I was having dinner with some gaming friends the other night and the conversation turned to movies and how sequels generally (Godfather II, Aliens, A Better Tomorrow II, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, etc being notable exceptions) generally are worse than (or aren’t as good as, in the best case scenarios) the original.
But it was pointed out that, with computer games, it seems the sequels are invariably better than- or at least as good as- the original game, usually due to advances in technology and so on.
So, we were trying to come up with game sequels that were definitely worse than the original game- and not just in a whiny Video Game Geek way, but genuinely and clearly worse (as opposed to “More of the same”, for example)
We kicked a few titles around (it was a lively discussion, as you can imagine!) but I’d be interested to hear other gamer’s thoughts on the subject- so, let’s hear your nomination for sequel games that were actually worse than the original game…
Master of Orion III is practically unplayable. Heck, many people even argue that Master of Orion II is worse than Master of Orion, due to the large expansion of micromanaging in MOO2. I don’t personally agree with them, as I find MOO and MOO2 to be two different takes on how to build a 4X game.
Civilization III was, in my opinion, worse than either Civ or Civ II. The corruption mechanic was a bad solution to the problem of mega-empires and massive expansion. It would be like saying LA doesn’t contribute anything to the US economy because it’s so far from DC. Pollution also became a pain in the butt, requiring constant cleaning in the late game. Key resources weren’t a bad idea, however, they had problems too. For instance, I don’t think you could build railroads without coal, no matter what your tech level, despite that in the real world we haven’t run railroads off coal for 60 years. I can’t remember if you could ever build firearms units without saltpeter, but again there’s an example of technological progress that should obsolete the unit.
Crash Bandicoot 4 on PS2 was awful. It had some neat level ideas taken from other games (Super Monkey Ball, for instance) but the loading times were just awful. I think it was something like a minute loading time for each level. Then again, I blame all that on the developer switch.
These days, are any Madden games (or other sports games) anything but roster updates?
For games it does seem to be the third, rather than the second. The second is an interation, often by the very same development team, then the third comes along later and tries to change things up to be “fresh” and goes down a dead end.
Descent 3, Doom 3, Rainbow Six 3, Thief 3, X-Com 3, MoO 3, Red Alert 3, X-Wing 3, Gunship 3, Wing Commander 3, all of them were atrocious while the second games were at least as worthy as the original.
The list of immediate sequels that were stinkers that I can come up with is much shorter…Dark Reign 2, C&C 2, Killer Instinct 2.
If you include early generation arcade games the list lengthens a bit. Quite a few of the classic games had really poorly thought-out attempts to cash in on the name with a sequel that often bore little resemblance to the original and/or was badly stiffed on development resources. Joust, Time Pilot, Qix, Operation Wolf and Spy Hunter come to mind but there’s many, many more whose sequels are barely even remembered as existing, they were so weak and poorly distributed.
Exactly. With a new game the development team typically doesn’t REALLY understand what makes the game fun until pretty late in the development cycle. So there’s usually a long list of little design mistakes that they’d like to fix, but don’t have time to. The first sequel winds up being the game the dev team would have made the first time around if they’d been given an extra year to polish the original.
Some more Wing Commander. While not true sequels, cashing in on the name were Wing Commander Academy, Wing Commander Armada, Wing Commander 4, and Privateer 2 (I haven’t played the rest) and none of them were very good.
Was Neverwinter Nights 2 a good game once all the performance issues were taken care of?
I emphatically agree with both of these examples. Civ III is the reason I’m only cautiously optimistic about the soon-to-be-released Civ V.
While I haven’t played MOO I, I will say that micromanaging in MOO II is optional. The AI isn’t great at choosing a build order, but you can still found most of your colonies “fire and forget” style. Rush build a defensive building on a colony’s first turn, set it to auto build, and you’ll have a fully-developed colony in a few hundred turns.
The 7th Guest was one of the high water marks of early multimedia gaming. It was a reason in and of itself to install your first CD-ROM drive. Its follow-up, The 11th Hour, was a self-indulgent, overambitious trainwreck that damn near killed Trilobyte Studios.
Personally, Medieval: Total War 2 lost the charm of the original by bogging itself down in the strategic and nation-building aspect and sillier micromanaged tactics than the original Medieval: Total War game. Looked prettier but didn’t really deliver on the same experience and actually felt like a less effective “historical simulation” to me.
I just want to jump in and be the voice of dissent on Civ III, which was far superior to its predecessors.
I think I liked the original Left 4 Dead better than the sequel, although they are so similar it’s hard to call L4D2 much worse. But I liked the characters and settings better in the first one.
Worse can be incredibly relative. For instance, Zelda II was a fairly good game, if a bit difficult and arbitrary at times. However, I’d argue it was worse than TLOZ. Ocarina of Time is often considered OMG THE BEST GAME EVER!!!11!! So any Zelda game after that could be considered “worse.” (Though I don’t agree that OOT was the best, I’m just illustrating the relativity of this).
If you’re looking for undisputable or widly agreed upon ones I’d say that The Settlers series has been going rather downhill since after 2. Settlers 7 is sort of back up on the horse, but the series still has a long way to go before it really redeems itself.