There are bad games, and then there are betrayals.
Sequels that don't just fail to live up to the hype but actively desecrate the memory of the classics we loved. They're a special kind of failure, and it's the gaming equivalent of your favorite band selling out, your favorite streamer getting caught cheating, or finding out that the restaurant you've spent most of your childhood weekends has been serving you microwave dinners all along.
For games, these are the sequels that killed franchises, ended all possible comebacks, and taught us that sometimes, waiting for decades doesn't really mean anything. From legendary disasters, false promises, and cash grabs, these are the video game sequels that caused disappointment, rage, and left us with the question of: "How can you really screw up this badly?"
10. The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
Telltale's The Walking Dead series made us care about Clem more than most of our real relatives. So, when A New Frontier sidelined her for a protagonist nobody asked for, it felt like watching a Pirates of the Caribbean movie without Captain Jack Sparrow in it.
Don't get me wrong, Javier was okay as a character, but "okay" isn't why we bought this Telltale game. We all wanted to see Clem's story continue, especially after watching her grow throughout the entire series. But what we got instead are occasional cameos in someone else's family drama. It was so disconnected from what we've wanted all along that even if Telltale went back to refocus on Clem for the final season two years later, it was too little, too late.
9. Overwatch 2
Sometimes a game doesn't even need to have a sequel, and this was most certainly the case for Overwatch 2. Blizzard took Overwatch 1, changed it from 6v6 to 5v5, added new maps, new heroes, and basically deleted the original game from existence.
It was such a hostile takeover that to this day, I still don't understand why all the changes introduced in Overwatch 2 couldn't have been included in the original. It was practically a "light update" that certainly doesn't merit creating a new game, and it didn't help that players who bought Overwatch 1 at full price watched the franchise transform into a free-to-play game with monetization all over it.
Overwatch 2 was also overshadowed by unfulfilled promises, including a PvE campaign and smaller story-based missions that were meant to shed light on how Overwatch came to be, but were eventually all scrapped in an aggressive shift to focus more on what worked in the first game: PvP and Esports.
8. SimCity (2013)
SimCity (2013) wasn't just bad at launch. It was a masterclass in how to destroy a buyer's trust and goodwill. One major flaw is that you always need to be online, even for a single-player experience, because EA's infinite wisdom believed that it was wise to require perpetually online play as a form of DRM to prevent piracy.
However, this wisdom didn't extend to investing enough servers to handle the requests on day one, and most people were placed in a queue, which lasted from a few minutes to a few days. That's how bad it was, and we can now only imagine the rage that people felt, especially those who pre-ordered the game and were met with a busy server.
That's not all, though, since SimCity (2013) was plagued not only by connection issues but also problems with its cloud-only saves, where players have reported losing their progress and sometimes entire cities. Worst of all, SimCity (2013)'s glaring failure lies in the city size itself. The maps were so limited that they felt more like cramped small towns rather than the sprawling metropolis that we all expected from a game called SimCity.
7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2
The first Force Unleashed wasn't at all a perfect game, but it told a compelling story about Darth Vader and you as his secret apprentice. It's a storyline that added new intrigues and sparked new interest in the Star Wars universe at a time before the J.J. Abrams movies and the Jedi: Fallen Order games.
However, when The Force Unleashed 2 came out, it took everything interesting about that story and threw it out the airlock. The plot was a sloppy mess, and the campaign was too short with repetitive level design that had you fighting the same enemies in similar-looking corridors, and boss fights that made lightsaber combat so boring that it killed any chance of The Force Unleashed becoming a proper trilogy.
6. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
After 20 years of waiting for a sequel to the cult classic Vampire: The Masquerade, what we got in 2025 was a game that doesn't really have its own identity.
Initially announced in 2019, it was originally being developed by Hardsuit Labs before Paradox fired them in 2021 and handed it to The Chinese Room, a studio with just a few games under its belt, and was more known for walking sims rather than a first-person RPG. Dan Pincheck, one of its co-founders, later admitted that they were essentially handed a grenade and were in talks with Paradox about dropping the "Bloodlines 2" brand name in its title. The rest is history.
So, is it truly that bad? No. But it's clear that it didn't carry the appeal of the original game, let alone live up to the franchise's namesake. What The Chinese Room created here is a Vampire game, but it's clear that it's not Bloodlines worthy.
5. Dragon Age II
Dragon Age: Origins was an epic fantasy RPG that let you explore vast landscapes and make world-changing choices. Dragon Age II confined you to one city and its outskirts, with copy-pasted environments that were so noticeable that it became its own running joke.
It's one of those games that was rushed in production, and it showed. Instead of the familiar tactical combat that made Origins a household name, Dragon Age II simplified everything with few strategic options, spells, and even fewer abilities in pursuit of style over substance, yet still failed in achieving both.
BioWare would eventually redeem itself with Dragon Age: Inquisition, but Dragon Age II remains a cautionary tale about what happens when big publishers choose to cash in quickly by pushing devs to intense release dates faster than they can actually make them.
4. Life is Strange: Double Exposure
It's not too uncommon for a game to change hands. Sometimes, an indie dev will hand over the reins of their hit game to a AAA publisher, who then decides to pass it along to yet another developer. Amidst all of the financial constraints and corporate rollercoasters, the ones who suffer most are the players, who bear the crushing weight of these divided visions. That is the story of the Life is Strange franchise.
The series has told several stories with unforgettable experiences across its multiple installments, but if you ask me what my favorite Life is Strange series is, then it's got to be the first one created by DontNod. It holds a special place in the hearts of many, thanks to its raw emotional coming-of-age story and unique time-rewind mechanic.
Unfortunately, with Life is Strange: Double Exposure under a different developer, Max's story took a turn for the worse, and I feel like the package missed the mark by introducing a confusing timeline system, characters that are hard to relate to, cringey conversations, and a plot that spiraled into a tangled mess of wasted potential. It felt like this wasn't the Max we all came to know and love. It was difficult to believe she would settle for a circle of friends like this, and even harder to accept her role as a teacher, given how little respect those around her seemed to show.
As a fan of the series, the nostalgic opening fades into exhaustion as you try to follow the Twin Peaks level of character dialogue that we're all forced to take seriously. It doesn't help that you are constantly exploring scenes over and over, and that's "doubled up" because you're now exploring them in two different timelines. There just isn't enough substance in this game, and while I really like Max and her sassy comments about everything, it wasn't enough to carry the game.
3. Mass Effect: Andromeda
The original Mass Effect trilogy is one of gaming's greatest achievements. Mass Effect: Andromeda is one of gaming's funniest memes.
This game is yet another victim of upper management pushing the devs to rush a game that's not ready to be released. The result is a sloppy mess of facial animations so contorted at launch that they spawned thousands of meme videos and T-poses online. And even after patches fixed these technical issues, Andromeda's real problems remained, which are boring characters and a plot that's so terrible that the game felt like fan fiction. Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect: Andromeda has its moments, and there are times when it recaptures the magic of the landmark trilogy that came before it.
But without a consistent narrative, strong storytelling, or a breakout star to carry it through the long, tedious hours and empty spaces, it remains the most forgettable Mass Effect game to date.
2. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
Warhammer 40:000 Dawn of War III is what happens when you try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one. For a little bit of history, we've had two completely different but equally great games under the Dawn of War franchise. Dawn of War 1 was a classic RTS game with base-building, mods, and massive battles, and Dawn of War 2 ingeniously ditched that base-building in favor of an intimate squad-based tactics game with some RPG elements mixed in.
But in a wild gamble to get into the esports scene, Relic, its developer, decided to chase the MOBA trend. As you may have guessed, Dawn of War III turned into a game with no real identity, which led to an eventual shutdown just less than a year after it launched. It was such a bad game filled with negative reception and horrible direction that it killed the entire franchise.
1. Duke Nukem Forever
No game better represents the danger of infinite time and money than Duke Nukem Forever. After spending 15 years in development, long enough that the game was rebuilt in 4 different game engines, what we still got was a game that felt 15 years old on the day it released.
Duke Nukem was first announced in 1997. By the time it was released in 2011, we had gone through 3 console generations. The iPhone had been invented, and Facebook went on to have 800 million users. Entire franchises were born, lived, and died in the time it took this game to get out of development.
And what did we get for all that waiting? A corridor shooter in an era of sandbox and open worlds. Duke Nukem Forever was so out of place by the time it released that the humor it was known for, which was edgy in the '90s, was just flat out embarrassing in 2011. It was a game that was supposed to revolutionize shooters, but ended up as a fossil in the world of gaming.
The sequels on this list failed for different reasons, sometimes it's rushed development, a misunderstanding of what players want, technical issues, or simple hubris. Either way, they took something people loved and gave them something they didn't recognize.
So let these games serve as reminders that sequels aren't just about slapping a "2" on the title and calling it a day. It's all about honoring player trust and tapping into the shared nostalgia that made the original special in the first place.
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