Sequels that Squandered Potential Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 NEXT | |
The Condemned series. The first game struck a perfect balance between gritty, realistic 1st person melee combat and that brilliant sense of isolation and imminent danger. Condemned 2 ruined it all with... shouting.
I know, I feel your pain. | |
I didn't even like the magnet gun. Geurilla was leagues better in both gameplay, story, and destruction ability. OT: PENUMBRA: REQUIEM. Good thing that shit was free with Black Plague. It had absolutely nothing to do with horror or anything from the two prior games, it was a bunch of ridiculous platforming puzzles, which honestly, some were annoying as fuck. It literally had NOTHING to do with the two games from before. | |
Assassin's Creed 2 and onwards. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that one but they really dropped the ball in terms of tone, atmosphere, characters and story that (in my opinion) the first one did very well. And to counter all that negativity I actually preferred Dragon Age 2 over 1 in nearly every aspect. | |
Pretty much every Obsidian game that ends with a number. (BG2, NWN2, KOTOR2, DS3) | |
Kingdom Hearts II. Hell, Kingdom Hearts in general. It's criminal how badly that series nosedived after the first game. | |
Spec ops the lien, is awesome, way way better than the other ones. | |
Crackdown 2. Fun game, but not nearly as fun as 1. | |
I agree to almost everything in your list, exept crysis 2, the first one was way superior, turned an awesome open world, into a linear shooter in new york. | |
Mass Effect-fucking-3. I don't even have to elaborate. | |
Two that I mention almost a bit too often | |
Mass Effect 3 Are the ones I can think of right now. | |
I'm gonna say Dragon Age 2, but not because of Origins. It was more because I thought the basic idea they had for the game's story sounded way more interesting than the first one. But then they fucked it up. Captcha: I like humans. | |
Diablo 3 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (even Castlevania 64 was more faithful) I would say Other M, but luckily it's being declared non-canon at this point FFXIII and by proxy XIII-2. Seriously guys, do you just want to make movies? If so, let us fans know so we don't expect an actual game. Ninja Gaiden 3, but this was obvious. | |
Halo 3 Why would you go from perfect Hit-Scan to travel time hit detection? Whyyyyyy?!? Halo 3 BR is horrible compared to the Halo 2 BR, and the BR is what Halo is all about. | |
So much this. I love Chrono Trigger, and was filled with balls exploding joy when I finally got Chrono Cross. I tried to enjoy it, but I couldn't. The storyline was a bit too convoluted, but the killing point was the sheer number of characters. It's akin to going to a small town, and trying to learn everyone's backstory. Eventually you stop careing completely. | |
Condemned 2. You just have to play it to understand. Its biggest failing was its shit ass plot. All of the supernatural subtext of the first game is literally explained away in 15 minutes of Condemned 2. Fuck that game. | |
Gotta agree with you there. As flawed as Assassin's Creed was, it was immersive and well-written enough that I was able to overlook the problems and, idiotic guardsmen and magic hay-bales aside, it felt very grounded in reality. Even the mystical elements from later on in the plot didn't detract from my enjoyment of the setting and just made me want to find out what was going on that much more. Really though, what killed AC2 for me was that it just couldn't capture that same immersion factor. A lot of this can be blamed on the bland music, non existent sound effects and plastic looking graphics, though the continued stretching of our willing suspension of disbelief with each instalment certainly didn't help (Wolf-Men? Tanks? AIR BOMBERS?) That, and the story completely failed to hold my interest. Too many characters coming and going - all of them bland and forgettable - and too many arbitrary leaps forward in time. Also, does anyone else find the Animus framing device to be completely unnecessary? They wouldn't have to keep coming up with excuses for Desmond to go back in time if they'd just cut out the middle man and set their games in the time period we're going back to. | |
I think the current poster boy for this very topic has to be Diablo 3. | |
*INSERT POPULAR OPINION* Lol I'm so gonna be flamed! But seriously going to agree with Fable III | |
Im gonna say Mass Effect 2. I think my problem is that it was made into a shooter with RPG elements than an RPG with Shooter elements. Granted, Mass Effect 1, in terms of gameplay (and I mean combat) was lacking, but instead of fixing what was bad, they instead just said fuck it and swung it to the other end of the spectrum. Good thing we got ME3. Besides the ending, ME3 got near perfect marks in balancing Shooter and RPG elements. *Edit* Almost forgot, SR3. Loved the game, but like Yahtzee said, SR2 is nearly perfect, and SR3 failed to measure up. | |
Blood Omen 2. We COULD have for the first time on our very eyes, a game that tells the tale of Young Kain and how he instead of killing everything on sight, he instead learns to keep his hunger and murderous ways to manipulate and obtain information by more subtle ways and expand his ally roster to survive and make a powerful empire that we know he will obtain by the time of Soul Reaver 1. Instead we got massive, buggy as fuck, atrocious animations, disappointment. But doesnt matter, Legacy of Kain is a strong series and that black sheep isnt going to bring down the rest of it. The legacy will go on in our memories......... forever | |
Where does that information comes from? | |
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn The first two games--Golden Sun and GS: The Lost Age--were very solid RPGs on the GBA. The first had its fair share of sidequests, optional bosses and items, a deep customization system with Djinn (if you wanted too), and very good combat system aided by the Djinn/Summon system, and a pretty decent, if basic, story. The second game increased the number of sidequests and optional bosses, greatly increased the number of items, further increased the customization with class-change items and even more Djinn, allowed for a total of eight interchangeable party members in and out of battle, along with that we got new summons that required multiple Djinn of different elements, and a bigger (if slightly more unfocused) story. With the third game we get...a lot of the same, with very noticeable deficiencies. Many of the same classes return with the majority of Djinn and Psynergy being the same as the last games. There's only one new weapon type and a new weapon mastery system in place, and a lot of the items are copy/pasted from the previous games. The story is very unfocused and never really reaches a conclusion for any of the plot points, the dialogue drags on and on and on (not everyone needs a say, dammit!), and the difficulty is ludicrously easy. Probably the biggest things that irks me, though, is that it has multiple Points of No Return, many of which aren't hinted at until immediately before. None of the other games really had these outside of the intro areas, and even then you never missed anything of importance or use that you wouldn't be able to find or fight later. It really makes me wonder what went wrong? They had so much to work with and expand on, and yet...ugh. | |
Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 and 3, BioShock2.. those are the only ones that come to mind | |
This. A thousand times this. | |
What really got to me was the story. This thing broke and you're right there with the tools to fix it....and you don't. And the way to kill the main enemies, and live on the surface again...is to fix it. *throws arms up in the air* | |
Modern Warfare 2 & 3. | |
Agreed, for the most part anyways. I thought it was an okay game on it's own, but failed miserably as a successor to Tales of Symphonia. It really would not have had any impact on the game if you swapped out Lloyd and the original cast for some generic legendary youth hero characters and slightly modified the story to change the parts where their names are directly mentioned. The story was... alright I guess, but the main character was a bit annoying. It's a bit of a shame since the battle system was probably my 3rd favorite in the entire series, behind only Abyss and Graces. I loved the aerial combat. | |
I agree with both of these guys on Condemned 2 and halo 2 was a big let down because of ending of halo 2 | |
Pft, hardly. Skyward Sword did the "gimmick" a hell of a lot better than Twilight Princess. Skyward Sword was never gonna be the next OoT anyways, its story honestly wasn't that strong. Twilight Princess had a more enjoyable story for me honestly (despite worse gameplay). Also, since you said it....
Diablo 3! :D No, seriously. It does kind of need to be said, and not even in a trolling sense. The game does some things well, but makes enough mistakes and the release had enough missteps that it deserves honorable mention on any list of games that "missed potential". | |
The gods that determine everything that is right with this world, hopefully. That game was an atrocity that likes of which comes only once every system generation. This way Custer's Revenge level bad. Atari: Custer's Revenge/E.T. (tie) | |
The Darkness II. Such a departure from what the first game set up. And not in a good way. Even the cell-shaded graphics and quad wielding couldn't save it. | |
Well, I was mostly exaggerating on the whole "next OoT" part. And doing a tired gimmick "better" is still doing a tired gimmick. Doesn't save the game from the fact that there were numerous times where fighting with the remote going finicky was the bigger challenge than the game itself; the game itself not even being hard in the first place. The upsetting thing is that I think Miyamoto has commented that this is going to be the norm for Zelda now... so I'm thinking that the series is over as far as I'm concerned. Next time a new Zelda comes out I'll just play Link to the Past and laugh at all the tools fumbling with their Wiimote flails.
To be fair, Diablo 3 was ALWAYS going to be a disappointment. It doesn't matter how flawless of a launch it had or how good or bad the game itself was, Diablo 3, simply by virtue of the fact that gamers are gamers, was always going to disappoint. The only way for Diablo 3 to have satisfied the Diablo 2 fans was if Blizzard just copy-pasted Diablo 2 and put a "3" sticker over the logo. I'm speaking in hyperbole, of course, but you get the gist of I mean. People will go through the game with a fine-tooth comb, and anything that makes it even a little different from Diablo 2 will be nitpicked to death as "the reason this game is worse than D2". It's the same reason why no Mario game is ever going to be "better" than Mario 64, no side-scrolling Metroid will ever be "better" than Super Metroid, or why no Final Fantasy will ever be "better" than Final Fantasy 7. Just that Diablo is getting it to the Nth degree because Blizzard fanboys are 10x worse than any other game's fanboys, mixed with the fact that they've had 12 years to conjure-up their own unique "perfect" Diablo 3. | |
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None more squandered than Supreme Commander was by Supreme Commander 2.