I just played the entire series and they were not that bad.
For that matter I thought GTA V was better than IV by miles and miles. GTA V was just brilliant in every way.
“X-Wing” was a really good game for its time. The sequel, “TIE Fighter,” was one of the greatest PC games ever made.
Super Mario Bros. 3 took everything great about Super Mario Bros. and made it much, much better. Mario 1 will always be a classic, but Mario 3, to this day, is one of the best games of all-time.
Ohh, wow, thank you for reminding me about those. I completely agree – I played X-Wing to death, and even though I had some initial skeptism about playing as the “bad guys” in TIE Fighter, everything about that game raised the bar.
I really, really disagree. Portal 2 is a much bigger game with a lot more content, and a worthy sequel to the first. But Portal is an utterly brilliant game, from the very start subverting tropes about tutorial levels till the fading note of ‘Still Alive’. For any sequel to Portal to be the most improved sequel is impossible given the starting point.
Resident Evil 4 was the version that made the franchise. Before that it was just a video game with no movie aspirations.
Since no one else has mentioned it, I’ll go with Fallout 3 → Fallout: New Vegas.
What’s particularly amazing (IMHO) is that while the game is vastly improved, it is fundamentally using the exact same engine of the prior game, so the improvement comes in many minor tweaks, rather than using next generation hardware or software. But fundamentally, the story, setting and gameplay are leagues better, while the vast increase in weapon types, roles, custom ammo/mods and history of the various ‘unique’ weapons all make combat infinitely more interesting.
I will note that Fallout 1&2 are games I enjoy for the Lore, but are so dated mechanically they aren’t particularly fun to play. F3 is fundamentally a new style game in the Fallout universe, which is perfected in F:NV.
True, but it isn’t the immediate sequel. Having said that, it is still a lot better than Super Mario 2.
But was NV really a sequel to FO3? It was made by an entirely different studio. Obsidian was formed out of the group at Interplay that worked on Fallout 2 through it’s entire life cycle. (The ones who worked on both FO1 and FO2 bolted from Interplay to form Troika before FO2 was complete. The rest would later leave to form Obsidian.)
But speaking of Fallout…
Wasteland 2 was a far superior game to Wasteland. And it was a direct sequel done by many of the same people from the original Interplay who made Wasteland. It just took decades because Electronic Arts who owned the distribution rights to Wasteland and also the name refused to let the name go for a reasonable price.
Oh, and I would also say Half Life 2 was far superior to the original.
Super Mario 2 wasn’t really Super Mario.
It was Doki Doki Panic with different sprites.
“The Lost Levels”, released for SNES, was actually the original Super Mario 2 in Japan.
I’m surprised you did not put Mass Effect in here.
I followed your playthrough thread and, while you liked ME1, you seemed to think ME2 was a substantial improvement (I would agree).
System Shock 2. Original System Shock is fantastic but it is clunky as hell. The Thief engine in System Shock 2 made it smooth experience with superb story.
Far Cry 3 was leagues better than Far Cry 2. No terrible malaria mechanic, no insta-respawning guard posts, no weapon degradation, much better wildlife, better driving, looked fantastic (and still looks good), better NPCs and voice acting… about the only thing FC2 has going for it over FC3 is the fire mechanics and I suppose FC2 was more “grounded” if that matters to you. Heck, for all its flaws with whiny Jason Brody, I still prefer the story over FC2’s disjointed collection of missions culminating in “lol nope”. I actually liked FC2 at the time but FC3 was a far better gaming experience.
Trying to keep the ramble down to a minimum, I’m one of the weirdos who preferred Far Cry 2 to 3. I just hated Jason that much and didn’t care for the magical reality stuff that FC3 introduced to the series. Far Cry 3 ended the series for me.
I concede all of your points (except maybe driving? I don’t recall, it HAS been a while) about FC2. I was in the minority about them and didn’t mind it so much.
The standout for FC3 was Vaas. If they made a game where you played as Vaas? Well, I’d go back to Far Cry for that. I’d even put up with the magical plot reality I dislike so very much.
My spicy contribution is I liked Borderlands 3 over 2 by a considerable margin. It’s vastly improved as a shooter. The weapon accuracy and the average range of a gunfight in BL3 feels reasonable. The plot’s another matter, and there’s a lot I reaaaaalllly don’t like about BL3’s writing. I may have yelled at the monitor, “Holy crap, Randy Pritchford, you are old!” But I still liked it better than BL2.
I am fully aware of that, but by the definitions of this thread I think it qualifies - especially as it is, as I said, fundamentally the same underlying engine and mechanics. And a direct sequel. And under license by the ‘original’ creators. Not the same development team, correct, but many games, especially with sequels separated by years, do not have the same creative team, so I can’t see why it wouldn’t count.
Yeah, the Call of Duty series is kind of weird, in that Activision alternated between Treyarch and Infinity Ward for each game, so sequentially numbered games weren’t really “sequels” in the conventional sense.
I don’t know… the original Wasteland was the pioneer of the weird and surreal post-apocalyptic setting that the Fallout games lean into so hard. That’s what made it so fun back in the day; the riffs off of famous sci-fi movies (the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud, for example) and the general weirdness- “Harry the Bunny Master”, “Hobo Dog”, “Snake Squeezins”, and so on.
But Wasteland 2 (and 3) seem to have leaned WAY into the grimdark aspects, and minimized the funny aspects. I mean, I suppose that’s a reaction to the Fallout games having run with it, but for me it was a massive letdown. As in, the original Wasteland was one of the most engrossing and fun video game experiences of high school, and then they come back nearly 40 years later and crap all over it with a relentlessly serious and difficult isometric perspective game. To say I was disappointed is to seriously understate it.
I would still say SMB3 is better than the “real” SMB2, which was basically just “More SMB1”. I would also say Super Mario Galaxy was a huge jump from Sunshine. And I’m a big fan of Sunshine, but I think Galaxy 1+2 are pretty much perfect games.
Uncharted was very pretty, but just okay gameplay. Uncharted 2 was like playing an action movie, a good one even, it was incredible.
That was meant to be in response to @Mahaloth
Not sure how I missed linking it (I messed up obviously).
It was a big improvement, but not so tremendously huge that it makes the most improved of all time.