10 Ways to Ruin a Video Game Sequel

Game developers really have it rough. Making a decent game is hard enough, but making a sequel to a hit game must be a nightmare. Expectations are high, and gamers are some of the most merciless people on the planet. Screw the pooch, and heads will roll.

The worst part is there's no set of rules for developing a sequel; what works for one franchise will ruin another. Still, there are a few things that will almost always open the floodgates of fanboy/girl rage. Thus, we present ten surefire ways to mess up a sequel and ruin a franchise.

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There was no way Bungie could have ever lived up to the astronomical expectations fans had for Halo 2. Still, we didn't think we'd suddenly be expected to sympathize with the enemies. The powerful, inscrutable Covenant of alien races from the first game still had it out for humanity, but this time around players spent half the game, including the underwhelming finale, playing as one of them. We grew to like the Arbiter eventually, but by that time the series was over.

One thing players tend to expect from sequels is improvement over the original, but some developers just can't seem to grasp this. Maybe they're happier playing it safe, or maybe they just get lazy. To be fair, we never played Crackdown 2, but we didn't have to once we heard that it was the same exact game, minus the morphing cars, which were easily the second-coolest part of the original (the first was jumping off tall buildings, obviously).

We have respect for developers who want to try something new, but we wish they wouldn't mess with the franchises we already like. Granted, there was probably a lot of pressure for Sonic to make the jump to true 3D (not including the weird, isometric Sonic 3D Blast from 1996), but we like to imagine that Sonic might still be a respectable mascot today had he had just settled for the two dimensions he'd already mastered.

It's sad to think that KoTOR 2 could have actually been as great as the original, if only it had been a better game. Instead, it was a buggy, sloppy mess. They might as well have made Jar Jar Binks the only playable character and made sure you couldn't shoot at anyone until they had shot at you first. As it stands, we'll fondly remember the first game, and try our best to forget the sequel.

Plenty of games have suffered from being developed across multiple systems, and we aren't referring to multi-platform releases like Modern Warfare. The recent abomination known as Duke Nukem Forever comes to mind, but the epitome in our minds will always be Perfect Dark Zero. It began on the Nintendo 64, continued onto the Gamecube, and (on Microsoft's purchase of developer Rare) finally released on the Xbox 360. Ultimately, though, it will forever remain in the bargain bin.

Don't get us wrong, we prefer when developers take their time crafting a well-thought out, cohesive experience. What we object to is when a game takes so long to come out that we literally no longer care about the storyline or the characters—especially when the original(s) left so many questions unanswered. We're not saying Dark Dawn was a bad game. We just no longer gave a damn by the time it came out. The practically nonexistent Kingdom Hearts 3 is another perfect example of this.

With the removal of series creator Hideki Kamiya for the development of Devil May Cry 2, the series took a serious hit. Like, a demon from hell stole the real DMC 2 and replaced it with what was actually released. It was ugly, tedious and nonsensical, and it almost spelled the end of the series. Though given the reaction to Dante's new look in the upcoming DmC, that may have been for the best.

Don't get us wrong. We loved Majora's Mask. Like, we loved it. We wanted to marry it. We still do, a little bit. But it was weird, and it was hard. Some concepts, like the Groundhog Day cycle of endlessly repeating days and the hunt for seemingly pointless masks, left Zelda fans weened on Ocarina of Time feeling alienated. Unfortunate, but the truth is gamers don't want ambitious changes. At least we get to look forward to a new Contemporary Shooting Stuff 7.5 every year.

Legend has it Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto didn't want to make a sequel to the insanely successful Super Mario Bros., so Nintendo got someone else to do it. But it was too difficult for American audiences, so they threw a coat of Mushroom Kingdom paint on Miyamoto's new game, Doki Doki Panic, and called it Super Mario Bros. 2. It wasn't a bad game by any stretch, but the problem was it wasn't a Mario game, either. And that alone is enough for it to be crapped all over for the rest of eternity.

Above all the others, this is the one thing that can truly wreck a sequel. Deus Ex: Invisible War comes to mind, but no game is more guilty in our minds than Dragon Age 2. Everything that made the first game great was absent; in the name of streamlining or some such nonsense, the game was smaller, dumber and less ambitious in almost every way. Bioshock 2 suffered similarly; contrary to what they apparently thought, it wasn't the plot twist that made Bioshock great. It was the themes, and the execution of those themes, which were more or less nonexistent in the sequel.

We don't expect things to change any time soon, but if we could say one thing to the people making and selling our games, it would be this: some games just don't need a sequel.