10 Video Game Franchises That Never Got Better Than The First Instalment

WC writes: It’s common to hear people complaining about how cinema is dominated by sequel after sequel, but few non-gamers realise that exactly the same problem exists in video-games. Only worse.

Looking through the high profile releases over the next few months and only Destiny, the first post-Halo project from developer Bungie, stands out as a wholly new title. There’s plenty of franchised games that look awesome and some may even be series highlights, but the originality question rears into view; how many are regurgitating the same old tat in a lazy cash grab?

That’s not to say developers always get it right first time. It may now carry the responsibility of being Ubisoft’s mega-franchise, but before they became a yearly ‘event’, the sequels to Assassin’s Creed were genuine improvements; the second took some daring creative choices to make the Italian-set adventure not feel as repetitive as the original. With tight deadlines it can take a couple of go arounds for a game idea to be perfected.

But sometimes they get it right first time, with later entries in the series only serving to highlight how bloody brilliant the first game was. Brilliant games like the ten we present to you today.

[hiredhelp]

Finally im not Alone when comes to batman..

"Why The First Was Best: Yeah, the ending of City, the second game in the series, was pretty damn exceptional. Unfortunately the open-world game couldn’t match the excitement of its more confined predecessor; having Batman swoop through a big city was cool, but the game felt less-focused in the bigger map. Like Portal, Arkham Asylum was a perfectly measured game, never letting the plot overwhelm the experience and advancing combat options at just the right time."

[badboyz09]

Every EA Sports title.

[Neixus]

NHL has been really good lately though, even though i'm not the biggest sports guy.

[SuperBlur]

meh , they fixed so many things that were wrong from AA that i could see past the flaws of AC and the story (both main and the harley's dlc) were top notch imo

[Jonny5isalive]

MIne is a list of FPS...

Half-life
Bioshock
Deus EX
Turok Dinosaur hunter
James bond FPS, if that counts as series

Just IMO of course and many of those series had good games later, I just liked the first ones the most for their time.

Bioshock 1 was way better than infinite even tough I enjoyed that one quite a bit. Bioshock 1 had a better setting, better combat and enemies. You could carry 8 weapons with alternate ammo types, vs 2 weapons with 1 ammo type in infinite. LOL You could Use tons of passive tonics vs 4 pieces of clothing for infinite.

Never even fought the bird, big daddy was way funner to fight than any crap from infinite. I also remember crazy people from bioshock1, infinite was just not that interesting till the end, and the boss in bioshock 1 was much better than the last fight in infinite. Meh, infinite was just spawning enemies after spawning enemies. The last fight was just even MORE spawning enemies.

[I_am_Batman]

I really like both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City but for me Arkham City is the better game by far.

The combat is improved, Batman has more gadgets and the riddle trophies are actually riddles in themselves and the boss battles don't suck. Not to mention that you get to see much more villians. The only thing Arkham Asylum has over Arkham City are the Scarecrow parts. But then again in Arkham City we got the Mad Hatter and the Ra's al Ghul stuff in exchange.

It also never felt less focused to me because of the open world.

For me personally Batman: Arkham City is one of the most improved sequels along side Uncharted 2.

[Magicite]

wasnt Mass Effect 2 better than first?

[Jonny5isalive]

combat and framerate was better, everything else is a downgrade. I was really hoping they would improve elements of the first, instead they got rid of some of the best stuff.

[LAWSON72]

Batman AA is way better then Batman AC IMO.

[bunt-custardly]

Hmm tried to view the article and got bombarded with ads.

Note to site owner - Ads being counter-productive to content = not good.

[MrSwankSinatra]

Adblock is what you need.

[MrSwankSinatra]

I know I'm in the minority, but i thought that BioShock Infinite was the best of three BioShock games. I loved the original BioShock, but man when i played BioShock: Infinite it was an experience i'll never forget. GOTY 2013 for me.

[PhantomTommy]

It was the hype the killed it for me. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastically well made game and I really enjoyed it for what it was. But it's not the game I thought it would be.

[hiredhelp]

Na i loved bioshock 3 awsome game for the last ever bioshock sadly.

[Roccetarius]

Bioshock 1 and 2 both had a good story, combined with a better mix of combat as well. Bioshock Infinite was a step back in terms of combat, and they had to cut a lot of the original content, such as consequences.

[ChickenOfTheCaveMan]

BioShock Infinite was an awesome game, but what was great about the first BioShock, much like the first Dead Space, is that eerie ambiance. Even if you could 5 minutes without facing an enemy, you had that feeling in those 5 minutes that at any moment one could get in your face out of nowhere.

[LAWSON72]

IMO Bioshock Infinite captured a different atmosphere but still in a very good way. Everywhere I went the sceneries and themes just left me in a state of awe

[DoctorJones]

I thought Infinite was a great game in its own right, but I'd have to say the first game was the best. Just for the way you could deal with enemies - they didn't instinctively know where you were as soon as you encountered them.

They would go about their business and you could deal with them as you wanted to, whereas the enemies in Infinite spawn and you HAVE to deal with them as soon as possible. It become a bit of a chore, you'd have some quiet time and then you'd trigger enemies spawning and kill them and then you'd have some quiet time again. It was just wasn't as much fun in that regard.

I still enjoyed Infinite a lot, but it wasn't as good as the first.

I played the second game through again recently and I thought that was slightly better as well from a gameplay point of view. Infinite had the better story though.

[ShaunCameron]

Where's Dead Space?

[Roccetarius]

Sadly, there was only one scary place in Dead Space 2, which required you to play the first game as well.

I do wish they had found more ways for enemies to spawn, because vents get old pretty fast.

[SG1_dapunisherX]

He right about the og mw4. what a classic the game was.....

[CloudRap]

Like in the case of the music industry, the best of the franchise tends to be the sophomore attempt where they've refined the original concept yet haven't strayed from what it made it great to begin with.

[Tales RPG addict]

The major difference is that American mainstream music has become really crappy over the years.

[PATCH3N]

Fable comes to mind instantly. The first game was so enjoyable, the later ones really werent.

Personally, I often prefer the originals, like Guild Wars being so much better than Guild Wars 2 and the original World of Warcraft beating the expansions that followed. I guess, when it comes to MMO's, I don't like the way they've evolved at all.

[Mikefizzled]

I hated Mass Effect but loved Mass Effect 2+3.
ME had serious flaws. Awful gameplay, The Mako and its terrible accompanying missions, the loading elevator and the annoying checkpointing system meant that I almost didn't give ME2 a look when it came out.

[rextraordinaire]

Yeah Mass Effect 1 was horrible.

Glad I played ME2, because they really corrected it.

[oIITSBIIo]

1- Batman AC is way better than AA specially in the story ,combat system .

AA is a great game and in my top 5 games last gen but it's definitely not the best Batman game . I hope AK will beat AC and be the best Batman game ever .

2- Same thing goes with Bioshok IMO Bioshok Inf was the best Bioshok game .

3- Mass effect : yes the first was better rpg game than ME2 .
ME2 gameplay was so boring I could not finish the game .

[Dfooster]

Wow what a load of rubbish. If arkham city was the first game and arkham asylum the second the sequel would have been panned for being a big step backwards. And mass effect 1 was better than 2? I don't think so. You are talking about two of the best gaming sequels of all time here in a not as good as the first one top 10 list.

I didn't read the rest because it was pointless.

[InTheLab]

I thought Bioshock 2 was better than the first due to it's superior gameplay and the fact that I played it first. While Infinte had a better story than the others, the gameplays was stripped down and lost all that made the franchise great. Setting up traps and creative planning was replaced with opening portals to oil slicks and puddles.

Arkham City is far superior to Arkham Asylum in every way. The second half or AA fell of due to backtacking and that was never an issue in AC. The combat in AC blows AA out of the water. More gadgets, no more iWin button with the ultra batclaw, the predator challenges were much more creative, and the open city to explore was much better as well. On that island toward the middle of AA, tell the truth. everyone of you that claim to enjoyed AA more look out at the city and wish you could explore Gotham City. AC may have been condensed version of Gotham but it allowed you to move around like batman and solve crime instead of being locked away in Arkham Asylum.

Agree with Mass Effect and Halo but Modern Warfare is the 4th game in the franchise and Cod2 is better than the first.

[Revengeance]

Have to disagree with Halo and Batman. Halo 2 blew the first one out of the water in EVERY aspect for me.

Batman AC gave you that sense of moving around in a true open world.

[Roccetarius]

I completely agree with Bioshock, Batman and Mass Effect.

Mass Effect especially, because they stripped down the RPG elements, in order to bring in the dude-bro crowd (evident in comments even on this piece).

Not to mention that Mass Effect 2 is almost completely irrelevant to the story as a whole.

[Relientk77]

I love Bioshock 1 and Infinite

so I disagree with that

[HeavenlySnipes]

Arkham Asylum isn't the best in the series lol

[guyman]

I agree with everything except for arkham asylum. City improved upon AA in pretty much every way possible. This person obviously didn't play the assassins creed games where initially 2 expanded on 1 very nicely, but iterations after that just kept sliding downhill I'm not sure on other people's view on gears of war 2, but I felt that game tried to do too much and suffered heavily for it. I thought it was a great step backwards from the first one in terms of atmosphere, general gameplay and story telling.

[darren_poolies]

I disagree with Mass Effect, Portal and Pokemon. Everything else, fair enough.

[fullmetal297]

I absolutely disagree with the Halo franchise. Halo Combat Evolved was a game changer for the Xbox without a doubt, but Halo 2 was first console game to massively payed online because it so many things right with the ranking system and clan matches. It was also the first game to introduced Xbox Live.

[vivid83]

arkham city was miles better than arkham asylum in my opinion

[LAWSON72]

IMO Mass Effect never compared to the first game. The original showed potential for a superb sci fi RPG franchise then the sequel was an action game with a soap opera on a ship and the third one felt disorganized with such a lazy and stupid ending, and was still very much just an action game. Last gen was full of sequels that have disappointed me but ME2 is at the top of the list because it was the first and everything they changed was things that I loved that had so much potential. I will never forget how disappointed I was when I went to the Citadel in ME2 and many of the other things that just left me so sad :(

My favorite game of all time was ruined by the beast that is EA and I sadly will never get a true sequel to one of my favorite RPGs of all time

[Dasteru]

Completely disagree on Pokemon. Yellow was better than Red/Blue, it had everything that was part of Red/Blue, improved, and alot more. G/S/C were also better. X/Y have surpassed even G/S/C imo. Features like the Wonder Trade really bring a new level to the games and make the old "gotta catch them all" so much more achievable. I just started X 5 days ago and i already have over 450 different Pokemon without even having done any local trades. I was finally able to build my ultimate team consisting of Pokemon from various gens. Even little things like now providing 31 PC boxes which has finally allowed me to create seperate boxes for each and every Pokemon type, and still have loads left over for things like shinies, legends, megas, tradables, starters, even a dedicated Unown box. If Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire keep all the major features of X/Y, it could end up raising the bar even further.

[ExiledBlitz]

What a load of tripe. Sonic 2 is a huge improvement from the original. Arkham City is so much bigger than Asylum and with a better ending to boot. Pokemon's mechanics have been improved with each generation. But if story and atmosphere are taken into account, I'd say Gold and Silver are the best ones. I like both Portals equally.