Game sequels that are better than the first game

[Lance]

Super Mario Brothers 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Completely agree. I'm not sure if any 'classic style' Mario game since SMB3 has quite been as good as it. SMW was okay, but somewhat overcooked IMO, like they were trying just a little bit too hard to make it bigger and better than SMB3, but just ended up making it feel bloated. The 3D games from the N64 onward took the series in a completely different direction, so don't really count as part of the same 'series' for me. And while I do like the New-SMB series, I can't help feeling it doesn't push the boundries like SMB3 did.

Sonic 2 took everything that was brilliant about the first one and refined it. "Chemical Zone" is just a stunning example of level design.

 

[Trimm]

I have to second Tie Fighter here. X Wing is a hall of fame game in and of itself, and Tie Fighter does everything that X Wing does well, and then improves on most of it.

Speaking of, not too long ago GOG put a whole bunch of the all time classic Lucasarts games out for sale, including X Wing and Tie fighter, if you hadn't already heard. (Of course you have.)

 

[Aldo]

Super Mario Brothers 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Oh yeah, Double Dragon 3 was a real disappointment. Was it even made by the same team as the first two games?

Don't know. However, I did found out that the Double Dragon 3 Arcade was developed by another company, but I never played it.

Double Dragon 3 on NES is a masterpiece compared to it's Arcade counterpart.

I played the Genesis adaption of the Arcade (which is a fairly faithful port) and it's just awful, practically unplayable and it has that stupid "pay for health" that plagued a few fighters around that time.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Absolutely. I mean, I know for a fact that the game was made by a team at Gearbox that included one or two former 3D Realms staffers, some of whom at least must have had something to do with Duke 3D back in the day. But for some strange reason, DNF feels like a race memory of what DN3D was thought to have been like, rather than actually being very much like DN3D really was.

Yeah, at times it feels more like a cruel joke, and that some of the staffers were in on it. "Hey, You liked DN3D, didn't you? We're making a sequel." *pulls leg until it bleeds*

The long dev time and the many people involved over the time of its development contributed to a filtered feeling, kind of like the old telephone game where the original message gets degraded into an unrecognizable mess. The original people at the start likely had a clear indication of where they wanted it to go, but that destination wasn't the same one by the time it reached Gearbox. The jokes and riffs it does have feel like an exaggeration of what they intended it to be.

There's no doubt they got the tone absolutely right -- it has it's own problems, but DE:HR feels like it's got the original Deus Ex to the very core of it's D.N.A. It's almost neurotic about it in places. The makers of the game clearly played the first game extensively.

Oh absolutely. I felt that even with its flaws, I found it to be brilliant. And that was back before the game got fixed to make the boss battles easier. It did really feel like the devs had a lot of respect for the core material, that it was as much a nod to it as it was a sequel. I think they managed a good balance between referring the original and going their own direction. The white room near the end with the original theme put a smile on my face.

I do think IW had that too (the story *is* just as gripping as the original), but it was simply fudged in the execution.

I think it's a weird game. It was faced with an almost impossible task of living up to the original. I think its first mistake was dumbing down some of the elements and interface. Though in retrospect, I think that had a lot to do with their budget at the time, which made them cut a lot of corners, leading to a differently structured game. I wasn't too keen on the story, personally. Felt like it relied too much on the original and less like it went in its own direction, leading to less of a solid story.

Oh yeah, about Arkham City, how could I forget that? I liked the original game, but felt it ended just as it started to really gain momentum. The second game really improved on it and I felt it was more of a satisfying game.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Sequels that are better than the originals:

Ms. Pac-Man
Frogger II: In 3-Deep
Swordquest: Fireworld
Pole Position II
SMB II and III
Sorcerer and Spellbreaker (sequels to Enchanter)
Day of the Tentacle
King's Quest 5 and 6
Space Quest 4 - 6
Mortal Kombat II (and 3 was better than 1, but not 2)
Wing Commander 3 and 4
Civ 4 and 5 (not sure which of those two is better, though, once all add-ons are in place)
Legend of Kyrandia 2 and 3

Sequels that were horribly worse than their predecessors:
King's Quest VII - good story, beautiful graphics, so buggy it was unplayable
Gabriel Knight III - similar to KQ VII
Final Fantasy X2 - makes no sense storywise after X, game play different and clunky
X-Wing vs Tie Fighter (Hey guys! Let's make an online multiplayer game while most people are on 14.4 or 28.8k dial-up. I'm sure that won't cause any problems. Why, we probably don't even need a single player story mode.... >.< )

 

[Timby]

Freespace was pretty epic, but Freespace 2 was epic-er.

Freespace 2 also wound up killing the space-sim market.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Not necessarily sequels, but I've always preferred the Mega Man X games to the originals.

 

[Reverend]

Freespace was pretty epic, but Freespace 2 was epic-er.

Freespace 2 also wound up killing the space-sim market.

Not sure "being the last successful one for a decade" necessarily equates to killing the whole market.

I mean did Grim Fandango kill the adventure game market? Of course not.

 

[Pondwater]

Super Mario Bros. 3

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Freespace was pretty epic, but Freespace 2 was epic-er.

Freespace 2 also wound up killing the space-sim market.

Not sure "being the last successful one for a decade" necessarily equates to killing the whole market.

I mean did Grim Fandango kill the adventure game market? Of course not.

No, Timby's right. FS2 bombed. It was a pretty expensive game to make in the first place, and it barely sold any copies. Volition eventually broke even but the game was never profitable. It definitely sent the industry a message that big budget space sims don't have a market anymore. That doesn't mean we haven't gotten any (we have, of course!) but it took several years for that genre to show any sign of recovery.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I mean did Grim Fandango kill the adventure game market? Of course not.

No, it was already dead. It was passing through the Land of the Dead I kid, I kid!

 

[Timby]

Freespace 2 also wound up killing the space-sim market.

Not sure "being the last successful one for a decade" necessarily equates to killing the whole market.

I mean did Grim Fandango kill the adventure game market? Of course not.

No, Timby's right. FS2 bombed. It was a pretty expensive game to make in the first place, and it barely sold any copies. Volition eventually broke even but the game was never profitable. It definitely sent the industry a message that big budget space sims don't have a market anymore.

Expensive to make and even pricier to market. Freespace 2 was Interplay's big release for fall 1999 and it had the marketing and promotional budget to back it up ... and then it went over about as well as a wet fart in church, sales-wise. The game's face-plant led to panic across the industry -- EA freaked out and canceled Wing Commander 6 and Privateer 3, LucasArts went to the more Rogue Squadron-esque arcade shooters, Interplay itself stopped supporting the development of Klingon Academy, and so on.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I for one lived free space 2. Free space 1 was the first game I played that required a 3d gfx card. The final battle in FS2 was awesome.

 

[Reverend]

Not sure "being the last successful one for a decade" necessarily equates to killing the whole market.

I mean did Grim Fandango kill the adventure game market? Of course not.

No, Timby's right. FS2 bombed. It was a pretty expensive game to make in the first place, and it barely sold any copies. Volition eventually broke even but the game was never profitable. It definitely sent the industry a message that big budget space sims don't have a market anymore.

Expensive to make and even pricier to market. Freespace 2 was Interplay's big release for fall 1999 and it had the marketing and promotional budget to back it up ... and then it went over about as well as a wet fart in church, sales-wise. The game's face-plant led to panic across the industry -- EA freaked out and canceled Wing Commander 6 and Privateer 3, LucasArts went to the more Rogue Squadron-esque arcade shooters, Interplay itself stopped supporting the development of Klingon Academy, and so on.

Honestly I wasn't aware of that. I'd always thought it was successful, though that may have more to do with how active the modding scene was (and still is I gather.)

 

[Lance]

X-Wing vs Tie Fighter (Hey guys! Let's make an online multiplayer game while most people are on 14.4 or 28.8k dial-up. I'm sure that won't cause any problems. Why, we probably don't even need a single player story mode.... )

The irony is, I think games like this, Ultima Online, and certainly Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, were ahead of their time in a way -- they predicted the increasing popularity of online gaming, and catered to that section of the audience at the expense of single player -- but they rather underestimated the extent to which people actually liked to have a decent 'offline content' as well (I remember somebody at Id Software being quite arrogant about this in the interviews when promoting Q3A; lots of sound-bites along the lines of "Single-player games are dead", "We will never again make games for offline play" and stuff like that). And like you say, the games were just a little bit too advanced for the internet of the day. I remember playing UO on my dial-up connection at the time, and feeling distinctly underwhelmed with the gameplay compared to the single player games in the series. I was like, "So *this* is the future?!"

 

[JirinPanthosa]

How many series are there out there where the original actually is the best game in the series?

In Mass Effect 1 I do prefer the longer, more complex story missions that were not just walks down straight corridors. I wish they'd bring those back, but they made such improvements to the combat in 2 and 3 they are still better games.

I guess the first Contra is my favorite Contra game. Other than that I can only think of obscure stuff. Valkyria Chronicles 1 was better than 2, but 3 which was not localized I've heard is better than 1. Maximo Ghosts to Glory was better than its sequel.

I suppose you could consider Persona 3 the first of a series because it's different enough from Personas 1 and 2 to not really be the same series. And it's better than 4.

Pretty much every other case I can think of has at least one game in the series that is better than the original.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Super Mario Brothers 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Completely agree. I'm not sure if any 'classic style' Mario game since SMB3 has quite been as good as it. SMW was okay, but somewhat overcooked IMO, like they were trying just a little bit too hard to make it bigger and better than SMB3, but just ended up making it feel bloated. The 3D games from the N64 onward took the series in a completely different direction, so don't really count as part of the same 'series' for me. And while I do like the New-SMB series, I can't help feeling it doesn't push the boundries like SMB3 did.

Sonic 2 took everything that was brilliant about the first one and refined it. "Chemical Zone" is just a stunning example of level design.

To me the level design in the new retro Marios is boring. I hate the star coins. They're not well hidden in clever places like the DK Coins in DKC2, they're randomly hidden in arbitrary places, so all they do is encourage you to tediously search every corner of every level as you go along which is a dull way to play the game. Also SMB3 had all these cool maze levels with hidden doors and hidden exits. Current devs apparently think anything but straight walks through the level are beyond the comprehension of their players. It's rare to even find a screen that you can scroll both vertically and horizontally at the same time.

Though I love the 3d games and I think some of the best Mario games I've played are fan hacks of Mario 64.

 

[Kelthaz]

There's a few series where the original is the best, but not many.

Alundra 1 was a Legend of Zelda clone that perhaps even outclassed the best of Nintendo's critically acclaimed series while Alundra 2 was ... best forgotten.

Chrono Trigger is loved by all, but Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross are very divisive.

Although I haven't played either game, Darksiders is considered to be superior to its sequel.

The Prince of Persia reboot Sands of Time was a nearly perfect game while the sequels (Warrior Within and Two Thrones) were a step backwards in quality.

Legendary Axe is one of the finest platformer of the 16-bit era, but it's sequel was a bit of a disappointment.

 

[Lance]

Toejam & Earl II has got it's critics, for the fact they abandoned the "rogue-like" gameplay mechanics of the first instalment and made a generic platform game instead.

Deus Ex Invisible War, as per reasons mentioned above. YMMV.

'Cannon Fodder 2' on the Commodore Amiga was widely ridiculed at the time for being a blatant level pack rather than a game in itself. Most people have forgotten it exists, while the original was widely ported to a variety of formats.

Strangely, in some cases a game sequel gets criticized for changing everything, whereas other game sequels are criticised for not changing enough. Gamers are fickle.

 

[Stoo]

Expensive to make and even pricier to market. Freespace 2 was Interplay's big release for fall 1999 and it had the marketing and promotional budget to back it up ... and then it went over about as well as a wet fart in church, sales-wise. The game's face-plant led to panic across the industry -- EA freaked out and canceled Wing Commander 6 and Privateer 3, LucasArts went to the more Rogue Squadron-esque arcade shooters, Interplay itself stopped supporting the development of Klingon Academy, and so on.

This is very interesting, I had no idea FS2 was such a disaster. I thought it was regarded as the greatest of the space-sims. (Or at least, of the more action-oriented ones). But I guess that would help explain why the genre went so quiet in the 2000s.

I wonder what went wrong? Since it seemed to have that "world war 2 in outer space" style of gameplay, as seen in X-wing, Wing Commander etc, down to such a fine art.