10 Video Game Sequels That Fixed NOTHING

When it comes to continuing popular franchises in gaming, sequels often carry some lofty expectations. They have to match the originals that spawned them, whilst going up against ever-changing trends in the industry overall.

Many of the disappointing follow-ups we've seen over the last couple of decades either buckled under the pressure, or ended up going in the wrong direction. With their offerings ranging from ho-hum to pitiful, there are certain main releases that deserve the badge of shame for failing to move forward.

As a rule here, we're keeping to one game per franchise and staying well away from annualised releases and the changing live-service genre. Not all the games on this list are outright terrible, but for the amount of time and effort poured into their production, they dropped the ball when it came to making worthwhile improvements on their predecessors.

Whether they were riddled with bugs, downgraded from what came before or simply refusing to go beyond the status quo, let's dive into the sequels that stagnated the most.

Releasing in the thick of the mainstream FPS craze in 2012, Medal of Honor: Warfighter became a textbook example of how to blend in with the modern military crowd without improving on its 2010 reboot. Its bland story and underwhelming multiplayer were bad enough, but the worst offender of the package was its mind-numbingly scripted campaign.

This story mode in particular refused to trust the player with anything beyond the most basic actions, defaulting to cut-scenes and constantly directing the player down its narrow corridors. The late TotalBiscuit even made a revealing video lamenting Warfighter's ridiculous kill barriers and seemingly endless rail-roading.

Being linear to a fault was a plague on first-person-shooters for some time, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter, for all the effort poured in, had no excuse for falling into formulaic territory. This trend was punished handsomely by dwindling sales shortly afterwards.

For a time it looked as if EA was putting together a production line of FPS franchises; DICE does the larger scale Battlefield one year and Danger Close Games with the closely knit Medal of Honor the next. After the latter was shuttered by the publisher in 2013, we haven't heard from the once venerable franchise since.