Games that need no sequel

[Caesare]

I don't remember which, but the 1st Resident Evil's engine was appropriated from some RPG on the snes.

That would've been interesting, however it's not true. The development for Resident Evil 1 began on the snes, as it was originally going to be for that system. In 1994, Capcom moved development to the Playstation, which was coming out late that year.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I agree with Sleeping Dogs. I kinda wish it had a bit more shooting in it (not that there was anything wrong with the melee combat. On the contrary. But I just like my guns). I tremendously enjoyed my time with it and Hong Kong was such a well done setting. Like, I've never been there, but after playing it I feel like I have, if that makes sense. To me it'll always be the little game that could. I wouldn't mind a sequel if it was well done, but I certainly don't need one.

I'm kinda drawing a blank beyond that. Bioshock maybe, but I heard Bioshock 2 justifies its existence by looking at Rapture from another angle and just being plain good. I'll be honest and say that I never beat it, although I can't really tell you why.

I thought it used firearms in a very tasteful way. You can get them right away, but only if you go looking for it (like trunks of cop cars). They're not prioritized much. When you finally get to shootouts it feels like total warfare. If they were more common I think they would have distracted from the melee combat but also made the story feel less impactful.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Return of the Obra Dinn. Obviously.

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.

There were several FPS games that were story driven before HL1. In different ways, of course. HL1 was more cinematic/immersible because it had unskippables, you have to stand there and watch from a first person perspective. No skipping dialogue or cutscenes. You have to watch because it's happening in vidya IRL.

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.

People that didn't buy the original raised up and demanded a sequel, then they didn't buy it. It's what I call Earthbound syndrome.

 

[ColonelCadaver]

Many paradox\city builder\total war and other highly replayable games don't need any more titles above 1. You make the game, you support its development and roll out stuff along the way. Only thing that stops them from doing that is the need to stamp out samey nigger shit with incremental changes for $$$ and common prejudice against "le old jank".

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Many paradox\city builder\total war and other highly replayable games don't need any more titles above 1. You make the game, you support its development and roll out stuff along the way. Only thing that stops them from doing that is the need to stamp out samey nigger shit with incremental changes for $$$ and common prejudice against "le old jank".

With Total War I disagree because visual spectacle is a big part of why people play it, but with the others I agree, and not only that but I'm pissed that they constantly break Paradox games mods through their shitty updates that are not and never will be better than the mod. Hell, it basically guarantees any small total conversions - the kind that are just a passion project of one dude - will never survive, they all have a shelf life because at some point they'll stop maintaining it.

That said, I would totally consider a Total War-like that removes all of the graphical flash for abstract shapes (like your unit is literally just a colored square with a symbol on it on a map) so it can run easy on a potato laptop. It could be like Total War in literally every other way, just all graphics abstracted out and marketed as the quick-paced, minimalist version. Hell, you do that and you could offer damn near any time period with it, no assets to fuss over, just tables of statistics for every unit, with basic rosters for big time periods... could have everything from Cyrus the Great to the Franco-Prussian under one roof and milk cheap-ass campaign DLCs forever.

I wonder how hard that would be to make... I'm a genius. It could be to Total War what Battlebit is to Battlefield.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

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,

Here's a pure survival horror game from 1986. It was the first game released by a now very familiar name: Ubisoft

 

[macrodegenerate]

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.

It didn't really end on a cliffhanger. That final boss fight was straight kino.

Edit:

Viewtiful Joe - just a fun game, that didn't need a sequel.
Legend of Mana - Self contained series of stories about the nature of love, and its destructive potential. Just enough to fill out the thesis.
Stardew Valley - Why improve on perfection?

 

[Judge Dredd]

Basically play into "Night of the Living Dead" instead of "Dawn of the Living Dead." That my lose something important, though, since as I understand (I never watched any of this stuff) Night was a straight horror movie and Dawn had the comedic and satirical aspects.

Night of the Dead was the first one, and set in a single house as a group of people try to survive. It should be easy, but they can't stop squabbling over petty bullshit. Is played straight.
Dawn of the Dead was set in a mall. The satirical and comedy elements are largely a result of modern interpretation. There's literally a scene where bikers are throwing cream pies into zombie's faces, but some of it like the line "it's one of those big indoor malls" is only funny to a modern audience.
Day of the Dead was set in a bunker. The original plot was meant to be nations using zombies as weapons, but the budget didn't allow for it. Is played straight.
There was Land of the Dead after that (people hated it but I thought it was alright) and Diary of the Dead I saw at release and completely forget.


Sorry for the wall of text, but I say all this because the fantasy that makes Dawn of the Dead and Dead Rising so popular is having your run a mall, as well as different strategies for zombie survival. This was a popular topic of discussion back in the day, until Zombie Survival Guide and Zombieland kind of ruined the fun. Games like Zombiod and 7 Days to Die are too dry and mechanical. While Dying Light doesn't allow for the freedom of surviving the immediate aftermath of an outbreak.

DR1, Case Zero, and to a lesser degree 2 and 3 do a good job at delivering this fantasy aspect.

I keep mentioning Case Zero because it's largely forgotten about these days, being seen as little more than a paid demo, but the small town setting is a logical extension, and the small play area and short run time make the run based progression of DR 1 and 2 make sense since a single run is 1-2 hours, not 8-12.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Darkest Dungeon

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@Need for Speed Surviving Mars as a brand may not be good but I would be interested in that same basic game but expanded on in some ways. What I found engaging with it - I've played a bit, I find it rather hard and have never gotten to late stage development - was the life support, rough logistics and dome planning. Everything has physical solutions and has to be shipped around, your systems can fuck up, and you have to think about what you're doing.

What I didn't like was the cutesiness of the setting and the lack of politics and conflict. It felt like the whole thing had this "tee hee isn't Mars so cool" vibe with the building choices, the traits were dumb. I never felt invested in my people as people, except for this one religious guru type. This in contrast to Tropico, the city-builder I played as a kid. Or The Martian Chronicles that I read. I would have liked for there to be have been more manufacturing and commerce and proper city-building, not just a little Mars theme park. And I would have liked to have been able to nerve staple my proles, throw them in gulags, and shoot it out for Martian independence.

Imagine a game of creating a society, guiding a Martian colony from that first corporate/national mission through its full maturation, not just economically but socially, into a new people. That could have epic scope.

Instead, the new genre of autistic sea/space games seem to all focus in more on the life supports and logistics, the one thing that I DO NOT want more complexity with.

 

[verissimus]

I feel like this thread is just "what sequels do you not like" instead. Cause as a general rule game sequels perform pretty well since they iterate on something that already works. I really wish bayonetta had good sequels but we just never got that.

Sort of, although a lot of people's selections here seemed more based off games that essentially had a good story that had a satisfying ending that resolved either all or pretty much all the issues going on in the story. Parasite Eve did this, while Parasite Eve 2 just felt like a sequel that didn't add anything storywise. Compare this to something like say Mega Man that pretty much doesn't have a story. I'd imagine anyone here that has a problem with another sequel in that series probably doesn't even like the series at all or is just tired of it.

As for me my choices would be
1) FF7, assuming you believe the supposed "remake" is a sequel to the original game.

2) MGS1. This I clearly say in hindsight because at the time I wanted to see a sequel to what was and still is one of my favorite games of all time. And then MGS2 game around and gave me second thoughts. MGS3 brought back some hope for the series only for MGS4 to ruin that and MGS5 to thoroughly desecrate it.

3) Kingdom Hearts 2. Yes the third game (ignore Chain of Memories) not the first only just because there clearly were unresolved issues in the first game that got settled in this game. The main character and his friends get reunited back home, they beat the bad guys, and all is seemingly fine throughout all the worlds...that is until Nomura and Square decided otherwise by dishing out more games that just made an already silly story unnecessarily nonsensical.

4) Assassins Creed. This choice actually has more to do with @Scarthew point because I utterly despise this series. Even so, I think most people agree that story wise the series has become about as nonsensical as MGS or Kingdom Hearts. I honestly don't even understand how the original game got a sequel given how brain dead the AI was and how pretentiously stupid the story was.

5) FFX. I know there are some people that enjoyed FFX-2, but uh.... That game has to be a guilty pleasure to those people that enjoy it right?

In general, I just prefer to see sequels to games that either weren't story heavy to begin with (for example Mega Man) or which the next installment is more like a separate adventure such as most Zelda games.

 

[Scarthew]

Sort of, although a lot of people's selections here seemed more based off games that essentially had a good story that had a satisfying ending that resolved either all or pretty much all the issues going on in the story.

Games aren't about their stories... they're games. I don't care what the excuse for a sequel is I want polish on the mechanics. There is one issue though which is level design/variety. RE4 had so many different set pieces that RE5 really just felt like a retread of it, its combat is improved for the most part but its scenarios are often repeated from 4 usually not as well executed.