It’s one of those subjects that you just can’t help but add to. We all have our own pet hates when it comes to gaming sequels. On occasion the mere mention of some can result in symptoms ranging from quiet weeping to severe nausea, and for certain fans you can still find them rocking in a corner steadily trying to forget the anguish of being let down (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy XIII). But what makes it worse is that on occasion it’s not that these sequels are bad games, it’s just that they simply do not live up to the legacy passed onto them. The following then are just a few that might just have been passable if it weren’t for what they had to live up to, and ultimately failed.
Nope, I’m not talking about a sequel to 2012’s X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Instead this is the sequel to the original 1994 game of the same name (or UFO: Enemy Unknown as it was called in Europe). Terror from the Deep more or less picks up where the previous game left off: With an alien invasion thwarted by the eponymous X-COM organization, life on Earth returns to normal, until a new threat emerges from the deepest regions of our planet’s oceans and the fight must be taken beneath the waves.
On the face of it this all seems like a pretty good set up for a sequel, and indeed Terror from the Deep is an extremely good game. But that is perhaps down to the fact that it shares so much in common with its predecessor. With Enemy Unknown being such the big hit that it was in ’94 the developers were then given just six months to come up with a sequel for release. With this extremely short window of opportunity, even by the standards of the day, there was only time to re-skin the graphics and make a few relatively minor changes to the gameplay. What resulted was mostly identical to the original except with a slightly different look and an increased difficulty level that took the game from being a mental challenge to nearly impossible to beat. It is perhaps a little harsh to put Terror from the Deep on the list; however it is a perfect example of what happens when developers are pressured into making a game too quickly. I still enjoy the game, but at the end of the day you have to consider how many opportunities were missed by not allowing more time for its creation.
The first KotOR is widely considered to be one of the best Star Wars games ever made. It featured an original story that actually allowed fans of the franchise to be surprised by events while still immersing them in a familiar universe, albeit four-thousand years prior to the events of the Saga. The gameplay was also very well-handled with an engine which allowed all of the benefits of an RPG, while combat still rewarded quick thinking with fluid animation that gave a sense of immediacy and action. Given its wide acclaim it’s no surprise that a second game was soon called for. The result however was somewhat patchy, but enjoyable for the casual gamer. Even critics generally gave KotOR 2 quite high marks all around. For fans of the original though it was a game that was full of holes. Between a change in developers from BioWare to Obsidian Entertainment, and yet another unfair deadline, the game was released with a large amount of story content cut; while the gameplay itself was riddled with upwards of five-hundred different bugs. To add a certain amount of insult to injury, many of the characters that the fans had learned to love in the previous iteration were largely absent and the story was simply not nearly as gripping either.
Today the game has largely been fixed via official patches and the fan community taking the time and effort to restore the content that was missing upon its release. This unfortunately still doesn’t change the fact that this had to be done in the first place; or indeed that the game generally just isn’t as satisfying an experience as the original was. On the bright side of things though, at least the first KotOR is still just as much fun on the seventeenth play through.
Final Fantasy is a series which really does not need any introduction. Even if you have not played any game in the franchise you are no doubt aware of it, if only because of the frequent arguments between fans over their favourite installment. In some ways, due to how unique in style and story each game is, there could be an argument against classing the majority of the Final Fantasy series as sequels at all. Each of the fourteen core games that make up the series are in their own separate universe with little correlation between them other than some familiar elements that they all share. However, having said that, I draw the line at FFXIII.
Let me be clear, I love the Final Fantasy series. I haven’t played them all, but in my mind I have played and thoroughly enjoyed the ones that matter most. Each one offers a truly imaginative story with characters that are often three-dimensional and relatable. But at the same time there is an element of exploration in the games. The plot will always guide the player towards their next objective but in between going from point A to point B you can more or less do whatever you want, whether that is leveling up your characters, talking to myriad NPC’s or even just taking in the often beautiful artwork of the game. In having this small element of freedom the game gives the player a sense that they are immersed in a living, breathing world that would still go on even if they weren’t there.
Tragically it’s this key part that is missing from FFXIII. Rather than having a world to explore, the player is put on a set path that they have to follow, and I mean that in a very literal sense. There are some quite expansive environments, but there is almost never anything worth going out of your way to take a look at. Instead you simply find yourself running from battle to battle as you try to reach your final destination. This coupled with a combat system which somehow manages to be both simplified while being more difficult to manage makes it a game which is thoroughly less fun than any of its ilk. Despite all these flaws it is still a very pretty game, with a good story and gameplay is very fluid, however is should not be considered a Final Fantasy game in any real sense. The feeling of immersion is lost as soon as the player is put on a set road that they cannot break away from, which funnily enough is as soon as the game starts. Because of this, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s dead to me.
Produced by Rare in 2000 for the N64, Perfect Dark can be considered the spiritual successor to Goldeneye, and in many ways is superior to what is widely considered to be the best Bond game ever made. With that in mind then, even if you never played Perfect Dark either on the N64 or on its XBOX Live re-issue, you should already have a sense of how high the bar was in order for the sequel to make the grade. Perfect Dark Zero was in the making for five years which should have given Rare plenty of time to work through all the troubles that could have befallen them. Unfortunately, if anything they were given too much time. When the game was first conceptualised it was to be an exclusive for the Gamecube. At that time Rare had been a long time second-party developer for Nintendo and was known to have produced some of the best games for the SNES and N64. In 2002 however Microsoft bought the company as a whole and thus development for Perfect Dark Zero was switched over to the Xbox and then eventually was made one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360.
The fact that Rare had become a part of Microsoft was enough to leave a bad taste in any fan’s mouth, given their loyalty to Nintendo. But the bigger problem for Perfect Dark Zero was simply that it was a game made for the previous generation of consoles. With the release of the 360, many titles were quick to take advantage of the greater hardware, while Zero’s long development time meant that it looked dated in many ways. It still played reasonably well but there was nothing new or revolutionary about it, making it a thoroughly forgettable shooter. To say its daddy was the last grand hurrah for the cartridge era, Perfect Dark Zero really did come across as the weakling of the pack.
This is game that lives up to its subtitle more than it does the name of the eponymous hero. It took a grand total of fifteen years to release a sequel to 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D and yet it still was not long enough to produce a game that was worth any merit. The legacy of Duke Nukem 3D is that of a game that was fun, quirky and technologically innovative for its day. It can in fact be considered a significant addition to the history of the modern first person shooter, alongside Wolfenstein and Doom. But you would imagine that with a personality as irreverent as Duke’s it would not take too much effort to create a sequel that could be funny and charming, even if it can’t bring anything new to the now overly saturated world of the FPS.
Sadly, not only does Duke Nukem Forever fail to bring anything new to the table, it in fact backtracks. Graphically the game clearly shows that it was devised several years before its actual release, while the game’s loading times could probably be rated as being only just a bit faster than the original game was on the PS1. This might have all been forgiven if at least Duke as a character was given a fair send off, with a final nostalgic farewell to a character that is so firmly rooted in the 90’s. However all this really leads to is toilet humour which barely reaches the mental acuity of the fifteen-year-old lad who was born the day DN3D was released.
All in all it marks a sad end to Duke. There may just be another game one day, but if not then it’ll always be best to get an old tower PC and play him when he was at his best.