Games that need no sequel

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F.E.A.R. is how Half-Life 2 should've played like (minus the bullet time)
the vehicle and physics sections are gimmicky, and it does way more scenes where all you can do is stand around and watch people talk
but the design of City 17 levels is fucking amazing and i think the combine is cool
 
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Judge Dredd said:
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.
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The creator of Resident Evil used to lie that he never played or heard of Alone in the Dark for years. Finally, one day, he came out and admitted that he based it on Alone in the Dark. He and other dummies used to say that he based it solely on Sweet Home, which is retarded since that's a turn based rpg with almost zero resemblance to a survival horror game besides the fact that you're in a mansion and there's ghosts.
 
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@Judge Dredd
@Slav Power

See that was my point though. Oh absolutely Alyx paved the way for more mainstream VR by giving a fantastic blueprint. I'm just not sure I would consider it more technically signifigant than Half Life 1. I would say more than Half Life 2 though.

This is the issue I have, Valve following the id route where every new game needs to be some glorious step up in technical achievement.

And yeah people pissed and moaned over RE2 Remake and Doom 2016 but I sure ain't putting stock into those opinions unless it's a valid criticism about the game design and not "it's different waaah"
 
Judge Dredd said:
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.
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Shogo is flat-out unfinished. The onfoot sections are unarguably worse than Blood 2's gameplay, and that's quite the feat. The giant robot sections were adequate, and the plot and ambience screamed so much 90ies weebery to be almost funny.

If you want the true game that tried to be Half Life and failed despite depth and mechanics, that's Sin. Looking at it now it's also dated as fuck, but they tried hard and failed... somewhat.

On-topic, the Mad Max spinoff game was very atmospheric but goddammit, the collect-a-ton region quests and the fact that it used extensively its vehicular combat system just ONCE (in the final boss fight) was a travesty. Someone really good worked on that combat system, and the design limits broke it down. Pity.
 
RSU 1741 said:
Shogo is flat-out unfinished. The onfoot sections are unarguably worse than Blood 2's gameplay, and that's quite the feat. The giant robot sections were adequate, and the plot and ambience screamed so much 90ies weebery to be almost funny.

If you want the true game that tried to be Half Life and failed despite depth and mechanics, that's Sin. Looking at it now it's also dated as fuck, but they tried hard and failed... somewhat.

On-topic, the Mad Max spinoff game was very atmospheric but goddammit, the collect-a-ton region quests and the fact that it used extensively its vehicular combat system just ONCE (in the final boss fight) was a travesty. Someone really good worked on that combat system, and the design limits broke it down. Pity.
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What do you mean, like there was only one fight where you had yo keep fighting through waves? I remember it being half and half car combat and brawling.
 
Judge Dredd said:
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.
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Same here as far as it being many years since I have played either Shogo or HL1. What I mean about continuous levels in HL1 is, once you get to a certain point there will be text on the screen informing you that this is the start of a new area, but there was no real end to the level before. You would just walk to a certain point and arrive somewhere that would be considered a new level. It wasn't like Doom 1 or 2 where you find the 3 keys and get to the room at the end where you flip the switch, ending that level before a new one loads. Shogo is like Doom 1&2, whereas Half life the levels just build into one another seamlessly. That was pretty cool and original for a FPS at the time.
RSU 1741 said:
and the plot and ambience screamed so much 90ies weebery to be almost funny.
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Watch the opening credits intro to Shogo on YouTube. The song that plays and the background action is straight out of some Japanimation from the 80s. It's pretty funny.
 
Slav Power said:
HL2 was nowhere near that much of a revolution since by 2004 story driven games were no longer something revolutionary, and instead HL2 was more of a glorified tech demo, to the point where it interfered with the fun factor, like with having to stack those bricks to move forward just to show off Havok. Needless to say HL2 still looks mighty impressive for a game from 2004.
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It's 2023, and there's still AAA games releasing this year that have facial animations that can't match HL2, or Source games as a whole. B4B looks soulless next to L4D, and TF2/Gmod memes are still being cranked out to this day.
Judge Dredd said:
Also, Half-Life Alyx was a complete mess shortly before release, and was all but remade in 11 months.
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Alyx was what caused them to look back on their development structure, and realize that the flat near-anarchist style meant they weren't getting anything done. On the other hand, they did pull it off, and even post-release they'd still push out updates for it, including for stuff that they didn't really need to...
... And ends up being some technical wizardry that makes you go "How in the ever living fuck?" Real-time raytracing? Naw, we still got raster graphics down pat.
 
Kerbal Space Program. The devs could have easily updated the game for years to come, even just by integrating mods into the base game (like they used to do in the early days.)
Meanwhile they decided to make a sequel - a buggy, broken 60$ piece of shit with absurd lag. Everything the game promises to deliver - interstellar travel, extraterrestial launchpads, even fancy graphics - has been added by modders years ago.

 
Judge Dredd said:
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.
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Truth! HL2 was incredible. Especially considering it was 2004 and it is still better than probably 75% of FPS that come out even now.

And whoever it was over at Valve who made the decision to cast Robert Culp as the villian is a genius. Nobody plays "increasingly annoyed and threatening" like Robert Culp. There's a reason he played the murderer on three different episodes of Columbo as a different character each time.
 
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Parasite Eve.

Literally the definition of lightning in a bottle:
- Smooth active time combat
- Modern (as of 1997) setting in New York with an interesting twist on its sci-fi story (hard enough to be based on actual science, but soft enough to allow a lot of cool crazy shit to happen)
- Very linear admittedly (unless you go into the Chrysler Building), but the environments have a lot of atmosphere and a lot of presence to them
-Hot, smart, cool and deadly female protagonist Aya Brea and your typical 90s diverse cast (who come off as actual people rather than props for the protagonist to play off of)
Minor spoiler: A really funny racist joke when Maeda is introduced
-Amazing soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura and a great ending theme

The sequels definitely didn't do it justice. PE2 was just Resident Evil but replace the T-Virus with mitochondria. It's a rather good but generic survival horror game of the time with some RPG mechanics slapped on. Not a bad game per se (it's a decent game to play for the ~10-20 hours it lasts), but not amazing like the first game. The third game has a horrific story but the actual gameplay is okay. Also they make Aya an annoying helpless woman when that's the exact opposite of what she is in the previous two games. Some people were bitching about sexism when it came out and while I won't go that far, they really aborted her character and just made her into a lame sex object for the director to project his fantasies onto (as she takes damage her clothes become more ripped up. Nothing too bad but still...).

The only game I think counts as a sequel of sorts to Parasite Eve is vagrant Story and I haven't finished that one yet. It uses the same battle system as Parasite Eve but more advanced and the game is a marvel to look at in addition to playing. Plus, it's one of Squaresoft's last games before becoming Square Enix, so I see it being the only true sequel to PE.
 
Geddy Lee's Fee and See said:
Parasite Eve.

Literally the definition of lightning in a bottle:
- Smooth active time combat
- Modern (as of 1997) setting in New York with an interesting twist on its sci-fi story (hard enough to be based on actual science, but soft enough to allow a lot of cool crazy shit to happen)
- Very linear admittedly (unless you go into the Chrysler Building), but the environments have a lot of atmosphere and a lot of presence to them
-Hot, smart, cool and deadly female protagonist Aya Brea and your typical 90s diverse cast (who come off as actual people rather than props for the protagonist to play off of)
Minor spoiler: A really funny racist joke when Maeda is introduced
-Amazing soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura and a great ending theme

The sequels definitely didn't do it justice. PE2 was just Resident Evil but replace the T-Virus with mitochondria. It's a rather good but generic survival horror game of the time with some RPG mechanics slapped on. Not a bad game per se (it's a decent game to play for the ~10-20 hours it lasts), but not amazing like the first game. The third game has a horrific story but the actual gameplay is okay. Also they make Aya an annoying helpless woman when that's the exact opposite of what she is in the previous two games. Some people were bitching about sexism when it came out and while I won't go that far, they really aborted her character and just made her into a lame sex object for the director to project his fantasies onto (as she takes damage her clothes become more ripped up. Nothing too bad but still...).

The only game I think counts as a sequel of sorts to Parasite Eve is vagrant Story and I haven't finished that one yet. It uses the same battle system as Parasite Eve but more advanced and the game is a marvel to look at in addition to playing. Plus, it's one of Squaresoft's last games before becoming Square Enix, so I see it being the only true sequel to PE.
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Vagrant Story is GOAT. Vagrant Story was meant to be like a series of games, with the first one actually named "Phantom Pain" (it appeared at the end of the credits) and the whole saga being "Vagrant Story" with Ashley being hunted down or something. Sadly SquareSoft was on the verge of merging with Enix and the launch of the ps2 and FF X outshone Vagrant Story, and some insideres even thought the game just wasn't really gonna sold well.

I could write a whole thesis on Vagrant Story and how it pushed the psx to its limits, the complex mechanics, the deep story and gameplay was ahead of its time.

Another of SquareSoft is Final Fantasy Tactics and Chrono Cross. Altough FFT got the remade in the psp with The War of The Lions and the new fmvs which, holy shit they are awesome and Chrono Cross had a new remade this year.

Examples on good games that don't need a sequel or franchise to sell well.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
What do you mean, like there was only one fight where you had yo keep fighting through waves? I remember it being half and half car combat and brawling.
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The brawling system was incredibly basic. And let's not forget all the Regional Bosses being reskins with middling mechanics to differentiate them.

I mean the car combat. Mad Max's car combat system was good, but they never gave it enough space to breathe properly, almost all fights were short, messy and cramped. Only the last battle when you attack an entire convoy on a dedicated area let the system completely breathe and show its depth.

At least, that's how it felt to me. It would have been great if only they let me play with it more, against bigger/more foes.....
 
There were the convoys around the open world, but only six of them, or some other really small number.

The game's best moments are few and far between. There's too much grinding with breaking emblems, pulling down towers, and farming for scrap.

Another major flaw with the game is the film items you unlock after beating the game are terrible. The interceptor is useless, the shotgun is completely outclassed by the pipe gun, and the armour is only usable because the combat is easy enough that you don't need the late game stuff.
 
RSU 1741 said:
The brawling system was incredibly basic. And let's not forget all the Regional Bosses being reskins with middling mechanics to differentiate them.

I mean the car combat. Mad Max's car combat system was good, but they never gave it enough space to breathe properly, almost all fights were short, messy and cramped. Only the last battle when you attack an entire convoy on a dedicated area let the system completely breathe and show its depth.

At least, that's how it felt to me. It would have been great if only they let me play with it more, against bigger/more foes.....
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It may not be as good as I remembered.

What could have been nice, and games in general do a really bad job actually delivering on this (Kingdom Come was supposed to have field battles and didn't) would have been something like a field battle between dozens of cars on opposite sides.
 
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