Number Twos: 10 Sequels That Should Have Been Flushed

4/17/2009 5:24 PM | 28 Comments | Page 3 of 3

Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.

Winner of the Most Intrusive HUD Ever award. Congratulations, Warren Spector.

Deus Ex: Invisible War (Xbox, PC; 2004)

Why It Stinks: News-man James Fudge chimed in with his gripes on this one. "Let's see. The game was too short, the RPG elements were dumbed-down, the skill system was bastardized, there were technical problems because of pixel shaders (most graphics cards didn't support that technology at the time), and changes to the inventory system and ammo use, and the textures were generally poor. A lot of this was blamed on simultaneous development on Xbox and Windows." Hey, why don't you tell us how you really feel, James?

Cirque du Soleil is in town.

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Xbox, PS2, GameCube; 2004)

Why It Stinks: Sands of Time was, to my mind, basically perfect. Ubisoft didn't agree with me, so it took the sequel in a much darker, more "xxxtreme" direction. The result was a sillier, boobs-centric follow-up that featured a grungy version of the Prince, and a couple of songs -- I kid you not -- from Godsmack. In the words of William Shakespeare: "Ew."

"If you strike me down with your tiny penis, I will become far more powerful than you can imagine."

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES; 1988)

Why It Stinks: I deferred to Zelda fan John Teti on this one. "They made the action side-scrolling instead of top-down, which was a mistake. And for some reason, they threw in RPG elements like 'leveling.' So the whole time you were trying to pick the RPG raisins out of your Zelda cookie. The music sucked. And there weren't nearly as many cool toys to collect like in the other Zelda games, and thus the puzzles did not force you to use those cool toys in a creative way. Finally, Link's sword was this tiny little thing and it made me feel like he had a small penis." Thanks, John.

Beaming friendly messages, "Close Encounters"-style, didn't work.

Power Punch II (NES; 1996)

Bonus Video Footage: Power Punch II

Why It Stinks: This was originally designed as a sequel to Punch-Out!!, but when Nintendo stopped counting money long enough to realize how god-awful it was, it disowned the game, and released it as Power Punch II (though I personally can't recall there ever being a Power Punch I). After the Mike Tyson-like star of the game (name: Mark Tyler) declares to the world that no one can defeat him, aliens come to earth and challenge him. No, I'm not kidding. If you're feeling kind of low today, watch the video footage of the game. Check out the slug ring-card girl who appears between rounds. Trust me, it'll make your day.

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Comments

CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 7:01:40 PM

@RyanKuo:

well, according to my brother, they took abreak when developing Halo 2 ;)
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GusMastrapa (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 5:59:32 PM

@MSUSteve:

I'll agree that their investment in story (or was passes for it) is intense, but I'm going to say it's mislaid energy. And even though they fail in most regard (they can't tell a story, they're awful at designing levels) they are damn good at creating compelling play and awesome multiplayer. So yeah, half of the package is lame, but the other half is so good (and so worthwhile) that the shoddy stuff is easily forgivable.
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RyanKuo (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 12:10:49 PM

@MSUSteve:

Bungie have been obsessed with backstory at least since Marathon.
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MSUSteve
4/20/2009 12:08:02 PM

@JohnKeefer: Wow! Clearly there are people out there that eat that crap up. To me the Halo story is muddled and amateurish, composed mostly of stuff ripped off much better source material. Hearing Bungie folks talk about the story and their story bible and all that with so much reverence just cracks me up.

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JohnKeefer (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 12:00:41 PM

@MSUSteve:

Bungie and Microsoft take the story so seriously that they have commissioned an encylopedia about the Halo universe:

http://www.crispygamer.com/news/index.php/2009-04-07/halo-encyclopedia-coming/
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Crispy Specials
MSUSteve
4/20/2009 11:45:03 AM

@CG-Prophet: My comment about taking Halo fans seriously wasn't in any way directed at you, or anyone in particular. I was talking about the general universe of fans that like the Halo story. Sorry for any confusion there.

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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 11:39:30 AM

@MSUSteve:

I have trouble taking someone seriously who doesn't read the whole thread and my ealier comments. ;)

My brother, a weekend warrior gamer, was bitching about Halo 2, not me. Frankly I don't care about Halo at all.
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MSUSteve
4/20/2009 11:31:09 AM

@CG-Prophet: I don't want to get all Gus-level elitist, but I have trouble taking seriously anyone who thinks the Halo games have a good story. In fact, I think I enjoyed the story portions from the demo of Halo Wars far more than anything from the mainline Halo games. The radio drama thing (I Love Bees) was also pretty good. But yeah, obviously there were many people that felt let down by Halo 2's SP component, including the story, further indicating to me that it wasn't just something tacked on to go with MP, but something that was meant to be significant.

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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 11:22:11 AM

@MSUSteve:

Nevertheless fans loved the story and they wanted more Steve.

A fair number of them felt let down by that. There's no doubt about it.
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RyanKuo (Game Trust Writer)
4/20/2009 11:04:07 AM

I think it's important not to take creators' intentions too seriously. What you end up with most often has little to do with how you started.

Funny, I wrote an article about how L4D is no fun with three AI bots. (It's not.)

=_=;;;;;;;;;;;;;
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Crispy Specials
MSUSteve
4/20/2009 10:54:16 AM

@GusMastrapa: "Bitching about Halo 2's story is like saying Left 4 Dead is no fun when you play with three AI bots." I'd agree with you if it wasn't obvious that Bungie is utterly in love with the story and universe it "created" with Halo. I say "created" because if you go back to Halo 1, it was essentially a remake of Aliens, complete with a bad-ass black sergeant character. I get the feeling that those guys take the story and universe of Halo deadly seriously and would say it's at least as important as the MP aspects are. I mean look how secretive they were about the story of Halo 3. How long was it before we saw anything about the campaign of that game? Saying that the SP component of Halo 2 being terrible is excusable because the game was obviously made with MP in mind doesn't seem all that accurate to me.
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johnteti (Game Trust Writer)
4/19/2009 2:14:15 PM

@FrankCifaldi:

You're right, the sources I had relied on were wrong, my bad.
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FrankCifaldi
4/19/2009 2:06:47 PM

@johnteti:

Well, we can start with the Mike Tyson's Power Punch ROM itself, which is credited to American Softworks. Then we can look at this quote from issue #23 of Nintendo Power: "Boxing star Mike Tyson will return to the NES in American Softworks Corp.'s new Game Pak, Power Punch. It pits Iron Mike against interplanetary opponents where the final count is really final! One of the most appealing aspects of Power Punch is that you box as Mike Tyson."
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johnteti (Game Trust Writer)
4/19/2009 1:52:26 AM

@FrankCifaldi:

It's been known for a long time, certainly well prior to the recent GameSetWatch piece, that the game eventually released as "Power Punch II" was originally slated to be published by Nintendo as a follow-up to "Punch-Out!!" A cursory Googling will turn up a number of sources, predating the GSW post, that confirm this history. Do you have sources to the contrary?
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FrankCifaldi
4/18/2009 6:47:24 PM

@FrankCifaldi:

Previous comment was a misfire, what I meant to say was:

Boy, it's strange how one blog post on GameSetWatch revises history. Mike Tyson's Power Punch was never a direct sequel to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Nintendo had nothing to do with this game (other than the seal of approval). This is a third party product that was meant to be an unofficial "spiritual successor," not Punch-Out 2.
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Crispy Specials
FrankCifaldi
4/18/2009 6:44:58 PM

Boy, it's strange
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JasonMcMaster (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 2:20:41 PM

@GusMastrapa:

me too dude. Halo 2 was the shit in multiplayer.
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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 1:53:41 PM

@GusMastrapa:

He wanted more from the single player in Halo 2, I would imagine - as as you say he didn't care about multiplayer, which always struck me as odd.

I didn't say he was smart (I hope he's not reading today).

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GusMastrapa (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 1:40:00 PM

@CG-Prophet:

Interesting. I can pretty much guarantee that Halo 2 is the one I logged the most time playing. We threw some pretty epic Xbox LAN parties when that game came out.
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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 11:21:40 AM

@Adny:

Good for you, for standing up for Invisible War. Half of the public liked it and half hated it. Even though it broke my heart guess what game I bought on Steam? yep, Invisible War.
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Crispy Specials
KyleOrland (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 10:44:45 AM

@GusMastrapa:

Oooh, I probably blocked Sunshine from my memory when making that consideration.

OK, by far the weakest of the 2D Mario games.

Happy?
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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 9:55:01 AM

@GusMastrapa:

Gus,

My brother, who loved Halo 1 to death, bitches about Halo 2 SP to this day. He is one of those players that has beat the first game on every difficulty and he just loathes that game.
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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 9:53:08 AM

@johnteti:

I like the leveling system and the sword techniques, and the combat dance you do against some enemies (block/stab up/block block/stab up). You it's not much of a disagreement and frankly as Zelda games go my favorite in Minnish Cap. Hereo's Arms is a good example of how Nintendo should have created Zelda 2, BTW.

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johnteti (Game Trust Writer)
4/18/2009 12:11:16 AM

@CG-Prophet:

You're right, it's not awful. It's just last on the list of Zelda games with a bullet. It seems like your list of downsides is the same as mine, except you don't have any Freudian issues with the sword. That is healthy.

If I needed a Zelda fix, I definitely would not reach for Zelda II. I almost consider it outside the Zelda canon. If I needed a Zelda II fix, I'd probably play Battle of Olympus instead, which is similar to Zelda II but more fun.
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GusMastrapa (Game Trust Writer)
4/17/2009 9:36:15 PM

@Adny:

While we're at it? Is Kyle saying that SMB2 is weaker than Sunshine?
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Crispy Specials
Adny
4/17/2009 8:29:20 PM

Interesting read... For my money, Warrior Within was a good game, if not a good sequel. Yeah, way too much attention to boobies, but a pretty good game with plenty of exploration and deathtraps.

Invisible War is also one I kinda like, although it's a lousy sequel it does have a fairly 'deep' story (and yeah, it is too short)

I wonder how many more sequel apologists this one will bring out of the woodwork :p
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GusMastrapa (Game Trust Writer)
4/17/2009 7:43:23 PM

Jones already addressed this but Halo 2 was only a disappointment if you played only single player. Bitching about Halo 2's story is like saying Left 4 Dead is no fun when you play with three AI bots. Halo's problem is that the series was born in a time when you had to serve both audiences in equal measure. Remember how crazy Quake 3 was for having no single player. Now we've been eased into the notion that a game with one mode done right is better than one with two half-assed or one that's awesome on one that is turgid, stuffy and full of needless backtracking.
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CG-Prophet (Game Trust Writer)
4/17/2009 5:52:25 PM

II suspect there will be a lot of brawls about some of the games in here so i'll throw the first few punches.

John: I love Zelda II. Not a real Zelda game, but it wasn't an awful game either. I think the most off-putting things about the game were: how much grinding you had to do to upgrade your skills and the 2D fighting. Oh and the sounds in the game were horrific (that encounter noise still haunts me to this day). Still I have it on VC and i've been playing it when I need a Zelda fix.

On the whole penis thing: It doesn’t matter how big it is, as long as you get off. And link probably has a small penis.
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