Sequels that are at least debatbly better than their predecessors? (All genres and mediums)

[CaptJ]

A lot of people bring up FO:NV but a lot was lost from the transition to the 3D style.

Question: Has anyone played the original Street Fighter? Because I only heard about it.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Question: Has anyone played the original Street Fighter? Because I only heard about it.

I played it. It was a jumbo arcade cabinet game, with saucer sized rubber buttons that you pounded.

IIRC in fallout 1, traps is borderline useless.

Except for detecting traps. Once your PC has died from one, it seems less useless. I remember my PC dying while walking into the thieves guild under the Hub. Quite a shock; at that time I didn't know that there were land mines in the game.

In Fallout 2 (to name one example), Mr. Bishop's safe is trapped. If the PC triggers the trap, they get hurt, but more importantly they trigger an alarm that brings Bishop's guard running down the hall, and sets the casino hostile.

The second you get FPS combat, you can either still have dice roll hit systems like Morrowind, which is...Gamey, or make it affect spread/damage, which barely works, like 3 and NV. ;(

Arx Fatalis is a very decent FPP RPG—that actually IS an RPG; it also sports realtime combat, and manual realtime spell casting. The player can make mistakes while casting spells—which doesn't sound very RPG-like if you were playing a great wizard, but Arx uses a fixed identity PC, and he isn't a great spell caster; but by the time that he is, the player is probably adept with the spell casting interface.

(You really do get into the habit; casting the mouse gesture spell effects. If you venture into a dark area you might find yourself unconsciously casting the Night Vision spell.)

 

[R.Graves]

Except for detecting traps. Once your PC has died from one, it seems less useless. I remember my PC dying while walking into the thieves guild under the Hub. Quite a shock; at that time I didn't know that there were land mines in the game.

In Fallout 2 (to name one example), Mr. Bishop's safe is trapped. If the PC triggers the trap, they get hurt, but more importantly they trigger an alarm that brings Bishop's guard running down the hall, and sets the casino hostile.

Dude there's like five examples of the traps skill being useful between both fallout 1 and 2. Total.

Now.... Should we extent this to spinoffs? Because Angel was at least as good as buffy the vampire slayer.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Dude there's like five examples of the traps skill being useful between both fallout 1 and 2. Total.

Traps skill detected traps; it meant that your PC could avoid certain nasty surprises that would harm other PCs. It could also enable the PC to not alert guards by not triggering explosive traps; like the one on Mr. Bishop's safe in FO2.

Spoiler

Other skills:
First Aid was stictly sport's medicine and minor wound treatment. It could be improved by reading first aid literature. Doctor was surgical training, and its use was for un-crippling, and wound treatment. Doctor could not be cheaply improved via skill books; and so it was a character development choice. These skills had different percentages, and gave different XP awards.

Between the two of them it meant that the player had six attempts to heal injury (with no item expenditures); but that just three of those attempts could be used to cure a crippling condition. The PC had to prioritize their NPCs, with whose injury got what treatment, and whether or not it was worth a further attempt (that day) after failing. IE. spending the day trying to clean debris from an eye, or bandaging scrapes and gouges.

Energy weapons are unlike shotguns, grenades, and light anti-tank rockets. Being an expert in one field, does not translate to having reasonable skill in the others. So you'd need a skill for each, and would likely gravitate towards specializing one of them.

Science & Repair skills are each a character development choice of focus; just like Doctor. You either pour skill points into one (and become expert), or divide among them, and remain average.

Now.... Should we extent this to spinoffs? Because Angel was at least as good as buffy the vampire slayer.

I never watched either, so I dunno. What did you think of AfterMASH?

Game's-wise, I nominate Myth 2, and Homeworld:Cataclysm. Cataclysm preceded Homeworld 2, and on the mechanics side, was a grand improvement on the original. Myth 2 was superb... but so was Myth 1. Homeworld 2 added several interesting complexities... but screwed up the base gameplay.

 

[YeeCop]

Postal 2
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Half Life 2
Payday 2

 

[Risewild]

Dude there's like five examples of the traps skill being useful between both fallout 1 and 2. Total.

The traps skill is used to find and disarm traps, mines and when safes and doors have traps but the skill is also used to determine if you can set explosives with timers (plastic explosives and dynamite) well or not. The character also uses the Traps skill to trap things like doors with an explosive (so when an enemy opens it... KABOOOOM).

 

[R.Graves]

The traps skill is used to find and disarm traps, mines and when safes and doors have traps but the skill is also used to determine if you can set explosives with timers (plastic explosives and dynamite) well or not. The character also uses the Traps skill to trap things like doors with an explosive (so when an enemy opens it... KABOOOOM).

I've done all these things without raising my traps skill so it's still pretty useless regardless.

Portal 2

 

[CaptJ]

Trap would have been cooler and more useful if you could actually set traps. I don't really like First-Aid and Doctor because those cost a lot of time to use. FO:T had the right idea on how to handle those skills. I wonder how less useful would those medicine skills be if it is split into three like they originally planned. The worst skill would have to Gamble which doesn't even work on all tables and doesn't have a unique skill check for all I know. I understand how people say that some games requires you to have a certain build and Bethesda's "every built is viable" philosophy is lame. However, I think there should a compromise between the two extremes. For example, not throwing in a lot of limited use skills into the list but still have bad builts like tagging Speech while having 2 INT.

I played it. It was a jumbo arcade cabinet game, with saucer sized rubber buttons that you pounded.

That sounds stupid.

 

[Gizmojunk]

The worst skill would have to Gamble which doesn't even work on all tables and doesn't have a unique skill check for all I know.

The Gambling skill works very differently from how it should; how it works in GURPS. In Fallout, it helps you win, but it's supposed to allow the PC to detect cheating in games of chance... Like in the Zatoichi films, where Ichi can 'see' the house trick that fools all the locals in the dice parlor.

I made a PC with Gambling tagged, and marched the PC into Junktown's Casino with 5 caps, and left with 1500.

...like tagging Speech while having 2 INT.

That results in a silver tongued idiot; they exist... People who haven't a clue what they are talking about, but they can parrot the jargon, and convince others with it. In Fallout 1&2, they can raise their Int with drugs, prior to the conversations.

Spoiler: All in fun:

(Streetfigh That sounds stupid.

That it was, but it had a line of players waiting to play it. The buttons did seem overly fragile; and they would break, requiring repairs.

 

[Kohno]

When I still played those games, I was always more the Mortal Combat (and later Tekken) guy than Streetfighter guy. Speaking of MK, the second game felt better at the time. Also... Tekken 3.

 

[Gizmojunk]

MKII was more polished than MKI, but seemed more cartoony; (in art and action).
I lost interest in the series from MKIII and beyond.

I still have the DOS versions of MKI & MKII installed, but I tend only to play MKII.

 

[Kohno]

Yeah, I remember they changed the style a bit, but I recall it felt more like they smoothened it out rather than "cartoonified" it. I might be wrong, though, it's been ages since I even saw a picture of it.

And yeah, 3 was the last game in the series for me too. It started to feel exhausted there already.

Luckily there was also Killer Instinct and.... Primal Rage!

 

[UnlimitedSprint]

Portal 2, definitely. More in-depth mechanics, an expanded backstory, and the soundtrack fits the setting much more that the first one did.

 

[Gizmojunk]

I didn't play much of MKIII; I liked the break-away areas, but didn't care for the characters.

Luckily there was also Killer Instinct and.... Primal Rage!

I liked Killer Instinct; even KI2.

This is me one Halloween, in an Eye-Dol costume from the game:

Spoiler: (A bit disheveled by that time; I didn't know it then, but I was missing the front of his loin cloth.)

*Time constraints necessitated a wig; as I couldn't get the back of the heads done in time.
**Yes... That's a Brake-Shoe medallion.

Dark Crusade (DoW) was better than the original Dawn of War, I think.
Eye of the Beholder II was far better than EoB1.
Disciples 2 was better than Disciples 1.
Baldur's Gate 2 (I thought) was better than BG1.
DOOM II

 

[Crni Vuk]

Not gonna go into detail. It's 2:42 am so all you get is a discussion starter list.

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn

Aliens

Terminator 2: Judgement day

Clerks II

Rocky II

lethal Weapon 2

Fallout: New Vegas

John Wick: Chapter 2

Toy Story 2

Mad Max: Fury Road

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Hatchet II (personally I disagree with this one but it's the fan favorite so... It deserves to be mentioned)

Thought I had more to post but hey this gives you guys more to bring up.

Most of them aren't in my opinion better, they are just different but retain the quality.

What I mean, take Terminator 1 and 2. Both are ecelent movies and Terminator 2 does everything right as a Sequel. It's expanding the universe in a logic way and it doesn't damage the previous way, by changing canon for example. However, Terminator 1 was a very different movie in the tonality. It was really more of a tech noir movie almost a horror movie if you want. Terminator 2 was a lot more an action movie in that regard and much less of a tech noir.

That's not a bad thing in my book, but I just can't say that those Sequels are better.

 

[R.Graves]

@Crni Vuk

Terminator 2 is a far better action film than the terminator is an action/horror film.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Do you always have to be like R.Graves?

 

[Gizmojunk]

I think many people underestimate the first film's impact on movie-goers of the time.

There was an episode of a weekly current events show; I think called 'PM Magazine'. They interviewed one of the guys from the first film (while it was in theaters)... Crew I think, Not Arnold, or other cast members. And they had the T-800 posed as a background prop in the shot. Showing off the amazing robot from the film.

During the interview someone had secretly rigged the T-800 prop with a wire/filament on its wrist (or some such), so that while answering a question, the T-800 reached out towards the guy—and he nearly hopped out of his skin on camera.

There was also the scene in the film with the pen-knife at the sink; this was pre-cgi, and audiences were not jaded/ or accustomed to that kind of believable effects in cinema yet. In some respects, it was a little bit reminiscent of the first movie audiences who saw a locomotive on the screen, traveling towards them, and freaked out.

 

[R.Graves]

Do you always have to be like R.Graves?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

 

[Gizmojunk]

It's another way of saying, "Oh you..."