Rotten Apples

Fibbers Games

Games that almost ruined an othwerwise perfectly good series.

Hitman Contracts

F1 2000

Tekken Tag

Anima

Tekken Tag was great. Tekken 4 was the disaster.

CiDeRmAn

Regarding F1 2000, F1 98 was one of the worst series games ever, it followed what is still one of the best F1 games ever F1 97 and I was assured by a Sony rep it would be great and when it appeared it stank like an old nappy, and on the PSone Need For Speed 2 nearly sank the franchise, it was truely awful.
Lets not forget Driv3r and WingCommander 4, the latter of which did kill the series, and WingCommander 3 was so good, especially if you had a 3DO!

Lemlin

Driver 2 and Driver 3. Driver 4 is at least restoring a bit of glory to the series.

Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness. Terrible game.

Perfect Dark Zero. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were both great.

Call Me Jimmy

fifa 2003 destroyed fifa as it went downhill after 2002.
fifa 2003 was possibly the worst football game I have ever played.

tman

i wasn't all that taken with Metroid Prime: Hunters
it just felt a little... "meh"
guess i was just expecting an engrossing 20 hour+ adventure in the style of Metroid Prime...

GrumPy

Halo2, and metal gear solid three was pants compared to one and two. - but still worth a play (ONCE)

Zombrex

Resident Evil 3 ... the words "horse", "dead" and "flog" come to mind .. thank God for Resi 4

And any of the Sims Expansions (all 6 million of them). It gives me a pain in my left testical to think how much money EA made with them off of poor non-gamer eejjits. Example of an intersting game, well designed and executed, just been ruined by money grabbing marketting suits ... Sims Rectal Exam Expansion anyone?

tman

Wicknight wrote:

Resident Evil 3 ... the words "horse", "dead" and "flog" come to mind .. thank God for Resi 4

i actually enjoyed Resi3 quite a lot
a hell of a lot more than code veronica, anyway...

jonnybadd

I have to agree with Tman, Code Veronica was the poorest of the main Resi's i thought, though none really compare to any of the Resi Survivor games or the Outbreak games.

4Xcut

Probably gonna get well and truely flamed but San Andreas. Not sure why all the things that made the others good were there, but it felt very lacking. I played the others nearly to completion and haven't even gotten to the 2nd city in san andreas. Just ruined the rep of III and vice city imho.

ShiverinEskimo

Doom 3

Dooom

UT2003, imo anyway. The new engine was novel, but the gameplay was lacking a lot when compared to UT.

Fibbers Games

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Regarding F1 2000, F1 98 was one of the worst series games ever,

Thats actually the one I meant I think. The one where the car looks all bent going around the corner?

tman

4Xcut wrote:

Probably gonna get well and truely flamed but San Andreas. Not sure why all the things that made the others good were there, but it felt very lacking. I played the others nearly to completion and haven't even gotten to the 2nd city in san andreas. Just ruined the rep of III and vice city imho.

i'm definitely with you on that one.
i got onto the third city but never really felt compelled to finish it. (compared to finishing vice city 100% from scratch twice:p )

Cuddlesworth

4Xcut wrote:

Probably gonna get well and truely flamed but San Andreas. Not sure why all the things that made the others good were there, but it felt very lacking. I played the others nearly to completion and haven't even gotten to the 2nd city in san andreas. Just ruined the rep of III and vice city imho.

You have my vote, its not that it was bad it just didnt do anything different from the last one. Ruined the whole concept for me.

Revelation Joe

Lemlin wrote:

Driver 2 and Driver 3. Driver 4 is at least restoring a bit of glory to the series.

I enjoyed Driver 2
Verily Driv3r did stinketh most heinously
As for Parallel Lines, it's pretty good but I'm still not happy with the aiming/targeting system

Del

Lemlin

Revelation Joe wrote:

I enjoyed Driver 2
Verily Driv3r did stinketh most heinously
As for Parallel Lines, it's pretty good but I'm still not happy with the aiming/targeting system

Del

Driver 2 was where it all started going downhill. It was released too early and could of done with at least another few months development. Alas, it sold by the bucketload on the back of the reputation of the first game and Reflections thought that they'd get away with releasing a shoddy product again with Driv3r.

Rainbow Six Lockdown is another very poor game in a series. I didn't like the way they dumbed the game down at all.

KdjaCL

All moh other than mohaa.


kdjac

byte

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Regarding F1 2000, F1 98 was one of the worst series games ever, it followed what is still one of the best F1 games ever F1 97 and I was assured by a Sony rep it would be great and when it appeared it stank like an old nappy,

Yes, have to agree, F1 97 was absolutely brilliant. But, as you say, whatever they had in 97 they totally lost in F1 98. Diabolical.

Lemlin

KdjaC wrote:

All moh other than mohaa.


kdjac

The original Medal Of Honour and Medal Of Honour on the PlayStation were very good. It was when the entire team fecked off to develop Call Of Duty that the game went downhill.

Medal Of Honour: Rising Sun..... just the thought of it makes me shudder.

Championship Manager is another series that has gone to feck since the developers, Sports Interactive, fell out with Eidos.

WellyJ

Lemlin wrote:

The original Medal Of Honour and Medal Of Honour on the PlayStation were very good. It was when the entire team fecked off to develop Call Of Duty that the game went downhill.

Medal Of Honour: Rising Sun..... just the thought of it makes me shudder.

Championship Manager is another series that has gone to feck since the developers, Sports Interactive, fell out with Eidos.

Yeh but SI still continue the series under the title "Football Manager",

Still as great as ever, avoid the CM series like the plague now.

BlitzKrieg

metal gear solid three was pants compared to one and two. - but still worth a play (ONCE)

can't agree with you here. MGS 3 was miles better then 2 Both gameplay and story made excellent improvements and its the only one of the 3 to get a proper reimagining in substence (MGS 3 Substance, new camera, MG 1 and 2 and multiplayer!)

Twin Snakes is the rotten apple of the MGS series, a great game redone in the worse possible way.

i actually enjoyed Resi3 quite a lot
a hell of a lot more than code veronica, anyway...

i thought both resi 3 and veronica were good, it went wrong with survivor and outbreak.


The sonic series has been going downhill since Sonic adventure 2, but its decline goes back further with the aweful sonic 3d and chaotix.

Blue shift is the weakest of the half life series.

command and conquer generals (saved by zero hour.)

Lemlin

WellyJ wrote:

Yeh but SI still continue the series under the title "Football Manager",

Still as great as ever, avoid the CM series like the plague now.

I'm well aware of that but it still seems a great pity to see the great name of CM gone down the plughole.

Football Manager is a class act though. I'm espeially enjoying the PSP version on the bus at the moment:)

CiDeRmAn

Star Wars Rebel Strike on the GC, Rogue Squadron series had been a good one til then and, frankly, how they could have released a game as broken as this is unbelievable, the on foot sections were more like some early demo, god only knows if the series can, or should, be revived.
With y'all on Medal of Honor Rising Sun, after Frontline was actually good fun they made the worst type of crap, of course by then Brothers In Arms and Call of Duty had shown us the way to true WW2 gaming happiness!

Cravez

Empire Earth 2 - The first empire earth was miles better and the second one looks kack with the 3d graphics.

Vietcong 2 - i was so disapointed with this game after enjoying the original so much.

Resident Evil Code Veronica & Outbreak - All the main resident evils were good, just that Code Veronica was the poorest of them and im not saying code veronica was bad, i actually enjoyed playing it but i enjoyed the others more. Outbreak was a brilliant idea just very poorly executed.

Command & Conquer Generals - i just didnt like this game one bit, it felt like playing a completely different game altogether than a command and conquer game.

Devil may cry 2 - nothing compared to the original and 3.

Hitman Contracts - as the OP already said this game, yes this is the worst of the hitman series, you dont feel like a hitman, just some guy who has flashbacks as missions.

Might & Magic 9 - If any of you are fans of the series like myself then you know you would have been disapointed of what would have been the first 3d version of a might and magic game. lets just hope dark messiah is a good comeback game

madrab

twisted metal black, loved the first 2 but this one annoyed me
all the tomb raiders apart from tomb raider 1
code veronica
doom 3

Retr0gamer

Suikoden 4 was awful stuff altogether. Thankfully Suikoden 5 is meant to be a return to form.

Sparkster the sequel to Rocket Knight Adventures was very meh.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance took the excellent FF Tactics name, dumbed it down and made it boring. Final Fantasy has a few duff games, FF2 was awful FF8 was comercial piss but not terrible. FFX2 however is a sham of a game. Dirge of Cerberus supposedly rapes the FF name as well.

Xenosaga was a pretentious and boring prequel to the fantastic Xenogears.

Wasnt all that fond of Medal of Honour Frontline. Two excellent opening levels and then boring corridor shooting.

Castlevania 64 was a little naff but nowhere near as bad as it has been labelled in some circles.

Slice

Super Mario Sunshine was so far off the mark compared to the main Super Mario series, and worse still - it was over-rated

Jimi-Spandex

Escape from Monkey Island. - Granted the third one wasn't as good as the first two, but it had charm and funny voice acting. This was shieeeite. Never should have been made. A black mark on the series.

Sonic 3D - I still can't believe I played through it several times. Utter garbage.

Kinetic^

Jimi-Spandex wrote:

Sonic 3D - I still can't believe I played through it several times. Utter garbage.

Ruined the series altogether, although I wasn't a fan of Sonic vs. Knuckles either!!!!

thelordofcheese

Actually, i blame Sonic Adventure for the ruination of the Sonic series,. but Sonic 3D was enough to make you cry.

Borat_Sagdiyev

4Xcut wrote:

Probably gonna get well and truely flamed but San Andreas. Not sure why all the things that made the others good were there, but it felt very lacking. I played the others nearly to completion and haven't even gotten to the 2nd city in san andreas. Just ruined the rep of III and vice city imho.

You're right in that it doesn't really do anything majorly different from VC or III in the first city, but you haven't seen any of the rest of the game. Its definately worth a go, but then again, I'm a GTA fan anyway so it would probably take a totally awful game for me to change my mind about the series (I still think 1 and 2 are good games!)

4Xcut

I wholy acknowlege that it was a well made game and i have played later parts on other peoples saves. I am a huge GTA fan, III and vice were 2 out of my top 3 games on the ps2, the other being FFX. I think it was just that gtaIII when you're 14 is so much better than the same game for the 3rd time when you're 17.

GTa III-Ground Breaking
GTa Vice City-Fixed a lot of the little flaws
Gta San Andreas-just not new

evad_lhorg

Ocarina of time. crap game. crap graphics... they all had pointy ears

Retr0gamer

Slice wrote:

Super Mario Sunshine was so far off the mark compared to the main Super Mario series, and worse still - it was over-rated

Oh come on. It wasn't as ground breaking as most Mario games but it was a fantastic game in it's own right. Probably the best platformer of this generation.

evad_lhorg

good god it was crap. ruined the series. thats what this is about and it did just that. i really hope they get rid of that awful thing where they just make you go into a level 15 times. "go beat an octopus in a race" "now go get 8 red coins" "now go get me some fresh cambodian breast milk".... its crap.


FLUDD? WTF?! more like WANNK

BlitzKrieg

I wasn't a fan of Sonic vs. Knuckles either!!!!

dont make me slap you

Sonic and Knuckles was the pinnacle of the sonic series.

rainbow kirby

Super Mario Sunshine is one of the worst games I've ever paid money for (admittedly only about a tenner, but still...). Luigi's Mansion is crap too.

CiDeRmAn

Loved Mario Sunshine, what was so wrong about the level goals amyway, no different than Mario64, think some of you are chasing that nostalgic memory of playing Mario64 for the 1st time and were disappointed when they didn't get the same buzz from Sunshine, but it was beautiful, really beautiful, I really loved cleaning the ink up as blobs of it were flying about and monsters oozing out from it, also the simple glare of the sunlight, lovely stuff, chasing that caterpillar around, I think it was Gelato Beach, wonderful, no one produced anything close to it during the previous gen.
Luigis Mansion was brilliant, great fun and a perfect little game, nothing on the same scalle as his brothers adventures but lovely, the way he hums the music as he is scared wandering the haunted halls, the way the vacuum sucks up cloth, the first time you look in a mirror in 1st person, each room more solid than anything I played before, great game, really, some people are unable to be objective.

Blub2k4

Super Mario Sunshine started crap and grew and grew on me, ended up loving it.

Carmageddon 2 really put paid to the fun in mowing down innocent bystanders by implementing a crappy driving system that made a sidewinder wheel feel like jelly, total rubbish after the first game.

madrab

i liked the second carmageddon, but the 3rd one (tdr2000) was abysmal

Borat_Sagdiyev

4Xcut wrote:

I wholy acknowlege that it was a well made game and i have played later parts on other peoples saves. I am a huge GTA fan, III and vice were 2 out of my top 3 games on the ps2, the other being FFX. I think it was just that gtaIII when you're 14 is so much better than the same game for the 3rd time when you're 17.

GTa III-Ground Breaking
GTa Vice City-Fixed a lot of the little flaws
Gta San Andreas-just not new

Not sure about that. There was no flying worth talking about in III, whereas one of the missions in SA requires you to shoot down two harrier jump jets with a harrier of your own.

There are loads of little things to keep you interested as well - the triathlons being one of them.

But if you don't like the game fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion.

thelordofcheese

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Loved Mario Sunshine, what was so wrong about the level goals amyway, no different than Mario64, think some of you are chasing that nostalgic memory of playing Mario64 for the 1st time and were disappointed when they didn't get the same buzz from Sunshine, but it was beautiful, really beautiful, I really loved cleaning the ink up as blobs of it were flying about and monsters oozing out from it, also the simple glare of the sunlight, lovely stuff, chasing that caterpillar around, I think it was Gelato Beach, wonderful, no one produced anything close to it during the previous gen.

Me too, i though mario sunshine was great. granted it wasn't as ground breaking as Mario64, but that doesn't take away from it being a damn fine game.

Trode

Not sure about that. There was no flying worth talking about in III, whereas one of the missions in SA requires you to shoot down two harrier jump jets with a harrier of your own.

Yeah, but proper flying was first introduced in Vice City, not San Andreas, so it wasn't new. You had planes and helicopters(and toy RC versions of same) with different controls and flight models(i.e. planes had to take a run at take off, copters had to be tilted forward to go forward).
Still, SA had a jetpack.

Borat_Sagdiyev

Trode wrote:

Yeah, but proper flying was first introduced in Vice City, not San Andreas, so it wasn't new. You had planes and helicopters(and toy RC versions of same) with different controls and flight models(i.e. planes had to take a run at take off, copters had to be tilted forward to go forward).
Still, SA had a jetpack.

Fair enough. But there were loads of things that were new to the series, even if most of them were small things:

swimming
girlfriends
triathlons
gym
buying clothes/tattoos/haircuts
custom cars
territory wars
mini games (pool, computer games, casino, etc...)
eating and the ability to gain/lose weight
parachuting
nitros on cars
dual weapons
etc......

So you can't really say that it didn't bring anything new to the franchise.

Trode

So you can't really say that it didn't bring anything new to the franchise.

I didn't, I even mentioned something new it did add. I was just pointing out that flying wasn't one of them.

Slice

No, In reckon Super Mario Sunshine could have easily been just any other platformer compared to previous Mario games - there just wasn't anything special, impressive or different about it. That said, neither did it have that special feel to it that most other Mario games have (I'm not talking about all the Mario spin-offs here but primarily the original platformer series).

CiDeRmAn

Well, each to his own I guess.

As for the GTA titles, I too found SA lacking, the atmosphere of the 1st one, GTA3 that is, put you inside the Sopranos, or perhaps Goodfellas, crashing into a car dealership for the 1st time and nicking a fancy sports car, then the 2nd, a pitch perfect ode to the media images of sunshine and cocaine driven excess from Miami Vice, beautifully complemented by one of the best soundtracks on any piece of entertainment, game/film/tv included.
But the 3rd, SA simply came across as a foul mouthed over extension of the franchise, the landscape too sprawling, unrealistic plotting, even for a game, that sees a just released gang member end up flying attack choppers and riding jet packs, kind of Boyz In The Hood crossed with James Bond, didn't capture my attention but for a short space of time, then I trickled along til halfway through the Las Venturas missions before getting very pissed off with it and so it hasn't been booted up in my PS2 for nearly a year now.

Driver 3 kinda made me believe that maybe SA was the best that could be done and maybe I set my sights too high but Driver Parallel Lines is really really good, Reflections, the developer, have stolen the march from Rockstar with a, so far, 70's based game with better graphics, better on foot action and a soundtrack almost equal to that of Vice City, all it lacks is the humour of that title, but then SA hadn't much in the way of goog laughs either.

I am looking forward to GTA LCS, I didn't play the PSP version but my brother has it on the PS2 and assures me its excellent so I am saving my pennies and keeping my fingers crossed that Liberty City really is a town I can come back to.

4Xcut

its not great on the psp.....i can't imagine the ps2 version being any better.
A port of a poor port

Cuddlesworth

Borat_Sagdiyev wrote:

Fair enough. But there were loads of things that were new to the series, even if most of them were small things:

swimming
girlfriends
triathlons
gym
buying clothes/tattoos/haircuts
custom cars
territory wars
mini games (pool, computer games, casino, etc...)
eating and the ability to gain/lose weight
parachuting
nitros on cars
dual weapons
etc......

So you can't really say that it didn't bring anything new to the franchise.

The problem I have with all that is that I see it as a minor annoyance. Where are the differences in the main game that make it different from the previous titles? Thats why I got so bored quickly. And thats why I see it as a rotten apple.