10 Underappreciated Video Games That Deserve A Sequel
Second chances really are hard to come by, especially in the games industry.
Transcript
00:00 In the modern gaming industry it can feel like every other game is a sequel.
00:04 The umpteenth entry in a franchise that's been trudging on for years,
00:07 refusing to die, sucking up all the oxygen the little guys need just to get on their feet.
00:12 The Final Fantasy series alone has over 90 games to its name,
00:16 including spin-offs and mobile installments, and that's not even the biggest one.
00:20 Gaming needs some more variety, but we don't have to rely on fresh faces and new ideas when
00:24 there are plenty of pretty damn good franchises that fell flat on their faces on their first outing.
00:29 Releases that may have reviewed well, but that failed to live up to their
00:33 publisher's lofty sales standards or just sold terribly overall.
00:37 Even games that simply set up solid ground for that sequel to be the breakout hit that
00:41 the original outing should have been. These games show that just because you
00:44 missed your overly optimistic sales expectations doesn't mean you're any
00:47 less of a blast to play, or any less deserving of that big budget sequel.
00:52 I'm Sci for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 underappreciated video games that deserve a sequel.
00:57 Number 10 - Enslaved - Odyssey to the West
01:00 You can have everything you'd think a game would need. Star power, gorgeous visuals,
01:04 fun gameplay, an interesting story and engaging characters, and success is still not guaranteed.
01:10 On the other side of every sale, there's a decision, and if people don't feel like your
01:14 title is the best use of their money at that specific time, then you're out of luck,
01:17 no matter how wonderful it is. Take Enslaved, for example.
01:21 Slapped together by the talented team of Ninja Theory, it had everything going for it.
01:25 With its sharp dialogue and character interactions slap bang in the middle of
01:28 when those were at their peak popularity thanks to the Uncharted series, it should have been a hit.
01:33 The whole world should have been primed to enjoy the adventures of Monkey and Tripitaka,
01:37 but on the horizon there stirred a beast, a shambling behemoth.
01:40 Its name was Call of Duty Black Ops, and it released less than a month after Enslaved,
01:44 meaning it sucked up a lot of the advertising space in the preceding weeks,
01:48 as well as saved up pocket money. To make matters worse, in the very same
01:51 month as Enslaved we had Fallout New Vegas and Fable 3, so Enslaved wasn't so much released as
01:57 kicked out of the door into a firing squad. And because of this, there's almost no chance we'll
02:02 get a pole-swinging, nimbus-riding, piggyback-giving sequel out of our two protagonists.
02:06 Ah well, at least we'll always have Pigsy's perfect ten.
02:09 Number 9 - Singularity
02:11 Starting with a doomed helicopter ride into an abandoned Soviet science facility with a beefy
02:16 soldier voiced by Nolan North, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for almost any other shooter from
02:21 an Activision studio. But if you manage to push past all this, you'll shortly have found out that
02:26 while Singularity looks like a by-the-numbers, grunty, muscle-bound, patriotic shoot-a-thon,
02:31 it's actually a time-travelling grunty, muscle-bound, patriotic shoot-a-thon.
02:34 During development, deadlines caused a big chunk of story content to be removed due to the technical
02:39 constraints of having to render the world twice in two different states while swiftly moving from
02:43 one to the other, a la the medium. Many time-travelling set-pieces and entire chunks of
02:48 finished product were excised just to get it out on time as opposed to spending the required man
02:53 hours to work out the kinks, leaving Singularity feeling gutted and a little bit rough around the
02:58 edges like it never really got to explore its own premise properly. But with the standardisation of
03:03 super-fast SSDs and Microsoft's Direct Storage, a Singularity sequel could have no problem blasting
03:09 between 50s Russia and 2010s Russia as smooth as Sleevichny Muscle-a. That's Russian for butter,
03:16 don't you know? Making for a more complete experience, a more enjoyable game, and who knows,
03:20 maybe even greater franchise potential down the line.
03:23 Number 8 - Mad World
03:25 If there's one thing you couldn't call Mad World, it's unoriginal. Just look at it. In a dystopian
03:30 future hell world where people use death and violence as entertainment, you must take part
03:34 in the game show Death Watch and win yourself a fortune through creative butchery. On top of that,
03:39 you're not just some schlub, you're a chainsaw-wielding slab of meat with a hairy chest
03:43 and a violent disposition. Mad World then has you tearing through area after area and boss after
03:48 boss as two seasoned professional killers commentate your every slash and stab. Points are
03:53 awarded for kills, with extra multipliers for multi-kills and how unique your kill is. It's all
03:57 very well uppercutting someone into the air and slicing them in half from balls to brain, but
04:01 wouldn't you rather put a bin over their head and impale them with a road sign first? Needless to
04:06 say, reviewers loved Mad World with its campy humour, black and white comic book art style and
04:11 extreme violence. However, being a Wii game, that last part was probably more to its detriment than
04:16 its advantage. The Wii was already considered to be more of a kid-slash-family console and so many
04:20 quote-unquote "hardcore gamers" that would be interested in this kind of gourathon just didn't
04:25 own the hardware. It's not really the type of thing you'd buy your gran for Christmas. Unless
04:30 you're looking at picking up your inheritance early. Number 7 - Vanquish
04:34 In the distant future, the newly installed Russian government uses a giant microwave to
04:38 destroy San Francisco. Instead of sending a thank you card, the USA sends our protagonist Sam,
04:43 fitted with an experimental battle suit, to infiltrate said giant microwave to take the
04:48 fight to those damn communists. Vanquish is a video game about speed and guns and shooting
04:53 those guns at high speed, preferably while on your knees and smoking a cigarette while heavy
04:57 metal blares all around you. Sam vaults over cover to lay down fire, gently feeds enemy rockets back
05:03 into the orifices they were fired from and dropkicks crowds of bad guys to death in slow motion. It's
05:08 the kind of intentionally over-the-top ridiculousness we just don't see enough of anymore.
05:13 It's got no illusions about being anything more than a fun, carefully crafted experience about
05:17 shooting people real good and it nails every aspect of the formula. Critics said it was a
05:21 blast but a little bit short and sadly a lot of people take a sort of pounds per hour approach
05:26 to buying games as opposed to just enjoying fun. You could easily see it as an open world title,
05:32 taking full advantage of the battle suit for fast traversal or even just a larger scale linear
05:37 experience where Sam can spearhead a counter-invasion against the Russians, complete with
05:40 hilarious Russian side characters looking to restore the pre-coup government.
05:44 Never Dead With the Souls series at its highest point
05:48 of popularity, allow me to introduce you to its total opposite, Never Dead, the game where it
05:53 takes real concerted effort to die. While our protagonist Bryce may be immortal, he's not
05:58 invincible and, seemingly as part of this immortality curse, his limbs appear to be
06:02 attached with sticky tape as they'll fly off the moment an enemy brushes lightly up against you.
06:07 Lose a leg and Bryce will start hopping around moving slightly slower, lose both legs and all
06:11 you can do is crawl, lose an arm and you're down to only using one of your dual guns at a time,
06:16 and so on and so forth. Getting Bryce's limbs to reattach is as easy as dodge rolling over them,
06:21 making them magnetically zip up and back onto your torso. It may sound like a liability to
06:25 be so loosely attached to your own limbs that they constantly drop off, but Bryce can use this
06:30 ability to traverse tight areas by tearing his head off and masterfully rolling it around through
06:34 vents and the like, and his immortality allows him to use himself as a human torch by lighting
06:39 himself on fire. It's this unique approach to the gameplay and tying every element of that
06:44 gameplay into Bryce's condition of immortality that makes Never Dead so unique, and a sequel
06:48 that expands even further on his abilities and his past would, at the very least, be interesting.
06:53 Alpha Protocol It feels like every other game
06:56 bills itself as open-ended, granting the player the ability to play and take the story in many
07:01 different directions. More often than not, this is a gross exaggeration. Alpha Protocol tried to
07:06 buck this trend by focusing mostly on the places you can take the story within dialogue trees,
07:11 by offering as much variety as possible, while keeping the gameplay itself fairly fenced in.
07:16 Dropped into the shoes of Michael Thornton, the game starts off looking pretty simplistic,
07:20 with the only choice of two preset classes or a complete blank slate to add it to your heart's
07:24 desire. But later on, you'll find that the meat of the experience, and the vast majority of the
07:29 enjoyment people take from Alpha Protocol, is through the wealth of choices you have in story
07:33 progression. Depending on the order you take missions, and how you interact with characters,
07:37 and at what times, you can end up with drastically different playthroughs, and just seeing how
07:42 Thornton interacts with his cohorts and enemies as you do very professional things like hang up
07:46 on your boss or pretend to have communications problems so you can execute surrounding bad guys.
07:51 The promise of Alpha Protocol is tied into the variability of its story, and a sequel that could
07:56 deliver a future for every possible end point would genuinely be a step up in what we expect
08:01 from narrative driven video games. Number 4 - Dark Void
08:05 Sometimes your game just needs a little bit longer to cook. Get those edges sanded down,
08:10 and at the very least finish inserting all the content. Dark Void is yet another title that got
08:14 pushed out of the door before it was ready and into an unforgiving launch window, an ambitious
08:19 mixture of arcade style flight simulator and third person cover shooter, Dark Void absolutely
08:24 sings once you push past the first hour or so. In the game you'll take on, and prepare yourself for
08:29 this, Nazi supporting robot lizards, alongside a ragtag group of human resistance fighters made up
08:35 of people who have become stranded in the Bermuda Triangle over the years. This includes Nikola
08:39 Tesla, who introduces you to his latest invention, only a bloody jetpack. It's from there that it
08:44 really picks up speed and starts living up to its potential. The inclusion of the jetpack into large
08:49 open spaces filled with smaller objectives lets you mix it up, swapping between aerial combat and
08:54 ground combat at will. Dark Void's main issue is that it ends just as it's starting to reach its
08:59 peak, as in it literally cuts from what feels like the midpoint of the story to the final boss.
09:03 The real tragedy is the possibilities of the continued story. It ends with a return to the
09:08 real world, jetpack in tow, just in time to get busy introducing the allies to jetpack technology
09:13 and setting up an alternate World War 2 Rocketeer style game that we'll sadly never get to play.
09:18 3. Heavenly Sword
09:20 Heavenly Sword was an early PS3 exclusive that saw players guiding around a red headed warrior
09:25 called Noriko and smacking people with the titular Heavenly Sword. Taking inspiration
09:29 mostly from God of War, Heavenly Sword bases its combat around changing stances between fast,
09:34 range and strong, depending on which kind of enemies you're fighting, and on quick time
09:38 events as they were very much in vogue back then. It's competently put together and tons of fun
09:43 to play, and sometimes you even get a nice motion controlled crossbow level where you can try your
09:47 best to fit as many crossbow bolts as possible into one guy's balls before he hits the ground.
09:51 Where Heavenly Sword really sets itself apart is in the quality of the writing and acting,
09:56 with every single character being distinct and well written. They all have their own consistent
10:00 personalities, motivations and arcs, and motion capture is used to make the cutscenes as believable
10:06 as possible, with the particular standout being Andy Serkis in his role as King Bohan,
10:10 the ultimate bad guy, and the means by which we meet most of the colourful,
10:14 and sometimes terrifying characters Heavenly Sword has to offer. The characterisation was
10:18 so strong that it got both an animated series and a film, as well as a sequel that was tragically
10:24 cancelled due to the game's poor sales, and as part of moving Ninja Theory on to developing
10:29 enslaved Odyssey to the West, see previous. Number 2 - Binary Domain
10:34 It's all very well to talk about crowded release schedules, rushed development, unfinished products
10:39 and unreached potential, but sometimes the problem is the public. Sometimes, gamers,
10:43 you make me so mad. Binary Domain has it all. Slick third person shooting, tight controls,
10:49 a unique art style, technical innovation, likeable characters, a future setting where
10:53 human-like robots have infiltrated society even beknownst to themselves, it even has a
10:58 French robot that does spin kicks and calls you Monsieur. And to make this game even cooler,
11:02 you can give your squad commands, commendations and just generally interact with them via your
11:07 microphone. Characters will react to what you say and can gain or lose trust in you depending on how
11:12 you act. Lose enough trust with a character and they'll start refusing to do what you say,
11:15 like an over-leveled Pokemon. So if Binary Domain is so bloody good in every way,
11:20 why didn't it sell well? Why aren't we on to Binary Domain 4, the Robotining?
11:25 Well, dear viewer, I blame you. You chose not to buy Binary Domain. You refused to heed all those
11:30 glowing reviews and pretty marketing spots Sega bought to evangelise this masterpiece,
11:34 games fail for all sorts of reasons. Just be glad that the game's producer, Daikei Sato,
11:39 expressed interest in bringing it back after Yakuza's renewed success in the West.
11:43 And if that ever happens, you'll know what to do.
11:46 Number 1 - Sunset Overdrive
11:48 It's been a common complaint of late that the Xbox has no exclusives. Pass Halo and you'd
11:52 struggle to find a title beyond Gears of War that you can only play on the Microsoft machine.
11:57 It wasn't always this way. There was once a time when third-party studios were very interested in
12:01 bringing games to the Big X, Sunset Overdrive being a standout from the previous generation.
12:06 A member of the barely populated comedy video game genre, Sunset Overdrive is a colourful,
12:11 bombastic, violent and almost obnoxiously tongue-in-cheek experience. The kind of
12:15 parody that does exactly what it's parodying while winking at the camera.
12:18 But underneath all the self-abasement and dick jokes, there was genuinely a fun experience
12:23 based completely around bouncing on the hoods of cars and skating along electrical wiring.
12:27 Insomniac brought their A-game here along with their knack for inventive weaponry,
12:31 giving us guns that fire vinyl records, teddy bears and fireworks among other things.
12:36 The world is vibrant and colourful and moving through it is so cathartic,
12:39 you could spend entire play sessions just bouncing, skating and wall running around.
12:43 As such, Sunset Overdrive sold really well and everyone really liked it.
12:47 So why we've not seen a sequel yet is a mystery.
12:50 Interestingly, the likelihood is that if we do, it'll be a PlayStation exclusive,
12:54 now that Sony have bought the studio that owns the IP. So let's look forward to a tense,
12:59 dour-faced sequel where everyone communicates in either grunting or crying.