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."

The pain of sequels

[PreacherTom]

2 words: Deus Ex. Satis est.

Overanalysis...

[ivan256]

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'.

not Death Metal

[Sinryc]

Godsmack is not death metal.

Re:Nice ad placement

[Dev59]

Good sequels might not NEED a lot of advertising... but if they're sequels to big games they're going to get it anyways.

Re:I have only one answer to this:

[MBCook]

I commented on why I never played Prince of Persia: Warrior Within above, but I'd forgotten about Jak II. I really enjoyed Jak and Daxter and I was amazed what they did with the second. Not only was it put in the future and made edgy, they decided to give the characters GUNS. If the characters were different you'd probably have no way to ever know both games took place in the same universe.

Another game I didn't play because they screwed with the original too much.

I mean, why not just give Ryu Hyabusa of Ninja Gaiden a pair of Uzis? That's more "cool". Especially is he holds them sideways. "He was Gangsta before there was Gangsta."

Sequels should improve. They should innovate. They should not be carbon copy clones. But something more than the main character's names should stay the same.

I like sequals...sometimes

[miyako]

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.

Doom

[VGR]

From the article:

... Doom 2 - which was really just a set of new levels ...

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.