played.

Divinity Original Sin - I consider Divinity 2 DKS one of the best games I have played (yes it has its issues but still) and after Dragon Commander which I thought was horrible I was a bit skeptical when this was announced and after I played it for a few hours I found it was shit.

Sacred 3 - complete waste of time.

Risen 3 - or should I say R2 expansion rather than sequel.

Someone listed Fallout 3 and I have to agree. When the game came out it was a mess. It was buggy, it was crashing, just plain horrible. Even when they fixed everything (or most of it) it felt of. I don't like how combat is handled in Fallout or recent Elder Scrolls entries. As for some of the other games mentioned. I actually find TR Angel of Darkness the best in the series. For me W40k: Dawn of War 2 is a bit better than the first one but I did miss the base building. With AC3 I have to agree, extremely shitty game and Ezio had a personalty unlike the protagonists from AC3 and AC4. In my opinion RE went to hell with RE4. I also agree that DA2 is shit and I do hope DA3 will be MUCH better.

 

[ObserverStatus]

Fallout New Vegas (controversial pick) - the player character was just an empty shell, no personality, no connection to the world, no reason for existing.

That's a positive though. When I play an RPG, one of the most important things to me is being able to create a character with a distinct personality. Things like being able to customize your appearance, abilities, and having more than 3 dialogue options in most conversations all add up to the feeling that the character you are playing is distinct from characters you have played in previous runs. Games like Mass Effect 3 which try to overwrite the personality I think my character has with the personality that the developers think my character should have are just annoying.

 

[Yuiiut]

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II: The first Dawn of War was fantastic. You build a bunch of cool units up and then sent them to die against the enemy. The second game, tried to copy Company of Heroes and become more of a squad-based game. Unit caps were terrible, squads had a shit ton of micro-managing, and everything else was just shit. Not the sequel Dawn of War deserved.

If that comment was meant to imply the last expansion to Dawn of War did anything but break the game into a thousand tiny pieces, you are sorely mistaken.
Yup, my choice is Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Not a standalone game as such, but considering the other expansions, which added new factions, races, units and maps it was terrible. The only units it added was air units, which could ignore all the terrain and hard work in map design, along with a campaign with an open memory leak so that even 5 years later, a modern computer could take up to 10 minutes to load the campaign, which is the same campaign as the previous sequel, but with more terrible map design and voice acting.

Um... Soulstorm added the Dark Eldar, and my favorite faction: the Sisters of Battle.

Though the memory leak error is a pile of crap. Relic needed to fix that crap.

That's true, but I vastly preferred to find mods for adding extra factions (as a Tyranid fan, it was the only option). I just felt that compared to previous expansions, which had added new units that actually worked (flyers were something I loathed) and new races and new campaigns, Soulstorm added new units which I found to destroy most game balance, new races with gimmicks I wasn't overly fond of, but can't complain to much about, and a campaign that was an effective clone of Dark Crusade. And then there was the voices acting and plot, which had never been brilliant, but was just appalling in the Soulstorm campaign.

 

[AndreyKva]

Dragon Age II.

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

Congrats. You are one of the two people in the world to think so (I am the other one).

 

[Shoggoth2588]

KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION, THESE GAMES ARE ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE AND I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR OPINION ON THIS - I WILL TAG THE MOST UNPOPULAR OPINIONS IN CASE YOU'RE A FANBOY

- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

The first TFU was a good game. It fit the Star Wars universe, it had good gameplay, and in general, I was interested when I was playing it. TFU2, however, was soulless. I was expecting a fulfillment of the TFU1's potential, because, while it was a good game, it could have been better. TFU2 just stripped down the first game with boring levels, boring bosses, boring story, and in general, it was not a needed sequel. TFU1's ending was final. This game introduces a boring story about a clone and... I don't care.

- Crysis 2

The first game was basically a spiritual sequel to Far Cry, a game I hated. The stealth was almost impossible, the gunplay was floaty and the game was VERY difficult... on Easy difficulty. Crysis 1 introduced balance tweaks, bug fixes, further improved graphics, a nano-suit with cloaking that makes stealth functional and tight gameplay. There was some potential for improvement however. Crysis 2 does nothing about it, really. It just introduces streamlined, more linear gameplay and an alienating setting. Though I did grow to like the setting overtime. Still, I prefered the jungle.

I straight-up refuse to acknowledge the existence of Force Unleashed 2 personally, especially considering the canon ending of the first game. As for Crysis 2, I just didn't like it. I never played the original and I went through the second more out of spite than anything. My problem with C2 is that, while it was fun stealthing around and, fighting human combatants but once you start fighting the alien forces you feel incredibly under-powered. I hated that about Halo 4 too: What's the point of the game telling you you're in hyper-armor that makes you an unkillable bad-ass if the combat doesn't reflect that?!

---

Skyward Sword is a game that I can summarize thusly: Swing your sword, re-calibrate your wiimote. Use the dowsing feature, re-calibrate your Wiimote. Make the slightest bit of progress, have your progress regurgitated back at you by Fi (well, 98% of the time). Most of those problems would be fixed if SS was put on the Wii U or at least re-worked so as to use a classic controller.

Final Fantasy XIII. I didn't like how XI was made into an MMO but I grew to accept it. I didn't like how XII played like an MMO but I haven't played it enough to form a good opinion but even in XII, you're given some significant control over your party members. FFXIII doesn't seem to WANT you to play it. Auto-Battle, corridor-style level design and, the story is overly complex to the point that I don't even think XIII-3 has everything wrapped up yet.

Fable 3...FABLE 3, FABLE 3, FABLE-FUCKING-3. Oh, you want to endear yourself to the masses? TOO BAD, you get to endear yourself to one person at a time after a quick scene transition. You want to get someone to follow you, HOLD THEIR HAND! You want a spouse? FUCK YOUR DOG! Yahtzee wasn't joking, the game opens with your player character rolling out of bed with the royal mutt and you do have to option to 'pet' the thing. This option includes it jumping into your arms and tonging you down. The combat is hysterically broken to the point that you can grind up some levels in magic and essentially become God. Getting new clothes and, hairstyles is obtuse and I don't know how it is now but if you want to dye your clothes black YOU'D BETTER PONY UP FOR THAT DLC SUCKER! The most compelling, sympathetic and, endearing character in the entire series is the chicken from the opening cinematic of Fable 3.

I hated both DS Zelda games. I don't remember much about them other than the touch-screen controls and, blowing on my console to use the flute thing.

Here are some other game sequels that I didn't care for but that I don't think are the worst-thing-ever;

Bioshock 2
Doom 3
Dragon Age 2
Fortune Street
Halo 3, 4 &, ODST
Kingdom Hearts...that aren't the first or second one
Lords of Shadow (I don't like to think of that series as being part of the Castlevania series)
Mario Party 9
Metroid Prime Hunters
New Super Mario Bros 2
Resident Evil 5
Sonic Unleashed & 06
Super Mario Sunshine
Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Wackyland (NES)

 

[TheRiddler]

The first game that came to mind was Bioshock Infinite. Well... mind you, I go out of my way to avoid sequels with mixed opinions. So with that in mind, it isn't really [i/]bad[/i], per se. It's just sort of frustrating to me, especially when compared with the stellar original.

The world seems artificial, almost like a Disneyland version of what an actual city would look like. There's only one way from place to place, and each area is generally marked with a big signs saying "HALL OF HEROES", or "BATTLESHIP BAY", or "RACIST'S ROTUNDA" (joking on the last one). The crowds empty out nearly immediately after shooting starts. You also begin to question the sanity of supposedly historically normal townsfolk when they start trying to rush you with suicidal energy.

It's thematically scattershot as well. I mean, it shows you racism, but then does nothing interesting with it other than go "racism sucks". And it does the whole dishonest trick of putting a child's life right in front of you to condemn the Vox, in comparison to the many unseen horrors and prejudices inflicted by the Founders. And it's all used to lead up to a lazy "both sides are the same" fallacy that I can't really get behind.

And the gameplay. Oh, the gameplay. A whole bunch of the interesting interactive systems are gone. Almost entirely interchangeable Vigors. No more hacking. No more security bots. No more setting splicers against Big Daddies or vice versa. Only two weapons at a time. Tonics become gear, and gear becomes functionally useless. No more than one ammo type. Skyhooks only are available in certain designated areas. A completely fucked health and damage system.

I don't know, the more I think about it, the less I like it.

 

[Sefa Lagaaia]

Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier... Naughty dog let High Impact Games join them on their quest to completely ruin this franchise, the first few games were golden but then they changed half the core mechanics for this one, made it terribly optimised while still looking muddy, blurry and generally unclear, changed the character models for everyone just to make sure it was unrecognisable and then filled it with shitty dialogue and terrible plot. There is also the issue that the only new mechanic that they brought into the game was broken, lacked any flare and was not welcome in place of the open worlds we had been permitted to explore on foot before.

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters... See above

 

[DirgeNovak]

Devil May Cry 2 and Final Fantasy XIII were two of the biggest disappointments I've had in gaming.

Devil May Cry 2 took everything that made the first game so good - tight controls, perfect level design, creepy atmosphere, well-designed enemies, charismatic protagonist... and threw all of it in the garbage. The controls are loose and unresponsive, the level design is shit and you never know where the fuck you're supposed to be going, there is no atmosphere of any kind, all enemies look stupid and Dante has maybe 10 lines of dialogue in the entire game.

Final Fantasy XIII basically did the same thing. I won't complain about the corridor thing because X was also a corridor and it's among my favorite Final Fantasies, but the main things that drew me to the franchise, combat mechanics and story, are completely ruined in XIII. I don't completely hate the idea of paradigms shifts, but their implementation was horrible. Reliance on auto-battle and AI essentially mean status effects and elemental damage are rendered useless, and healing, buffs and debuffs are unreliable; unless you're controlling the synergist/saboteur/medic yourself, you'll get what the AI decides to give you, and they might very well heal themselves instead of you, and if you die, they don't give you a phoenix down, you have to start over. Same thing when sentinels become important later in the game; if you're not controlling the sentinel yourself, there is no guarantee they'll provoke the enemy and keep the heat off your back or that they'll use steelguard in time, making a lot of the tougher fights basically a game of chance. And the story is garbage. The only two characters I could describe as likeable, Sazh and Fang, are barely involved in the story at all, and the other four are completely insufferable. The premise makes no sense. If the fal'Cie wants something done, why wouldn't it just fucking tell the l'Cie what their mission is? I got through more than half the game before quitting and I still don't know who the villain is or what the point of the story is. It's ridiculous.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Mass effect 2...damn that game was a disappointment. I loved the first game and expected them to expand upon it. Instead they strip away most of the rpg elements and sideline the cool main story for some tedious pointless crap. Typical Bioware...they are only good for 1 game in a series and even mass effect was mostly a cut and paste from KOTOR