In the modern gaming industry it can feel like every other game is a sequel. The umpteenth entry in a franchise that’s been trudging on for years, refusing to die, sucking up all the oxygen the little guys need just to get on their feet.
The Final Fantasy series alone has over 90 games to its name including spin-offs and mobile instalments, and it’s not even the biggest one. Gaming needs some more variety but we don’t have to rely on fresh faces and new ideas when there are plenty of pretty damn good franchises that fell flat on their faces on their first outing.
Releases that may have reviewed well but that failed to live up to their publisher’s lofty sales standards, or just sold terribly overall.
Even games that simply set up solid ground for that sequel to be the breakout hit that the original outing should have been.
These games show that just because you missed your overly-optimistic sales expectations doesn’t mean you’re any less of a blast to play, or any less deserving of that big budget sequel.
You can have everything you’d think a game would need; star
power, gorgeous visuals, fun gameplay, an interesting story and engaging
characters, and success is still not guaranteed. On the other side of every sale
there’s a decision, and if people don’t feel like your title is the best use of
their money at that specific time, then you’re out of luck no matter how wonderful it is.
Take Enslaved for example. Slapped together by the talented team of Ninja Theory, it had everything going for it. With its sharp
dialogue and character interactions slap bang in the middle of when those were at
their peak popularity thanks to the Uncharted series, it should have been a
hit.
The whole world should have been primed to enjoy the adventures of Monkey
and Tripitaka but on the horizon, there stirred a beast, a shambling behemoth. Its name was Call of Duty: Black Ops and it released less than a month after Enslaved,
meaning it sucked up a lot of the advertising space in the preceding weeks as
well as saved up pocket money.
To make matters worse; in the very same month as
Enslaved we had both Fallout: New Vegas and Fable 3, so Enslaved wasn’t so much
released, as kicked out the door into a firing squad.
And because of this there’s almost no chance we’ll get a
pole-swinging, nimbus riding, piggy-back giving sequel out of our two
protagonists. Ah well, at least we’ll always have Pigsy’s Perfect 10…
Source: https://whatculture.com/gaming/10-underappreciated-video-games-that-deserve-a-sequel
