worst game in a good series

[erock]

here's what i mean. an otherwise good or great series having a terrible game. sonic, mario, crash bandicoot, metroid... and so on.

i'm sure sonic has had more than a few the original sonic the hedgehog games were some of the best, but his sonic adventure games and all his other 3d games were bad.

as for crash, i'm probably biased because i love the furry dingo. plus i dont really remember many bad crash games. i would have to bring up crash twinsanity, although not a bad game at all, the save feature and it's inability to skip cutscenes almost drove me insane.

[Magnum]

zelda - oracle of seasons

as with ages, the overworld was a total mess

[bovine_university]

It will be tough with some of these series because I haven't played all of the games in some of them.

Final Fantasy II: Not counting spin-offs like Mystic Quest or Crystal Chronicles, this is definitely my pick for the weakest of the Final Fantasy titles. It's playable, but the map layout is too accessible (you can walk to 3/4 of the worlds locations from the very start), the level-up system is ambitious but poorly executed, and the story lacks the punch of the later entries.

Castlevania 64: I know everyone is going to say Simon's Quest for this one, but that one has a nostalgic charm for me that I can't say I don't like it, flawed as it may be. This entry for the N64 however, just shows how the series is meant for 2D, not 3D. Barring some very intense sequences like Frankenstein in the hedgemaze, the game stretches its particularly short length with very unforgiving platforming, some very long and annoying fetch-quests regarding exploding nitro, and some dull boss battles. The 3D also lends a hand in making the combat frustrating since you can't always see your attacker due to the camera angles, and considering that these enemies aren't Resident Evil style zombies that lurch around, timing is crucial.

Resident Evil 0: Again not counting spin-offs, this is the game that made the gaming world realize that RE was running dry (and sparked the dramatic changes seen in Resident Evil 4), and for good reason. Barring some cute story developments, this is probably the worst of the series, due to some very unmemorable puzzles, an unbalanced difficulty system, and lousy extras. Even the big draws to the game ended up working against it, since the two-player format served no purpose besides some lame puzzle attempts and it really took away from the frightening atmosphere, and the removal of the storage boxes didn't so much increase difficulty as much as it made for annoying fetch quests (uh-oh, where did I leave that item that I dropped?).

I might have more later and I tried to avoid the bigger series with obvious choices for now, but I may come back later.

[Shadow The Hedgehog]

kingdom hearts - chain of memories

[moneychair2003]

any console port of a PC game.

[SubSane]

The Resident Evil Survivor games were much worse than Resident Evil 0. Much.

MegaMan - The GBA/DS games. What happened there, Capcom?

[RJF]

as for crash, i'm probably biased because i love the furry dingo. plus i dont really remember many bad crash games.

Pretty much every crash game made after naughty dog stopped doing them sucked ass.It's about time they just ended the series but it seems to just keep getting passed from one shitty developer to the next.

As for Sonic,none of the 3d ones really work that well.I guess it's just hard to translate the style of sonic's gameplay to 3d but they never really managed it.After playing Sonic rush for the ds(An awesome game)it's obvious that Sonic is at it's best as a fast-paced,2d side-scroller.

[xander biscuits]

Never liked Heroes of Might and Magic V. Loved all the others to bits

[Kiyosuki]

DEVIL MAY CRY 2!!!!!!!!

Huge rant coming but I have to vent.

I replayed all three of these not too long ago, and first and third are great. But god, I hated the second and after giving it a second shot I now fully remember why I hate that game. I hate it even more so than before now.

It may not look at first glance like its worthy of being one of the all time terrible 3D games but once you've played it through you realize how badly put together this piece of shit is. Its so bland that its delirium inducing. There were some stages, especially in Dante's game, that I actually started to feel uneasy playing. Like I just had to sometimes pause it and stop for a minute because I didn't want to continue, its that bland and neverending.

I think it has to do with the fact the enemies have the blandest attack patterns imaginable. That and the fact what you see of your character in the beginning? Thats it, there's nothing to look forward too. Some Arsenal additions yeah but its mostly model switch stuff. No new abilities, no awesome new attacks, no real new weapons, not even new ways to combo. Just simple devil trigger augments and blegh. And the spot on control that makes the series famous is nowhere to be found, its replaced with this klunky feeling control thats so bad that really Lucia is the only thing I can stomache playing as without sheer force of will since Dante is not only slow as a snail but as responsive and boring as one too.

Stages are also bland, unimaginative, and sometimes even incomplete looking! And they can either last a shockingly short amount of time (like literally, you walk through one room its over.) to torturously and unecessarilly long. Of course, the most annoying stages, the underwater ones are the longest.

And don't get me started on that story. I know DMC isn't trying to be Metal Gear Solid or anything intelligent but at least the first and third have a huge and epic, if somewhat intentionally cheesy narrative. The story in 2 is one of the most disjointed things I've ever seen put together in a video game. Its as bland as the gameplay and twice as vague. Dante should never be the stone cold silent type either. I really like the design of the Lucia character, the games' one saving grace. Even her game suffers from everything but at least she has a cool style, I wish she were in something better that could take better advantage. But its just not enough.

The game felt like one big giant haze of bland music, bland bland fighting, bland bland bland locations, an ultra bland storyline, bland voice acting, and nothing making sense. And finally by the end with this games' one minute crapfest endings(compared to say...DMC1 and 3 that feel like you really completed something. There's plenty of cheese yes but you can't deny they're pretty big and over the top endings.) you feel so empty for playing this that I actually regret it. Joke's on me then but I guess I have a morbid curiousity to revisit old wounds. In this case though I just literally forgot how bad it is, its been a really long time since I played a game thats actually painful to play. After playing the first and third game this game is an unexcusable disgrace. Even if Lucia looks cool avoid it like the plague and just pretend DMC skipped the number 2 because its gangster like that.

I'm sorry again for the rant but I just hate this game so much. It represents everything that can go wrong with action games. I'm seriously considering throwing it in the trash, I don't even want to sell it. Its not worthy of being spread like the virus it is.

[SubSane]

Never played past DMC1. Looks like I should be glad.

Let's hope the bad ones don't come every other time.

[Kiyosuki]

Never played past DMC1. Looks like I should be glad.

Let's hope the bad ones don't come every other time.

No no no play DMC3. Its awesome. Dante is even cheesier because he's young Dante, but thats part of the fun. Gameplay wise it destroys DMC.

Just don't play DMC2. I think 4 will be more of the same but still good because 1, 3, and 4 were all done by the series creator. 2 was done by someone else and it shows.

I hear the guy got run out of game making because he made one too many bad games.

[Nebuchanezzar]

Resident Evil 0: Again not counting spin-offs, this is the game that made the gaming world realize that RE was running dry (and sparked the dramatic changes seen in Resident Evil 4), and for good reason. Barring some cute story developments, this is probably the worst of the series, due to some very unmemorable puzzles, an unbalanced difficulty system, and lousy extras. Even the big draws to the game ended up working against it, since the two-player format served no purpose besides some lame puzzle attempts and it really took away from the frightening atmosphere, and the removal of the storage boxes didn't so much increase difficulty as much as it made for annoying fetch quests (uh-oh, where did I leave that item that I dropped?).

You said it mummy. I don't count those crappy gun shooting survivor games as part of the series, myself. What's strange though, for me, is that all the previous RE games seem as fresh and marvellelous as they always did. It kinda makes the point that the series (once more, for me) wasn't really running dry, it was just that RE0 just wasn't anywhere near as good as the ones that preceeded it. Even the backstory, which should have been extraordinarily good, seems tacky and threadbare whereas the less dense story of RE2 and 3 seem as great as ever. Once more, it seems to be that it wasn't a case of RE0 being overshadowed too much by repetition, it's just that it wasn't anywhere near as good as its siblings.

Banjo-Tooie: This is in regards to the platforming lineage over the N64's lifetime. Mario, BK, Rayman 2 and DK64 had all come out beforehand and had been excellent titles within the subgenres that they were placed in. For instance, Rayman 2 could hardly be regarded as terribly similar to Banjo-Kazooie, and Banjo-Kazooie was vastly different from Mario 64, and so on. When Banjo-Tooie came along, compared to the other platformers on the system, the games engine was overworked, new ideas seemed unnessecary and at times simply downright annoying, levels were too large and often quite boring, and the mechanics of the game were far too overcomplicated. It was a case of going one step too far, and as such the game comes across as seeming far weaker than the other stellar platformers available on the system.

WWE Wrestlemania X8: I was a massive wrestling fan back in the day, and I was a huge fan of the superb THQ series on the N64. I nominated Wrestlemania2000 for the tournament, because it was just such a fantastic fighting game. X8 was the Gamecubes first wrestling title from THQ, and I was expecting big things from it. Unfortunately, I was dissapointing beyond belief, as the entire game had been transformed from an almost faultless engine into a simplistic, sucky arcade style one. Just awful.

Sim City 4: Much like Banjo-Tooie, it was a case of going a step too far in overcomplicating matters. The series had been going through a consistent rise, and Simcity 4 looked to be adding levels of detail beyond my wildest imagination. I was expecting an almost fully customisable sandbox game, from what I saw in the screenshots (based on promenades, sidewalks, billboards and street level stalls etc.), but instead I got a game with a complex money system that all but eliminated any chance of an effective sandbox mode, and I was also lumped with nothing close to a fully customisable game, but instead one that was a more detailed version of the tile system which had been seen time and time again. It wouldn't have been at all foolish to give the player the power to customise the city fully, being able to approve and choose buildings to be constructed, creating vistas and promenades that were RCT3 style in their freedom blah blah blah. The game was a case of overcomplicating the money system, and restricting freedom. Bah.

Roller-Coaster Tycoon 3: Decent game, but the 3D engine (for me) was unworkable on my computer, and the slowdown experienced by the game when the park got to a realistic size was unbearable. The scenery mechanics were a little iffy too, which led to decreased freedom in regards to scenery design. Unlike Simcity 4 though, at the least this game gave almost total freedom when desiging scenery.

All the games I've listed are quite good though, except Wrestlemania X8. They'd all get at least over 80% from me.

[conor.]

GTA 2, I enjoyed GTA 1 to some extent but 2 had so many problems, ofcourse they came back and sorted everything out with 3.

[Kiyosuki]

http://suitable.cocolog-nifty.com/boy/variety/zelda_01.jpg

"Hellz yeah, motherfucker!"

[Enter The Moleman]

Much like the Crash series, once Spyro got taken over by Universal and stopped being developed by Insomniac the series sucked beyond question. But then Insomniac did the Ratchet and Clank franchise, so it's lose win.

[H Thompson]

And the Crash people did Jak & Daxter yes. Although this time around Insomniac are continuing with Ratchet & Clank, but I don't know what Naughty Dog's plans are.

I might as well talk about FFXII, I've not played 1-5 or X-2 which I don't think anyway, so I pick this.

To be honest I think the most dissapointing thing about it is, something you can't really blame the game itself for - The media worship of it. I kind of wasn't all that interested in XII in particular, I really didn't like all the character designs and the story premise just didn't really interest me. But then people were going fucking crazy for it, so I started to get really excited, which made the dissapoint that was to come, all the harder to bare.

I guess the main problem is, I think the most important feature of the final fantasy games is the story, but I guess other people don't feel the same way, it's not that the story was bad, it's just that there didn't seem to be very much of it, this is sort of like how FFVII would be, if you took out all the stuff about Cloud's past and Sephiroth and just made it about you fighting the Shinra. I admire Square for trying to do something different, the megalomaniac your up against is a lot more down to earth, and all the political intrigue is a good idea. But it all seems to disseapear after the first act, and then the game just becomes about crawling through fields and dungeons with the occasional bit of story ever 8 hours or so. And why is there virtually zero character development. Again I can understand they want to avoid the cliches, so they don't go through the usual "This characters has these issues, but by the end of the story they resolve them and fall in love and live happily etc etc etc" But it shouldn't be completly non-exsistant, they hardly even talk to each other, previous FF's would have the characters actually talking about the situation and to each other, and there'd be a sort of group dynamic that develops, there's just so little of it in FFXII.
And again the reason it dissapoints me so much is because what there is of all these things, is pretty good. And Balthier is obviously the best character ever.

But excuse me if I don't find fighting for hours on end, without any story or even anything like puzzles and save points to be that much fun.
Oh and on the battle system it has it's advantages and disadvantages over the old system, but it feels like it takes quite a lot longer than it used to the level up, consequently, So often I would spend days, just grinding to prepare for a boss, which partly accounts for how fed up I got of fighting.

[Frylock]

Ratchet: Gladiator

There are so many reasons why this game never could hold up to the other three games in the series.

First of all it's just plain boring! It's all try to win this match and head on to the other while the other games actually had good stages with an entertaining story.

Also, why did they decide to put Clank out of the game? He was a brilliant sidekick in the other games so why kick him out and only use him for some useless cut-scenes? Did the developers decide to dissapoint the fans or something?

Anyway, despite this game I'm still looking forward to the new game coming to PS3 mainly cause it looks like it's gonna be more alike to the first game (which also happens to be the best).

Anyone know the release date?

[NegaDuck]

Megaman X6. Boneheaded level design, overly difficult enemies (this is from someone who's beaten every previous Megaman/X game) and overall just not fun.

[Tino]

Splinter Cell Double Agent was not nearly as good as the first three games, and the stealth, which made the series great, was not really in it.

[Jims]

Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

(I'm not counting those CDi games, because there isn't much discussion value there.)

I just can't stand Oracle of Ages. The game is simply too tedious and annoying. Moving across the overworld is a giant hassle, because you keep having to warp forward/backwards every two screens. Yeah, I know that adds to difficulty, but it's just plain annoying to deal with. The game also feature the Jabu Jabu Belly dungeon, which has some of the most ridiculous amount of backtracking I've ever seen. I infinitely prefer Seasons over this game, despite both games operating on the same game engine.

In short, the game is too annoying to be fun. Blech.

[Greased Scotsman]

I don't get all the criticism levelled at the 3D Sonic games. I thought they were absolutely brilliant fun, with great plots, fast gameplay and brilliant music ("What I'm Made of" by Crush 40 from Sonic Heroes is my absolute favourite video game song). Sonic Heroes in particular was IMO the best Sonic game since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. (BTW I haven't played Sonic on Xbox 360, so I can't really comment on that.)

Same with Banjo-Tooie. I understand the 'more of the same' opinion, but when you're talking about the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie 'more of the same' is not a bad thing.

[Kiyosuki]

Oh god another big fucking rant. lol

I don't get all the criticism levelled at the 3D Sonic games. I thought they were absolutely brilliant fun, with great plots, fast gameplay and brilliant music ("What I'm Made of" by Crush 40 from Sonic Heroes is my absolute favourite video game song). Sonic Heroes in particular was IMO the best Sonic game since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. (BTW I haven't played Sonic on Xbox 360, so I can't really comment on that.)

Same with Banjo-Tooie. I understand the 'more of the same' opinion, but when you're talking about the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie 'more of the same' is not a bad thing.

I consider Sonic Heroes one of the worst games I've ever played so I definitely don't quite agree with you there. :silly:

Its fine if you like them, but the reasons quite a few others as well as myself didn't like them is mainly the controls. When you're not literally being directed and controlled by the game itself on an overblown rollercoaster, you're futzing around with some of the stiffest controls around and dealing with what seems to be Sonic Team's biggest problem for the past decade or so, the camera.

I swear, Sonic Team has some kind of curse with bad camera work. I hear the Secret Rings, which was a definite improvement over whats basically been many different versions of the same game we've been playing for a while, suffers from some camera work. Namely...you can't backtrack without some pain, the camera is -always- looking ahead.

The plots are tolerable I guess, although they've gotten a little bit too cheesy. It would have been easy to overlook if the games themselves were more solid, but since they're not you pay attention to the story more than usual, and really some of the stuff in these stories would make Dante cry. The whole thing with the Shadow experiment for example (Yes I played a bit of that just out of morbid curiousity.) actually had me laughing a little. I don't know, my tolerance of cheese in story is usually very high but there's something about an anthromorphisized Hedgehog with a giant 9 millimeter and an even bigger head lamenting about a human girl's death and top secret government projects thats just funny. And the way much of it rolls it is what makes the difference.

What bugs me at least more than any of this though is that the 3D Sonic games have basically become synonymous with lazyness. Now I don't mind reusing models and game builds a little since this is such a sequel heavy industry but when I went to E3 a year ago and tried out Sonic for the PS3, and realized I've played this exact game before and have been playing it since Sonic Adventure it became easy to see something went wrong, or someone just doesn't care.

Thats the thing, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, those..PS3 and 360 crapfests...they're all the exact same game with different characters, some graphical improvements, and different stories and thats it. Secret Rings is the furthest Sonic Team has grown since Adventure and that is just sad. There's a difference between reusing a game build or its basic elements, and basically reusing the entire same game. I wouldn't find this a problem if the Adventure build were better but the thing is, is that all the same problems that were a part of that first Adventure game are still here. There has been no conscious effort to improve on it at all.

That in a not so small nut-shell is why many hate the 3D sonic games. Adventure I enjoyed a lot, and I can kind of enjoy 2. But its a game build thats been stretched so far and so thin without any real substance, improvement, or just plain variety that its not hard to see why the series has faltered both critically and sales wise so much.

[morbot]

Best series with one horrible game?

The Series: Zelda
The Game: Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link

The end.

[Orzabal's Eleven]

Super Mario Sunshine. Up until I played this game, Mario could do no wrong in my eyes. It felt... I dunno, it just felt very 'unmarioesque', having to go around squirting water at stuff rather than farting about jumping on heads and what not - and though kudos to 'em for giving a new gameplay idea a shot, but bugger me, it'd already been done to a good degree with Luigi's Mansion, and SMS felt extremely detached from the series as a whole, despite it being the most beautiful game out for the 'Cube. I played it a while, but it didn't captivate me. I was left sorely disappointed... though, I'm hoping Mario Galaxy'll bring something new that doesn't feel utterly bland and involve a bloody annoying machine on your back talking at a third of the speed of normal speech and in a tone that'd make a toaster wince.

Yeah, I struggled for an analogy there. Anywho. I'm sure there's more, but... I can't think o' 'em right now. I COULD mention Zelda : Wind Waker, but I'd get lynched... so I won't.

Ah, crap.

[cars01]

Crash bash in the crash bandicoot series.

[mikeymansimpsons]

Tomb Raider 3. Great series, bad game. No real "tomb" as much as it was globe trotting. Good game, but 1,2,4 and Anniversary win hands down. Angel of Darkness was the second worst, but only by a small margin. But AOD was rush released as saids by the animators in Anniversary's collector's edition DVD. Glad that Crystal Dynamics have breathed some life back into the series. So that's why 3 is the worst, because they were used to their one game a year process by that time and yet they STILL produced a bad game. I still like 3 though. 4 is ace but had mixed reviews.

Meh.

[BigButtSkinner]

Best series with one horrible game?

The Series: Zelda
The Game: Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link

The end.

I'll never understand why people don't like this game. It was always one of my favorites on the NES. But anyway.

It's still pretty new, but I hated Yoshi's Island DS. What is it other than the first game with an extra screen? The graphics and sound are identical, the gameplay is identical apart from some extra playable characters, and it's slow. The game is just boring.

And while we're on the subject, check this out:

Top 10 Worst Mario Games (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23547.html)

[H Thompson]

I never properly completed Tomb Raider 3, it's a sign that bigger doesn't always mean better, the levels are so relentlessly huge and daunting that's it's just no fun to tackle them, and constantly safe walking because they decide to throw unexpected traps at you every 10 seconds.

I never even bought Chronicles and AOD I didn't bother with because the reviews were so bad.
I have to say though the gaming press coverage of it confused me, in all the previews journalists were talking about how good it could be, how it would be cool that you'd get to do all this cool stuff, and go to all these places. And then when it came out, amongst the complaints of the controls and all the technical flaws were criticisms of it introducing elements like hand to hand combat, stealth and RPG elements which is so not what Tomb Raider is supposed to be about, but had they got it working properly, It seems like it could have been brilliant and more interesting than the "going back to basics route" Crystal Dynamics have taken, which is good, but just hasn't quite blown me away, it just seems like the safe and easy option.

[SudsMcDuff]

Metal Gear Solid 2. I'm sorry but every other Metal Gear has had an amazing story. This game? It was convoluted, confusing, and just plain bad! Fantastic series otherwise.

[block02]

I'll never understand why people don't like this game. It was always one of my favorites on the NES.

Probably because it's more of an RPG than a "traditional" Zelda game(although the "tradition" of the series hadn't been defined yet) and because of its insane difficulty.

Anyhoo back on topic: I pick Metroid Prime 2. The first Prime was great and this one was pretty good too, but the beam ammo thing killed a lot of fun and the light and dark world motif was way too derivative of LttP. Also, the screw attack(my favorite weapon of the series) seemed to be used for crossing large gaps much more than ripping through enemies. Hopefully Prime 3 will be better.

[BigButtSkinner]

Agreed about Prime 2. I bought it and got a ways through it, then just lost interest. Maybe I'll pick it back up before Prime 3 comes out.

[block02]

It's very difficult, especially for completionists such as myself.

[The God of all Jawas]

Splinter Cell Double Agent is much worse then the other Splinter Cell games. :(

but Conviction looks great! :)

[Kiyosuki]

Metal Gear Solid 2. I'm sorry but every other Metal Gear has had an amazing story. This game? It was convoluted, confusing, and just plain bad! Fantastic series otherwise.

I kind of liked the point behind the story. The ideas Kojima emphasized about the changing times culturally and how much of an impact that has on us, as well as our relation to the fast approaching future and how much the digital age is changing the very fabric of society I found to be really interesting. There are some things that could have been handled way better though, I like the idea of Raiden but some things were just way too overdone surrounding that character.

As for Metroid Prime 2, it was a little tough to keep playing in the middle I think because it had so much backtracking. All Metroids do but this was to the extreme. Its not just revisiting areas to find entrances to new ones, its doing a different version of the exact same area again and again for minute reasons. Its an interesting idea but I can definitely see how it was a bit of a bog to drag through. I think it picked up a lot the moment you got the Light Suit though.