Good Games With Shitty Sequels - How did they mess it up so bad?

[Judge Dredd]

The last few years has had a few high profile sequels that should have been sure fire hits, but failed spectacularly. Why did they suck, and how?

These examples I haven't played, but off the top of my head I can of-

Cities Skylines 2
The first game had some fundamental flaws as well as key elements added by DLC. Perfect for a sequel, but it come out and people hated it.

Planet Coaster 2
Never played any of these, but it's currently sitting at mixed reviews on Steam, despite the first one being well liked.

Payday 3
I was a big fan of Payday 2, but stopped playing around Scarface because my friends were "done" with 4 player co-op horde shooters. After nearly a decade of content, and an engine that was fraying around the edges (it was a racing game engine used for a FPS) a sequel that tightened up the flaws seemed like a no brainer. But while the moment to moment shooting was improved, everything else was a huge downgrade. Breaking into bank vaults and running off with bags of cash and gold was out, and standing in circles to fill up meters was in. The fan backlash was strong. Even while the game was bleeding out, they focused on payed DLC instead of fixing fundamental issues.

While I've not checked the game recently, supposedly the devs went back to making DLC for PD2, despite that game being wrapped up.


Any others? And why did they fuck up despite being sure things on paper?

 

[BirdUp]

Half-Life.

 

[The Last Stand]

Black Ops 2 to Black Ops 3/4. BO3's campaign made NO SENSE at all. I hate having advanced movement in Call of Duty.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Mario Galaxy

 

[Buck Breaking SS]

Sims 4, a perfect representation of DEI + greed

 

[Brain Power]

Deus Ex -> Deus Ex: Invisible War. Take everything that made Deus Ex 1 great, remove it because consoles couldn't run it and you get Invisible War.
Thief: Deadly Shadows has the same issues (same company and engine as DE:IW), and it's so clunky I haven't even tried finishing it to compare it to the original two, the jank is just too much and way too different from the Dark Engine jank. Never touched Thi4f, but it's supposedly even worse than Deadly Shadows.

 

[Eschaton Aggravate]

FEAR, FEAR 2 was decent but the 3rd one just screwed things up by making it a coop game, completely taking away any horror, and the combat is also worse than the first two.

Dead Space: pretty much the same thing, starts off solid and then becomes decent followed up with a coop mess, taking away horror/tension you would have playing alone, oh and micro-transactions, allowing you to buy ingame shit with real money, yay.

Dragon's Dogma: decent game, with some flaws, 12 years later the sequel arrives, it's pretty much the same fucking game, with some minor details changed, but no real improvement on the formula and the same shitty design decisions, i don't get why it gets a 2 added to it since it's just a remake with some changes and prettier graphics.

 

[ENDTOPII]

Deus Ex

I think that this game is the patient zero for this trend, at least for how a great game can go down to console slop with just a single game. Even if Invisible War still can be enjoyed to some degree, it was a massive downgrade. The original had the a CD space limit and had to cut out content from it in order to make it a finished product, which leads to the logical conclusion that the sequel should have been more exploring, but instead it went the opposite direction... because of X-Box!

---

Watch_Dogs

The original had that comfy dark atmosphere, the only thing they had to do in the sequal was to have less bugs (at the release) and campaign Co-Op. The second game was just a reddit nigger simulator, the OG atmosphere was completely removed in order to fit reddit humor and niggers into the game, I'm not exaggerating one bit here.

Spoiler: Mandatory Watch_dogs memes

---

F.E.A.R.

MandaloreGaming video elaborates better than I can on this. Not as bad as my previous mentions, but it sticks out for me due to how shitty the new HUD was...

Spoiler: Videos

---

Spoiler: Honorable mentions (more like downgrades, not "shit")

The "sequel " just has no soul...


The captivating thing for me, with horrror games is the mystique of the world itself. So for every instalment you add for said horrror franchise you remove that "mystique" (it's a necessity, you have to unveil stuff as the story progresses), so it becomes less horror and more something else because of this. After the first game you explore that "horror", in the second and the third one you are just... fighting it, the mystique is kinda gone. At least the third instalment had Co-Op... that's about it. It's nice that the best Dead Space game is still on GoG untouched from the pozz that the remake had.


They just had to pozz it with feminism and shoehorn niggers in the third instalment unapologetically... expected since it had a bunch a celebrities, as such is the faith for any AAA game out here. The second game was fine (I do like the idea you can play as the father or the daughter), but in the third one (that is pretty much a DLC) just took a whole huge dump on the franchise. I never played it due to the main main character being a sheboon nigger... seeing the ending on Youtube was such an eyesore for me that I will never touch anything from Arkane Studios ever again!

 

[Bubble Ba'ath]

Blood is probably my favorite shooter ever made, the perfect Build Engine boomshoot with action gore and comedy. Blood II is possibly the worst shooter ever made, janky, lacking in all the personality of the first, terrible combat and level design, nonexistent troll of a soundtrack.

 

[The Last Stand]

Battlefield 3 to Battlefield 4. Bloated story, horrible color tone, bugs galore at launch.

 

[ENDTOPII]

Battlefield 3 to Battlefield 4. Bloated story, horrible color tone, bugs galore at launch.

I got it a year after the launch, so I never experienced the seething over the bugs. But BF main sale was always the multiplayer. BF4 was a banger game on the MP part, wouldn't say it wasn't that much of an downgrade compared to BF3.

Feels like I'm the only user on the internet who can wait a few months before paying for slop so I don't suffer from malding due to a broken product.

 

[Brain Power]

Yakuza 7/Like a Dragon -> Yakuza 8/Infinite Wealth (Gaiden doesn't count because it was made AFTER 8/IW despite being released before)
Generic, pretty mediocre gameplay but with a great story and character development -> Slightly better gameplay with horrendous story that starts promising but falls apart fast and goes nowhere,vtubers, DEIfication (Ichiban and his mom getting retconned into hapa mutts, the constant girlbossing and the constant Seonhee asspatting are just some examples), short despite RGG's claims it's their biggest game so far (only 14 chapters and they're padded by filler), way too easy, strangely empty hubs, not many substories that are not about introducing to mechanics, plot bits from the previous game that are exactly the same but in Hawaii dood!, flanderized characters that lost all their development from the previous story and behave more childish than at the beginning of 7 to please redditard tourist fans, and the thing they kept promising would happen doesn't happen because they chickened out AGAIN and RGG doesn't dare getting rid of their golden goose. I know 6 is considered one of the worst Yakuzas (I don't like it very much either) and the main plot and ending are very disliked, but at least they were trying to do something even if newer games rendered it moot. With 8/IW I really don't know what were they trying to do.

 

[eDove]

The Last of Us

 

[Broadside]

God of War Ragnarok was an absolute joke

 

[HyperboreanRightsActivist]

I think that this game is the patient zero for this trend

The adam jensen prequels sucked so much ass, it's unreal.

 

[Nguyen Van Phuoc]

Half-Life.

This but Portal instead, the game spent most of its runtime making awful Reddit tier jokes and teaching you the same mechanics of Portal 1 all over again. Such a bore of a game

 

[The Backwards Man]

s.t.a.l.k.e.r is about to have a really shitty sequel

 

[Patrick Bait-man]

Dead Space 3.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I got it a year after the launch, so I never experienced the seething over the bugs. But BF main sale was always the multiplayer. BF4 was a banger game on the MP part, wouldn't say it wasn't that much of an downgrade compared to BF3.

Bad Company was known for it's single player campaign, but Bad Company 2 ditched it.

s.t.a.l.k.e.r is about to have a really shitty sequel

I saw that on Steam and knew it would be hated. The original stalker wasn't that good, but various mods have turned it into a milsim for autists. If stalker 2 isn't that, then it's going to get review bombed.

 

[Bankingway]

Oddworld: Soulstorm is an overly modernized mess with crafting and retarded difficulty pretending it's as well-implemented as the other games, plus an awful story.

Silent Hill 5/Homecoming had a cool idea for a protagonist, a soldier with PTSD and a rough family life he's coming back to, and threw it out for a cheap twist. That's not even mentioning the combat, but least it has a handful of good monster designs.

Ratchet and Clank past the PS2 entries, but especially the PS4 reboot/remake. Any further elaboration would end with a paragraph of seethe. Speaking of which:

Sims 4, a perfect representation of DEI + greed

Beat me to it. Good fucking lord.

Spoiler: LOUD NOISES

Sims 3 was full of its own kind of greed (see that pervasive cash shop and the cool shit that was gated behind it) and had downgrades from 2 in terms of needing to wrangle with a forever beta program to make your own maps/neighborhoods, but Sims 4 doesn't let you make your own neighborhoods. They can't even make meaty expansions like they did for years prior to its release, they made DLC for DLC. They've come up with new forms of DLC, "kits" and "game packs" instead of sticking to the two types that've been established since 2.

As a cherry on top, they're not making new entries anymore beyond whatever Project Rene is supposed to be (and it's not Sims 5). Instead, they'll be dishing out more corporate slop while its playerbase looks on, talking about how the perfectly tailored scenes in the trailer for the next DLC are sooo cute/detailed/whatever while thinking it'll be good this time... And then it won't be, they'll be superficially disappointed or cope with "fix it with mods!" before doing it all over again the next time EA teases new slop with hollow pandering, a pretty-looking world and/or "lore" you can barely explore or do anything with.

Anyone with a mild amount of brain activity has gone back and spruced up an abandonware copy of Sims 2 Ultimate Collection or pirated 3 with every bit of content included. Sims 4 players will simply eat shit until the game dies.