Has anyone else noticed the abundance of sequels these days? It seems like every other game you pick up is "Something: 2: The Next Mission" but what does that mean for gamers?

There are two types of sequels: absolutely great, and absolutely horrible. There's not much room for the grey area. For some reason, the designers of games assume that if people like their game, there must be a sequel. This is often deceptively good for a time, and then when the sequel finally hits the shelves, it's nothing close to what you were expecting. In this situation, you often decide to cautiously rent their games before you go out and pay your fifty bucks. Often, this is the only way to keep the developers motivated. It gives them the message that you aren't sure about their product, so they try to make it better so you'll be more likely to give them more money. Take the Sonic series for example. Sonic Adventure DX was pretty bad… Sonic Adventure 2 was a little better, but still pretty bad… By the time they hit Sonic Heroes, they seem to have realized that people were only buying the games out of loyalty (notice the blurb on the box "All New Sonic!" as an example…).

There are also those sequels that make you say, "Wow, that was the best sequel ever, they need another one!" Chances are, you don't say this too often. The only time you'll be saying this in the next few months is with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and possibly Viewtiful Joe 2. Let's think about why people like sequels like these, but not others.

The primary reason gamers really like some sequels is because the original game was good. Going back to the Sonic example, Sonic Adventure was bad, so why would you want to go get more bad stuff? Shallow gamers form opinions very quickly. Only the die-hard gamers tend to have toe common sense to see that the developers just had a creative lapse, and skirt cautiously around the next sequel, but eventually return to the series. This is called loyalty, and it is a fleeting trait these days…

Second to that in the things that make sequels great is the way they are presented. Most people when they pick up a sequel are looking for familiarity. Games like Metroid Prime 2 hold true to the original controls, and they keep everything in a similar fashion to the first game. Going back to my first point, this is only good when the first game was good. Many times you just want to scream at the developers "Change it already!"

There are some developers, like Nintendo, who stick to the idea of franchises. Although they are similar to sequels, they are often quite different too. Take a look at the Final Fantasy games. Square-Enix does a great job with the "series" if you can call it that. It really is more of a franchise because none of the games (except for X-2) have anything to do with the previous game. There are just some things that are standard in most of the games, such as chocobos. This is where Nintendo has the one-up on other developers. Yes, I'm talking about the ever famous, Mario. Although he does have many games, which build upon each other, each one is designed so that if you haven't played the others, you can still understand it. I think that is one of the reasons that Mario has survived the test of time. He appears in independent games, not sequels, so he is a franchise, and a good one at that.

Basically, success comes with quality, which is only common sense. The problem is, different people interpret quality differently. Sequels are getting a little out of hand these days. Developers should stick to franchises and stop bogging gamers down with sequels that don't quite live up to their expectations…

Chris Hofer