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[Teneb]

-snip-

In case someone doesn't get why I said that: it's less formulaic and mechanical than previous BioWare writing (see my Let's Play of KotOR (I swear I will finish it, I just have been typing up too much stuff to have the will to type some more)). Mind, it still is formulaic and mechanical. Just, less so.

So instead of, say Garrus from Mass Effect, who can be defined as "cowboy cop that doesn't like to play by the rules" and has no depth other than that, we have stuff like Blackwall who

Spoiler: Actual spoilers (click to show/hide)

initially seems to be just a regular do-gooder, "hello I am a hero, let me save you now", but turns out to be a deserter, murderer and coward who stole the real Blackwall's name out of shame and fear

. Two dimensions, instead of just one.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well... There was this whole... Galactic threat thing... But I guess it wasn't important

That's called a plot, and it was present in all three games.
I was talking about specific player choices which could be reasonably expected to change how ME3 ends.

[Neonivek]

Well... There was this whole... Galactic threat thing... But I guess it wasn't important

That's called a plot, and it was present in all three games.
I was talking about specific player choices which could be reasonably expected to change how ME3 ends.

I was referring to that. You have

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The option to release a galactic threat

[Chiefwaffles]

You mean the insect-things in ME1?
I fail to see how that would affect the ending. Admittedly, ME3 addresses your choice in a bit of an underwhelming fashion (I'd say it should be like an actual dialogue or side-quest, but you just get a random guy telling you something then leaving), but it does. But how would it change the ending?

You know, I bet lots of ME3's perceived problems would be fixed if they added one of those "where are they now" epilogues like in Fallout 1 and 2. But regardless of that, I don't see how the insect-things would actually change the ending itself.

[nenjin]

I don't think this is going to be too popular, but Saints Row the fucking Third.

They took out the atmosphere of the world. No longer could you interact with it on the same level. In fact, you could barely interact with it at all.

They took out the diversity of the city. Instead of trailer parks, marinas, high-rises, forests and slums, we got copypasted, nondescript buildings and the occasional industrial area. 

They changed the pacing for the worst, having all the best weapons being granted very early on, and even the pre-mission cutscenes were removed. That's not even going into the customization lost, or the on-disc DLCs, or the missing activities, or the surprisingly easy gameplay, or how short all the above makes the game.

It had a few strong points, and even improvements, but it took out so much. How they managed to make a game with fucking superhuman brutes, the undead, (para)military organizations, and gangs that were much more interesting than the Not Yakuza, Jamaicans, and GENERIC TATTOO TUFF GUYS #52940 so boring is beyond me.

Never got Saint's Row 2 to work well back in the days of YYAARRRRRR, so SR3 was my first real intro to the series. And while I liked it, yeah, even I noticed that it was trivially easy. That every new gun or toy was good for some orgiastic killing and physics fun....and that was pretty much it. You did the dumb missions to get the dumb cars and weapons and outfits and....there wasn't much else to the game. Once the schtick was over the game felt surprisingly empty.

And then they released SR4 which pretty much invalidated all the GTA-like activities of the previous game and I just couldn't be assed, not after putting like 80 hours into Prototype, which was a game built to do what SR4 was only parodying.

[hector13]

This is why marketing is VERY important. Sometimes all a game needed to be well recieved was to be a sidegame.

Heck Yoshi Island was originally going ot be called Super Mario World 2 (to admit though... it probably would have still been well recieved)

It was called Super Mario World 2 :p

Assassin's Creed 3 was a bad one, if only for the last 2 hours of the game.

Basically they had a nice ending set up for both Desmond and Connor, fucked both of them up, and ultimately shat on the series.

Edit: I want to make clear I don't really like any of the AC games, but 3 is just the most egregious example.

[nenjin]

Assassin's Creed 3 was a bad one, if only for the last 2 hours of the game.

I'd argue the hours preceding the last two are pretty bad as well. I like AC and I still can't bring myself to finish 3 and get on to the ones that are reputed to be better. Not only is Connor just surly and whiny and annoying, it turns out swinging through trees and hunting game are way less interesting than blood letting at will in a city. While I may respect that they tried something different, the final product sticks out like a sore thumb in the rest of the series.

[hector13]

See, I rather enjoyed the rest of the game, indeed I was quite willing to say it was a savior of the series.

But then there were the last four story missions for Connor which were god awful, one of which was broken, how the final boss was killed, and Desmond's stuff, which, as a I say, what on the rest of the series.

It would only be worth it to see how badly they fucked it up, to be honest

[nenjin]

See, I rather enjoyed the rest of the game, indeed I was quite willing to say it was a savior of the series.

But then there were the last four story missions for Connor which were god awful, one of which was broken, how the final boss was killed, and Desmond's stuff, which, as a I say, what on the rest of the series.

It would only be worth it to see how badly they fucked it up, to be honest

As dumb as it sounds, you make a compelling case.

And if you weren't aware, AC3 was the last game by the guy who created the series before Ubisoft gave him the boot. That's why Desmond's storyline gets jettisoned for the most part, and why, with the exception of Black Flag, AC pretty much has been on a downward slop. (At least by my casual reading of the other game's reception.)

To me there was a lot more gold to mine after AC2. Like expanding the level of interaction in the cities. They went from none in AC1 (which to me is still kind of the most aesthetically evocative game of the series, and the best written), to generic upgrade-a-thon in 2, to slightly more interesting upgrade-a-thon in Brotherhood with the Estate and the Brotherhood and an attempt at multiplayer, to....some sort of weird hybrid action-strategy mini-game in Revelations? to.....crafting in AC3. Fuck. Loads. Of. Crafting. To boats and sailing in Black Flag. To...be honest I haven't really kept up with AC since that.

There are so many more ways they could leverage life and action within a city through your actions and behavior that they've never capitalized on. Like, remember when you're doing story events in 2 and Brotherhood and the layout of guards changes, the traffic density changes, hordes of guys might be there to fight or people might be hyper aware of you.....if Ubisoft would leverage that stuff dynamically as you play, in response to stuff you'd do, AC could become more like a sandbox and a hell of a lot more fun could be had in it. Instead they just keep tacking on more mini-games, more collectibles while the cities and the life blood of it just stay the game, adequate filler to make it all semi-believable and immersive.

[Retropunch]

The first AC was interesting, but Assassins Creed has always been on a funny ledge between RPG and action-adventure, but never very good at either. The writing/plot is too weak for an action/adventure, and the RPG elements are so 'lite' that it doesn't work as that either.

My most hated thing about the whole series though (after 2), is that it always feels like the developers aren't trying - it just feels like they're phoning it in and not really trying above the bare minimum. Even Black Flag, which was decent, was only any fun because it was the first game that really allowed you to do the sailing thing.

[Cthulhu]

Assassin's Creed 3 was a bad one, if only for the last 2 hours of the game.

I'd argue the hours preceding the last two are pretty bad as well. I like AC and I still can't bring myself to finish 3 and get on to the ones that are reputed to be better. Not only is Connor just surly and whiny and annoying, it turns out swinging through trees and hunting game are way less interesting than blood letting at will in a city. While I may respect that they tried something different, the final product sticks out like a sore thumb in the rest of the series.

I think all of the assassin's creed games are the worst sequels.  AC1 was interesting even if it was really formulaic in its design, and kind of limited.  It was new and exciting.  As the concept evolved they got farther and farther away from the core concept, the whole "assassinating" thing.  I can't remember really assassinating a single person in Revelations, for example.  And while I occasionally had fun in syndicate with the flashy, satisfying combat, it's been firmly settled in the Ubisoft "content" model of diluting nine hours of good game with twenty hours of doing the same shit over and over.

And I fucking hate the modern sequences.  Every time they make my blood boil.  "Hey, I see you're having lots of fun assassinating shit and being a badass, but I'm gonna go ahead and take you out of that for some stupid Dan Brown illuminati bullshit you don't care about."

[nenjin]

On the other hand, I generally liked the Dan Brown Illuminati shit when it was in-game, in AC2 and Brotherhood. Because you could do it at your leisure.

What really chaps me about the series is the writing. In AC1, the villains had semi-believable reasons for what they were doing. They believed they were doing the right thing and it was explained convincingly enough that I occasionally found myself asking if I was on the right side.

That level of sophistication in the writing was absent from 2 onward. The bad guys were Templars, they were more or less mean assholes and they couldn't really explain why they were doing the things they were doing. The whole act of confession from AC1 was a chance to understand your foe but in later games it was mostly a chance for them to say "Fuck you!" on last time to Ezio and the others.

That, and fucking space aliens.

[Neonivek]

To admit AC was kind of doomed so to speak when the game wasn't concluded in the second game.

It is kind of clear it isn't a series that is meant to really have a ending.

[Shadowgandor]

Sword of the Stars 2
The first game is still one of my all time favourite games both single player and multiplayer. It was a turn based 4x game with realtime battles, interesting research mechanic (RNG was involved, which forced you to adapt to your options), each race had its entire own play style and even to this day, the game looks pretty good.
Then came the sequel. For the first year or two, it didn't even run on most machines. It crashed after a couple of turns. The time it took for a turn to be processed was enormous. The normal "select fleet, right click to move them" system was changed to a mission based fleet system. Lets say you want to annihilate a population and colonise it the next turn. In the first game, you send a fleet to the planet, end of turn had a battle occurring, next turn you can select your fleet and colonise the planet. In the new one, you issue a bombardment mission, the fleet goes there, bombs till 0, then returns to base. Now you can issue a colonise mission, which had the fleet move to the planet again and colonise it. It felt so awkward and slow, which was made even worse by the long loading times.
What made it even worse is that the space battles actually look absolutely amazing in the sequel and the races were even better in terms of uniqueness. It was just hidden behind such an obtuse interface that it sucked all the fun right out of it. Multiplayer also had some major desync issues. I wanted to love this game so bad, but all I was left with was so bad

[CABL]

It's page 6 already and nobody mentioned Fallout 3 or 4. I guess bashing Bethesda's Fallouts is not in fashion anymore...

Unpopular Opinion: I think when Bethesda develops their games by themselves, the games are pretty meh (Skyrim, Fallout 3, 4), but their games are usually good when they are publishing them (Dishonoured, Fallout: New Vegas, Doom2016).

Spoiler: Off-Topic (click to show/hide)

P.S I don't hate Bethesda's games. I just don't find them fun. I also think that Skyrim is quite overrated (it is a decent game for 100 hours, tho). My biggest gripe with Skyrim was combat and difficulty dissonance.