A revelation dawned upon me the other day as I strolled through the aisles of my local Look & Listen, scanning the towering racks of DVD’s for my latest visual fix. Society has gotten lazy. No longer do we live by the norm of being the first to do this, or the first to do that, we simply go with the flow of what everyone else is doing. Which is pretty much nothing. No longer do we strive to be the first on the moon or to go that extra mile to be better than our competition. We take already working designs and simply improve on them. From the TV to the Phone to the Car and even to our back yard…The Video Game. And what do they think improving a video game is? Making a sequel and then fixing all the things that weren’t right the first time around.

I very much blame Hollywood for the sloth like mentally that society has adapted when it comes to creating original content. They are the daytime street corner entrepreneurs when it comes to rehashing an already used product. O, if you didn’t catch that, that was a nice way for me to say “daytime whore selling their soul for more money”. Anyway, as I was saying, even the video game industry has latched onto the gravy train that is sequels. I mean, I thought it was bad when I looked at the DVD shelf and saw that I could now purchase anything from Rocky 1 to Rocky 6 or get myself the complete box set of Police Academy…all 13 of them. But to my amazement, when I looked left, the gaming rack was even more of a shocker. Tiger woods 98 – 2010. Need for Speed 1 – Shift. Madden 98 – 2010. I mean, is it our fault that these games are still being made…time after time after time? Ultimately? Yes, it is. But I’m going to bite my tongue, because I am not here to blatantly rip any sequel that has ever come out to shreds, because what this article is about is: Glorifying those that did make a change for the better on the second run, and those that should have been left next to the water dispenser at the Game Developing company. Right there next to the tiny palm tree that they bought at Best Buy. Eidos and Core…I’m talking to you! Yes, YOU! And on that note, let us begin with most probably one of my most hated gaming sequels:

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness

Even though this game received a multitude of mixed reviews, in the end it was worse than your grandma’s liver and lung stew…after you’ve eaten nothing for a week and your dying of starvation from living on nothing but warm Naartjie Powerade. That’s how bad. The game prided itself on 4 brand spanking new features that would catapult Lara into an age of gaming the likes that you’ve never seen before. Yes Eidos, and rose petals would fall from the heavens and trumpets would salute and..blah blah blah. These features that the game bragged about…NEVER HAPPENED! They, Eidos, said that the new game would include: “Character Evolution,” “Character Interaction,” “Cutting-Edge Graphics,” and “Advanced Control”…hey Eidos, you forgot one thing there…RIDICOLOUS glitching! Take for instance the Character Evolution “feature” that they brag about. As you would play through the game, Lara would be able to upgrade her upper and lower body strengths through different puzzles. If she completed them she’d be able to jump higher, run faster and all that jazz. Sounds like a great idea right? Except, to be able to acquire these powers, you had to perform CERTAIN tasks at EXACT locations. If you didn’t…no cracker for Polly. Take for instance the beginning of the game…Lara finds a crowbar and if she uses it to break the chain around the handle of the door, she would acquire the necessary upper body strength to shimmy along a ledge to get to an ammo pickup. EXCEPT, you HAVE TO use it with that exact door and if you don’t…cracker go bye bye. So for me, this killed A LOT of the loves that I had with Lara. Lucky for her, they then released Legend, which put a smile on my face, but still doesn’t take away the deep dissatisfaction that Angel of Darkness left behind. Ugh, I get heartburn just thinking about it. Shame on you Eidos! Shame on you!

Sonic (The Next Gen Version)

Doesn’t it sting when designers take something that gave you so much enjoyment as a child and choke the life out of it? It’s like somebody pinning down Alf and kicking the chocolate spaghetti out of him. Enter Exhibit A: Sonic the Hedgehog…the bastard version that came to next gen consoles everywhere. I didn’t even need to purchase this game to feel the pain and disappointment that would go hand in hand with playing this monotone piece of upscaled vomit . Looking at the cover was enough. But me being all Curious George, I couldn’t leave it be. So I borrowed it from a friend…I still wasn’t convinced that it deserved my hard-earned money and decided not to add it to my collection just yet. To this day, not wasting my money on that game, remains one of my top financial decisions and after playing that game I felt like kicking the chocolate spaghetti out of him for buying it in the first place. Repetitive gameplay, bi-polar looking graphics and scripting and voice acting that is SO horrible that it feels like your in a bad, VERY bad Japanese porno more than you are a game. And to top it all off, what is the main plot of the game (even though it was there since we were kids, we just couldn’t figure it out)…? Sonic, a blue hedgehog with super speed, has to defeat an evil cyborg tyrant and overthrow his evil empire all in an attempt to save his loving princess who is being held captive by said Cyborg. Seriously? That might have worked on us when we were kids Sega. But seriously? Bestiality? That’s how you try and rope us in to buy this disturbingly grotesque piece of sidewalk trash? Shame on you too!

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