Command & Conquer 4. The people behind this game should be nailed to the fucking cross.

Blood 2.

It makes me sad when people are mean to Sacred 3. It's basically a sequel to Sacred Citadel that doesn't take itself seriously at all, and yet it got crucified for daring to be a numbered entry. It's stupid fun, though, and a great deal of the hate is just bandwagon-hopping.

For me, one of the worst sequels I've played would be Legend of Mana. Seiken Densetsu 3 is a brilliant game that was never officially localized, but everything good about it was removed in LoM in favor of little mini-stories that make little sense, have no impact, and are basically just meaningless fluff padding the whole thing out.

Yeah, the people who came up with that game were truly monsters.

I'd say Doom3, SC2, D3, Quake 3 and WoW are all worth considering. SC2 in particular was so bad that it made me realize that the original wasn't really that good. I just thought it was good because the genre hadn't yet peaked.


And not bad, and not technically a sequel, but ridiculously hard would be that second episode of Wolf 3D, you finish the first one on that second to hardest difficulty and then struggle to get through that first level on the easiest setting.

From the top of my head, worst sequel in gaming is Prince of Persia Warrior Within.

Close second is Dragon Age II.

Close third is Deus Ex Invisible War.

A couple that haven't been mentioned so far:

-Aquanox (sequel to Archimedean Dynasty)

-Desperados 2

-Stronghold series after Stronghold Crusader

I've been lucky to have avoided being disappointed by sequels. On PC, the only one I can think of is Space Quest 6 -- I wasn't a fan of the art style and I hated how they completely dropped the storyline of Roger becoming a captain and romancing Beatrice. On consoles, NHL 99 was an ok game but it was pretty terrible next to NHL 98 -- awkward-looking players moving way too fast with a puck that bounced everywhere. NHL 2000 was much more like a refined NHL 98.

By your standard clever corporate administrators, more like! ;-) Like Lagerfeld over Chanel, or such like?

But by mine, one of the best games ever - and wish you could enjoy it like I do.

What nobody is telling you and that you need to know to be able to appreciate Mass Effect 2 properly is that Mass Effect is an RPG with shooter elements, and Mass Effect 2 is a cover shooter with RPG elements. Grok that before you decide to give it a spin, or risk serious disappointment.

[url= Story-wise it's similar enough not to be a real shock. It's the mechanics that change substantially. I recommend it, but you should go in knowing you're not playing a sequel, you're playing a different game set in the original continuity. ][/url]

I've seen a shitload of people on THIS forum who swear they really like that game.

It's baffling
You could see the excitement melt from my face when I first saw the screenshots in an issue of EGM back in the day.

God damnit, just ..... damnit.

Master of Orion 3 is the obvious answer.

There's also XCOM: Terror From The Deep, which is basically the same as UFO Defense except worse in most ways.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance! Boy, I hate the plot to that one and the generally uninteresting battles.

Postal 3 and Soldier of Fortune: Payback.

Can't agree more. They sold their soul to MS abomination called XBOX, level design suffered greatly due to memory limitation sections were too small (like playing good old Half-Life 1), color palette reminded me of 256 VGA era (2-3 main colors and gray in between). Never liked, had to force myself to the ending in coming of Deus Ex: HR (another boring game).

And there was one more game corrupted by evil corporation same way as Deus Ex 2, it's Thief: Deadly Shadows. To this day I still haven't finished it yet, it's so grey ugly and mechanics boring game, it's unbelievable. Robbing a small castle visiting 3 intersections divided by the blue mist, oh come on! And of course I have no more rope arrows, who cares, it's just an engine limitation.

Both Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 can't be played on PC without *worst* ever implemented gloom effect turned OFF.

Everyone continues to surprise me by not putting DNF in the trashcan where it belongs.

You are sick and you need HELP!

thief 4.

Vanguard at launch. It was heralded as being the spiritual sequel to EQ1, and to this day you'll find people who've played it in one of two camps: Those that loved it despite its bugs, and I do mean bugs, and those who saw it as a gross overreach and far too wide of a scope on it for it to have a chance.

Unfortunately for Brad McQuaid, the overwhelming bugs and lack of finish on launch doomed the game to mediocrity and low subs throughout its entire life.

It had the potential to reinvent mmo's and steer people away from the traditional EQ model that WoW made so popular. Instead, it showed people what a project with too many cooks in the kitchen creates.

To be fair, if they would have been more focused and not hemmoraged money the way they did, having to sell out to SOE just to launch the game, it would be alive today and Sigil Games would be up there next to Acti-Blizz.