Which sequel would I say didn't live up to the original? Well, my answer would be a relatively unknown game to a somewhat little known arcade racer by the name of 'Off-Road Challenge' a semi sequel to 'Super Off-Road' (Easily my favorite game ever)

For those that haven't had the pleasure of playing it, 'Super Offroad' involves racing up to three human-controlled offroad trucks (or dune buggies if you so desired, in the 'Track Pak' expansion) against a gray CPU controlled truck (presumably driven by the game's headliner, Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart)

The reason I say Offroad Challenge is the sequel is because I read the Ironman came back to help with this new game, and since it features some of the same features of the original, such as the 'speedshops' in between races where upgrades and nitros may be purchased with winnings, much like the original.

However, my main complaint about the game is it felt too similar to Midway's "Cruisin' series of arcade racers (USA/World/Exotica) instead of taking place on lap-based hill and jump filled circular tracks. That and the nitro reacts differently than it did in Super Offroad.

Maybe if Midway did a proper sequel to the game and featured 'Arena' style courses like the ones featured in the original it'd be cooler.

DT

Chris,

Sonic Advance 2 was one of the most disappointing sequels I've run across. I guess normally you wouldn't even expect that much from a Sonic game on GBA, but the first one was just so enjoyable... it put Sonic back in 2-D where he probably belongs, on a system that could easily handle the "blast processing" requirements that he used to need back in his heyday on the Genesis. Hunting down and beating all the bonus levels provided a good, but not unreachable challenge... it was fun unlocking Super Sonic for the final moon level. Sonic 2, on the other hand, was just plain annoying. In a game that was supposed to be about speed, there were too many places where they put spikes or a pit at the end of a speed run, so you had to spend the entire game slowly crawling through the levels to avoid instant deaths. Man, that's NOT what Sonic is about. The bonus levels had to be reached with every character to unlock the final bonus stage. And the final, regular level was the worst. In this day and age there is no excuse for "we can't think up a cool final level, so we'll just make them fight all the bosses over again." Oh, and did I mention the boss that could kill Sonic even if he HAD rings? What's up with that?

Now, I know I'm alone in the entire Universe on this one, but I was terribly disappointed with Suikoden 2. Everyone always talks about how great the plot was because it was so different (at the time). Well, different doesn't always mean good, and the plot of Suikoden 2 was deeply flawed. You beat the main force for evil halfway through the game. The rest of the game was spent fighting against someone whose stated goals would have been met by immediately joining forces with you and bringing lasting peace to the land. There was absolutely NO motivation for him to continue fighting, and the last half of the game was a sorry mess of narrative, dancing around the fact that this character had no motive to be doing the things he was doing, and was only doing so to keep the game from ending after twenty hours.

Also, you couldn't walk diagonally.

Let the flaming begin.
lower case dave

Chris, Gameforms letters dude

Hey, I've had my wisdom teeth before. I sware to God, I'll never have it done again. Just be sure to clean the stitches every day in order to help the healing process. You can probably use something to squirt water onto the stitches in order to clean it out. Kind of like using the pressure of the water hose to clean up the dead leaves off the front lawn.

Game sequels gone bad? People are going to say Metal Gear Solid 2, but I think that's unfair. The story was weird. The gameplay was genius (if not challenging). A game I would consider to be a letdown as a sequel is... Super Mario Sunshine. Yep. I just think there wasn't enough gameplay variety as its predecessor, Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64's level designs had more character than Sunshine's levels. There weren't enough crevices or secrets to make them interesting to explore. The exception to that is Noki Bay, which had a lot of cool passageways you could explore in the huge cliff. I mean, they could've done better if they had tried hard enough, but they didn't, really. It's so sad.

Another game that was kinda disappointing was Majora's Mask. The time scheme was cool, but the fact that you had to stop everything in order to go back in time by three days was an incredibly annoying gameplay mechanic. There's a reason why there was a time-slow-down song in the game: the game designers couldn't think of another way to make it easier on the player. I'm almost at the boss, but oh no, I have to get back to Termina Village before the moon falls onto the villagers. Shit. Too bad. Now I have to retrace my steps all over again. That's my only problem, really, but oh is it a big problem.

Oh yeah, and one last thing to mention to anybody else that wants to talk about sequels: Final Fantasy doesn't count. Some lame-o is going to come around and tell us "Oh, Final Fantasy VIII was soooooo lame compared to Final Fantasy VII", but they aren't direct sequels! Stop complaining about how much you hated Final Fantasy XI, IT WASN'T MEANT TO BE A SINGLE-PLAYER RPG, DAMMIT. THEY'VE BEEN ADVERTISING IT FOR THE LAST FIVE GODDAMN YEARS, so go suck an egg! ::sigh::

Chris, who wanted to say something here but couldn't think of anything

I have one response to bad sequels. MGS 2. I played this one before MGS, and I wasn't bothered by it, but after I played Twin Snakes, the fact that I played as Snake as a tutorial and then as an angsty punk for the real game really started to anger me. The game was basically a rehash of MGS 1 with a new protagonist and villains with less personality. Also the sheer fact that they took away the multiple endings angle and all of the breaking down of the fourth wall that was in MGS could make it the worst sequel ever. Snake Eater had better be better. Oh, I almost forgot Sonic Heroes. I can only imagine the meeting that went on to design that one:

"People say we need to go back to Sonic's roots....hm....how was the Adventure series different than old school Sonic?"

"It was slower and it had plot."

"Ok, lets take away the plot."

I mean it was gorgeous, but it was the worst Sonic game since 3d blast. You would fall every two minutes, they STILL haven't fixed the bad camera everyone hates from Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, and it just didn't feel like a Sonic game :^(. And to take a blast at the past, for your previous topic, a pokemon mmorg where you could set up gyms and then dethrone gym leaders to become one and challenge trainers like in the show would be interesting. A harvest moon or animal crossing mmorg should both rule too.

Austin "A true Sonic Hero" Smith