What's the worst game you've played due to Vinnyitus (series completionism)? Ever stopped a series because of it?

I have a pretty bad case of Vinnyitus for most forms of media. If someone tells me that a sequel is good unless it has absolutely no canon ties to prior entries (like most of the Final Fantasy series) I generally will want to play/watch/read those before getting to the sequel. There are some exceptions for genres that absolutely don't rely on story or established characters (like most fighting game series) but story driven stuff it's a must.

Sometimes this works out okay. I played all of the major prior God of War games before playing the 2018 entry, and while I think that was totally unnecessary considering how thin the ties are, those games ranged from mediocre but not bad (the PSP games) to pretty darned good (God of War III.) I even played Dante's Inferno as part of the experience just to see what the God of War clones were like at the time. That game's not quite as bad as people say, though it's hardly a must play.

I had a lot of fun going through the Halo and Gears series with a friend towards the beginning of the Xbox One era after those games were made available (in the MCC and through back compat), both of us talking about how the series evolved over time and just having fun playing them co-op together.

Sometimes this works out less well. I love Ratchet and Clank but I really did not need to play Full Frontal Assault or All 4 One. They aren't horrible games but they really aren't worth going back to. There I did not play the PSP titles because I would have had to do so on my Vita and I really do not like handheld gaming. If they are released for the new PS+ service to play on PS4/5 I will almost certainly play them.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss is another game that wasn't terrible but I really could have skipped. I played that a year ago and I have almost no memory of it beyond the basic outlines of its pretty boring plot.

So I'd like to hear about your worst Vinnyitus experiences and if there has ever been a game so bad that it stopped you from getting to the later games in a series. That has definitely happened to me, in Rayman of all things (which I know is not very story based, at least for the first game.) I wouldn't say the first Rayman game is bad but it is very difficult and I just got frustrated and gave up, so I never played the later Rayman 3D Platformers or even Legends and Origin, all of which I own and all of which I would probably enjoy much more than the first. Similarly I have all the Gex games on my PS3 and I'd probably like the 3D platformers but I found Gex 1 to be a boring chore.

I know I'm not alone in this, so spill your secrets!

ETA: Oh I forgot the biggest one for me! The Witcher. Pretty much everyone agrees the first Witcher game is hard to go back to so I've never played the series OR watched the TV show because I'd have to force myself to slog through that first. Some day maybe.

There's nothing i've felt the need to go back and catch up on yet, in most cases i was there at the start, but for example i've touched on Final Fantasy's 7, 8 and 9 but i've only finished 13, and they're all so disconnected from each other i don't feel like i've missed anything.

I don't think this is Vinnyitus but i played all the Halo games because every time one came out the reviews were so good, but i didn't like any of them past the first.

The first two things that come to mind are Metal Gear Survive and Yakuza: Dead Souls - games that nobody should play in otherwise great franchises.

The original Gran Turismo for the PlayStation. When the game came out, everyone was talking about how innovative and amazing a driving game it was. It was praised for its realistic look and driving compared to many arcade type racers that were popular at the time. I rented it back when video game rentals from video stores were common and I disliked it from the start. I was stuck doing those stupid driving test and couldn't advance to the main races unless I completed them. Eventually, I gave up and played the other games I rented. I haven't played another Gran Turismo game since. I was thinking about giving it another go with this latest version for the PS5, but some of the negative stories surrounding the game have given me second thoughts so far.

The God of War series is the one that comes to mind, with each game being a series of diminishing returns, to the point I never completed Ascension.

A big mistake of mine was forcing myself to play the Resident Evil series in order when I can just pick the good ones (because there are real bad playthroughs, urgh.) A sidenote, is it considered vinnyitus when I didn't play the sequel because I got spoiled as to what happened to the main character of the prequel?

Yakuza 3 was a bad one. I mean, it was still a Yakuza game and not like the dead souls spin-off (which I refrained from) but it was definitely the weakest of the main series. I almost went nuts trying to play the entire Ys series and stopped short after Ys 3, not because it was bad per se but just that it wasn’t good enough, and also I suddenly realized I was gonna end up playing like 8 more games before I’d be done and it didn’t seem like it would be worth it.

Something that I could think of is Need For Speed: Shift PSP version, which is a demake of the PC, PS3 & Xbox 360 version, instead of using MADNESS Engine (Which the PSP's hardware cannot handle), so it ends up using Renderware which was previously used in Burnout Legends PSP version then it resulted in the driving physics feel so basic as that while Need For Speed: Shift on PC, PS3 & Xbox 360 featured much more complicated & advance driving model plus having a superior roster of cars & tracks, performance upgrades, visual customizations and graphics too.

Also, the Need For Speed: Shift PSP version is a very bad Project Gotham Racing clone as well.

I'm sure there's more examples, but the one that comes to mind easily is that just to be a stupid DrakeNier completionist I slogged through Drakengard 2 and 3, which I think are both pretty terrible (the first one sucks to play but at least is overall, an interesting experience). And I guess it's a series within a series, but I really, really didn't have to play FF13-2 and Lightning Returns.

The current one I'm fighting is continuing to play Trails of Cold Steel; I thought 2 was a huge downgrade from the first game and I know I should probably stop there. Will I? Who knows lol.

I got a code for Assassins Creed 4 with a GPU purchase. I was excited to play it but had stopped midway through Assassins Creed 2 some years earlier and decided that I had to finish it first. The fistfight with the pope convinced me to keep going on through Brotherhood and Revelations, only for 3 to squander all my interest in the story they were trying to tell.

Vinnyitus ended up introducing me to my favorite games in the series, but also caused me to enjoy 4 less as I was getting tired of the formula and had mentally checked out of the present-day portion of the story.

It's a toss up between Final Fantasy II and XIII. I think XIII is a bleaker, more soulless thing, but II is somehow both boring and annoying to play. I think the award has to go to XIII because everyone involved should have known better.

I suppose this is a bit weird but I own all of the Arkane immersive sim games and their DLC but have only put about 7 hours each into both Dishonored Remastered and Deathloop and don’t see myself getting back to those or flirting with the others any time soon. There was just an incredible sale on their catalog at some point and I got swept up in the critical hype despite. Wing very aware I wasn’t likely to click with them.

I could also say that I found Yakuza 3 and 4 to be a pretty significant drop off in overall quality from the stretch of 0 to Kiwami 2, but the minutiae was just as quality as before so it’s hard to feel like I forced my way through them despite being mostly disappointed in the gameplay and main story beats. I slowed my pace significantly with yakuza 5 and am back to having a pretty great time.

I'm the opposite of this because I've never understood the idea of forcing yourself to play a game just because it's part of a series, or for any reason really, and I'm much more likely just to give up on a franchise rather than make myself play a game that I'm just not feeling. I've still never played Witcher 3 despite owning it, because even though I loved Witcher 1 I sort of bounced off of 2 and said I'd go back to it but then Skyrim came out and then things happened, I dunno. And it's been 11 years now and I know that I'm never going to beat Witcher 2 but I still can't bring myself to start Witcher 3. I loved the first two Mass Effects but have never and probably will never play 3, even after they "fixed" it.

I gave up on the Assassin's Creed franchise after I bounced off of Brotherhood, and even though some recent instalments in the series have looked promising I've basically ignored them because I feel like I'm "done" with the series. I cannot imagine being in the mindset of wanting to play Valhalla so much that I'd slog through 3, Black Flag, 4, etc. just for the sake of completionism. I don't have that Vinny-esque brain. There are games that I absolutely adore that I will never 100% because I'm just too lazy and find it too difficult to get motivated. I'm replaying Breath of the Wild at the moment and have zero intention of finishing all the shrines. It's not a time issue, either - I've got the time, I'm just not very good at using it to do something other than play Luck Be a Landlord, or that time I got really into Storybook Brawl, or some F2P bollocks that requires minimal mental energy.

@av_gamer: Is that actual Vinnyitus or just not liking the series? A driving series is the kind of game I wouldn't need to play every iteration of because there's no narrative connection whatsoever. If it is true Vinnyitus I have to say I respect the commitment!

@hermes: I played Ascension a few years ago and...I don't think it's THAT bad. It's not as good as III but I'm not sure why it gets so much hate. Then again I thought Dante's Inferno was okay so maybe I'm the outlier.

@cmaki: I think that's just spoiler aversion, though it is often found alongside Vinnyitus. Similar populations.

I guess for me it'd be playing Suikoden IV two times in succession. First time playing blind and then immediately bringing up Gamefaqs to get all the characters knowing full well that game was shit. It just burned me out and I couldn't muster the energy to complete V. It's a bummer because Suikoden I-III are my favorite series of RPG's too.

I'm currently about to finish the Mass Effect trilogy. Mass Effect: Andromeda is on Game Pass still. Against my better judgment I'm probably gonna play it because I need to see the mess for myself. I'm even watching Alex's rather eventful playthrough but for some reason I kind of want to play it anyway even though it seems like a miserable slog? I dunno.

I guess another one for me would be the middle Starcraft 2 expansion, Heart of the Swarm. It is by far the weakest of the three campaigns but I always play through it anyway when I'm replaying those campaigns. Heart of the Swarm launched when MOBAs were the hotness so there's a bunch of MOBA-like missions in it that are very tedious and boring. Luckily they got rid of all of that for the last expansion campaign.

I don't know why I had the itch but late last year I went through and played all the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games, which included the re-master of the DS game bridging one and two (which I think might have been my favorite of the 3?)

Those are some weird games. The first one is unabashedly just an original God of War clone with minimal connections to "Castlevania" outside werewolf and vampire enemies...eventually. The second game has a ton of cool set up and ideas but they fumble it pretty hard with a lot of annoying backtracking and not going far enough with the interesting "Dracula in the modern day" idea, though I still enjoyed it more than most, I think. Mirror of Fate I think was actually really, really cool. A strange mix of the God of War character action combat, but on a 2D plane and then incorporating castle exploration that calls back to the popular main Castlevania games, though not quite as in depth as those games.

Fun games tho, glad I played em. Helped that all 3 were pretty cheap these days, I could see being a bit put off if you paid full price for any 3 of the games back when they were new.

I dip out of most series when they release a subpar title, but I finished Hitman Absolution. The marketing alone should have kept me away (Remember the leather nun hit-squad?).

Only one or two levels have the same complexity found in the rest of the series, and the lackluster story is confined to a single country. On a positive note, Contracts mode survived into later games.

@bigsocrates: I'm not sure if Gran Turismo counts or not. I don't dislike the series and do want to a reason to play another one. I thought the PS5 version was the one, until those stories about the shady in-game store practices surfaced. So if that doesn't count, I understand.

I guess based on other people's examples, I'll say Resident Evil: Revelations 2. It wasn't as good as the original Revelations and is one of the weakest entries in the whole series, but as a fan of RE, I powered my way though it instead of giving up on it. The game is far from awful, but not up to the RE standard I'm use to. Good thing, because I jumped right into RE7 afterwards, and as many of us know, that is a great entry in the series.

Who’s Vinny?

It's a stretch, but I played through and got all the achievements in Breathedge the past week because I was jonsing for some Subnautica-like off of gamepass and I already S-ranked the achievements out of Subnautica and Below Zero last year. It's got moments but it also has some slogs and intentional busy work often there "for humor".

But now that's done and I started up a fresh Subnautica save on my Series X and having fun again while I half remember things.

Also I played through ME Andromeda a few months ago and 100% all the quests in that. Again, I see moments but also lots of slog. Plus too many party members and prominent characters that their attempt at "growth" is to have them clam up when you first meet them. "Hey, I'd like to get to know you more" "No. I came out here to get away from my past. I'm not talking about it." times 6.

I just gotta get it off my chest that an example of GREAT potential squandered by that sort of "character development" is one of the random party conversations you can get with the Krogan and Andromeda local party members is the Andromeda local asks "Why do you call it 'The Milky Way'?" "We don't call it that. It's just what the humans call it." "OK, then what do Krogan call it?" "I call it 'Gone' because we're now too far away for me to care anymore." <sigh>

I played all the Kingdom Hearts side games before they were collected into the 1.5,2.5 madness collections as just a series of cutscenes.

Of these, I think Re:Coded was probably the worst. Chain of Memories was repetitive and got a bit hard at the end, but the cards thing was at least unique. 358/2 Days had multiple player characters that helped break up the monotony and an actually interesting puzzle based skill system. Dream Drop Distance had a bunch of new worlds which was a nice welcome after the others. Re:Coded must have been the worst. All repetition, lacking new content, rehashed story, and all those stupid ugly blocks filling the worlds.

I loved Red Faction: Guerrilla so much that I looked past the reviews and fan chatter and played/finished Red Faction: Armageddon. I hated it from about five minutes in, and it only got worse from there. I was just so confused by it being so different, and I was hoping for it to turn some mythical corner that didn't materialize. I should have known after the first level/area, but NOPE. That was back in the days where I cared about achievements, so I told myself it was worth it for that.

I'm a big Devil May Cry fan, but I was content for years with skipping DMC 2 after the reception it initially got. I heard enough to know it sucked, and it's not at all necessary to enjoy the rest of the series (thankfully). But when the HD collection came out on PC, I suddenly felt the urge to finally see it for myself. I just had to know.

And yeah, DMC2 is abysmal, and the only reason I probably finished it was because you can completely break boss fights with devil trigger. But, I'm still glad I played it in a weird way. The game itself sucked, but I feel like playing it helped me have a better understanding of the series and appreciate the improvements they made even more.

Peacewalker. It wasnt even that it was that bad of a game, but transition from a playstation controller to PSP controls just made it impossible for me to play and enjoy at the same time

Kingdom Hearts 3 ... a bit of a sunk cost effect and wanted to "see it through"; of course, these games might as well have been written by Vince Russo, and I cannot recall how many 'false finishes' I thought I saw in the third game alone ...

I actually thought that the KH3 trailer was satire when I first saw it. The voice acting was especially horrendous, and maybe this is the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but it has seemed to get worse over the course of the series. A lot of the dialogue in the game feels really disjointed and lacking the right inflection, timing, etc., as if the characters had had entirely different conversations, and then bits of each conversation were plucked and patchworked into a coherent meta.

The game is bad in a lot of ways. That's just what stuck out, off the top of my head. I can thank corona-chan and lockdowns for finishing the playthrough.

Apologies to Jan who loved the game (and cried over Donald?). 😂

(Maybe I can put Shenmue III up here in the future ... It's still in the shrink wrap at this point, and I'm not sure if I have the heart to touch it. I'm kind of content with having collected it LOL).

I got into the Trails series with the release of the first Trails to the Sky game on PC, but have only actually finished that and most of 2nd. 2nd has a pretty notorious second to last boss that I was just never able to beat. That stalled my progresion in the series, and even though the more recent and popular Trails of Cold Steel quadrilogy isn't a direct sequel, I haven't been able to bring myself to continue.

Final Fantasy XIII is both the game I beat because I couldn't stop myself and the game that nearly ended my love for Final Fantasy. I eventually got FFXV when the Royal Edition came out and ended up enjoying it, but the impulse to automatically buy something with "Final Fantasy" in the title was shattered by XIII.

I'm sure Mass Effect Andromeda is going to get some mentions here, but - for me - there was just enough there to enjoy it and still look forward to whatever the future of the franchise might be.

To the point of The Witcher 1 - I think its actually a fantastic game that "holds" up in the sense that the tone, themes, style and even menus are quite interesting. My only real knock against that game are the lackluster character models for the NPCs in the various communities you go to. Main characters and monsters look "good" for the time they came out in. The music is good and its actually relatively easy to play so the linearity of the gameplay doesnt really overstay its welcome provided you use potions and are somewhat decent at the very simple rhythm gameplay. I'm sure I'm in the minority but I found the Witcher 2 and 3 to have substantially worse sword combat then the first did.