Feature: The 49 Best Sequel-Less Games Subscribe to this RSS feed

Games 40 to 31!

40- Clive Barker's Undying (PC)

Undying was more than just a horror-themed first-person shooter. Clive Barker was involved in its creation and it had one of the best sound designs of its era. Sound does things for horror that even great art can't.

Another critical success and sales failure, Undying not only didn't get a sequel, even console versions of the original game were cancelled. However, fans might be satisfied by the upcoming Jericho, especially if the sound is up to snuff.

39- Advent Rising (PC, Xbox)

This third-person action/shooter was meant to be the first game in a trilogy, co-authored by Orson Scott Card, in which humanity is nearly extinct. Humanity has the potential to unlock immense psychic powers and so is being hunted to extinction. Fast action, an innovative control scheme and a serious space-opera of a plot made for frenzied play.

Advent Rising was designed to be a vast franchise with comics, books and spin-off games. Poor reviews, disastrous sales and a failed million-dollar contest (that left publisher Majesco giving away free games as an apology) made the publisher move away from big-budget games entirely. The developer would love to make a sequel, but someone would have to come up with all the cash Majesco lost, and that's not happening.

38- B-17 Bomber (Intellivision)

This Intellivision classic not only had you flying and managing a WWII bomber, it spoke! The Intellivoice add-on directed flight crews to face fighters or drop bombs on Nazi-occupied Europe.

Like with Space Spartans, it was a thrill just to hear human speech in a console game, but there have been enough bomber simulators that this one doesn't need a sequel.

37- Chu Chu Rocket! (Dreamcast, GBA)

How do mice escape vicious cats? Rockets, of course! Chu Chu Rocket! had players dropping arrows to guide mice to rockets while keeping cats away. Entertaining as a single-player game, Chu Chu Rocket! highlighted the Dreamcast's online capabilities when you sent cats to eat other players' mice.

Don't expect a sequel, but Chu Chu Rocket! followers still hope to see the multiplayer game arrive as a download for one of the latest consoles.

36- Herzog Zwei (Genesis)

Herzog Zwei is best known as a precursor to modern real-time strategy games, but it was also a great two-player game. Slower and more thoughtful than most modern RTSs, the player was also directly involved because of the command unit, making it part of a select group with Sacrifice.

Herzog Zwei is one of the few games on this list whose memory is better than prevailing opinion when it was released. A planned sequel was never released, and this one is likely to remain merely a memory.

35- Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy (Xbox, PlayStation 2)

Nick Scryer may have a dangerous mind, but his memory was wiped so he can infiltrate a terrorist group run by powerful psychics. By mixing wild psychic powers with ragdoll physics, Psi-Ops let players run rampant with Scryer's powers, creating a sandbox game for hardcore shooter fans just as The Sims is a sandbox game for the dollhouse set. The ability to levitate a box skyward and snipe from heights or fling enemies around like discarded toys made every level a replayable toy with gruesome options.

Three years after release, there's no sign of a sequel and the prospects for one are bleak. The PC port of the game was cancelled and while the rights to make a Psi-Ops film were purchased, the movie isn't being made, either. If you're desperate, you could always play Second Sight.

34- Tech Romancer (DC)

This 3D fighting game gave Dreamcast owners control of giant robots... traditional anime mecha, BattleTech-style war machines and just plain wacky constructs. Each had its own anime tale and exaggerated techno-attacks.

Despite the warm and fuzzy memories fighting enthusiasts have for Tech Romancer, nothing with its range of mecha characters and crazy attacks has supplanted it, and there's no sign of a sequel.

33- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (Xbox, PC)

Drawing heavily from Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth (and other stories), players explored Innsmouth's horrors in an action/adventure game that spurned the usual game conventions. Dark Corners of the Earth sported no life bars, no targeting reticle and disturbing insanity effects along with a brilliant chase sequence.

Don't wave Shadow of the Comet or Prisoner of Ice in our faces. There have been a lot of Lovecraftian games (like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem), but Lovecraft doesn't have a dictatorial master of the canon like D&D or Star Wars. We love the way Dark Corners of the Earth handled horror, and want to see even more. Both sequels and ports were in the works, but efforts ceased when the developer went under.

32- Blade Runner (PC)

Set in the same world as the film, Blade Runner had players hunting replicants through Los Angeles. This quality adventure game broke many conventions and gave gamers a branching plot with randomized characters (you really didn't know who was human and who a replicant).

As with many other games on this list, lackluster sales have discouraged sequels to an otherwise fascinating game.

31- Oasis (PC)

Unbelievably elegant, Oasis turns 85 clicks on a 10 x 10 grid into a nail-biting strategy and puzzle game. Rebuild the Egyptian empire's roads and mines and save it from hordes of barbarians. Win by claiming all the Glyphs of Power.

Oasis is so carefully balanced that remaking the game risks ruining it. Oasis might get a sequel someday, but will it preserve the brilliance of the original, or go too far like Bookworm Adventures?