Be Excellent To Each Other

I've just been checking out my top ten played games on 360 voice:



Of those ten, seven are direct sequels to previous iterations of the same game. SWOS, although a separate game, is a sequel of sorts to Sensible Soccer, and The Orange Box contains the sequels to Half-Life and Team Fortress Classic (albeit with new IP - Portal).

That leaves Bully: Scholarship Edition as the only original IP (and even that is a redone version of the PS2 game Canis Canem Edit).

I'm trying to figure out what this means. Is it that I'm comfortable with familiarity; or that games with new IP just aren't very good at the moment? I'm not sure the latter is true, as I've enjoyed games like Crackdown, Prey and Gears of War recently.

Of games coming out in the near future, are you looking forward to sequels of franchises that have been around a long time, or looking forward to something brand-new?

MIRROR@S@ EDGEMS!

Both.

I think it just means that some games that are fun to play sell well and then get sequels and you play them cos they're fun. I suppose my list is a bit similar although lots of them are sequels to games I never played in the first place.

It is in depth reviews like this that make the Internets Teh awesomes.

I would say it is probably quite difficult to look forward to something new as you haven't played it*, if you see what I mean, whereas I am looking forward to Starcraft 2 as I really liked the original.

*unless you buy into all the hype and stuff, and then you are generally let down.

But should developers be making endless sequels? For example, Burnout Paradise is so much more than a Burnout game , but I feel they just used the IP as people know the brand.

Mine are -

1. Viva Piñata
2. Hitman: Blood Money
3. Crackdown
4. Oblivion
5. GTA IV
6. LUMINES LIVE!
7. DOOM
8. Geometry Wars Evolved
9. Geometry Wars Evolved²
10. Halo 3

I wonder how it calculates that? Is it "number of days played" or something? I guess it's only since it started blogging me, too. Otherwise some earlier games might be up there.

Nice to have two "new" games in the top three. And Hitman Bloody Money was the first Hitman game I played properly.

My most looked forward to game right now is The Force Unleashed. Which isn't a sequel, but it's very much part of an existing universe.

To be fair, games aren't subject to the same trends that films are when it comes to sequels (ie: sequel will be lousier than the original at a likelihood so close to 100% it's not worth typing out all those decimal places), and sequels are often better, since simply releasing an improved version with all new x is much more acceptable than filming the same ... film again. It's generally only when a game gets stupidly overdone and/or fails to innovate properly that it goes down the pan.

So while the industry is generally glutted with sequels in place of original games, those sequels are still often very good games, so it's not such a disaster.