The beauty of video games is that if you make a mistake, you often have a chance to go back and fix all your mistakes. Even the biggest video game characters of all time had moments where they were in terrible games but came back with a vengeance in the sequel. Here is my list of sequels that were better than the originals.
5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – It is not to say that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was a bad game because it was most certainly not. Uncharted was a great game but Uncharted 2 was better. The addition of the multi player, better cut scenes and a more fleshed out story with new characters really gave the franchise a face lift and now our favorite leading man, Nathan Drake, is riding high because of it.
4. Red Dead Redemption – Let’s just say that Red Dead Revolver was an awful game. It was definitely on its way to video game purgatory never to see the light of day again. Red Dead Redemption pretty much changed everything we knew about the franchise and made it infinitely better. It went from an action cowboy game to an open world cowboy game with so much to do you could spend days there. It is almost not a sequel at all seeing at how it is so different, but alas they share a name so it counts.
3. Resident Evil 4 – RE3 was not a great game by anyone’s standards. It followed the same formula as the first two Resident Evil games followed. That wasn’t a bad thing but after 3 games of the same style, things were getting stale. Then comes RE4 and it took Resident Evil as a franchise in a new direction making the game into a 3rd person shooter with all new mechanics and the offset camera changed the way 3rd person shooters looked. It was really revolutionary in its changes while still holding true to what Resident Evil was to begin with, survival horror.
2. Street Fighter II – The original Street Fighter was an arcade only game that frankly wasn’t very good. You only had one choice of character and the controls were very stiff. It was difficult to do anything in that game and it simply came and went. Then came Street Fighter II and completely changed the face of the fighting games industry forever. You were able to choose from a number of characters which was a new concept at the time and it now seems that all fighting games now give you a ton of characters to choose from. It even changed arcade game design and focus. Street Fighter II was the game that changed the game.
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – First person shooters were not the games they are today back when COD4 came out and everything you see today in the FPS market is because of COD4. It was unlike anything we’ve ever seen from the genre. From the guns, to the cinematic cut scenes, to the incredible multi player it had it all. It is the one game that led to the hundreds of millions of dollars Activision has made off this franchise. Call of Duty is the top selling video game of all time all thanks to the momentum it got from COD4.