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The Curse of the Wayward Sequel
As big a part of the industry has sequels have become, they don't all turn out for the best. 1up takes a look at anticipated or promising sequels that just failed to deliver the goodness a second time around. From the article: "By the next Christmas season, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - except things had changed drastically. The biggest diversion was with the Prince himself, whose clean-cut looks were altered into a rugged, rock star style. Taking with that same theme, the soundtrack featured a sizable amount of death metal, including an anachronistic appearance by a Godsmack song. The fighting engine was improved over the original, but with it came tons of cheesy dialogue spewed out during combat."
Sounds to me like they wanted it to feel kinda like the DMC series?
Some amazing games resulted in sequels so bad or uninspired that they didn't even make it to market. I know this happened with Full Throttle , the success and humor of the first game was an accident, and you can't duplicate accidents according to market demand.
At least add something to it. Or next time, just post the link without your filler.
The ad I got just below the article was for Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm not sure they were going for when they bought that ad...
"As big a part of the industry has sequels have become, they don't all turn out for the best." What does that mean? "Sequels big, industry become part, all they don't best turn out for." "Sa gbi a prat of eht idutsnry sah sequles hvae bcemoe, tehy dnot lal trun tuo rfo eht bset." A Toyota's a Toyota.
2 words: Deus Ex. Satis est.
Most sequels are doomed from the start of ever being as glorious as their original. The idea for the original game is already in it's second (or third) iteration and stagnancy begins it's gradual decline.
In contrast most games that have overcome this obstacle usually prosper from a complete overhaul in storyline (FF 1 through whatever) or perspective (the Mario titles).
In the end it comes down to money. Sequels are safe bet from a sales and marketing perspective and the bottom line is the only thing that matters.
"You know it's sad but true." - Metallica
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
"Taking with that same theme, the soundtrack featured a sizable amount of death metal, including an anachronistic appearance by a Godsmack song." If Godsmack is the submitter's idea of death metal, then there are lots of things in my music collection that would break their mind.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
I can't even think of reading TFA based on the summary. I thought Warrior Within was the best in the current Trilogy. I found all the improvements made completely up to my expectations. The Prince's dark and brooding attitude of impending doom made it even more thrilling than the first. The mask of the wraith was a really neat plot device and mode of game play... although some of the temporal inconsistencies it introduced were a bit disturbing.
Overall, I'd highly recommend Warrior Within as a fitting and appropriate sequel. The Two Thrones was a bit of a step back to the original in terms of the Prince's temperament, but worth playing through.
Favorite Warrior Within Quote: "You should be honored to die by my sword!"
Fear is the mind killer.
Anything that allows you to so brutally hack an opponent to pieces in kinetically fluid combat has my vote. The combat makes the game the sheezy. Of course, I'm not a hard-core PoP fan, so I don't have to suffer the changes the way I do with, for example, the 1984 Dune movie.
Best combat I've ever experienced in an over-the-shoulder martial arts style game, though.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Everybody always thinks too hard about why Warrior Within wasn't good. Perhaps it is because people don't want to admit to themselves that the combat doesn't make the game?
Here's the deal. The Sands of Time was an excelent environmental puzzle game with some crappy fighting. The Warrior Within was a crappy 3D fighter with some mediocre environmental puzzles. Neither the music, the mood, nor the combat engine had anything to do with what made the games good or bad.
It's OK to admit you like an adventure/puzzle game. It doesn't make you less 'hardcore'.
Yes, I know Spyro pulled off the whole 'sucked into a new world' bit, and hell, R&C did it too, but Jak II took a decent mute protagonist and animal sidekick, and:
1) Shunted them into the Future
2) Tortured the main character for TWO YEARS (and this was IN the prologue)
3) Made him talk and basically turned him emo, and gave him 'eco-morphing' powers and a gun.
... the original was a platform/collector-style game with minigames. They don't even PLAY the same. Yes, sequels are meant to be different, but not THAT different. On top of that, in spite of the 'sprawling' world that the original Jak & Daxter made famous, the gameplay itself felt incredibly linear.
How the hell Naughty Dog pulled it off is beyond me... it's a great game, but a complete sellout of its premise.
I remember the first game. I got it real cheap because the third one was about to come out I think. It was okay. I think the most interesting part was jumping off of the ledges and wasting my rewind power when my friends were watching. First time they were impressed. 50th a bit agitated...
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Command and Conquer was worlds funner and less buggier than its sequel. At the end of C&C, it advertised C&C2. So everyone wanted to play C&C2. C&C2 sucked.
God spoke to me.
Godsmack is not death metal.
Yay, I have a sig.
Duke Nukem Forever, 4tw. Due out any year now.
the Prince of Persia was turned into a rugged rock star, as opposed to the effeminate, but also rocking, Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Persia.
Then again, I wouldn't go up against the latter in a game of "First to Impale the Other On A Floor With Metal Spikes Wins."
Seriously, to have a Tomb Raider game where you don't raid any tombs was just the ground-glass icing on the turd cake that was AoD. (And we got Angry Emo Lara a few years before the MySpace Prince.)
You must think in Russian.
I thought the fighting in Sands of Time was pretty cool. I was really worried that I was going to have a big problem with it, since the way I process 3D spaces I have trouble aiming from a 3rd person view. Nope, no problems at all, the game handles it. The combat looks impressive, but it very simple to control. Like you said, it's a puzzle game. So the combat shouldn't require hours upon hours to learn. Well, with the model it has, it doesn't. It's a fun addition to make it not just about puzzle after puzzle, but it's easy enough to control that you can just do it.
I disagree about the enviornmental puzzles in WW. I thought they were best in WW. I did like SoT more though, due to less emphasis on combat, although what was there was terribly painful. OTOH, the combat in WW was often of such extremely variable difficulty as to drive one insane.
Yeah, the puzzles though. In WW, they were the best. They were larger, more intricate, more difficult, and more beautiful. And the Dhaka(that what it was called?) sequences were amazing and intense -- insane 3d platforming in a hurry! In the final game... they improved the combat, reduced the amount of it, yet, visually, it looked terrible in comparison to the first two games(a matter of artwork I think, not technology), and the platforming sequences were just boring. Still worthwhile though.
It's as if Ubisoft was abso-fucking-lutely dead set on NOT making a perfect game. And they were so damn close..!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
People like to complain about sequals for video games, and I admit that a lot of times it becomes ridiculous, but I think that there are a lot of instances where sequals are really welcome and add to the overall series. The fact is that most often when I think of games, I think "what is my favorite series".
Mario, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk, Metroid, Tekken, Zelda, how many people are really doing to go "damn, not ANOTHER Zelda game, try something original nintendo!".
The problem really is when a company runs out of ideas (or at least out of good ideas) and tries to use the name of a great game or series to sell crap. It's bad for gamers who are tricked into buying crap, and it's bad for publishers who ruin the name of a great series.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Yeah, just new levels.
Except for the pain elemental. And the arachnotron. And the mancubus. And the revenant. And the arch-vile.
And the super shotgun.
The additions are a masterpiece orchestration of game balance. I guess Kurt Kalata never actually played it.
The Internet is full. Go away.
MGS 2. Zelda 2 Adventure of Link. Doom 3.
Insteresting that they named those three. With Metal Gear Solid 2, I've heard nothing but praise for it, except for the fact there's a great deal of cutscenes, but fans of the series don't mind. Raiden might not be loved (I like his animations) but he didn't kill that game, in fact I'd rank Metal Gear Solid 2 higher then Metal gear solid 1 just because there was so much interaction in the world. I've heard far worse things said about Metal Gear Solid 3 (in fact many fans just didn't finish much of it).
Adventure of Link isn't exactly a sequal unless you mean a game where everything is completely different except the story. top down vs. Side scrolling. RPG style vs adventure. The only similarities tend to be the main character and it's a story sequal. Imagine if the next Metal Gear solid is a RPG. Is that a sequal or an offshoot? I don't love the game, but at the same time I don't know many people who call it a sequal unless it's the same way Yoshi's island is a "sequal".
Doom 3 is a retelling of the original. The only real complaint I ever heard is it's not too scary and it's dark. Not exactly bashing but then again is it a sequal? Not exactly or at least a sequal that came over 10 years later. Who expected it to be as good now there's competition.
Why not take stuff like Devil May Cry. Xenosaga (which never reached Xenogears' levels of popularity) or Final Fantasy X2, Might and Magic 9, Dynasty Warriors 4, Tony Hawk Under Ground (or the sequal or the American wasteland), or Tomb raider. They did nail some egregious errors (deus ex 2, Final Fantasy 8) but it seems they could only think of a handle full and just looked for games that grew some hatred, but wasn't exactly "bad" games.
Tribes 3
MOO3
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Most of the points were already discussed in this recent thread. Still, I think it bears worth mentioning that a lot of times, sequels represent a refinement of the original idea. Sure, a lot of times, they suck. But sometimes they extend or even surpass the original idea that spawned in the first game.
Game sequels still stand an infinitely better chance of being better than their predecessors compared to movies.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
D:
They just put it in different boxes.
And slaverling button bashers buy it and think they're cool.
Losers.
Real Gamers have PCs.
I wholly agree with the series statement; I'd add that any imaginable series WILL produce junk sequels at some point, especially given multiple existing iterations on a similar theme. At some point, someone will get overambitious, throw away a definitive characteristic, attempt to change/incorporate an incompatible platform, add multiplayer options where they didn't belong, REMOVE critical aspects of multiplayer functionality, or otherwise botch the sequel. All of the big console series have their failed experiments; the same is true of PC games. To name a few series currently unmentioned, consider Fallout, Tribes, and Simfoo (anyone remember SimAnt/SimTower fondly?). Each of these series contain Top-10 listworthy games; they also contain titles not worth a full playthrough. Two of the series seem to have been tanked by their failures; on the other hand, the Sim series is moving on towards some sort of all-inclusive magnum opus. Scientific estimations predict that Spore is going to sell approximately a jillion copies; in point of fact, it's got broader appeal and more potential than any Sim game to date, but a big part of its sales rest on the series's established quality. On the other hand, a new Fallout game might be a harder sell, since many "newfound" gamers never encountered the series, but I for one would slap down $60-70 on opening day for a copy. Branding lives on and DEFINITELY has powerful effects...
Oh boy... dude, I don't think you could be more far off. In looking back on many long-running series, it's almost an assurence that the second game is the weakest. Let's see:
- Final Fantasy II (Japanese) - commonly criticized for having one of the worst magic/stat systems in RPG history
- Mario II - if you're counting The Lost Levels, then I need not explain myself. Meanwhile, Mario 2 USA, while still pretty good, is usually considered one of the weakest in the series
- Metroid II - I happen to dissagree with this, but it's still a common conception that this game isn't very good
- Zelda II - Highly revered for being "unique", highly criticised for being almost entirely unplayable.
- Devil May Cry 2 - need I say more?
- Halo 2 - well, we'll have to see if the rest of the series can hold up
- Metroid Prime: Echos - not terrible, but miles below the first
- Xenosaga 2 - argggg
There's only a very few examples where Game #2 was considered one of the best in the series:I'll argue that for video games, Game #3, more often than not, is a defining moment in the series, just look at this list of just a few #3 games:
In fact, almost no long-running series I can think of has a bad #3 game. If #2 is good, #3 will usually be good (Mega Man, Sonic, incluced), if the #2 game sucks, well there's a very good chance of redemption at #3. Many series, however, had such weak #2 games that the series died right then and there.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
was the best of the renegade series.
co-op multiplayer where you could hold an assailant by the shoulders while your team mate beat him up.
Ladies of the night who would hold you by the shoulders and knee you in the groin. Then you could do it back to them! Great fun.
Renegade 1 and 3 were poor by comparison. I always thought this series was superior to the more famous double dragon as well.
Syndicate Wars
X-COM: Terror from the Deep
Wing Commander: Privateer 2
Ultima 8 (9 is just a given, of course)
You're damn right about the bugs in Warrior Within. In fact, I put a lot of hours into that game, got to the very end, yet couldn't finish due to a gameplay bug. All 3 of my saves were corrupted(GC version).
The bug in question was mentioned on Ubisoft's website. They provided no fix, no workaround. The only solution? Play the entire game over, and *PRAY* it doesn't happen again. Not even a mention of how to avoid triggering the bug.
So I sent Ubi a nasty(no, not like my posting history sort of nasty) email and traded the game in.
Cheers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
However when they start work on a new game in the series they have a bit of a dilema. If they stick with the same forumla and mechanics as the previous game they're going to be acused of just milking the franchise, so they usually try to change at least a few things. However when they change things around the risk alienating the fans. Add on top of this that the new game is frequently made by a different team, sometimes an entirely new team, sometimes even at a different company, but even if it's with the "same" team there's usually been some turnover in terms of individual employees. So a different group of people is trying to make a game that's at least somewhat different from the previous one and in effect they are rolling the dice on the percieved quality of the final product.
This makes it similar to the "curse" that follows sports stars who are featured on various magazines and products that the Straight Dope analyzed awhile back (you can look up the exact column yourself if you wish.) They pointed out that such acolades are given to atheletes that have just experienced an exceptional year, just as sequels are usually financed for games that did exceptionally well or were exceptionally well recieved. Statistically speaking it is unlikely that the next game/season will be just as exceptional as the previous one. So it may seem like a "curse" or a tendency to "ruin" sequels, but a lot of it is really just probability and statistics.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It's funny you should say that. The dev team for RA2 _hated_ Tiberium Sun :) We didn't like the gameplay, we didn't like the graphics, and we definitely didn't like the codebase we had to work with (RA2 used fundamentally the same engine as Tiberium Sun.) There was much rejoicing the day we finally got rid of the last placeholder TibSun units and graphics, not just because it was an obvious sign of progress but because it meant we didn't have to deal with anything from TibSun anymore aside from the code itself *shudder*
Anything with the Fallout name other than Fallout and Fallout 2 is not an actual Fallout game. It's just some crap made by Interplay with the Fallout name slapped on it to sell copies. They are not sequels and not actually part of the series in any way.
>> SimAnt
Awesome game.