Top 10: Most Disappointing Sequels

What's nice about movies is that when a sequel comes out, you can just expect it to suck. It's only once in a blue moon that an Empire Strikes Back comes out and eclipses the original. In the video game world, however, I'd say it's about a 50/50 chance that the sequel will be better than the original. Often times, even if it's not as good, it's still close. Sometimes, though, you let yourself get too excited and just set yourself up for disappointment. The following is the list of the ten sequels I found most disappointing. It's important to note that these are not all bad games, but some of them definitely are.

10. Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge was the first racing game not featuring turtle shells I ever played that got me hooked. It had a blinding sense of speed, physics built for fun before realism, and spectacular car wrecks. The only drawbacks were the lacking online mode, limited car models, and 2-player only local multiplayer. All I wanted for the first true next-gen Burnout was a larger variety of cars (instead of just two basic models), giant multiplayer races, and next-gen crashes. I only got one of those things (and *damn* did the crashes look good). Unfortunately, the good people at Criterion decided that we a sandbox racing game. I'm not going to lie, the game is very impressive, and there are a lot of people who like it and play it to this day. Hell, they even managed to have an in-game DJ who actually succeeds in sounding cool. I'll also give Criterion major props offering arguably the best post-release support this generation. The problem, though, is that every race just goes from point A to point B. Point A is a random stoplight and point B is one of eight cardinally-directed finish lines. The races are too short, too hard to organize, and it takes way too much memorization to stay on course. Burnout always succeeded in balls-to-the-wall racing where you always felt a little out-of-control, but the courses did a good job a directing you. When you have to quickly react to turn signals and turn down the right road, it's pretty easy to accidentally find yourself going 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Plus, having to take right turns just interrupts the flow of the race. It certainly has its great moments, but they're too short-lived and too few-and-far between.

9. Gears of War 2
If you were to pick this game up for the first time today, you might wonder why it's on this list. However, those of you who picked this up week 1 know exactly what I'm talking about: glitches and head-scratching balancing issues. Why, for the love of everything holy, would you let everyone spawn with a stun grenade that ragdolls players for 2 agonizing seconds? Why would you let ragdoll physics impact the outcome of each confrontation and why would you stun someone that long? In the heat of battle, 2 seconds is an eternity. Aside from that issue--which they've fixed--there were the unlimited and nearly indestructible grenade plants, the unbalanced weapon cycling, the broken matchmaking, the nonsensical ranking system, and the schizophrenic shotgun with a mind of its own. I'd list more, but at this point it's beating a dead horse. I've harped on this before, but the lesson here is that you should always do a beta test for a highly anticipated game. Epic got caught with their pants down big time.

8. Resident Evil 5
This is another game that wasn't necessarily bad, just not as good as I'd hoped. Resident Evil 4 was the critically-acclaimed and 100% bitchin' revamp that the series desperately needed. The big thing that game accomplished was being smooth. It was an incredibly well-crafted experience from beginning to end, which stood in stark contrast to its clumsy predecessors. RE5 kept RE4's revamped control scheme, but added back a healthy dose of clumsiness. The cooperative play was a nice idea, but it just didn't work particularly well. It just felt so forced, and by consequence, RE5 was stripped of a large number of the nice touches that pushed RE4 into the all-time great category. The weapon, inventory, treasure, and upgrade systems were all greatly reduced and felt naked in comparison. Not only that, but inventory was strictly limited and had to be managed in real-time. There's a reason co-op shooters don't give players inventories. On the story side, the Uroboros were way less cool than las Plagas, and while RE4 had some of the best boss fights in recent memory, RE5's boss fights ranged from dull to uninspired. Had the co-op been an in-game spin-off like Assignment Ada, the game could have been a lot better. Forcing co-op throughout the entire game (and I say "forcing" because trying to play it with an AI partner was excruciating) ended up crippling the experience.

7. Perfect Dark Zero
The current generation of games got off to a really rough start. Where Super Mario 64 and Halo: Combat Evolved let us know that their respective generations were going to take us places we'd never thought possible, Perfect Dark Zero introduced us to the Xbox 360 with a whimper. Never has the premier launch title of a hotly anticipated console sucked so much. Not only that, but it was supposed to announce the return of Rare, who was of the former king of console FPSes. Honestly, I can't really list off a bunch of specific problems because I returned it the day I bought it. It was archaic, unpolished, clunky, and ugly. The graphics weren't even noticeably better than Halo 2's. Had it not been for the surprisingly solid Call of Duty 2, there wouldn't've been any reason to own an Xbox 360 for the first year of its existence. Oh, and seriously, what is with the redesign of Joanna Dark's character model?

6. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games of all time and remains my favorite RPG. When Bioware decided to turn the sequel over to Obsidian, I was understandably nervous. Turns out my fears were completely justified. The game just felt like it had no soul. Like the developers just didn't have any passion for the Star Wars universe. The story felt empty, the characters were uninteresting, and your character got too powerful too quickly, so the game was too easy. It was impressive technically, but the experience just felt hollow.

5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
I've never seen a developer get so cocky as to blatantly remove functions that gamers wanted, and then scoffed at their complaints. PC gamers like dedicated servers? Well, screw you, you don't get them because their stupid. Xbox gamers like party chat? F that, we're taking that away, too. May your Modern Warfare sessions echo with the prepubescent screams of nine year-olds. On top of that, there's the whole knifing issue, the terrible maps, the incoherent single-player, and infinite grenade launcher rounds. This game was so close to being the best online shooter ever made, but IW got out of control.

4. Twisted Metal III
Twisted Metal 2 was awesome. Then, 989 Studios took over for the sequel, and it was just terrible in every way. That's about all there is to it.




3. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
I don't I've ever been more excited for a game's release as I was for this game's (maybe Melee). Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time, but its sequel was a huge let down. First off, let's just forget that I was actually excited for the multiplayer, which ended up being little more than a afterthought. The first Prime was incredibly atmospheric. Echoes was half purple. Half of the game was spent in a parallel, dark version of the planet where everything was an ugly purple. The enemies here looked like they were handcrafted by a 4 year-old, and for some reason it was necessary for the player to take damage in this world when outside of protective light bubbles. Traveling to the dark version of the planet was not something one did with anticipation, but with agitation. Add to that that three of Samus' four beams required ammo, something that had never been a part of Metroid and hasn't since. As a result, instead of getting to wield fire, ice, or electricity at will, the player basically stuck to the boring old power beam and saved the light and dark beams for boss fights. The game wasn't exactly terrible, but it's just so much worse than its predecessor.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV
This is the only game on this list that seems to be universally acclaimed by reviewers (Modern Warfare 2 had good initial reviews, but it quickly fell out of favor), and I'll never understand why. Is it because of the convoluted, meandering story line? The annoying incomprehensible accents? The impossible-to-drive vehicles? The clunky aiming and running controls? The God-awful cover mechanic? The blatant disregard for checkpoints? The constant pestering of in-game characters? The confusing world map? The creepy character models? The boring side missions and mini games? Niko's inability to buckle a seat belt? The absence of tanks? The fact that at no point during the entire 90 mission long campaign was game fun? I'm tellin' ya, I just don't get it. They took away everything that was fun about Vice City and expanded on everything that was annoying about it. Ever wish they went down a more Vice City-esque path? Go play Saints Row 2.

1. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
And here we have the inspiration for this entire list. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one of the most surprisingly good games of the last generation. Hell, it was great, and even won some Game of the Year awards. It started the whole parkour game thing, and the level design puts Assassin's Creed II to shame. Sure, the game was entirely linear, but it worked well that way. The Sands of Time also had an incredibly moving story about lost love, and the ending was pretty gut-wrenching (but still very good). The Prince was also a very well-crafted character who was very likable (which is very rare for an action game character). He had a softer side, but could kick ass when necessary. The problem is that while The Sands of Time was critically acclaimed, it sell as well as, say, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. So for the sequel, Ubisoft decided that the parkour platforming needed to take a back seat to the combat, and that the prince needed to be more of a badass. So, in the opening sequence to this sequel to an extremely tasteful game, the Prince is on some ship in the middle of a storm, doing battle with some "bitch" in a metal thong. See that America? The Prince swears now! He's so much cooler. So instead of trying to regain his lost love, he's running around killing random people and forcin' out swear words at every turn. I fuckin' love swearing as much as the next guy, but it was just so out of place here. There are games on this list that were worse sequels to better games, but no other game on this list completely bastardized everything the original stood for like Warrior Within.

--Chilly P

Thoughts for Monday 041210 (Mostly about Bad Co 2)

PSA: April 15th is the last day that you can play any original Xbox 1 titles on LIVE. Bust out your copy of Halo 2 for the last time.

I'm almost 17 hours into Final Fantasy XIII and the game is still going nowhere. This is when most games are wrapping up, yet FFXIII has decided that it's still time for plot development. Seriously, there hasn't even been any real rising action yet.

Trying to play through Perfect Dark on Special Agent has given me a whole new appreciation for check points in FPS campaigns. I've been stuck on the same level for a long time (Infiltrating Area 51).

And now the rest is about Bad Company 2...
In no particular order, here are my 10 favorite kits for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (one kit per gun; vehicle perks and side arms not included ):

• Medic: M60, Defibrillator, Red Dot Sight, Magnum Ammunition
• Medic: USAS-12 Auto, Defibrillator, 12 Gauge Slugs, Magnum Ammunition
  
• Assault: AN-94 Abakan, 40mm Grenade, Red Dot Sight, Assault Marksman
• Assault: M16A2, 40mm Grenade, Red Dot Sight, Magnum Ammunition
• Assault: WWII M1A1 Garand, C4 Explosives, Light Combat Equipment, Magnum Ammunition
  
• Recon: M24 Sniper, Mortar Strike, 12x High Power Scope, Improved Demolitions
• Recon: VSS Snaiperskaya Special, C4 Explosives, Red Dot Sight, Magnum Ammunition
• Recon: Type 88 Sniper, C4 Explosives, 4x Rifle Scope, Magnum Ammunition
• Engineer: PP-2000 Avtomat, M136 AT4, Ammo Hip Bandolier, Magnum Ammunition
• Engineer: AKS-74U Krinkov, Anti-Tank Mines, Explosives Leg Pouch, Improved Demolitions
  

And, hey, you know what's nice about BC2? I can carry all of those kits and more into battle! I can't stress enough how awesome it is that I don't have to pre-build kits before battle. I hate being stuck in a situation where I could really use a certain class and I just can't. For example, if we're getting bogged down by tanks and I really need to go tank bustin', I can throw together an engineer class that is completely geared toward shooting a lot of rockets at tanks. You may notice that I put Magnum Ammo on nearly everything. Well, it's easier for me to tell the benefit of magnum ammo than the benefit of ceramic armor in that game. Maybe if it was like Call of Duty and told me when I was shooting at someone using body armor (a.k.a. Juggernaut/Pain Pill) I'd be more aware of it. As it stands, most of the specializations in Bad Company 2 only offer marginal benefits, so it doesn't make that much of a difference.

I think I may be the only person who likes the USAS better than the Saiga. I know the Saiga has better stats (that's indisputable), but something about the USAS just feels better.

I've now gone gold with every gun except the G3, M9, M93R Burst, and the MP-412 Rex. Having spent quality time with every gun, I can pretty positively say that the AEK-971, the Uzi, the F2000, the MG3, the Thompson, and the SV98 are my least favorite guns.

I have a total of 4 tracer dart plants. I fail to see how tagging a helicopter is sufficiently easier than hitting it with a rocket.

The "Stimulus Package" ended up being the fastest-selling map pack in XBL history. So much for $15 being too expensive. To everyone who bought it: thank you very much for raising prices.

On that note, DICE has said that they'd like to make all of their map packs free, but it's not really up to them. It's up to EA. Giving away free map packs would be a good way of steering more gamers away from the Call of Duty franchise. I honestly can't imagine anyone liking Modern Warfare 2 better than Bad Company 2 after having played both. Having said that, I really don't want BC2 to be more popular than Mod2. You know how Macs always brag about how they don't get viruses? Well, why do you think that is? Is it because OSX is a more secure operating system, or because Apple hardware is more robust? No, it's because the Mac user-base is exponentially smaller than the PC user-base. It's not even close. Plus, almost all businesses use Windows. So, if you're going to write viruses or spyware, why go after such a small portion of the population? Writing viruses for Macs is a waste of time. By that same reasoning, Modern Warfare 2 is plagued by asshats and glitchers because it's the most popular shooter on the market. Sure, Infinity Ward should have done a beta and that would've caught stupid things like the Model 1887s, but even if they had, there would still be near-constant attacks on their code base. The point of this aside is that I'm worried that if BC2 becomes more popular than Mod2, that all the hackers and idiots will bring all their nonsense to that community and I'll have to go elsewhere once again. I know it's completely selfish and I wish nothing but the best for the guys over at DICE, but if some ridiculous thing like the javelin glitch happens to BC2, it will be a sad day for all of us.

Speaking of free map packs, why not just port some maps from the first Bad Company straight over? The only adjustments you'd have to make--that I can think of--are changing all of the Artillary guns to UAVs, adding UAV spots to each new offense spawn, updating the vehicle spawns, and making certain buildings collapsible. Valley Run was a fantastic map (here's a quick refresher for those who played the first game) and I'd love to see that one come back. I would also love to see Over and Out because defending that last point in the bottom of a bunker was a blast. I loved Harvest Day's farm setting, but I think it'd be too open for BC2. Snipers would just wreak havoc on that map. Oasis was good, but there's no need to bring that back because it's just an inferior version of Arica Harbor. I really liked the enormous cranes that you could snipe from on Deconstruction, but they'd have to alter that map to make the second leg easier for the offense. Getting across that bridge was an exercise in futility. End of the Line involved way too much running/swimming and was so open that you actually saw people too infrequently. Final Ignition had that giant building at the beginning that was way too easy to defend and got frustrating. The last map was Ascension, which was a nightmare for the offense. It was like Nelson Bay, but the offense had to run uphill the whole way, and the entire map was congested with buildings. It might not have been any fun, but it did have a castle at the end which was a cool-ass set piece. That's something that the new game lacks. Leguna Presa really missed an opportunity when it used the dam as just the background. How cool would it be to snipe from/at the top of the dam? I also wish they'd bring back the golf course setting. The campaign of the first game had a level where you infiltrate some rich Russian guy's house, and you have to fight your way through a golf course to get there. When they eventually released the Conquest gametype, they had a golf course level. It was awesome.

I've heard some people grumbling that M14 and G3 don't have available RDSs and 4x scopes. They discussed this on the Battlefield Blog and his reasons make sense, especially with the M14. If you want a powerful semi-auto rifle, use the T88 S.

I wish they'd make it so that if your teammate puts C4 on your UAV and blows it, your UAV should explode. It's pretty cheap that three guys can systematically destroy every MCOM station without ever leaving their spawn. Sure, a good player should always spot a UAV when he sees it, and the team should be able to shoot it before it flies away, but there are newbies who have no idea what's going on, and it's not really fair to them.

Thoughts for Tuesday 032310

Cute, isn't he? The pic will make sense later.

That Hind on the last leg Isla Inocentes is way too overpowered. I'm not waffling on that anymore. O. Ver. Powered.

I'm also ready to say that the M60 is far and away the best gun in the game. Is it fair that the class with health packs and which usually gets the most points anyway also gets to have the best gun? I'll say "maybe not." Was that last sentence a run-on? Probably.

I'm 10 hours and 45 minutes into Final Fantasy XIII, and the game is still pretty boring. Outside of a few battles, I really feel like I'm just going through the motions more than playing a game. Honestly, the only real "gameplay" to be had is the game of quickly navigating menus. I've read a bunch of reviews now, and whether or not they liked the game, they all say that it starts to pick up around the 10 to 15 hour mark, and that until you get there, the game is basically a tutorial. Seriously? A 10-15 hour tutorial!? Let's put that in some perspective:

• Metroid Prime: 15-20 hours
• Resident Evil 4: 20-25 hours
• Twilight Princess: 30-35 hours
• Mass Effect 2: 18-22 hours
  
• Halo 3: 6-8 hours
• Bad Company 2: 6 hours
• Dante's Inferno: 8-10 hours
• Portal: 2-3 hours
• Final Fantasy XIII's Tutorial: 10-15 hours!

I think you get the point, and that's that most games are done by the time this one has told you how to play it. The game is advertised to be 60 hours long, but that still means that more than a sixth of it is dedicated to introductory play. I'd say the first third of Portal is the tutorial, but Portal actually required a lot of instruction because it was a completely new gameplay experience. FFXIII is just overly complicated and they guide you along way too slowly. I still feel like I'm just waiting for the game to start.

I downloaded Perfect Dark on the XBLA, and I'm not yet ready to make a recommendation. While it's aged better than I thought it would, it still hasn't aged as beautifully as Halo:CE. However, it's actually playable, unlike the the N64 catridge. Have you tried to play Perfect Dark on the N64 recently? You can't. You can't tell what's going on because the resolution is ridiculously fuzzy. Yeah, it was fine back then, but so was not owning a cell phone. The multiplayer isn't as much fun as I remember, but I'm playing with strangers. I think joining up with three friends and maybe even playing a little--dare I say--splitscreen would be more fun. The single-player, on the other hand, is not very nostolgic for me because I never really played it. My overprotective parents didn't let me have M-rated games back in the day, so I only played it at friends' houses. I guess Goldeneye 007 was rated T because I played the crap out of that single-player and even unlocked all the cheats.

Playing through Perfect Dark's single-player is a blast from the past. No regenerating health or shields. No checkpoints. Ambiguous objectives. No indictator of where to go. Over-the-top animations and auto-aim. Wacky and made-up weapons. No scripted events. If you look at the evolution of the FPS, Perfect Dark and Goldeneye are like the monotremes: more advanced than their predecessors, but an evolutionary dead-end. I'll say the former is the platypus and the latter is the echidna because platypi are venomous, and Perfect Dark had that tranq gun.