Feature: The Top 21 Games that Didn't Need Sequels! Subscribe to this RSS feed

Sometimes, a bad game gets a follow-up. Other times, the original perfects the formula. Regardless of the reason, all of these games should have stopped at one.

The gaming industry craves sequels more than any other, perhaps to its detriment. Instead of highlighting new IPs, developers stick to tried-and-true franchises that already have a fanbase. For some series like Mario, Halo and Metal Gear, new titles manage to offer up innovations and improvements that trump previous hits. The following 21 games were sequelized for all the wrong reasons.

Some were poor titles that inexplicably sold well and begat bad followups. Others were so finely tuned that sequels had nothing to upgrade. All of them were a waste, particularly when so many great games never got a second chance. Read up on these 21 titles, but heed no further attention to any. Let each franchise die today:

21- Guitar Hero

Nothing bad can be said about Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, or even Guitar Hero 3. In fact you probably couldn't say anything bad about Guitar Hero 4,5,6,7,8,9 or 10. Catch our drift?

They should have just kept Guitar Hero the same, ported it to the next-gen and released songs as downloadable content. But that would have been too easy. With Rock Band looming, the series' stagnation is becoming painfully apparent. Enjoy spending sixty bucks for another set of songs!

20- Syphon Filter

Nancy Drew and Tom Clancy walk into a bar. After a series of shouting matches and drunken apologies, the two leave the bar to consummate their new found, um, companionship. The result is the bastard child, Syphonn Fliter. Syphon Filter and it's pseudo-saga should have been AFI (Aborted on First Inception), but the series perpetuates and the impending release of Logan's Shadow threatens to eradicate all jobs at Sony Bend.

19- Juiced

Juiced should have died a lonely death when Acclaim went bankrupt. Unfortunately THQ, the company most likely to be the next megapublisher to end up broke, ended up resurrecting it, which would be like re-animating Anna Nicole Smith. Yeah, it's nice that you revived the dead, but couldn't you have found something more interesting to bring back?

Juiced apparently touched on the untapped ride-pimping genre, since the game received a sequel; Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights. Gamers, if you buy a game with the subtitle Hot Import Nights, you need to stop reading the reviews in Maxim.

18- Ty the Tasmanian Tiger

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger was a paint-by-numbers platformer that offered up an nonsensical mascot with a patently offensive Australian accent. Somehow, it became a trilogy that came out for all three last-gen consoles, despite each game playing in the same, C-grade platforming manner.

Even more bizarre is that both EA and Activision have published Ty titles. Apparently good decisions aren't necessary to rule the third-party game publishing world.

17- Pokemon Stadium

The Pokemon series itself is a strong candidate for this list, but since it's evolved ever so slightly, we'll give it a pass. What we won't stand for is the Pokemon Stadium/Colosseum/Battle Revolution trilogy of error.

For some reason, gamers continue to support these titles that let you battle your handheld Pokemon on the big screen, with little else to add to the equation. Hey Nintendo, here's a novel idea... make an original Pokemon game for a console! And not a sucky one like Pokemon XD.

16- Shenmue

Like the upcoming Too Human and Mass Effect seem to be blissfully unaware of, stretching out a narrative over sequels before the first one's success is confirmed is a bad move. Case in point: Shenmue. With 16 chapters planned, Sega obviously wanted to slowly draw out the story. Look back at the original, and really concentrate on how much Ryo accomplished, outside of finding some sailors.

Turns out Sega couldn't recoup the kabillions of dollars it spent developing the first title, so the company crammed a bunch of chapters into an even poorer-performing sequel. Some heavy story editing would have gone a long way here. Either just have Ryo randomly run into fLan Di at a random bus stop and shiv him. Hey, it could happen!

15- Destroy All Humans

Didn't we Destroy all the humans the first time? Apparently not. We've given Crypto three shots to eradicate our race, but he's still dragging his feet. It sucks to say that a sandbox game featuring an alien with odd weapons could be generic, but this sandbox game featuring an alien with odd weapons is pretty goddamn generic.

14- Far Cry

You play as Jack Carver as he rescues Valerie Constantine from a cheap island of Dr. Moreau. In Far Cry: Instincts you play as Jack Carver as he saves Valerie Cortez from the same island, only this time Carver has some generic genetic powers. In Far Cry Instincts: Evolution you play as Jack Carver as he calls all his ex-girlfriends to tell them he has feral abilities. Actually, that's a lie, but we're pretty sure it involved an island, supernatural abilities, and a complete lack of innovation.