Infamously Bad Sequels and Reboots
Sequels and reboots that completely and utterly miss the mark in terms of what made the original(s) great or even just decent. Mostly just adding games that I’ve played but ones that are so infamous their reputation truly preceded them are also listed. Always open to suggestions for more to check out since I find this kind of thing fascinating.
11 Games
Straw that has seemingly and hopefully broken the camels back with the big dumb empty Ubisoft open world model - at least for the AC games. Syndicate and Unity did this with the traditional AC model, but dear god they were nowhere near as bad as this. One do the few AAA games I’ve ever seen people frequently call “offensively bloated”
If you were following new releases when this came out I’m sure you can remember the hilarious response to this games’ visuals and voice acting. The character models were mocked relentlessly for having these really stiff wax statue faces, super unnerving lifeless eyes, and being liable to glitch out and transform into twitching, contorted monstrosities at a moments notice. The game itself is rather mediocre but definitely not terrible. It’s nevertheless become infamous due to sky high expectations as well as a comically botched release.
Ditched basically everything that made the original Bioshock unique and enjoyable. Only similarities are FPS, magic powers, and audio logs. Story is basically a “well actually 🤓” response to critiques of turn of the century systemic oppression, which is kind of hilarious in a really depressing way.
I actually kind if like this game but general public consensus is that it completely jumped the shark so it deserves to be on this list as something that is indeed “infamous”.
I actually kind of enjoyed this game but understand that most people really hate it and it certainly diluted most of the RPG elements from origins.
Decent game if you approach it as “oblivion with guns” but a terrible Fallout game where the devs either had no interest in adapting the real essence of the originals into an FPS or they completely misunderstood what made the original so compelling. New Vegas stands as proof that the character of the originals can be successfully adapted into an open world FPS format.
See my review of this game. Not as bad as people say but abandons or guts almost everything that made the original so great. It’s also just rather unpolished and poorly balanced.
Perhaps the most infamous bad sequel of all time. Has to be played to be believed honestly. This game isn’t bad because it’s totally broken or buggy but because of intentional gameplay design decisions. Kind of interesting to play for this reason because you’ll be in awe of how anyone thought this was a good idea.
