Sequel decay

[Kesolr]

I believe Silent Hill is pretty representative on having a very decaying series of games, everyone can agree (or disagree depending your stance with The Room) that the first four games are classics on their own right, but once the creatives behind them left, the sequels resulted in pretty crappy games.

Origins was pretty mediocre, only having original areas to explorer compared to the rest of the series, it tried to make its own version of PH, but in the end, it just felt like copying someone's homework, the homework being SH2

Homecoming is an action title that doesn't have a good story, because it sacrifice its own gimmick about being PTSD soldier by copying SH2's twist, alongside being heavily influenced by the movie without trying to make up their own style.

Shattered Memories is the exception to the rule, it was unique enough on giving its own spin to the original to the point i see it with some fondness, though some would argue that the removal of combat is a pretty big downside, but the interactivity it offers with motion controls is quite fun.

Finally, There was Downpour, an attempt to make a more open survival horror title with optional areas to explore, combat involving having to scavenge for weapons in the area and once again, an interesting premise of being an escaped convict running into Silent Hill itself, but the dev team was punching above their weight with how unfinished and half baked everything resulted, especially the story being a mess that constantly drops plot points and it can even retcon itself on making Murphy a completely innocent person who SH fuck with for no reason if you get the best ending.

Quite the headache to be honest, didn't play the remake, so i can't comment on it.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

I believe Silent Hill is pretty representative on having a very decaying series of games, everyone can agree (or disagree depending your stance with The Room) that the first four games are classics on their own right, but once the creatives behind them left, the sequels resulted in pretty crappy games.

Origins was pretty mediocre, only having original areas to explorer compared to the rest of the series, it tried to make its own version of PH, but in the end, it just felt like copying someone's homework, the homework being SH2

Homecoming is an action title that doesn't have a good story, because it sacrifice its own gimmick about being PTSD soldier by copying SH2's twist, alongside being heavily influenced by the movie without trying to make up their own style.

Shattered Memories is the exception to the rule, it was unique enough on giving its own spin to the original to the point i see it with some fondness, though some would argue that the removal of combat is a pretty big downside, but the interactivity it offers with motion controls is quite fun.

Finally, There was Downpour, an attempt to make a more open survival horror title with optional areas to explore, combat involving having to scavenge for weapons in the area and once again, an interesting premise of being an escaped convict running into Silent Hill itself, but the dev team was punching above their weight with how unfinished and half baked everything resulted, especially the story being a mess that constantly drops plot points and it can even retcon itself on making Murphy a completely innocent person who SH fuck with for no reason if you get the best ending.

Quite the headache to be honest, didn't play the remake, so i can't comment on it.

Dont even get me started, one of my favorite games is like a beautiful statue thats unfinished forever

Silent Hill is made by Team Silent from 1998 to 2004, from 3 onwards they made clear they wanted to expand on the mythos and 5 was apparently gonna explore the idea of horror during the daytime alla texas chainaw massacre, But it will never happen

After that it got picked up by mediocre studios that only got the series on a superficial level and never read the book of memories (lore book by TS), every damn western game was just a worse SH2. I got so sick of 2 being the only sh western devs seem to care about, even Origins and Shattered Memories (who the hell needed a prequel to 1??) just HAAAD to have the big twist at the end like 2 hell origins even rips off one of its monsters and then as a final fuck you it got turned into a generic triple a game. Like a cult artsy foreign movie getting a hollywood remake that will be remembered way more than the original because its way easier to watch

 

[Kesolr]

Like a cult artsy foreign movie getting a hollywood remake that will be remembered way more than the original because its way easier to watch

A Fitting Metaphor considering how awful the HD Collection was back in the day, people always say they rather play that because "its more easily accessible".

now with the Enhanced Edition and how easy emulation has become, i think those assumptions can be stomped at the very least.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

A Fitting Metaphor considering how awful the HD Collection was back in the day, people always say they rather play that because "its more easily accessible".

now with the Enhanced Edition and how easy emulation has become, i think those assumptions can be stomped at the very least.

I wont play the remake because 1: OF COURSE THEY'RE REMAKING 2 FIRST
2: Its from friggin blooper whos made nothing but mediocre sh2 rip offs, they wanna be SH so bad
3: From the first screenshots it I hate it

Finally I watched gameplay and its a good distillation of everything I hate about modern games, and ofc they redesigned everyone, changed the voice actors again, called the games outdated, de emphasized the more explicit stuff, made it twice as long, made it a the last of us clone with the dark soul dodge and parry, made james not shut up when things happen, change the voice direction and cinematography from a mish mash of eraiserhead el topo and other "weird horror" movies to netflix I'm gonna turn into the angry videogame nerd if I keep typing this and destroy a copy in my james sunderland jacket which I do happen to have

What a shitload of fuck

 

[bobobobo]

Diablo 1 (9/10)
Diablo 2 (10/10)
Diablo 3 (3/10)
Diablo 2 Resurrected (3/10)
Diablo Immortal (0.2/10)
Diablo 4 (/10)

well 1 & 2 qualify as "retro" to me
and they are the only 2 good games in the series

A minor correction to the numbers here, I believe you've made some isignificant arithmetic miscalculations that I couldn't help but notice and feel the necessitiy to point out in the interest of preserving acceptable levels of mathematical rigor in this here fine establishment:
Diablo 1 (infinity/10)
Diablo 2 (0.000001/10)
Diablo 3 (error/10)
from this point we can describe all subsequent entries with this simple formula:
diablo = diablo(n-1)/n - everything_that_was_good

 

[Boo Man]

A minor correction to the numbers here, I believe you've made some isignificant arithmetic miscalculations that I couldn't help but notice and feel the necessitiy to point out in the interest of preserving acceptable levels of mathematical rigor in this here fine establishment:
Diablo 1 (infinity/10)
Diablo 2 (0.000001/10)
Diablo 3 (error/10)
from this point we can describe all subsequent entries with this simple formula:
diablo = diablo(n-1)/n - everything_that_was_good

haha yeah i think we can reduce that equation to: (Diablo = Bad)

 

[bobobobo]

True. Haven’t finished 2 yet. It was fine… but too mediocre. But I feel maybe I’ll be nicer on it when I come back. The bullet time is a mechanic I love in general so I’m not against having it in a mediocre game if it means having it at all. Idk if I’ll ever play 3. I try to avoid the “bad game = i shouldn’t play it” mentality but it doesn’t look like a particularly interesting game either.

It's an above avarage FPS on it's own, but it's just so painfully obvious that they tried to make the same game with better grapicz and maybe more varied environments and obviously failed. There is no room there left for subjectivity or preference, it's like whoever had the recipe for the special sauce just up and left and took it with them and no one else on the team even noticed. With 3 they tried to go a different direction, but it doesn't make it any better - you clearly wanted the special sauce, you tried to get it, you totally failed, and now you are pretending that you didn't even want it in the first place, just let it die already.

 

[bobobobo]

Trepang 2

gave it a go, but it doesn't scratch the itch for me, you can see they tried to make fear, but ended up with discount bulletshtorm in confined spaced. It's impressive first release for the small team, but all it did is make me wanna play fear and bulletshtorm again.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

True. Haven’t finished 2 yet. It was fine… but too mediocre. But I feel maybe I’ll be nicer on it when I come back. The bullet time is a mechanic I love in general so I’m not against having it in a mediocre game if it means having it at all. Idk if I’ll ever play 3. I try to avoid the “bad game = i shouldn’t play it” mentality but it doesn’t look like a particularly interesting game either.

Dont bother

I love fear 1, the atmosphere and mechanics are excellent and its a tecnical marvel for 2005.
On paper it sounds so boring, "you ambush groups waves of identical enemies in an office building" but the matrix-esque flying particles and enviroment chunks, the voice acting of the enemy soldiers the the way each encounter feels unuqie because of its ai and how many wats you can approach a fight...
Oh bliss, bliss and heaven, oh it was like gorgeous and gorgeousity made flesh

Fear 2 is a watered down sequel by a different studio because they wanted to appeal to cod normies

Also they tried making alma hot
Im all for hot chicks but why alma???

 

[Lee__Kanker]

There's good stuff about it, but it was very disappoining considering how much I liked new order and old blood

 

[hazys]

Series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have been smart to avoid "direct sequels" for the most part, since the weight of their back stories would have crushed the newer games eventually.

There are some games that offer what feels basically like a "complete idea" and thus don't feel like they require sequels. Like, I don't think Ghost Trick ever needs a sequel.

When a series is gameplay-centric rather than story-centric it's very easy to iterate upon the mechanics that made it successful and pump out sequels that satisfy the core base. However, once the series achieves a higher level of popularity, it will probably abandon many of the mechanics that appealed to the core fans in search of something more generic and popular. I believe this has happened to Monster Hunter, Yakuza/LAD, Souls, SMT/Persona, etc etc.

 

[Tonberry]

Begrudgingly, I’ll say Dark Souls.

Demon’s Souls is an insanely well-executed ”prototype” of what would come after. In some cases I think it’s the best Souls game but it’s clear they were still finding their footing.

Dark Souls 1 is such a humble colossus, and the droll takes on how its very presence shook the very core of a safe and sterile AAA game industry all hold merit. It did everything it wanted to do right, even if it’s rushed near the later third. An extremely tight dungeon crawler with a mind-boggling amount of variety and player expression, with gameplay and immersion first and foremost.

Dark Souls 2 is ”they failed, but tried”. It explores and iterates upon several ideas from the first game in interesting ways, but it didn’t work all the time, and a wonky development and the downgrade really hampered the outward quality of the game, so it’s a roller coaster of excellent dungeon crawling and pure jank.

For Dark Souls 3, they didn’t try at all. They over-course-corrected so ridiculously hard that it has absolutely zero unique identity. There is nothing about this game that makes it stand out, other than that it was the first next-gen FromSoftware game to have 60fps so it felt smooth.
It’s a gray, ugly, boring, soulless mess of a game that’s afraid to do anything new and relies on the success of DS1 WAY too hard.

(I’m not including Bloodborne or Elden Ring because, even though they’re very similar, they have their own titles and should probably stand on their own.)

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have been smart to avoid "direct sequels" for the most part, since the weight of their back stories would have crushed the newer games eventually.

There are some games that offer what feels basically like a "complete idea" and thus don't feel like they require sequels. Like, I don't think Ghost Trick ever needs a sequel.

When a series is gameplay-centric rather than story-centric it's very easy to iterate upon the mechanics that made it successful and pump out sequels that satisfy the core base. However, once the series achieves a higher level of popularity, it will probably abandon many of the mechanics that appealed to the core fans in search of something more generic and popular. I believe this has happened to Monster Hunter, Yakuza/LAD, Souls, SMT/Persona, etc etc.

I love how Bioshock 2 makes completely no sense because both endings of the og were very definitive

Why

 

[G_44]

Sometimes a game becomes an explosive success and this almost always guarantees sequels - it becomes a franchise.
That said, for a myriad of reasons (company interference, trend compliance, lead changes), sequels sometimes become... different.

"Better" and "worse" are not quantifiable, objective metrics, so it's all very relative. The way changes are weighted depends very heavily on something highly personal - expectation.

I'll start the conversation with a personal example, then: Parasite Eve.

This was the third RPG I played on the PS1, after FF7 and Xenogears, and I absolutely loved everything about it. You had an intriguing story, a sexy, strong and independent female protagonist, incredible music and very cool and fresh systems to back it all up. It's a game that really stuck with me and that I hold very dearly, along with the other two I mentioned above.

Then came... Parasite Eve 2. My disappointment was unsurmountable: it had become something else, something I couldn't care less about - a second fiddle Resident Evil (I am no RE fan, never have been). To me, everything that had been attractive, interesting and fresh about PE had been discarded in a foolish attempt to chase after Capcom's survival horror behemoth and it failed spectacularly.

I don't even need to say that Third Birthday made things even worse, so I won't waste anyone's time by ruminating on all the bullet points that make this "sequel" terrible.

So, I'd like to hear you guy's thoughts regarding similar experiences!

Same, I also played the Parasite Eve series and both the sequel and the third installment were very disappointing.
And about The 3rd Birthday, it's a pretty sad case. It has amazing cutscenes and a great soundtrack, but how is it possible to have such a terrible story with so many plot holes? It's really quite disappointing.

 

[fishboneKiller]

i think if Clean Sweep didn't exist, chibi robo would be a perfect qualifier for this. the first chibi robo is probably one of the best moonlikes/adventure games out there, but everything after that (except clean sweep) goes for something completely different, and usually worse... park patrol is really disappointing as a sequel, though i'd be lying if i said i didn't get some kind of simple enjoyment out of the main gameplay loop. (my feelings about park patrol are complicated) photo finder feels really half baked, it's entirely focused on taking pictures with a... less than stellar set of cameras. the main appeal of the game is- er, WAS submitting photos to photo contests, but those have been done for a long time now. besides that, it does have some of the exploration of the first game, but it's mostly to just go do minigames, and the distinct, cartoony visual style is substituted for a more realistic style, to go with the photo-taking focus. i'll be honest, for the hardware, it's a pretty impressive looking game, but it totally chugs the framerate and just doesn't have the same flair the original style does.

and then zip lash is zip lash. i don't think i really need to say anything else about that one

 

[hazys]

Fully agree with you, Clean Sweep is so good. But I don't know if it's fair to use Chibi-Robo as an example because it was never a successful series. I think the dev team got saddled with a bunch of different ideas from Nintendo to try and make it stick. Only Clean Sweep followed in the steps of the original; the rest are almost spin-offs.

 

[hembruh]

i think if Clean Sweep didn't exist, chibi robo would be a perfect qualifier for this. the first chibi robo is probably one of the best moonlikes/adventure games out there, but everything after that (except clean sweep) goes for something completely different, and usually worse... park patrol is really disappointing as a sequel, though i'd be lying if i said i didn't get some kind of simple enjoyment out of the main gameplay loop. (my feelings about park patrol are complicated) photo finder feels really half baked, it's entirely focused on taking pictures with a... less than stellar set of cameras. the main appeal of the game is- er, WAS submitting photos to photo contests, but those have been done for a long time now. besides that, it does have some of the exploration of the first game, but it's mostly to just go do minigames, and the distinct, cartoony visual style is substituted for a more realistic style, to go with the photo-taking focus. i'll be honest, for the hardware, it's a pretty impressive looking game, but it totally chugs the framerate and just doesn't have the same flair the original style does.

and then zip lash is zip lash. i don't think i really need to say anything else about that one

great timing for this post. I played and beat Clean Sweep for the first time last week. I love the first Chibi Robo. got it for under $10 on clearance when either a K or Walmart was clearancing GC games a couple years into the Wii. played it a bit, didn't really like it, went back to it a few years later when I was 17 or so and the game totally clicked for me that later go-around. an ex got me a 2DS when they came out to play 3ds games with her and one of the games she got me initially was Park Patrol along with a couple other DS and 3DS games. I liked it, but didn't love it and kinda had a "huh, so this is Chibi Robo 2? weird." reaction to it.

I had known there was another JPN-only DS game, but assumed it was probably more Park Patrol, played Photo Finder and Zip Lash as they came out and again had a "huh, so this is Chibi Robo now, weird and disappointing" reaction. I liked Photo Finder for what it is just fine, I had fun with it, and I didn't hate Zip Lash but just thought it was a waste of the IP.

Anyways, flash forward to today, a decade later I was updating the software on my modded Wii U and 2DS because I haven't touched either in a couple of years beyond playing what's already on them, and got a larger SD card for the 2DS so I ditched an old flash cart and put DS games on twilightmenu and added all the newer gamecube and wii fan translations of the last couple years to the U and played the wii port of the first game and fell in love again and decided to try out Clean Sweep on the ds.

I don't know if I have ever been so disappointed to play a game I loved in my life, disappointed that it was the one we didn't get here, disappointed that there wasn't a console follow up or an enhanced port of clean sweep on the wii, disappointed that translation has been out since 2016 and I hadn't played it and disappointed there wasn't a true follow up to it at all. Clean Sweep is fantastic, I might think it's the best of the series.

I think with Chibi Robo as it shook out, it ended up a directionless series, as unfortunate as that is. There's the first game, the true sequel (Clean Sweep), and 3 games that tried other things that didn't particularly work. I think this is the fault of the sales not being particularly good for any of them. the first game I actually remember being pretty heavily advertised, however I was a kid middle school or under age so I might have just been the exact age I was looking at the magazines and such that had the ads so it seemed that way to me. Park Patrol was stuck as a Walmart exclusive in the states which automatically being a store exclusive limited it's exposure. I think if we had gotten Clean Sweep it maybe wouldn't have been a bestseller but word of mouth would have went a long way on it. by the time we got Zip Lash it was already sort of a failure to launch in the west and scrambling to do different things with it wasn't the ticket to bring the series any momentum, imo it was going to fail even if it was amazing.

a real shame because the two "main" games are great. fun, satisfying gameplay and genuinely funny sense of humor to them. I'm really hoping that koROBO game ends up being a great follow up, but I do wish they would have been more of a Nintendo staple because I think a good console Chibi Robo game on the Wii and U would have made good uses of their respective console gimmicks.

 

[Perseonn]

Then came... Parasite Eve 2. ....

I want to say PE, but hey, that's the first post.

Here's an infuriating iconic picture from the bloody sequel to further fuel your rage.

And I agree, the less said about The Third Birthday, the better; but for the uninitiated, let me fill in on how infamous that instalment is:

• Aya marrying the reject on the above screenshot.
• Clothing damage.
• Derriere camera.
• Spoiler

  Sexualizing minor (!!!)
• Spoiler

  Aya dies at the end.

 

[RageBurner]

I want to say PE, but hey, that's the first post.

Here's an infuriating iconic picture from the bloody sequel to further fuel your rage.
View attachment 16466

And I agree, the less said about The Third Birthday, the better; but for the uninitiated, let me fill in on how infamous that instalment is:

• Aya marrying the reject on the above screenshot.
• Clothing damage.
• Derriere camera.
• Spoiler

  Sexualizing minor (!!!)
• Spoiler

  Aya dies at the end.

My rage about the sequels has no bounds, but you illustrated everything perfectly, haha.

 

[Perseonn]

Yeeeeeees, let us channel hate to one Meester Kyle I-was-out-of-town Maddigan

 

[spectresfrommercury]

parasite eve 2 no yoko shimoura means no buy for me.