5 absolutely awful video game sequels

We’ve all had the experience of playing a game, and knowing within the first five minutes that it is going to be a winner. That it’s going to change your life. That it’s something you will forever look back on and think — that game was amazing.

So imagine your excitement when you see that a sequel is being made. The anticipation! You lie awake at night for hours imagining how it will look, what new characters there will be, thinking about how many hours you’re going to dedicate to playing the most amazing sequel to the most amazing game you’ve ever played.

And then… it comes out. And you know within the first five minutes of putting it into your machine, that this is not the game you thought it was going to be. And the disappointment is crushing.

These are the games that made us feel as if there was no hope left in the world of gaming.

Super Mario Bros 2

You might be surprised to see this game in here, if only because in all our heads, Super Mario Bros. is always awesome, right? Uh, not in this case. Super Mario Bros. 2 is a direct copy of a game called Yumi Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, and was simply re-skinned with Mario characters. It both looks and feels like a half-assed job and given the popularity of Mario at the time, no doubt everyone thought they could get away with it. What’s worse is that it really doesn’t feel like a Mario game. Instead it feels like a generic and forgettable platformer. Luckily for Nintendo, it quickly followed this up with a third Mario game, which was awesome, so in this case the company is mostly forgiven.

Driv3r

Driver and Driver 2 were immensely popular, and with good reason. They combined racing, shooting and action into one game for a result that was, quite honestly, awesome for its time. Sadly Driver 3 (oh sorry, Driv3r. What a dumb name) was incredibly boring. The first games were fast-paced and dynamic, but this game just sucked. The game mechanics were incredibly outdated, and you spent more time getting out of the car walking around on foot (which kind of defeats the purpose of the name doesn’t it?) engaging with a story that, to be honest, was crap. It was also surrounded by scandal when it was discovered that Atari had actually bribed a number of magazines to give the game a high score.

Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 4 was awesome. Great gameplay, awesome storyline, classic survival horror. Resident Evil 5 was mediocre and filled with controversy over its setting. Resident Evil 6 was a piece of crap. It wasn’t scary — in fact it had moved almost entirely away from its survival horror roots, which is really what made the franchise so popular, and the action was pretty generic and forgettable from start to finish. Yes you can play as different characters with different fighting styles, but RE6 felt rushed and turned from an awesome franchise into a sub-par third-person shooter that all of us who played it would rather forget.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

What could have been a pretty amazing game considering the success of the first one, turned into a dismal disappointment with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. The original game expanded on the Star Wars universe and gave players a sense of the greater whole. It was also the first incredibly successful Star Wars game after a number of disappointing releases, so of course we all had high hopes for the sequel. Unfortunately it had an underwhelming storyline and increasingly frustrating boss battles, and it all seemed like an obvious attempt to cash in on the first game financially without putting in much effort. Uninspiring.

Duke Nukem Forever

This. This is the worst sequel ever made. Fifteen years of development and four developers later, Gearbox Software eventually said f*** it and released the most awful Duke Nukem game ever. Clunky controls, insanely long loading times, awful, dated design flaws, humour that wasn’t even clever, it was just juvenile and offensive. Oh and did we mention the awful level design? Duke Nukem Forever is the game that should have been canned when it changed developers the first time. And the second. And the third. If you were reminiscing about the original Duke Nukem, go back and play that one — steer clear of Forever.

And the moral of the story is?

Sadly, the moral is that just because it carries the name of your favourite game ever, it doesn’t mean that it will be any good. To be fair, there are a number of amazing sequels to incredible games, so it’s certainly not a given that all sequels will be terrible. Most of them are likely to be decent in fact, but sadly there is the odd occasion where the disappointment is just soul-crushing.