Often referred to as the sophomore slump or sophomore jinx, the difficult second album syndrome can apply to almost any walk of life. It's seen a lot with musicians where the first album is a critical or commercial success and then the second is disappointing. Athletes and sports teams will also suffer, a great first season is often followed by a less spectacular second.
However, I think that in the video games industry that the opposite is more likely to be true. Games developers have the luxury of being able to take everything they learned the first time around and combine it with any criticism that may have been leveled at their game. Of course, there have been examples of sequels that don't match the first game, Final Fantasy X-2 anyone? But overall I think the games industry's sequels are good, better one the whole than film at least.
It's been argued that they're often too effective, as each year we're treated to a deluge of follow-ups to last year's cash cows. In any case I'd like to take a look at what I consider some of the sequels that most improved on the original formula and took their IP to new heights.
Call of Duty was always a strong franchise. The first three games, set in WW2, sold well and were critically praised. However when Infinity Ward released Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare the bar was raised far and beyond anything that had gone before. For me it was the first CoD game that I really got into and spend significant hours playing the multiplayer.
It's been one of the most played games on Xbox Live for years now having reinvented what people expected from an online shooter. CoD4 pulled kicked off the trends for experience and classes in FPS games, borrowing heavily from RPGs. This gave you a reason to go back and keep playing as well as providing a varied experience. It's little wonder that Unreal Tournament has died completely, along with that style of FPS. Like the entire gaming world, I'm looking forward to Modern Warfare 2 and the advancements that'll bring. I don't think it'll be the huge change that CoD4 was at all, but nonetheless will be the defining online shooter of 2009. And yes, that includes Killzone 2 and Halo:ODST.
Metal Gear Solid was a breakout success for the Playstation console in 1998. Following on from the earlier NES Metal Gear games, Metal Gear Solid was the game that really established the franchise and introduced it western gamers. It established the stealth genre along with breaking and establishing many of the common gaming formulae.
I loved Metal Gear Solid. It was more than a typical game when it was released. The incredibly intricate plot and lengthy cutscenes are a put-off for some people, but I loved them. I loved the fact that a game like this could try to blend aspects of film into its plot and go past the (at the time) usual trend of just giving you an excuse to kill the bad guys. Combine it with the stealth aspects and you had a game that was light years better than its prequels and far ahead of anything at the time as well.
The third sequel that went beyond its prequels, at least in my eyes, is World of Warcraft. While not strictly a sequel, it does follow the events in Warcraft 3 and continue the story. With Warcraft 3 and Starcraft Blizzard already had two of the best RTS games out there and clearly felt that with their success with Diablo that they could build a great MMO. The MMOs that predated WoW, Everquest and Ultima Online, hinted that there was a market there but neither had really broken the mainstream.
World of Warcraft changed all that. It grew beyond even the developer's wildest expectations as they struggled to meet the early demand. Server queues were constant during the game's early days. I played WoW heavily during its first three years, and is easily the game I've put the most time into. I think that says enough for how good I felt it was.
I eventually stopped playing just down to the fact that I'd spent so much time in Azeroth that I was just starting to do the same things over and over. What made WoW great was making an MMO an joy to play, rather than like a second job. It's without doubt Blizzard's most successful game and for this reason goes up into my top sequels list.
Well that's all for now, hopefully we'll see some great sequels this year and hopefully they'll all be great improvements. Another game with the impact of Metal Gear Solid would be just great.
Author Resource:-
Patrick is an expert Research and Travel consultant working for HolidayExtras.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlespromoter.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
