Let’s talk about some of gaming’s most disappointing sequels

destructoid.com:

You’ll have a hard time finding a movie sequel that doesn’t pale in comparison to the original. Sometimes, it’s just hard to come up with a story that beats the one we all already love. Games don’t have that problem as making a better game usually requires the developers to just read player feedback and improve upon the original’s gameplay shortcomings. That’s, however, not the case in every single video game sequel. There’s a surprisingly high number of once-promising sequels that fumble hilariously in places where the original triumphed.

The Hype: Though Mass Effect 3 rocks on a technical level, it proved a step down from Mass Effect 2 in terms of writing and overall story. Yes, the awful ending was but a culmination of many other problems sowed by the third game. But that was a trilogy closer. No way that a fresh new start would bring back some of the old problems and even add more problems, right?

The Trainwreck: How bad is Mass Effect Andromeda? Well, you could easily come up with a credible fan theory explaining that it takes place entirely in Shepard’s final panic-induced nightmare as he slowly passes away from lack of oxygen while adrift in space at the beginning of Mass Effect 2.

I think Andromeda deserves our collective admiration because it doesn’t feel like a failed product. It feels like a product whose goal was to fail and succeed on all fronts. Everybody hated it upon release as glitches made it go from very weird to look at to straight-up unplayable. Ironically, I believe it got even worse when BioWare finally patched it into a playable state. Why? Because it turns out that hiding underneath all of the unforgettable animation glitches was a formulaic and unmemorable game that’s way below BioWare’s