Games that need no sequel

[Pissmaster]

Perfect Dark has its flaws, but is a campy fun FPS from 2000 that's quintessentially 2000.

Perfect Dark Zero just kind of exists, and that upcoming Perfect Dark reboot really doesn't need to happen.

 

[Named User]

Kid Icarus: Uprising. And it never did

 

[The Last Stand]

Bully: Scholarship Edition. I consider Jimmy Hopkin's story complete based on everything that happened. How would you even DO a sequel set in a school again, especially today?

Red Dead Redemption needed no sequel. That story was ambiguous enough to allow creativity of what happened with John Marston's past. Evidently, RDR2 retconned that game to hell and back.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Red Dead Redemption needed no sequel. That story was ambiguous enough to allow creativity of what happened with John Marston's past. Evidently, RDR2 retconned that game to hell and back.

It needed a sequel if you ever wanted there to be another open world Western game again.
That's one of those "one game series per genre" things.

 

[Yamamura]

The Simpsons Hit and Run. I can see the temptation to reboot it because of the resurgence in attention it got, but I can say the sequel could never exist. The circumstances that made the original game possible just aren't there anymore.

 

[Judge Dredd]

There seems to be a consensus that Half-Life 2 (and especially HL2 Ep 1 and 2) were nowhere near as innovative as Half-Life 1, and that combined with the sheer disappointment of HL3 non-development, makes it so the whole series would have been better off with just ending at HL1

HL1 was revolutionary mainly because it was the first story driven linear FPS, where before that it was all id Software with non-lore and focus on running and gunning.

Everything Half-Life did was done by Shogo shortly before. What killed Shogo was the rushed development (parts of the game are straight up missing) and that bullshit critical hit system.

Half-Life 2 wasn't that bad. Things like the physics puzzles only seem old hat because everybody tried to copy it in the aftermath.

Alyx wasn't particularly groundbreaking either, minus being a fully fledged VR game. But even then that's because Valve had all the time and money in the world to throw at it. All people want is a great game.

"It wasn't ground breaking, except for all the ground it broke."

Also, Half-Life Alyx was a complete mess shortly before release, and was all but remade in 11 months.

I wouldn't mind, but it seems strange you guys try and prop up HL1, but throw HL2 and Alyx under the bus.

Half Life 3 wouldn't need to be groundbreaking to be successful. I don't know why this is a common sentiment people are having. All Valve needs to do is make a worthwhile experience.

To be successful? You're right. But to be well received? Wouldn't happen. Other games that promised to be ground breaking, but got stuck in development hell (mainly Duke Nukem Forever) were a disappointment. Even when the result is good (Resident Evil 2 Remake or Doom 2016) there was a contingent of people who did nothing but piss and complain.

Valve, especially with Half-Life, has a reputation for innovation. Story, physics, and episodic content. As we saw with Alyx (and VR in general), there are people who will be furious if the game isn't just a Ep2 map pack with an ending and better graphics. There are people who will be furious if it doesn't completely reinvent the games industry and make everything before it completely obsolete.

that upcoming Perfect Dark reboot really doesn't need to happen.

I didn't know there was one. That said, I'm really torn on this.

The unfinished Perfect Dark sequel sounded good. But if they're doing a reboot in current year, I can only imagine it being a complete mess.

 

[herefortheactualthreads]

Sleeping Dogs is a pretty fun game that has no sequel nor does it need it. I think Mirror's Edge didn't need a sequel. Mirror's Edge Catalyst is sorta a sequel soft reboot but it doesn't have the same charm as the original. Dice could have left it there and it would have become a cult classic.

For Sleeping Dogs being a japenese GTA-like game, it was pretty good. Mirror's Catalyst was a prequel, maybe i am too much sperging here but i genuinely think they could somehow expand the story between Catalyst and OG Mirror's Edge, and maybe get new ideas on how Faith and Kate progressing in Mirror's Edge 2: Electric Boogaloo, i could see a FPS-Parkour game happening.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

Perfect Dark Zero just kind of exists, and that upcoming Perfect Dark reboot really doesn't need to happen.

I will be in an infinitely small minority for saying it but its multiplayer was actually quite fun but the single player was absolutely awful on Perfect Agent, let alone Dark Agent. It was jank but the weapon slot system (4 slots that weapons take up between 1-3) still is something I wish I saw elsewhere.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Darkest Dungeon.

Ironically, the sequel doens't add much.

 

[Slav Power]

Half Life 3 wouldn't need to be groundbreaking to be successful. I don't know why this is a common sentiment people are having.

I don't think you understand. Valve cannot release a new Half-Life game with that name, because everyone would look at it and expect something impossible, and no matter how good the game would be, it would flop solely because of the name alone. And Valve is fully aware of that.

Episode 3 was announced 17 years ago, and by those 17 years gamers have created a myth of HL3 being the best, most groundbreaking game of all time. Nothing that Valve can release can meet that, so they will never use that name. And as evident by this thread, the obsession with this name is still prevalent within gamers.

Valve will never release a game called Half-Life 3, get over it.

Alyx wasn't particularly groundbreaking either, minus being a fully fledged VR game.

Look, I know that you also don't have a VR headset to play that game, but that doesn't mean it "wasn't particularly groundbreaking" because of the hardware requirement that you don't fulfill.

HL:A was groundbreaking as in it's set a benchmark for VR games. How they should be designed, what types of control schemes should be implemented, and what kind of world interactivity should be implemented in them. Granted they did so to sell their VR headsets, which for the time were really decent, but still, if you have a HTC or an Oculus you can still play it and experience it.

You don't need a VR headset to realize that, because it's clearly visible when looking at VR gameplays on YouTube that Alyx was Valve's way of showing how VR games should look. You just have to drop the cynicism that stems from VR being so prohibitively expensive and also limited to your house space.

I wouldn't mind, but it seems strange you guys try and prop up HL1, but throw HL2 and Alyx under the bus.

Welcome to video game discussions in 2023. Everyone just wants to pick the greatest possible game and shit on everything else for the dumbest of reasons, because now you just have cynics that can't enjoy shit and the only enjoyment they find is in being mad at everything. HL1 was best because it was in the 90's and everything after 90's is shit. That's probably the logic, much like /pol/tards moving the goalpost of what's a "huwhite man" to cavemen era just to add more things to the "get mad at" list.

Sleeping Dogs is a pretty fun game that has no sequel nor does it need it.

And will probably never get one since the studio that made it closed down 4 years after it's release, and I don't think Square Enix really cares about that franchise to have some other studio make a sequel.

It didn't need one in any sense other than it's the only AAA "martial arts movie" open world game, besides Yakuza. And I have Yakuza 0 to play one day - I'm honestly so intimidated by its length I can't bring myself to actually boot it up - so maybe it fills it well enough, but I'd appreciate having a martial arts GTA-like with modernized graphics.

I actually got Yakuza 0 alongside Sleeping Dogs thinking it's a "Japanese GTA clone". However I was dead wrong, but at the same time it was one of the best mistakes that I've ever made. Ended up playing through the entire series and enjoying it. Definitely turned on the waterworks at certain moments.

Zero is very particular, since it's the only one in the series where you have a shitton of money and it's also used to level up your skills. I've managed to get through it tryhard mode because I didn't knew how to make enough cash to level myself up, but if you want to level up to have an easier time during the story: Mr. Shakedown, Mr. Shakedown Deep Pockets upgrade and Zap Gun. Get shaken down for all you have, find him, defeat him with Zap Guns, and you get all of your money back and then an additional half of it. Repeat this process and you'll max out your cash.

Also don't try to 100% Zero because it's tedious as shit, and don't waste too many Completion Points if you want to unlock leveling of the fourth style. I wasted mine on business perks and infinite running, and to get the skill unlock I'd need to learn how to play Mahjong.

or Sleeping Dogs being a japenese GTA-like game

>Japanese

 

[internet friend]

Dark souls. The first game had a sense of finality to it, and a choice that left you feeling like you made an impact one way or another. The sequels just ruined that.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Eternal Darkness.

I don't remember if that game ended on a cliff hanger or not, but that game's mythical status wouldn't exist if it got a string of sequels.

I have Yakuza 0 to play one day - I'm honestly so intimidated by its length I can't bring myself to actually boot it up - so maybe it fills it well enough, but I'd appreciate having a martial arts GTA-like with modernized graphics.

For me, part of the appeal of Yakuza is the glacial pace. I've not played any of the games because there's always some caveat to each one. Usually censorship related.

It's a shame that GiantBomb never got around to making that Endurance Run of Yakuza. Though given them making Persona mainstream has made the fanbase insufferable, maybe it's for the best.

The other big appeal for Yakuza, especially zero and the early games, is virtual tourism. Especially period virtual tourism. I'll never get to visit Club Sega, but at least it exists in Yakuza...

 

[Caesare]

Everything Half-Life did was done by Shogo shortly before.

Shogo wasn't one continuous storyline though was it? I kind of remember it being broken up into levels. And, it just plain sucked. As cool as it looked at the time, it was hard and boring. That first mech level I remember went on forever and was hard as fuck. If you do something technically first, but you did it all wrong and the product stunk as a result, should it really count?

Red Dead Redemption needed no sequel. That story was ambiguous enough to allow creativity of what happened with John Marston's past. Evidently, RDR2 retconned that game to hell and back.

I enjoyed rd2 quite a lot, but the worst thing about it for me was the fact that I couldn't kill dutch. There's little satisfaction that he supposedly dies at the end of the first game. I wanted to blow his brains out as Arther Morgan or John Marsten. Seriously, I hated dutch way more than micah. Micah was kind of cool in his own way. I like how he has two obviously scumbag friends that just start hanging around the gang and everyone else is okay with this.

There seems to be a consensus that Half-Life 2 (and especially HL2 Ep 1 and 2) were nowhere near as innovative as Half-Life 1, and that combined with the sheer disappointment of HL3 non-development, makes it so the whole series would have been better off with just ending at HL1

HL1 was very good, but HL2 was way more interesting, I thought.

 

[Radola Gajda]

Eternal Darkness.

I don't remember if that game ended on a cliff hanger or not, but that game's mythical status wouldn't exist if it got a string of sequels.

Yes and no it kinda did end on cliff hanger. If you did only single run, but if you finished it multiple times it gave you "true ending"

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@Slav Power That’s the thing, when I man up and play Yakuza I’m sure I’ll love it, but I think of it as it’s own thing, it doesn’t fill the same casual and lighter spade that things like GTA clones did.

And really, that’s an extinct genre. You have GTA itself and RDR, but Saints Row died, came back, and sucks now. Everybody apes RPGs or Ubishit now, nobody makes the same formula of “linear missions, fuck around in a world full of minigames” in the same way.

@Caesare I absolutely despised Dutch for a mixture of being a 1970s Leftist radical in the 1890s, his general douchiness, and attitude towards Southerners (fuck your Pennsylvania veteran dad).

He was written VERY well. But I don’t really want to play on his side. The speech where he goes on about European “peasants” destroying his noble savage utopia makes my blood boil.

Micah is too cartoonishly evil to be a good character or really offend me. Was just a very cheap, lazy character.

I wish they had actually built up Leviticus Cornwall as a proper villain, characterized him more. It was a badly written game overall, hidden behind top tier production value. I don’t regret the time spent on my one play through but it’s ultimately still a frontiersman sandbox with minigames for me.

 

[Caesare]

I wish they had actually built up Leviticus Cornwall as a proper villain, characterized him more

Leviticus was such a non entity that when I did the mission where he gets killed, I had no idea who the fuck he was. I had completely forgotten who he was supposed to be.

It was a badly written game overall, hidden behind top tier production value,

It really was. I know it wouldn't be fun otherwise, but the fact that the game tries to portray your gang as a honorable group of criminals despite the fact that you shoot about 900000 people along the way was retarded. They should have just leaned into the fact that you were all scumbags, considering a big portion of the gameplay is going to be shooting people.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Leviticus was such a non entity that when I did the mission where he gets killed, I had no idea who the fuck he was. I had completely forgotten who he was supposed to be.

As a coal mining enjoyer I was disappointed that they made this whole company town area and only really used it for that one mission. Heck, could have had some side content about a firedamp explosion, union organizers. I would have traded an empty New Austin (beautiful as it was to see in color and greater detail) for Roanoke Ridge done as a more authentic and detailed Appalachian chapter, like how much time it spent on the West and Louisiana areas of the map.

It really was. I know it wouldn't be fun otherwise, but the fact that the game tries to portray your gang as a honorable group of criminals despite the fact that you shoot about 900000 people along the way was retarded. They should have just leaned into the fact that you were all scumbags, considering a big portion of the gameplay is going to be shooting people.

I had expected it to have more social banditry - Robin Hood - in it, and instead it has you loan sharking. Or they could have had it be about being a scumbag, obvious to the audience but not the characters, but you wake up to it along the way. He kind of does, but it’s driven more by Dutch being a douche than it is any sort of actual principled reasoning.

I’ve got a post in the RDR thread that sums up my problem with it by contrasting to “The Shootist,” but basically Arthur just has to go “I’m vewy sowwy” while STILL being a thug to the bitter end, and even the wife of the man he killed will suck his dick about what a good person he is. It’s infantile.

A shame, too, because the way they had him fall apart from tuberculosis was brilliantly done.

Edit: I guess this stuff is my version of Fallout fans bitching about Fallout 4 all the time while also being obsessed with it.

 

[Anonitolia]

Kid Icarus: Uprising. And it never did

Dude, that game needed a sequel solely to fix those fucking awful controls. Or a remake. Or anything.
Wouldn't hurt to give Kid Icarus some more relevance, too. I really liked how Uprising was written...

 

[Judge Dredd]

Shogo wasn't one continuous storyline though was it? I kind of remember it being broken up into levels. And, it just plain sucked. As cool as it looked at the time, it was hard and boring. That first mech level I remember went on forever and was hard as fuck. If you do something technically first, but you did it all wrong and the product stunk as a result, should it really count?

It's been a while since I played, but it depends how you count one continuous story. It did have set levels, but so did Half-Life. The story was intended to have flashbacks and other scenes, but the final game doesn't really have that as far as I remember.

The part I bolded is largely the point I was making.


Resident Evil is often credited as the first survival horror. It coined the term, and it was the first one to be a major influential hit, but games like Alone in the Dark did what Resident Evil did long before. Other games like Maniac Mansion, Project Firestart, Sweet Home, and Rescue on Fractalus could be argued as doing the survival horror thing before Alone in the Dark. Going even further back you get into dumb territory, is Pac Man a survival horror because you're chased by ghosts?

I could go on a similar autistic tangent about cover based shooters, but you get the idea.

I'm sure it's possible to go on a similar tangent about physics. Pointing to games like Trespasser and The Incredible Machine. But it was Half-Life 2 that made it so every FPS for a few years from Doom 3's expansion to Bioshock had a discount gravity gun, and every AAA game today has crates that fall over when you throw a grenade at them.


It doesn't make sense to me how people can put HL1 on a pedestal for it's influence when games like Duke Nukem and Shogo were attempting some of the same things, but then dismiss HL2 and Alyx because it was just physics or just VR.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

HL1 was very good, but HL2 was way more interesting, I thought.

HL1 was revolutionary in terms of worldbuilding and storytelling. The gameplay basically has you run through a linear gauntlet where lots of scripted shit happens (which unfortunately is a trend that became overwhelmingly popular and dominates the singleplayer FPS genre probably to this day) but the scenery and stage setting was quite impressive for its time. HL2 tried to spice this formula up by introducing stuff like vehicles and cool physics tricks and I'd say it succeeded.