C&C: Tiberium Sun was … stroke inducing, it was so bad, especially when the original C&C was such a masterpiece. This is what happens when EA buys a small game studio that just made a hit game.
Star Trek: Elite Force 2 was a reasonable game, but it was nowhere near as good as the first one, mainly due to the change in the weapons - the Tachion Pulse Disrupter was the best suppression fire weapon with an interesting mechanic (partially self correcting trajectory bullets if you were on target at the time you fired) and it was replaced by that awful Klingon machine gun thing. Similarly, the awesome handheld photon torpedo launcher , err sorry the “Photon Burst” which had the actual sound of photon torpedos launching, and the correct animation was replaced by a considerably inferior replacement with a hopeless secondary fire mode and terrible sound effects.
Following the theme of “third one sucks”, Urban Strike on the Mega Drive (Genesis) was nowhere near as good as either Desert Strike or Jungle Strike that preceded it. Mortal Kombat 3 was also a pale imitation of MK2.
I’m probably in the minority on this one, but I felt that the original Heroes of Might and Magic was the best one. There was a cartoonish aspect to the creatures that got lost quickly in the series. Combat was generally less complicated, but there was still enough depth in structuring the town. Overall, the game was more fun.
The later ones all looked really ugly (HoMM 3 especially) and the tone was darkened. I’m not saying there weren’t some really good things added, but a whole lot was lost from the original.
Also, I think a more proper analogue to the crappy movie sequel or ‘direct-to-video’ release is the Expansion Pack. As far as the game goes, it usually doesn’t add much but people will buy it anyway because they liked the first one. Although the general opinion usually isn’t “this is awful” but “is this really worth it?” when it comes to that. To some extent that concept has faded, or rather is being incorporated into the ‘episodic’ style of release, which hasn’t been all that well-received either.
I don’t know, I think that’s only true if you grade on a curve. SMW should have been head-and-shoulders better than SM3, being the flagship game for a brand-new platform, but it wasn’t. It was still better than 3, though, just not by as much as it “should” have been. Personally, I think that the ability to re-visit areas was itself enough of an improvement to make it better.
From everything I’ve heard, Myth III was worse than Myth II, but that’s mostly attributable to how good II was, not really a condemnation of III.
And there also has to be a special mention for Zelda II and Super Mario Bros. 2. I wouldn’t necessarily call either one a bad game, per se, but both were so vastly different from the original (or any of the subsequent sequels) that it doesn’t make sense for them to carry the same name.
Enjoyed Civ 3 as an improvement and is my favourite Civ. Liked Moo2, although Moo2 did lose the feeling of hugeness that Moo 1 had. Moo3 was more a mess that didnt really work than a sequel in my view,if anyone managed to successfully play it my hat is off to them.
Warhammer was arguably Daoc 2, as was SWG the sequel to UO, both were downgrades in my view. I dont think theres ever been an MMO sequel as successful as the original has there?
Duke Nukem Forever will be the worst sequel ever simply due to its delay even if it does make it out finally.
It’s interesting how many of these games came up in the original discussion, actually.
One of the big challenges we had was that it’s so subjective- I loved the original Half-Life and whilst I enjoyed Half-Life 2, I didn’t like the story nearly as much as the first game. So, to me, HL2 was “worse” than HL1, even though the graphics, engine,and physics were a billion times better.
And I really liked Civ III- especially with the introduction of “Borders”. That was long overdue.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. Civ 3 was a spectacular game. Was it perfect? No. Was it freaking amazing and addictive? You betcha.
It’s going to be hard for anyone here to top “Master of Orion 3,” to be honest. The first two were outstanding games. But 3… I mean, it’s hard to believe the game was ever once playtested by a person who actually enjoyed video games.
A recent disappointment was Supreme Commander 2, which isn’t a TERRIBLE game but is not even close to the quality of the original. It’s very arcade-y.
I very much agree with M003. Every Mortal Kombat game after (arguably 3) has been total shit. Every sonic game after Sonic Adventures has been total shit. Deus Ex 2 was mediocre compared to the fantastic original. Final Fantasy is another classic example, it really hit it’s peak at FF6, became super popular with FF7, and has gone straight down hill ever since. Also, just to get my licks in, Halo is a pretty piss poor sequel to Tribes 2
A lot of the games on this list are kinda unfair, though, given that the developer of the first didn’t make the sequel (Neverwinter Nights 2, KOTOR 2, Fallout 3, etc) so it’s hard to judge.
I’d say the general trend in video games is they hit a sweet spot and then take a dive until the developer ditches it and comes up with a new IP.
it was indeed much better. TM Black was a great game
Yeah, Half-Life is another highly subjective one, you’re liable to get mounds of fans thoroughly defending either one as the best. I find often in these cases they tend to be about equally good, but good at separate things.
I personally like Half-Life 2 more, but that may partially be because I sort of suck at HL1. But when I watch, say, the machinima Freeman’s Mind the story becomes much better simply because of the fact that I don’t actually have to worry about killing grunts myself and can focus on the atmosphere (which I feel does beat HL2’s atmosphere, which is more a compliment to HL1 than a slam on HL2). I find HL2 better balances difficulty and story and is (again, imo) better at immersing you because of that. Point Insertion may well be one of the best chapters in video game history. Every time I play it I forget about the part where Alyx rescues you and relive “ohshitohshitohshit did I jump in the wrong building? Shitshitshit” I rarely get that kind of rush from a game.
Re: Civ II: What some people might not know is that Microprose released an early (very likely beta) version of Civ II called Civ Net, which was buggy and unstable. My friends and I would amuse ourselves by removing the cd while the game was running, and it wouldn’t even notice.
I think SimCity 3000 was a pretty awesome game, and in a lot of respects was better than 2000, which did not entirely work as a game; it had a lot of balance issues.
But 3000 left me feeling like they were just that close to making the greatest economic time of all time and choked in the bottom of the ninth. It works, it’s balanced, it’s visually wonderful, but… there’s just a sense they swung and missed anyway.
One design decision I just could not understand, and still don’t, was the decision to make the Wonders purely cosmetic. They cost nothing and did nothing; you could decorate a village with the CN Tower, Empire State Building, and White House in the first four minutes of the game.
Imagine how much more thoroughly super awesome the game would be if you just made it so they cost a lot of money and did something for your city. Yeah, you’ve got to pay a ghastly fortune for the Petronas Towers, but if you build them commerce gets a 10% boost in demand, or something. I always wondered if they didn’t mean to do that and just didn’t have time to implement it.
There were also two Civilisation games released by (I think) Activision, sometime after Civ II around 1999/2000. If memory serves correctly, they were called something like Civilization: Call To Power and had a lot of features (Trade routes, borders, resources, units very similar to Corporations) that wouldn’t make an appearance in the Sid Meier Civ games until much, much later. They also had a couple of things that still haven’t been implemented, including an “Orbital” layer where the player could build space stations and, as they progressed into The Far Future, deploy Orbital Drop Ships full of Space Marines anywhere on the planet.
The Call To Power games weren’t well looked upon by most people IIRC, but I actually preferred them to Civ II because of all the extra stuff there.
Call to Power was an abomination of a knock-off that doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same conversation as Sid Meier’s series. It tried a few new things, but got everything wrong.
It wasn’t that hard. The key was to use the menu screens, not click on planets. From the menu screens, you could quickly and easily switch production and allocate population, and once you got to a certain tech level, you could ignore food and/or production and just have 100% scientists. Also, to build armies, you just had to use the send function to send all the ships to one-two planets, and/or build star gates.
I used to play on “huge” and destroy all the tiny planets so that I could terraform them into large/huge Gaia’s.
My friend and I used to challenge who could conquer Orion first. I think the record is something like 12 years.
Imho, the Civ-type games were the most annoying, especially when you had to have armies of settlers building roads and railroads.
Another one that sucked in later versions: The EA Sports Madden series. There was a steady improvement from the original until ~'04 or '05. Then, they started taking away features and making it more console-like. I was shocked when I bought '08 (the last one for the PC) and found it had fewer options than my old '04.
Going back a ways… I thought Ultima VI was good, but not quite as good as V. Then VII (both parts) were the best of the series, and VIII pretty much sucked.
The Might and Magic series fluctuated as well. III wasn’t quite as good as II, VI didn’t measure up to IV/V, and after the much improved VII, VIII was horrible.
I’d be interested in opinions on this as well. I bought it when it came out, and never did get it running… if it’s worth it, maybe I’ll give it another shot. I still play the first one quite a bit.
Civ 3 was an improvement on the earlier two games. It wasn’t as good for its time as the other 3 games in the series, but it is a better game.
It added resources, unique units and civ traits, culture and other features which were great advancements in the game. Sure, I’ll agree that corruption and pollution weren’t implemented well but that doesn’t make it a bad game or worse than the older versions.
In my vast experince with games it happens when either:
Different devlopers work on the sequal
The sequal is rushed for deadlines
The creator doesn’t want to make a sequal, and thus doesn’y try or actively screws up
The company decides to add “variety”, dickering around with core mechanics, and often no properly testign the chanes
The company decides to market the game for a less inteligent audience, destroy alot of what makes the game great (see Victory Boxing, which started as a unique and tactical boxing game, then became a bad rip off of Read to Rumble)
Examples? Every Bloody Roar game as the 2nd (giving the series a rpetuation as button masher),
The playstation 2 Crash Team Racing (made by a different team),
Casltevania 64 (bearing in mind this was right after SOTN… again made by a different team) Capcom clash ds (different team, since people had forgooten about the far superiour neo geo pocket games),
Victory Boxing/Conteder games after the PS sequal,
Street Fighter the Move the game (and really, any street fighter movie after the first anime), Tekken 4 (rushed out).
ANd othes that escape. Its a sad Phenom, but its not that complex
