2010 looks to be the year of sequels. The industry loves them; this past year, the biggest selling titles were sequels – Halo 3: ODST, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2. Sequels sell well because, obviously, they are recognizable to consumers. And what consumer doesn’t like to stay in their comfort zone? There’s plenty to be said for innovative new properties; games like Brutal Legend and Dead Space come out of nowhere to massive success (and inevitably start franchises of their own). Indie games in particular tend to offer a non-mainstream experience that is often completely unique when compared to the tried-and-true formulas of franchises. Still, how about some love for the franchises? Some of the best games in recent memory are part of mega-franchises: GTA IV, Fallout 3 and Halo 3 spring to mind. Sequels are able to excel because a) they have huge amounts of money poured into them and b) they are built upon (mostly) very stable foundations. If a game is successful enough, then by definition it must have done something right. Sequels can build upon an original’s successes and rectify any shortcomings making use of that most wonderful of things: hindsight. Although not included in this list we would like to give shout outs to Final Fantasy XIII, Fable III, and Halo: Reach. With all of this in mind, I will now list the top five video game sequels landing in 2010.
5. BioShock 2: BioShock is a creepy game. It’s also a very good game – still arguably one of the very best games from this generation. The story is literate and interesting, the graphics stunning, the art design hugely imaginative and the first person gameplay innovative. Overall, it really was one of the complete games around. BioShock 2 has lots to live up to, then. But to be honest, as long as the developers can continue the story in a satisfying way, update the graphics a little (they don’t need much) and add a few gameplay elements here and there to keep things interesting, this one should be a foregone conclusion. Plus, we already know BioShock 2 has multiplayer, immediately rectifying one of the very few issues from the first game.
4. Mass Effect 2: The original Mass Effect was BioWare’s first foray into the current gaming generation. An entirely new property, the game promised an enormous galaxy filled with aliens, encounters and, most importantly, choices. The game very nearly met its promises, too. The game is stunning, with awesome characters, a great story, fantastic sound, a solid levelling up system and probably the best conversation system to date. The game did have shortcomings though: texture pop-in was horrendous, the frame-rate frequently chugged (although the game still looked stunning), the promised exploration was limited at best, the combat sections weren’t great, with a lot of pausing breaking up the flow of combat, and, for an RPG, the game was a little short. Mass Effect 2 promises to fix every one of those problems, and if it succeeds as well as the current hype suggests it will, then it’ll be a solid contender for game of the year, if not the decade. Here is an example of where a sequel really can lead to top-of-the-line gaming.
3. Dead Rising 2: Dead Rising was very, very fun. It’s every gamers dream game, really, to be locked in a mall with thousands of zombies and be given free rein to take them on with whatever you can pick up. Chairs, bats, knives, plant pots or footballs – literally, whatever you can find. It wasn’t all fun and games, unfortunately, the game had some issues with standard definition TV’s (the text was unreadable, so anyone without a HDTV couldn’t understand their mission objectives!) Plus, the main gameplay hook was that you had to photograph the zombies. This was fine, because just killing zombies probably would have gotten old, but killing zombies is what people really wanted to do. Dead Rising 2 jettisons the photography mechanic, letting players focus on killing zombies, which the developer promises there will be a lot more of. Of course, there will be missions such as rescuing civilians to keep things fresh.
This feature list continues on the next page, please click below to reveal our final choices for the Top Video Game Sequels Landing in 2010.
