10 Sequels That Are Better Than The Originals (P1)

Well, I'm back. By which I mean my computer's working again and I have access to Photoshop and all the images I wanted to use for this post.

My original plan was to make a simple Top Ten list (expanding on one I sent in to GameFAQS a while ago) and post all of these in one go. But I realized that even while I was trying to keep each entry relatively short, it still would have been quite a bit of reading.

So I figure I'll get some more updates out of the idea by posting them as a 10-part ongoing thing.

So. Without further not getting to the point...Leko presents...

The idea of this may seem a little redundant. After all, isn't a sequel supposed to be better than its predecessor? Well, yes. But very few actually are, and some turn out to be even worse. 

The intent of this list is to highlight 10 examples of sequels that I feel completely outshine the game that came before. Sequels that are so much more than a simple number tacked on to the original title.

I will now begin.


#10: Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku II (GBA)

Yes, yes, I know. It's a game based on a pre-existing franchise, so of course the original sucked ass!

But MAN did Legacy of Goku suck ass!

Imagine the first Legend of Zelda with Goku in place of Link. Now imagine it slower and clunkier. Imagine the enemies aren't knocked back when you hit them, but rather they stay within attack range and continue hitting you for much higher damage at the same time. Imagine you can't tell important items apart from the background, and  that the very few sound effects the game has are ear-bleedingly terrible.

Congratulations. You've imagined Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku.

 It's a basic adventure game that actually does a fairly decent job of condensing an entire 1/3 of the Dragon Ball Z story (From Raditz to Frieza) into a few hours of gameplay, but that doesn't mean a damn thing when that gameplay is absolute crap.

You've got your standard leveling system where you get stronger by beating up enemies, but there's really no way of telling of how strong you actually are. You level up several times before it simply says "YOUR STRENGTH INCREASED," and the only way to measure how high your strength is is to count how many times you need to punch each enemy. The enemies themselves have no health meters, nor any indication that you've actually done any damage at all to them until they drop dead.

And when I say "no indication," I mean NO. INDICATION. They don't flinch when you hit them. They don't make any sound. And most annoyingly, they DON'T FUCKING MOVE. This leads to numerous situations where you're literally standing on an enemy's toes, hitting him while he hits you. You will lose ridiculous amounts of health fighting the most common enemies.

BUT WAIT! DOESN'T GOKU HAVE ENERGY ATTACKS? LIKE RANGED ONES EVEN?

Yes. But they suck. What a shock, right? You can run from an enemy until they stop chasing you (usually about half a screen's worth of distance) and hit them with an energy blast. Unfortunately, doing this is like trying to knock over a Jenga tower with spit wads. It'll come down eventually, sure. But it takes FOREVER. The famous Kamehameha wave has embarrassingly short range and isn't even worth charging because if you're in range to hit your target, your target is in range to hit you. And he will. There's also the much more useful Solar Flare, which temporarily stuns enemies based on how long you charge it.

You can restore your own health by using herbs and Senzu beans, both of which blend annoyingly well into the background unless you know what you're looking for. The herbs could easily be mistaken for bushes, and the beans are about 3 pixels big.

I would go so far as to say that its only redeeming quality is that the chibi character sprites look awesome, and even those get massively improved in Legacy of Goku 2!

Speaking of which, Legacy of Goku 2 is EVERYTHING the first game should have been.

It continues the story from where the first one left off to the end of the Cell arc, but it seems like it goes a little more in depth than the previous game. It gets more from the story without resorting to an obnoxious number of unnecessary side-quests. It still has them, but they're not so obviously being used for padding.

The art is improved, the sprite animations are smoother, the combat is improved, the save system is improved, the leveling system is improved, everything about it is just better. But if I talked about EVERYTHING that was better, you'd be reading a short novel here. So I'll get to the most important points.

Enemies actually react when hit, and a number appears above them showing how much damage you've done. This means that not only can you better understand how strong you are, but you can actually keep beating on an enemy while approaching him if you carefully time your punches.

As you level up, your stats increase. Rather than just YOUR STRENGTH INCREASED, you have 3 stats: strength (how much damage melee attacks do), power (how much damage energy attacks do) and endurance (how much damage enemy attacks do to you.)

Also, THERE'S MORE THAN ONE PLAYABLE CHARACTER. Which makes the game's title a bit inaccurate, but still! Not only that, but EACH character has their own special energy and melee attacks. Piccolo's Special Beam can go through multiple enemies, Gohan's Masenko acts somewhat like a grenade, Trunks's Burning Attack stuns enemies like the Solar Flare, etc. Saiyan characters can also go into Super Saiyan mode, which increases their stats and speed until their energy meter runs out.

If you're already familiar with the Dragon Ball Z storyline, I suggest skipping Legacy of Goku and going straight to Legacy of Goku 2. If not, I suggest looking up a summary online and THEN skipping to Legacy of Goku 2.

(There is also a 3rd game in this series called Buu's Fury, which further improves the gameplay, but it's not as big a jump in quality as between the first two.)

Dead Space (PC)

THIS IS A SPOILER WARNING. I WILL POST THESE IF I INTEND TO GO INTO DETAIL ABOUT KEY PLOT POINTS IN A GAME. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SUCH THINGS, I INVITE YOU TO CEASE READING IMMEDIATELY.

If you've seen any of my past reviews of "horror" games on my DeviantART journal, you would know by now that I've had some issues with managing to fully enjoy certain aspects of them. Namely, the aspects of them that are supposed to be scary (and therefore actually BE horror games). Before I go into this review of Dead Space, I think it important to define what I personally consider to be scary.

Scary is being all alone with no weapons in a dark room hiding from something that is actively trying to murder you. Scary is hearing that thing moving around and having no idea whether or not it is even near you until you step on its toes.

Scary is NOT being armed to the teeth and surrounded by hideous mutated monsters that make more loud obnoxious screaming sounds than the fangirls at an anime convention.

In short, 90% of Dead Space is what I would call "not scary." This is not to say it is a bad game, though.

We begin with a team of people (including the main character, Isaac Clarke) responding to the sudden mysterious loss of contact with a gigantic ship in an abandoned sector of space. Their ship inexplicably crashes, leaving them stranded inside the aforementioned gigantic ship as they investigate the cause of the aforementioned mysterious loss of contact.

If you have to guess where it goes from here, you have no business being involved in any way with any science fiction stories. Ever.

It turns out the entire ship has been overrun by mutant alien zombies known as "Necromorphs,"  which are basically the Flood from Halo, only louder and less vulnerable to shotgun blasts.

The way you have to deal with these abominations is actually fairly clever, though, despite the cliche factor. You see, conventional anti-zombie warfare teaches us that headshots are the way to go. So no big deal, right? You just blast the head off that Necromorph charging at you and he should drop dead-

OH GOD HE'S STILL CHARGING! 

So you unload the rest of your ammo into the body, BUT IT'S STILL COMING OH CRAP!

That's right. Headshots pretty much don't count for shit in Dead Space. You need to remove individual LIMBS from these freaks to take 'em down. Chop off arms, legs, anything sticking out of the main body because anything fired at that main body isn't gonna do jack. And hey! How convenient! You just happen to be surrounded by high-powered mining tools whose SOLE PURPOSE IS TO CUT THINGS.

So yes. We revisit my main issue with every horror game ever: YOU CAN KILL EVERYTHING THAT WANTS TO EAT YOU, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

No monster can be scary when all you need to do is blow its arms off. They don't even bother sneaking around or making quiet nerve-wracking noises. They just jump out screaming and start running at you. This is not scary, this is startling until it is done so often you expect it every time you open a fucking door! That decidedly non-human "corpse" on the ground? It's gonna attack you when you get close. Those other human corpses? Stomp them apart before an Infector comes along and brings them back. (Which will happen if there's more than 2 in a given area.)

One thing that does make them a bit interesting is that each type of Necromorph has a special "death scene" if they attack you in a certain way. Some of the enemies will start grappling with you, initiating a  button-mash quicktime event to free yourself. If you succeed, you kill it instantly (sometimes) in a short little scene. If you fail, IT kills YOU instantly in a short little scene. I suggest failing each one at least once for the entertainment value. In a particularly disturbing one, a small tentacle monster decapitates you and implants itself in your neck to take control of your body.

Dead Space's main problem is in its predictability. Anyone with a basic knowledge of horror storylines is going to be able to predict with uncanny accuracy what is going to happen next. Oh, one of your teammates is a badass black soldier guy? Guess who's not gonna make it off the ship? What's that? One of the scientists on the ship has survived and he knows how to stop the Necromorphs before they inevitably consume humanity? "Not if I have anything to say about it," says the plot.

In fact, the main character being an ordinary guy with no military training should clue you in that he's gonna be the only survivor of this incident.

Also, expect a major attack any time you complete a main objective. Do NOT pick up that key card unless you have ammo. They can sense when you've done something plot-relevant.

The only predictable plot twist I actually didn't see coming, but in hindsight really should have, was a certain character's betrayal. Scientist guy gets shot and the ship we were gonna take starts leaving before I even know what's going on. Then...

"Sorry, Isaac."

OH, YOU BITCH!

"Blah blah blah, conspiracy, blah blah, experiment, blah blah can't let you screw it up."

Oh, and Isaac's girlfriend you're supposed to be rescuing was a hallucination the whole time.

But enough about what the plot does wrong. Let's talk about what the game does right.

Dead Space actually has a very nice difficulty curve. You start out tripping over ammunition and facing relatively weak enemies. As the game progresses, you find yourself facing new enemy designs, and lamenting your sudden lack of ammo. This leads to some very intense situations and often barely making it out alive as you limp to the nearest save point.

And now, I fondly recall my most badass moment in Dead Space: One certain type of Necromorph has an explosive sac on its arm that self destructs when it gets close to you. This explosion also damages other enemies in the immediate area. I found myself near the end of the game, having just fought off another massive wave of Necros and considerably light on ammo. Another wave decided to attack, headed by one of these suicide bombers. I dismembered his explosive arm and it rolled over to me. I ran out of ammo and was getting slashed from all directions when I noticed it on the ground. Seeing that I still had a reasonable amount of health, I stomped it. Boom. No more Necros. I like a game that encourages this kind of desperate creativity.

Part of your equipment is the "stasis module" which is basically a toned-down version of the bullet-time effect in F.E.A.R. I think it's actually more useful here, though because it only slows down what you aim it at, rather than everything around you. It's used to slow down malfunctioning machinery, and of course some of the faster Necros.

In addition to the stasis module, you're equipped with the "kinesis module" which is basically the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2, or the telekinesis Plasmids from Bioshock. It allows you to pick things up and throw them.

There are also sections of the game that require maneuvering in zero gravity. These are very well designed and fairly disorienting (in a good way.) One boss fight takes place in zero gravity, and is extremely difficult if you forget that fact. You can't outrun massive tentacles, but you can jump to the other side of the room.

Dead Space is an enjoyable action game with decent atmosphere. It's just that the enemies, while somewhat uniquely designed, lack all pretense of subtlety and therefore are incapable of producing anything more than occasional heart-stopping jump scares. The level designs are linear enough to easily figure out where to go, but with enough side paths and alternate routes to have fun exploring. The story is cliched beyond all reason, but it's hard to think about it when your legs are being torn off.

In the future, when mankind is out exploring the galaxy, if we ever "mysteriously lose contact" with a ship, just send in the guy you brought along to fix the comm systems with no weapons. He'll fix everything intentionally or otherwise.

Dead Space gets a 7.5/10