Computer Game Sequels *worse* than the original?

[Snarky_Kong]

@Chronos

I’ll take your word for that, since I never actually played it. I’m just saying that I wasn’t all that surprised when I heard it wasn’t as good as II: After all, there are a ton of games that aren’t as good as Myth II.

Oh, absolutely.

I might check it out if you can find it. I did just say it’s flawed, but it still has dwarf levels.

[RickJay]

@Illuminatiprimus

@Cicero

At the moment I feel like nominating Civ V.

BURN THE HERETIC!!!

Er, I mean, um… Well, accepting that you might have some valid concerns I would point out you’re comparing a product in its first week to an iteration that now has several years worth of updates and two expansion packs on it. Hardly fair.

In fairness, that doesn’t speak well for Firaxis.

I like Civ V so far but don’t like the suspicion I have that they plan the product’s flaws all along so they can sell expansion packs.

[Illuminatiprimus]

I think that’s an unnecessarily cynical view to take. I don’t think they deliberately design the games to be bad and then slowly patch the game up to their intended, perfect vision via DLC and expansion packs. I think it’s just natural that over time the developers learn how to make their game better and they’re a company and so have to stay alive, so they charge for it as an expansion.

We’re fortunate that we’re dealing with a medium in which this is possible. If Hollywood produces a bad film the best you can do is pretend it never existed when a better sequel comes along. Same with books, you can’t patch or release expansions for those.

[Chronos]

Yeah, sometimes they don’t come up with an idea at all until some time later, possibly after player feedback, and sometimes they have an idea right from the start that they’d like a particular feature, but it takes longer than the ship date to implement it (or even to figure out how to implement it).

And Snarky, how did you guess that dwarves are my favorite Myth unit?

[ramel]

“Elite III: First Encounters” was so buggy when released, it was literally unplayable.

[Martini_Enfield]

@Illuminatiprimus

We’re fortunate that we’re dealing with a medium in which this is possible. If Hollywood produces a bad film the best you can do is pretend it never existed when a better sequel comes along. Same with books, you can’t patch or release expansions for those.

I bet that will change as E-books become more popular… Martini Enfield Predicts[sup]TM[/sup] that authors will, In The Future, “Patch” or “Update” their books, release expansion chapters, and so on.

[Jragon]

@Martini_Enfield

@Illuminatiprimus

We’re fortunate that we’re dealing with a medium in which this is possible. If Hollywood produces a bad film the best you can do is pretend it never existed when a better sequel comes along. Same with books, you can’t patch or release expansions for those.

I bet that will change as E-books become more popular… Martini Enfield Predicts[sup]TM[/sup] that authors will, In The Future, “Patch” or “Update” their books, release expansion chapters, and so on.

Web series do this sometimes, so I wouldn’t be surprised. The Nostalgia Critic has done this twice, once where he got Art Carney and someone else mixed up so he uploaded a redub to change it, and once where he removed an autism joke.

It could happen with other things.

[Enright3]

I thought the Max Payne sequel was worse than the original. Also Grand Theft Auto had a sequel that was horrible, but RockStar redeemed themselves with GTA4

[Tom_Scud]

J. R. R. Tolkien patched The Hobbit at some point during or possibly after the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

[Trepa_Mayfield]

@Kobal2

@Mekhazzio

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.

Yup.
For the grand majority of games, game #2 is “let’s take game #1, correct everything that players thought was wrong and add limited amounts of new shit on top”. As a general rule, that works more than fine (Fallout 2 bugs and ambulatory car trunk aside).
The real, absolute craptastic shit is almost always #3 - when the devs figure “allright, we’ve pushed that as far as it can go, let’s try to reimagine it, only better” or “let’s widen our player base by appealing to more gamer stereotypes”. Except it was generally imagined just right the first time around…

Yup. Case in point: Super Paper Mario. God, that sucked. I think somewhere around the minigame “Jump 1000 times in a row with no variation so that you can hold the right button for 15 minutes straight” the game was just laughing at you.

[Telperion]

@Tom_Scud

J. R. R. Tolkien patched The Hobbit at some point during or possibly after the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

I still say the troll AI is severely broken.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Martini_Enfield

@Illuminatiprimus

We’re fortunate that we’re dealing with a medium in which this is possible. If Hollywood produces a bad film the best you can do is pretend it never existed when a better sequel comes along. Same with books, you can’t patch or release expansions for those.

I bet that will change as E-books become more popular… Martini Enfield Predicts[sup]TM[/sup] that authors will, In The Future, “Patch” or “Update” their books, release expansion chapters, and so on.

That already happens. Publishers often release “author’s preferred edition” thingies for anniversaries, and the like, and paperback releases or reprints often get bonus chapters.

[marshmallow]

Counter-Strike: Source
StarCraft 2
Metroid Prime 2
Chrono Cross
Turok 2
Pain Killer sequels (not made by the original company, but still)
Majora’s Mask (I know some people lurve this one for being different. I give them credit for trying, but I’d never replay it because it’s so awful)

Portal 2 looks like it’s either going to be awesome or die to the cuts of 1000 gimmicks. No middle ground.

Metroid Other M is an abortion. They summarily executed poor Samus.

L4D2 is a weird case. My friends and I basically consider it and the original to be the same game, what with all the shared content and the fact that custom mappers can port all the original campaigns to the next. The original survivors are far superior. I’d make a case for the original campaigns being better both in atmosphere and, with the L4D2 SI, versus as well. Besides the SI, the best parts of L4D2 were the roller coaster and the hard rain effects. Gauntlets were already being done in L4D1 custom campaigns before L4D2 came out. Everything else about L4D2 was eh…flat, wide open maps during the day is kinda meh. And bile, defibs, and melee make the survivors even more imba. But pipe bombs make zombies fly everywhere! And realism versus on original L4D1 maps! Yes sir.

[TBG]

@GESancMan

I thought it was OK, as just a game; but as an Ultima, it sucked. The mechanics of Ultima IX are so far removed from the previous games that I have a hard time considering the game a true part of the series. It’s more like a completely different kind of game that happens to be set in the same world.

Fair enough.

[XT]

Haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies if these have been mentioned, but I’d say Lords of the Realm/Lords of the Realm II/Lords of the Realm III is a good example. The first game was a lot of fun, even though the graphics are crude by today’s standards. LoTR III sucked big time.

Also the Stronghold series. The first game was fun, the last one in the series…wasn’t.

-XT

[kushiel]

@Bosstone

@PopeJewish

As for FFTactics, it didn’t have sequels. The FFT Advance games are utterly and completely unrelated. FFTactics was about a religious and political feud that saw a man and his best friend end up on opposite sides of a war. It dealt with class-ism, religion, politics, etc. FFTAdvance was about kids trapped in a magic book trying to get home.

As far as gameplay goes, FFTA was terrible whereas FFT was great (the stupid law system ruined FFTA).

Funny thing is, the FFT story was a convoluted political story that was not helped at all by the inexpert localization, and the gameplay was undeniably broken. Compared to that, FFTA is far better balanced and solid.

Yet, FFT is by far the more enjoyable game. It’s not just the paucity of story and the bullshit law system that hurts FFTA…I just really hate the Clan stuff Square seems intent on including in every Final Fantasy game in the last few years. I can’t quite explain why, but it just doesn’t interest me and in fact kind of puts me off. There’s too much they want you to DO in FFTA, whereas I could happily spend 3 game years fighting random battles in Mandalia Plains in FFT.

I purchased the PSP remake because everyone raved about its awesome translation. Haven’t played it yet. I played the game once, I got the remake so I could understand what the shit was going on, but no one has brought out a cheat device that doesn’t require firmware hacking, and hell if I’m going to do the roof battle with Elmdor without any help.

The scariest part is I read a Gamefan review of the original that said the translation was much improved over their preview copy. If the final copy was that bad, what the hell was the original translation like?!

[Snarky_Kong]

@Chronos

And Snarky, how did you guess that dwarves are my favorite Myth unit?

Because they’re everybody’s favorite?

[Bosstone]

@kushiel

and hell if I’m going to do the roof battle with Elmdor without any help.

I never go into that fight without a Ninja and Monk strike force. Properly trained up, they can end the fight before it begins.

[Cliffy]

The first Gabriel Knight was the best one – absolutely engrossing, plus it had the advantage of teaching you all the backstory of the Schattenjagern. The second was FMV, and it’s clear why that was a dead end. The third had better acting because it was back to animation, and it was an enjoyable game, but I didn’t grab me to nearly the same extent.

–Cliffy

[fusoya]

King’s Quest. That series had 4 solid games, a 5th (which I am currently replaying on the NES) which was introducing Sierra’s new mouse-based interface but they really hadn’t gotten the hang of yet, making it a pretty flawed game. Fortunately they more than made up for it in KQ6, which was the peak of the series, but then KQ7 was practically an interactive story game (which was IMPOSSIBLE to beat without getting patches, which back in the mid 90s was quite a feat!), and KQ8…was so bad that Roberta Williams retired from the industry in disgrace.