http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3168894

The first Devil May Cry defined what action games during the PS2 generation should be, so of course everyone was excited about the inevitable follow-up. But when those first screenshots came out, the writing was on the wall -- the ugly, muddy environments were unappealing enough, but when Dante and Lucia (the second playable character) looked like they were made out of multiple staircases (due to the PS2's antialiasing problems), it wasn't clear if Capcom was intentionally going for that "made by child labor" visual style. And the game played just as good as it looked; chalk that up to Capcom not including director Hideki Kamiya in on his own game's sequel. The series has regained its former glory without Kamiya's direct supervision, but part two was a learning experience that nearly sank Devil May Cry. Now let's never speak of it again.

How do you follow up a revolutionary first-person shooter like Deus Ex? The simple answer: Don?t drop the complexity that made the original so different in the samey FPS genre. It's true that games like BioShock have toned down the RPG elements of their older siblings without suffering as a result, but Invisible War felt far too much like a remedial version of the original. Instead of taking advantage of greater technology to build bigger worlds with even more choices, Deus Ex underwent a dumbing down that stands out more as a wasted opportunity than the streamlining of a once-intricate game.

This disappointing sequel is an entry into the "what could have been" department. The original Super Mario Bros. 2, sometimes known over here as "The Lost Levels," was inexplicably designed so people would hate Mario and videogames as a whole. Super Mario Bros., once a charming land full of mushrooms and hills with eyeballs, was transformed into a nightmare filled with poison power-ups and blind jumps that left you at the mercy of irregular blasts of wind that would diminish what was left of your few remaining lives. Nintendo had the wisdom to see that the sadistic Japanese sequel to the groundbreaking original could have caused another videogame crash all by itself, so they re-skinned a much better game and introduced the world to throwing vegetables in a vaguely Mediterranean setting. Just think of all the childhood trauma they prevented.

Admittedly, Chrono Cross had a lot going against it. As a sequel to a fondly remembered SNES RPG created by a dream team of developers spanning multiple companies, Cross' existence alone almost seems like an act of hubris. Even so, this sequel didn't help matters much with its treatment of the source material; soon after starting a new game, you learn that the entire cast of Chrono Trigger was implausibly snuffed out offscreen -- the only way that this scene would have been more perfect is if the words "SCREW YOU" scrolled across the screen, followed by the game deleting the contents of your memory card. This disrespect to Trigger was bad enough, but original scenario writer Masato Kato decided to make the story an impermeable mess this time around instead of a charming and simple tale like the original -- blame this on all of the time Kato spent on the ill-fated Xenogears.

In the wake of the phenomenal Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it's ludicrous to think that anything Metal Gear could come even close to disappointing. But set the Wayback Machine to the fall of 2001 and you'd be amazed to see that hype for the original sequel was far greater than the seemingly world-ending PS3 iteration. The original Metal Gear Solid was a watershed moment for the evolution of videogames, and we all assumed -- or at least hoped -- that the sequel would do the same. But the final product was a game entangled in its own message and delivered right out of the school of Andy Kaufman. Metal Gear Solid 2 sought to alienate its players, and it did, though the charm of playing a fourth-wall busting prank was a little hard to swallow when the admittedly awesome gameplay bits got lost in a sea of meta. Luckily, 2004's Metal Gear Solid 3 was a true successor to the original and kept the goofiness in easy-to-digest intermittent bursts

I dont really agree with number 1

Number 1: MGS2?
I smell fanboys coming *run away*

MGS2 was crap, but not the most dissapointing sequel ever.

uh oh, here comes anger!

Wasn't there some Zelda 2 that was a weird side scrolling type affair that was a huge departure from the top down view of the first? Or did I dream that? And if that's real, was that a disappointment or nah?

 yeah there was one,but i havent played it so i cant say if its a dissapointment or not

I know Chrono Cross is kind of polarizing, but I think it's pretty brilliant. Having such a huge cast of characters an amazing enough feat, but the story works out pretty well regardless of which ones you use. And one of them is a Mexican wrestler! Take that, every other RPG!

Surely there are worse disappointments than Super Mario Bros 2, as well. It's fun in its way.

i agree

Oh, Lordy. Yes, this one definitely ranks. Worse than SMB 2 by a mile.

Lol, Lost Levels is beastly.

I got to World 4 where I apparently have to hit some invisible blocks to make a kind of staircase, but Mario doesn't jump high enough?!!??! And I can't get to World 4 with Luigi the slippery git.