Similar Sequels

Sequels are great in that they can take the aspects that people loved from one game into another while still improving the problems with an original game. They can also continue the story from a previous game. But sometimes, problems arise when a game is too similar to the original game and can, in some cases, be indestinguishable from the original game.

Some recent games to have this issue are Fallout: New Vegas, Annual sports titles such as Madden NFL, and each and every Call of Duty from CoD4 onward.

Let's start with Call of Duty. I think these games are overrated, overhyped, and not worth $60 each year. They are not bad games by any means, they are just uninventive. The last two CoD games have had extremely short single player campaigns, obviously because the focus has shifted to the multiplayer mode. This would be acceptable if they didn't feel like copy/paste experiences from the previous years. Everything about the way the games play, right down to the HUD, is the same.

Moving on, Fallout: New Vegas feels like a large expansion to Fallout 3. The HUD, combat, dialouge system, and even in game textures feel the same as Fallout 3. This comes from aHUGE fan of Fallout 3. Not only that, but New Vegas somehow managed to be more glitchy/buggy than Fallout 3. If one were to take screenshots of Falllout 3 and New Vegas and convert them to black/white images, they would appear to be from the same game.

We've arrived at the biggest culprit of them all: Madden NFL. These games are just graphical improvments from year to year. The large changes to gameplay quickly tapered off since Madden 05 (released in '04). This is because EA has an exclusivity deal with the NFL. Basically, EA is the only publisher that can publish games with the NFL liscence, including teams and players. This gives them no competition in the NFL game market, which is why these games have become stagnant.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below!

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