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Dervius

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,967
UK
Lost Planet.
I loved the visuals of the first one and the 'simplicity' of the icy world, and the graphics were amazing, maybe because it was the first game I played on the newly acquired GPU at the time.
Lost planet 2 and 3 felt super generic/boring and it lost the charm. For me.

Came to say this but for 3 specifically.

LP2 was a pretty major departure from 1 but all the major components were still there and it introduced a load of nre stuff. The coop focus was divisve, but I loved what it did and it seemed to double down on some of the wackiness of the world.

LP3 is a very good single.player game, but it has nothing of the magic of it's predecessors. It plays like almost any other UE3 game of that era, while LP1&2 felt and played totally different with MT Framework. It also totally dropped the mech stuff in favour of having a single first person mech, which is still fun in its own way but not the LP I wanted.

Playing Lost Planet 1 on 360 was one of my most "woah this is next gen" moments ever.
 

JeffBruh

Member
Feb 15, 2021
8
Rise of the Tomb Raider. Still like it but Tomb Raider (with inferior graphics) still left a much bigger impression on me.
 

wollywinka

Member
Feb 15, 2018
3,109
Hello fellow Mass Effect 1 enjoyer!
I also thought it was a really boring move to just remove the mako instead of trying to make it better, and of course it is replaced with YET another mini-game (Mass Effect had way too many mini-games).
Scanning planets > watching paint dry >>>>>> the Mako
 

N.47H.4N

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,105
For me at least was Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare sequels, I loved the first game, one of the few multiplayers I was addicted, I couldn't enjoy the other two games, a classic of less is better, the original was so tight and simple to just pick up and enjoy.
 
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smokey5604

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,334
Colorado
Dead Rising: The Thread(TM)

Everything that came out after Off the Record was just a progressive downslide of Capcom Vancouver Not Getting what made Dead Rising special until nobody cared anymore.
Yup, unfortunate that it had something fairly unique in a saturated genre and then they decided to throw it away for some more mainstream appeal I suppose.
 

WeWereGiants

Member
Nov 8, 2017
409
Dead Space? Especially 3

I've seen a few people say Final Fantasy Tactics but weirdly enough I prefer Advance and A2 to the original. Sorry to anyone this mentally pains haha
 

Pyramid Head

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,850
Bayonetta.
The sequel destroyed the intricacy, flow and, more importantly, fun of the combat system by steering it towards a dependency on Witch Time and button mashing.
It made a lot of enemies un-combo-able, massively lowering the fun threshold.
It removed all powerful projectile weapons, further limiting your options.
Some enemies now did not telegraph their attacks at all, breaking every rule I assume game designers are taught in combat 101.
Overall, huge portions of the game were now comprised 'on rails' set-piece sections, which impress on first playthrough and bore when revisited.

Also, the game still has the gimmicky 'vehicle' sections everyone bemoans from the first game, and they're actually way worse. Just shorter.
 

Shin Kojima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,035
Monster Hunter used to be more hunting sim/providing for the village than the boss rush it's seemingly becoming now. I still love the series but I wish they would go back to their original concept.
 

Legacy

One Winged Slayer
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
15,704
Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West.

Zero Dawn is one of the most perfectly crafted universe and a ridiculously accurate outlook where discovering the layers to its world and how it came to be was an absolutely incredible experience only rivaled by Mass Effect 1.

It just cannot be repeated. Forbidden West is a great game but you just can't do the same thing twice.
Yep. There were some great improvements but FW did feel like a step down
 

fireflame

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,275
Fallout obviously. I didn't buy 4 when I read how it lost its RPG part.
Diablo, which is supposed to be set back on its rails with Diablo 4. The Nephilim story was a mess. It took months to fix the game.I still don't like the art even with the add-on.
Thief, whose third episode was weakened by its for consoles designed, and got ruined withe latest game.
Final Fantasy for multiple reasons.
Mass Effect because of ME3 disappointing endings and Andromeda.
 

Thera

Banned
Feb 28, 2019
12,876
France
The Last of Us

I know people often compare it to The Road most of the time. And if it's true toward the overworld, I think human interaction and main objective is way more closer to Children of Men. And I just checked, it's one of Neil favorite movie and he confirmed it was an inspiration.
So, for me, the game was special because of Ellie and Joel, how their bond evolved and how they reacted with "friendly" encounters. Overall, it was a very hopeful game in a depressing world.

Then part II came and it's a depressing game in a more depressing world with barely any "light" human interaction.


Metal Gear Solid

It's such a clusterfuck I can't even says at which moment but probably MGS IV
 

MayorSquirtle

Member
May 17, 2018
8,082
I'm not trying to say ME1 mako was great but replacing it with a mini-game instead of trying to make it better was an unambitious choice.
ME2 would've been a very different game with a completely different scope if they'd "tried to make the Mako better." The game was plenty ambitious in other ways compared to ME1, they just decided that the game they wanted to make didn't have a need for big areas to drive around in.
 

OrangeNova

Member
Oct 30, 2017
12,747
Canada
Actraiser
Soul Blazer
Final Fantasy Tactics (after the PSX version)
Xenogears (After the PSX version)
Mass Effect (After 1)
Dead Rising (After 1)
Resident Evil (After 3)
StarOcean (After 2)
Perfect Dark (After 1)
Tales of (After Destiny)
Dead Space (After 1)

And while a number of these I still love their sequels beyond these points... They're not the same. The big one for me is Resident Evil, I love 4, it's a great game... It's just not resident evil to me.

Also Soul Blazer is a hot take but I loved how simple it was, and as much as I really like IoG and Terranigma, I find myself going back to SB much more.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,504
Dead Space, and I think Callisto Protocol will commit the same mistakes. To me, the biggest issue that Dead Space 3 had wasn't co-op, microtransacions, or opening more the world. To me it is that it became more action oriented than scary. I think the change came with the second game and the third cemented it. It became a boring game to me and because of that I didn't complete it. I don't even have strong feelings about it. I just dropped it multiple times.

Dead Space 2 is better than the first and it's crazy to me that people say it became more action oriented than scary (not that scary isn't incredibly subjective). It's a much more varied, less predictable game than the first where each quarantine room was telegraphed. But 2 has a ton of downtime and slower-paced sections and arguably much better horror. The trek trough the elementary school is phenomenal and haunting, fixing the solar arrays is eerily beautiful, the Stalker ambush is scarier than most moments in the first and the return to the Ishimura is masterclass in tension building.

Dead Rising I agree with, even though 2 still had much of what made the fist game great. The rest though...
 

Maledict

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,125
The minigame was unarguably worse imho

Happy to argue that point…

ME1 is always a funny discussion on era because if you just went by comments you would think the majority of posters much preferred it over ME2. But whenever we've done a poll on it, ME2 wins. ME1 has some very vocal and passionate fans it seems… ;-)
 

Maledict

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,125
Dead Space 2 is better than the first and it's crazy to me that people say it became more action oriented than scary (not that scary isn't incredibly subjective). It's a much more varied, less predictable game than the first where each quarantine room was telegraphed. But 2 has a ton of downtime and slower-paced sections and arguably much better horror. The trek trough the elementary school is phenomenal and haunting, fixing the solar arrays is eerily beautiful, the Stalker ambush is scarier than most moments in the first and the return to the Ishimura is masterclass in tension building.

Dead Rising I agree with, even though 2 still had much of what made the fist game great. The rest though...

Dead Space 2 was good game, but I definitely preferred the first because it was more scary and more horror orientated. Dead Space 2 was absolutely a shift to a more action based gameplay, and there were several bits which were *way* more shooter than the first game had. Dead Space 2 flung a lot more monsters at you at once, and in waves, than the first ever did.
 

onibirdo

Member
Dec 9, 2020
2,401
If we count the first two Golden Sun games as one then my vote is on Dark Dawn. It was like Korra to TLA in more ways than one.

And Boktai 2 as well. I appreciated the fact that you could play it in the dark with the new vampire form, but I didn't like the generic fantasy weapons (+ weapon crafting ugh) compared to the modifiable gun from Boktai.
 
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KaCo

The Wise Ones
The Fallen
May 22, 2018
3,101
Dead Rising: The Thread(TM)

Everything that came out after Off the Record was just a progressive downslide of Capcom Vancouver Not Getting what made Dead Rising special until nobody cared anymore.
First post nails it. Such a unique series that got greatly mismanaged in the end.

As much as I want it to return, I also dread what it could become.
 

Farlander

Game Designer
Verified
Sep 29, 2021
336
I suppose what I wrote in the 'what is the most underrated Assassin's Creed' thread applies here just as well :D

It's definitely 1.

I still have problems ever since 2009 (well technically 2010 as that's when AC2 was released for PC) with the prevailing notion that 'AC2 took everything AC1 did and did it better'. AC2 took AC1 engine and went into a totally different direction. It's a good game, sure, but it's NOT AC1+, it's a totally different thing.

The closest Assassin's Creed 1 has received for a sequel was Assassin's Creed Unity (in a sense that, while not all, a bunch of principles were reused in Unity too). But really the true sequels to Assassin's Creed 1 are actually the modern Hitman games.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,504
Dead Space 2 was good game, but I definitely preferred the first because it was more scary and more horror orientated. Dead Space 2 was absolutely a shift to a more action based gameplay, and there were several bits which were *way* more shooter than the first game had. Dead Space 2 flung a lot more monsters at you at once, and in waves, than the first ever did.

Like I said, scary is subjective. Waves of enemies can be terrifying. Action can be terrifying. I mean, the first game had a section in which you were blasting asteroids for fuck's sake. I'll take the eyeball needle scene over that when it comes to horror.
I definitely don't think 1 it was more horror orientated. It was just more samey and repetitive to the point it became exremely predictable. You could see each quaratine scene coming from a mile away, just based on the lay-out of a room. Nothing in that game came close to the horror and masterful environmental storytelling of the elementary school in Dead Space 2 for me. Or the restraint of the return to the Ishimura section, where you expect something any minute and it doesn't happen for the longest time.
There's a reason it reviewed better than the first. It's simply a better game and I don't see how it lost what made the first game special. It simply build upon the foundation of the first without being an exercise in repetition.

3 I agree with.
 

klauskpm

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,267
Brazil
Dead Space 2 is better than the first and it's crazy to me that people say it became more action oriented than scary (not that scary isn't incredibly subjective). It's a much more varied, less predictable game than the first where each quarantine room was telegraphed. But 2 has a ton of downtime and slower-paced sections and arguably much better horror. The trek trough the elementary school is phenomenal and haunting, fixing the solar arrays is eerily beautiful, the Stalker ambush is scarier than most moments in the first and the return to the Ishimura is masterclass in tension building.

Dead Rising I agree with, even though 2 still had much of what made the fist game great. The rest though...
I wholeheartedly disagree. And it is as you say, it is subjective. To me, the scariest/most tense part was the elementary school and I remember vividly how happy I was with it. Going back to Ishimura was a nice thing but I don't remember any tension building from going to it. The only "tension" that I remembered was "the world is going to end" tension, but honestly this makes the story feel less personal and again, just try to make things bigger and use more enemies. Maybe I'll need to replay it to remember 🤷‍♂️ And for the Stalker sections, those were super weak in all games to me. They were so easy to deal that they were just ammo consuming, but even that was easily handled by using the Ripper.
 

Phoenixazure

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,454
I feel like Lost Planet falls in this category. A single player game in the snow turning into a coop monster Hunter adjacent game feels like I was playing a unrelated games with only a few mechanical similarities. I don't know if Lost Planet 3 was a good enough course correction as I lost interest in the series after
 

Wise

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,228
Zero dawn to forbidden west

Zero dawn felt new and fresh and the whole robot thing was unique

Forbidden west just seems like a retread of that with a worse story and nothing really "new"
 

Bluforce

Member
Oct 27, 2017
630
Is this another Jak II thread? :P

But yeah I really disliked the GTA vibe they went for after Jak 1. Felt like a totally different series for a very different audience lol

Jak II was just embarrassing to me as someone who loved the original Jak and Daxter AND Grand Theft Auto III in those days. Jak II just came across as pathetic/shameless honestly rather than something truly compelling/inspired.

Jak & Daxter to Jak II. The series never recovered from that, though the Daxter game came the closest to what made Jak & Daxter great.

The truth is in these posts.
 

Bunkem

Prophet of Truth
Member
Aug 25, 2021
1,307
Hotline Miami. 2nd one was so bloated.
Geometry Wars. Same problem.
Early '00s Prince of Persia, the nu-metal sequel was still good fun but godawful in everything but the gameplay.
 

MercuryLS

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,578
The Last of Us. The sequel lost the great world building, the comradery between characters, and sometimes heart warming story in a post apocalyptic world. For mean spirited, vindictive, extreme violence, terribly written trite.

(What? This isn't the unpopular options thread?:)

100% agreement. The direction they went with Part 2 just didn't do it for me.
 

UnluckyKate

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,602
Zero dawn to forbidden west

Zero dawn felt new and fresh and the whole robot thing was unique

Forbidden west just seems like a retread of that with a worse story and nothing really "new"

I sadly agree. It has its moments, ideas and characters but the charm and magic of the first is just gone
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,504
I wholeheartedly disagree. And it is as you say, it is subjective. To me, the scariest/most tense part was the elementary school and I remember vividly how happy I was with it. Going back to Ishimura was a nice thing but I don't remember any tension building from going to it.

Play it again. It's beautifully done. It has a creepy atmosphere and you expect enemies to jump you but it doesn't happen for ages. I think DS2 is actually really good in balancing tension and action. Not that the first doesn't, but the first game basically repeats the same trick constantly (with a few exceptions here and there, like those regenerating Necromorphs).

The Last of Us. The sequel lost the great world building, the comradery between characters, and sometimes heart warming story in a post apocalyptic world. For mean spirited, vindictive, extreme violence, terribly written trite.

(What? This isn't the unpopular options thread?:)

What? There was ton of comradery and heart-warming moments between characters. Ellie and Dina, Ellie and Joel, Abbey and her dad, Abbey and Lev and so on. And the worldbuilding was just as good if not better. Not to mention the level design, AI and gameplay, which were leagues ahead of the first. Some people are acting as if the first game is some sort of rom-com, despite you playing as a murdering asshole.
 
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Killzig

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,044
Scanning planets > watching paint dry >>>>>> the Mako
I fell asleep scanning planets for minerals so I gotta disagree there. If you weren't playing day 1 it was easy enough to pull up maps of the UNC worlds and just go in / hit the markers for the side quests and only visit the planets with the side quests. Should have just integrated that into the sequels so you could scan from orbit to find the points of interest instead of having you aimlessly paint the map looking for anything that might be cool. FTR I like all the Mass Effect games to some degree (even some parts of Andromeda), but 1 is still special to me.
 

klauskpm

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,267
Brazil
Play it again. It's beautifully done. It has a creepy atmosphere and you expect enemies to jump you but it doesn't happen for ages. I think DS2 is actually really good in balancing tension and action. Not that the first doesn't, but the first game basically repeats the same trick constantly (with a few exceptions here and there, like those regenerating Necromorphs).
Yeah. I know it is a good game. I think it is a pretty good one. To me it is like Resident Evil 4. They are more action oriented than their previous installments, but they are still great. It is just that I prefer Resident Evil 2 Remake, which I think Dead Space 1 is more alligned to. And obviously I make the comparison that Resident Evil 5 is like Dead Space 3. They dobledown on action and it becomes a boring game to me.
 

Jimnymebob

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,715
For me at least was Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare sequels, I loved the first game, one of the few multiplayers I was addicted, I couldn't enjoy the other two games, a classic of less is better, the original was so tight and simple to just pick up and enjoy.
Agreed absolutely. I think BfN ended in an alright place before the devs just completely abandoned it, especially compared to 2, but the original was just so simple.

It's one of the reasons I don't want to get a Team Fortress 3, because I know there's a big chance that they'll just add in too many new characters, or have different characters for each team etc.
 

WyLD iNk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,240
Here, duh.
I still have slight contempt for Resident Evil 4's blatant disregard for everything that made the originals great in the name of chasing after the much more accessible shooter-centric design. The series slowly improved in my eyes, where it peaked with a brilliant flash in RE7, and has since fizzled out so much that I haven't even played Village and have no desire to do so.

I really miss Resident Evil, man.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,504
I still have slight contempt for Resident Evil 4's blatant disregard for everything that made the originals great in the name of chasing after the much more accessible shooter-centric design. The series slowly improved in my eyes, where it peaked with a brilliant flash in RE7, and has since fizzled out so much that I haven't even played Village and have no desire to do so.

I really miss Resident Evil, man.

You thought 5 and 6 slowly improved over 4 (which is the best Resident Evil, fight me)? I also don't get how it fizzled out after 7? 2 Remake is one of the best games in the series and a true survival horror game and the only other main Resi before Village was 3 Remake.
 

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750
One Piece Unlimited World Red.

The Wii games were all about collection materials and exploring the nook and crannies of the levels. Like an Atelier game with real time combat and 9 playable characters. All of the crafting was geared towards unlocking new moves and areas or getting a more resistant rod for the fishing minigame, which was useful to get rare fish and cook HP boosting recipes with Sanji or revival items with Chopper.
You trained each move by using it and each character had different traits to them (long range/ traps for usopp and Robin, electricity for Nami, cutting bamboo with Zoro, running over water with Brook...) so using different characters to beat up enemies and exploring always felt rewarding.
So you could expend hours in those levels training, exploring, fishing and gathering materials, and the levels had a lot of verticality as well. I know I did.

But UWR was a multiplayer-centric game. You no longer had to unlock or train moves, most of the maps were simpler with barely any collectibles and no reasons to revisit them. And the real time motion controlled fishing from the Wii was turned into a button mashing minigame that was harder if you played alone.

Just comparing these two maps from Unlimited Cruise 1 and UWR can give you an idea of how much they simplified the whole thing. If I remember correctly all those stars were roadblocks where you needed to bring an specific number of items to open up the path, including secret areas and bosses.
isla2.jpg
0295A7B7ECA78117C724A570E1562A769365A720


But for UWR, instead of playing each level for hours to unlock hidden areas and bosses you'd just play the level to reach the boss and move on to the next one. I ended up expending more time in the side modes like the colloseum or the tavern missions, because the main game felt very lacking by comparison.

And then World Seeker removed all the other characters in the crew and the 90% of the crafting altogether and set the game in a single, big and open location. All the crewmates stay on the ship and barely do anything.
tumblr_ppj3439KII1rrkbnwo1_1280.png

You had some (confusing) exploration on the closed areas like the mine and prisons, but for the most part you're just launching yourself around the map with nothing much to do other than picking up glowing spots and hoping they're useful later.
 

RisingStar

Banned
Oct 8, 2019
4,849
Assassins Creed by far, but they also drive the original concept to the ground with all the yearly titles.
 

Egocrata

Member
Aug 31, 2019
423
Assassins Creed, after the first one.

The first game was an awesomely open ended and focused murder simulator. Like a Hitman in the past with cool super moves. It was a bit repetitive, but it gave the player a ton of agency. It was awesome.

Then they became set piece, action games, and finally poor Zelda wannabes.
 

Host Samurai

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,235
I can see why some people prefer Streets of Rage 1 over too, as 2 got kinda weird with its sci-fi theme by going from beating up street punks to robots. I love them both and prefer 2, but I'm 50/50 with the sci-fi direction of its sequels.
 

Vespa

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,850
All the Burnout games post 2, the fine risk vs reward balance goes out the window but it seems the majority of fans were okay with that
 

WyLD iNk

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,240
Here, duh.
You thought 5 and 6 slowly improved over 4 (which is the best Resident Evil, fight me)?

Yes. Largely because of co-op, which is the saving grace of that over-the-shoulder style in the series. RE6 actually has excellent combat mechanics that the game utterly fails to teach, but played co-op, it's one of the better TPSs available, if you can set aside the messy campaigns and spotty level design.

Dead Space also shits on RE4 from a great height, and shows how to actually pull off that style in single player, with better all around design.

I'll fight you. Meet me out back in 10. Bring friends.

I also don't get how it fizzled out after 7? 2 Remake is one of the best games in the series and a true survival horror game and the only other main Resi before Village was 3 Remake.

I didn't find 2 Remake to be particularly amazing (and I still prefer the original RE2 by a long shot between the two of them), especially since it was neither a full remake (the B scenarios were truncated) and Mr. X was grossly mishandled. I do think it is what RE4 should have been, though. I'll give it that much. But I maintain that Resident Evil should never be a shooter, and that is EXACTLY what 2 Remake *is*, ultimately.

The RE3 remake is a disrespectful shadow of the original, which is still peak Resident Evil on the PS1. Somehow worse than 2 Remake (because sequels should always regress that much, I guess). Crapped out to cash in on 2 Remake's success. Its existence pisses me off only slightly less than RE4.