Sequels that were a step back

I was curious on what you duder's think are some sequels that were a step back from their predecessors. I'm currently listening to the Hotline Miami soundtrack and realized what a huge bummer Hotline Miami 2 was from a gameplay perspective. What sequels do you guy's think were a step back?

Halo 4 completely ruined any interest I had in the Halo franchise. It was my favorite series and by a mile. To be fair, I sort of thought they should have killed the series after Reach, but 4 really sucked. It was cartoony looking while trying to be super serious and ended up being way over written. I get that the chief is sort of emotionless in the games before, but that's the fucking point. They also went out of their way to turn Cortana into a whiny damsel who needs a proper male figure to help save her from her own hormones. Not to mention the levels themselves were about as exciting as a Padres and Brewers game.

Your never suppose to reveal the mystery behind the forerunners either. When you do that, you ruin how special it is. Now they're just another generic shooter enemy instead of a cool existential threat. The Didact himself was a boring do-nothing villain and an ambien pill personified.

My "favorite" part was the mech sequence. The one that moved super slow and where the level was a straight line through a corridor. If there's one thing I hate about halo vehicle levels it's how wide open they are and how agile the vehicles always were. Good job 343... you really came up aces with that one.

Coincidentally enough, there has been like a 2-week-long thread going on about almost this exact topic:

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/what-direct-sequel-to-a-game-has-actually-been-wor-1809127/

Honestly, Hotline Miami 2 is probably pretty high up there for me. It's not even that I loved Hotline Miami 1's really sparse story, but even if I had no expectations for Hotline Miami 2, it's just kinda unappealing. If you've never played the first game, 2 is probably hard to follow because it does flesh out some events and people from the first game without really telling a compelling new story of its own, but if you did play the first game, Hotline Miami 2 fleshes out a bunch of stuff that you probably don't really care about in the first place (the devs had a bizarre fascination with Manuel Pardo, going so far as to heavily base a whole character on him who has almost nothing to do with any of the other characters). It's just a disjointed mess that goes nowhere and none of the individual story arcs are that interesting, and some of the chapters are aggressively unfun because of the absurd difficulty due to maps that are way too big.

It honestly feels like the devs intentionally made a sequel that would close out the Hotline Miami 2 story just so they could get out of fans and Devolver Digital asking them to make more Hotline Miami games.

Assassin's Creed 3. Hoooooolllyyy crap do I hate this game so much. I was so hyped about this game and it just fell flat on it's fucking face. I forgave Revelations since it was clearly supposed to be a stopgap game, but it ended up being better than 3! Technical problems, what felt like a 6-hour long tutorial/intro sequence, an extremely boring story after the first few hours, and technical problems out the ass. This may be my most disappointing game ever, after absolutely loving 2 and Brotherhood. What a load of shit this game is.

I think I must be in the minority for thinking that Hotline Miami 2 is superior to the first one in every way. Anyway, on topic I think Devil May Cry 2 was a huge step back. I also think Arkham City is inferior to Asylum but I don't know if I'd call it a step back, it just went in a different direction.

I'd call it a step back a tiny bit. It wasn't as consistent of well rounded as the first and the story was a little nonsensical at points as a remember, but it was still a great game. It seemed like Rockstar was just trying to make a bigger game, but wasn't quite a big enough developer for their plans. It's hard to really trash on them for it and it was still a damn good game.

@slaps2: Yeah I agree with that. I do think Arkham Knight was a far better game that City though, story issues aside. I know I'm in the minority on that one too.

Assassin's Creed 3. That's where I really started to fall off, and their annual release schedule started to show its mark on the quality of the series. And 2 was just so good. I'm waiting for them to finally win me back at some point, so maybe this longer break they've taken will give them that chance.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided compared to Human Revolution in terms of story, but I'm mentioning that based on the word or mouth on this site, not my personal experiences with the game since I'm not very far in.

F.E.A.R. 2 is the worst I never seen a series get so dumbed down I still have nightmares. I wanted a real sequel to F.E.A.R. not that under cooked glow in the dark COD lite shooter that we received.

Burnout Revenge.

It took Burnout's defining mechanic - avoiding traffic for points - and threw it out the window. In Revenge, you were able to hit any car going in the same direction as you, turning it into an encouraged gameplay mechanic in which you were meant to 'check' traffic into other racers. The environment was turned from a threat into a toy, or a tool. Burnout was at its height when you barely felt like you were in control, ripping through your boost and narrowly missing every obstacle, and Burnout Revenge pretty much eliminated that idea.

Plus, personally, Revenge had a gross dark yellow grungy color scheme, versus the Dreamcasty tropical brightness from the previous two games. The whole tone went from a 90's toy commercial, with spiky-haired kids exclaiming "WHOA!!", to something much more cynical and violent (hence the name "Revenge", I guess). It seems like Paradise reversed the aesthetics and that worked for a lot of people, but I never got into the idea of traffic as something to smack into, versus something to avoid completely.

Two Worlds II. The first game was bad, but at least it sort of good bad, with a main character voice actor you could laugh at. The sequel didn't even have that.

(I also just read that game is inexplicably getting an expansion. Six years later. Six years. For that game.)

Mass Effect 2.

In terms of armor designs and art direction, the Souls games.

Demon's Souls > Dark Souls > Dark Souls II > Dark Souls III

Dark Souls III has almost nothing I want to wear. Shows that more doesn't equal better.

Walking Dead Season 2

Revenge gets a bad rap. Different strokes for different folks, but I liked Revenge a lot. Traffic checking has always been a divisive thing. My feeling is as long as the races are balanced to that gameplay mechanic, it's fine. Like, you would never see a race with as many cars in Burnout 3 because it would be nearly impossible. For the most part I would drive into oncoming traffic anyway, which is still classic Burnout. And launching another car into a big rig or another racer was always fun. One other thing I liked in Revenge was the sense of verticality over past Burnouts where you were mostly glued to the road.

Yakuza 3, and maybe six

The Final Fantasy numbered sequels/side stories. X-2, 13-2, etc.

FEAR 2.

Any Battlefield after 2142. I had fun with the later ones, but none of them captured the magic that was 1942 with the Desert Combat mod installed.

Fallout 4 - Right off the bat, it was really obvious that your choices meant fuck all and that the dialogue trees had fewer branches than the Targaryan family tree.

Chrono Chross - I'm sure it was a good game. The music was great. It just had the curse of me wanting something more like Chrono Trigger.

Soul Calibur 2 and up - I actually really liked Soul Calibur 2, but there was a mode missing that I -really- enjoyed in SC for unlocking stuff. 3 up just felt like a totally different game to me.

Neverwinter Nights 2 - All they had to do was make the Neverwinter Nights toolset with better graphics and I would have been happy. However, at the time, the graphics were a huge step up that made my video card cry while at the same time had art direction that I really didn't care for. The camera made the game unplayable for me and the toolset was a huge step back from the NWN 1 toolset.

X-Wing vs TIE Fighter - I wanted it to be the game that X-Wing Alliance was. Out of the box, it was pretty much just ship to ship death match. Balance of Power brought much needed campaigns, but by then, Freespace was around the corner.

Hotline Miami 2 is the most obvious pick. Some parts of that game are fantastic, but most of it is middling to bad. Definitely not the tight, almost perfect experience the first game was.

Dark Souls 2 is a major step back from DS1 and DeS, though still an excellent game in it's own right.

Dishonored 2 is worse than Dishonored 1 in terms of writing, especially given how they doubled down on their Chaos system being a cheap, black and white morality lecture lacking any nuance or subtlety. What's that, you killed 7 people who overthrew your rule, turned your father to stone, killed a close friend and executed innocent bystanders in the streets, all on the aniversary of your mother's assassination, which you witnessed as a child? Well a snarky, angsty teenage god is going to compare you to a serial killer that mutilates the bodies of their innocent victims.

Seriously, the outsider recasting was a huge mistake among a number of poor writing decisions.

I'll not disagree but I enjoyed nursing a ruined Kenny through that game before realising it was so damaging. And I'll throw the token Pro Evolution Soccer mention in. When Konami released Pro Evolution Soccer 6, it became the biggest selling game in the series. They followed it up on the PS3 with Pro Evolution Soccer 2008. It released broken. It remained broken. The series has never recovered .

@shindig said:

Yeah, dealing with Punished Kenny was one of the only well done parts in Walking Dead Season 2. Jane was actually a decently written character for most of the season, until the writers suddenly made her completely stupid near the end of Episode 5. Still though, what a dumb, pointless season that whole thing was.

This times x1000.

@bisonhero: I wouldn't call it pointless. Clementine's development is well done. She's an escort mission in Season One. In Season Two, she's on par with the adults, often having to take charge.

Another, maybe, unpopular opinion. Every Dead Rising game since the first has been a step down. Dead Rising 2 even seemed to lose quite a bit of the polish of 1. Dead Rising 4 of course was definitely a downgrade though, less a step down than a jump off of a sheer cliff.

Force Unleashed 2 is the biggest offender as far as I'm concerned.

Fallout 4.

• The game removed every build in favor of the "kind of awesome in everything" one. The minimum for each stat is not bad, just kind of average, which makes role playing pointless.
• The map has invisible walls near the starting point, which makes the promise to "explore anywhere" a lie.
• The dialogue options were just bad. And not only because the need for voice acting forced Bethesda to have the bare minimum, but because the UI is god awful.

I was a bit late to the realization that Mercenaries 2 just wasn't as good as the first one. I still had fun with it, but it was still a bit disappointing.

And jeez, I have no idea why they changed the Chinese general in that game from the guy that was in the first game. They're supposed to be the same person, but they're totally not. The guy in the second game was basically a stereotype.

Fallout 4. It just doesn't have that magic that Fallout 3 had.

Same feeling. Even though I did have fun playing it I spent quite a while trying to convince myself it lived up to the first one. And yeah the story is kinda astonishingly bad especially considering the first game had next to no story (which it seems was for the best). The AN being lame oil-hungry Americans, the Venezuelan rebels basically being afterthoughts, and whatever the hell they did with Peng was all just bizarre. I do remember liking the drunk Russian helicopter pilot though.

@alucitary: I'm with you. I think Dead Rising had this great vibe and they never quite recaptured it.

Resident Evil 3 and 6

Fallout 4. Streamlined into boredom oblivion. And in terms of writing an immense step back from New Vegas. Hell, ESO has better writing than Fallout 4.

I disagree on Resident Evil 3. I think it is one of the best Resident Evils. Resident Evil 0 on the other hand..........

Truth to power.

Great topic!

Socom 3: Socom 1 and 2 were spectacular in terms of both single player and online! Socom 3 had more of an emphasis on vehicles and large maps. While I do enjoy games like that (ala Battlefield) Socom did not mesh well with this new concept.

@lawgamer: Man I would put Two World's II on a list of MOST IMPROVED sequels. It's like that, Red Steel 2, and Assassin's Creed II.

@gunslingerpanda said:

I'll second this motion. This is going to sound dumb, but I prefer the combat in 1 like a million times more. It's more akin to a traditional RPG as opposed to a TPS dressed up to look like an RPG that every ME has been since.

Probably Halo 4 for me. Or Assassin's Creed III.

@zelyre: "...had fewer branches than the Targaryan family tree."

Hilarious!

@facelessvixen: Story only because it doesn't give enough of a conclusion, where the end feels exactly like it's saying 'hey, wait for the sequel'. That said, the story was okay otherwise, and it wasn't the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that you don't go to enough varied and new locations. In Human Revolution you pretty much globe-trotted, and many places were pretty good environments in my opinion. In Mankind Divided, the environments weren't bad but weren't great either and the time with the game consist mainly in Prague. The thing that is better, however, is the gameplay just due to controls (on console), and some of the mechanics like the cover system were tweaked a little. It's just a slightly better playing game. Something I also really dislike is that I feel you can't actually go in killing dudes throughout the game without some kind of penalty. In Human Revolution, I could stealth my way through and set all the turrets to kill enemies without any penalty to it, but in Mankind Divided I think that's different. New game plus however is better where you actually get everything as compared to the Director's Cut's version of it, where you only get the powers but not the guns. Some awkward looking animations here and there, but the game, in my opinion, is really great looking as well.

Fallout: NV -> Fallout 4, that's a pretty big drop for me.

Dawn of War 3 - Though I may be biased as I loved both Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2, each for their own qualities. Dawn of War 3 however, to me, is a halfhearted attempt of merging the two, failing in carrying over what made the two previous games great - and ultimately failing at making itself unique.

Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2.

Hitman Absolution drew all the wrong conclusions about what made Blood Money great and unique. I'm really glad IO is back on track with the series.

Dead Space 3

I'm probably going to write a blog post about this once I finish up the game, but Just Cause 3 feels like a massive step back in almost every area. With the exception of the improved traversal mechanics, grappling hook capabilities and maybe the story (which is still not very good) Just Cause 3 feels more like a subpar proof of concept for Just Cause 2 than a 5-years-in-the-making sequel.

• Movement: JC3 removed the abilities to sprint, roll and crouch. I remember some interview claiming that this was done to encourage taking advantage of the vertical space, but considering that a lot of the story missions and base clearing activities demand you to be running and gunning at ground level to be at all effective this rings super hollow.
• Vehicles: Almost all the vehicles feel terrible to control. JC2 wasn't perfect in this area by any means but there was still a pretty great sense of speed and a wide variety of vehicles to mess around with. Most everything in JC3 feels slow and unwieldy, with far less variety. At least they have real tanks this time around? I guess?
• Environment: Just Cause 2 had mountains, deserts, jungles, tundras, swamps, massive cities and a huge variety of towns and settlements (even if there were a lot of copy-pasted assets). Just Cause 3 has farmland, hills, a few practically identical towns and one big snowy mountain. If it was all handcrafted and interesting, I'd give it a pass...but it ain't.
• Bases: Sure, JC2 suffered from a lot of copy-pasted settlements. JC3 suffers from the exact same issue, except there are fewer settlements with even less variety: small town, big town with police station, small power station, big power station, military base. Considering how samey most of the environments are, this becomes especially grating.
• Unlock System: Whoever decided that gating the abilities that actually make the wingsuiting and parachuting fun behind side challenges was a good idea is an idiot. Having to grind out boilerplate open world side objectives to access the best parts of the CORE SELLING POINT OF THE ENTIRE JUST CAUSE SERIES is flat out terrible.
• Cooldown Timers: Whoever decided that removing the currency system from JC2 and replacing it with cooldown timers was a good idea is also an idiot. This adds nothing to the experience and, in fact, makes it much harder to do the kind of fun dumb physics experimentation you could do with the Black Market in JC2 if you had the cash (dropping a bunch of vehicles at once, e.g.). Baffling.
• Collectibles: JC2 had money caches, armor parts and weapon parts scattered all over the map, which created a really awesome feedback loop for exploration. By contrast, JC3's collectibles are limited to audio logs fleshing out its bad story and rebel shrines (which are just collectibles for the sake of collectibles unless you track every single one of them down). All those upgrades are locked behind time-limited side activities. It feels completely antithetical to the open world ethos.
• Mission Variety: I'll confess, I don't remember that much about JC2's missions...but I'm still pretty damn sure 70% of them weren't shitty escort missions. At least every other mission in JC3 is a slog of friendlies' health bars and NPCs complaining that they're getting hurt. This has never been a fun mission type, even as a one-off, let alone as the (seeming) VAST MAJORITY OF THEM.

I'm a sucker for fun traversal mechanics and nice explosions so I'm going to see the game through to the end (I'm already 3/4s of the way there), but goddamn...what a let down.