20 Gaming Moments That Insulted Your Intelligence

3. Neil Is Cliff 2.0 - Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Death Stranding 2 sure had a lot to live up to where its secondary villain was concerned, considering how instantly iconic Mads Mikkelsen's Clifford Unger was in the original.

The sequel's equivalent, a Solid Snake-looking soldier by the name of Neil Vana, certainly had promise on paper, though ultimately Kojima went way too far in having Neil more-or-less repeat the same beats as Cliff.

That is to say, Neil is also a recurring boss throughout the game who shows up with a group of spectral soldiers to hunt the player across a number of surreal battlefields.

And if that's not samey enough, Neil is also a haunted figure with ties to protagonist Sam's past, just as Cliff was in the first game.

Ultimately for all of Hideo Kojima's efforts to make Death Stranding 2 a bigger, better sequel, pretty much everything about Neil felt like a lazy copy-paste of what he did with Cliff in the first game.

Needless to say, if Death Stranding 3 does happen, there will be many eye-rolls if Kojima rehashes the Cliff formula once again.