Sequels to good video games are almost always a financial success as fans clamour to get more of a good thing. Historically, even the worst of sequels have made money - even the likes of Duke Nukem Forever was hated the world over and didn't sell half as well as expected, but it reportedly still made a profit. Financial success does not always correlate with the happiness of fans however, who are often left disappointed by a shoddy sequel that tramples on their memory of the original. Video games can be an emotional media, arguably more so than film and TV, simply because you're 'in' the game, experiencing everything alongside the characters. Due to this, they are often sensitively received and make sequels both more desirable and more risky. It's all too easy to become negative about subsequent instalments because they either aren't the same as the original, or they don't innovate enough on an established formula (really can't win can they?), but every now and again one comes along that manages to make something special, even more special. Today let's all put our positive pants on and talk about the ones that were great, the ones that didn't let the fanbase down, and the ones that didn't just cash in on the original.
10. Fallout 3
"War. War never changes..." but Fallout did. The original Fallout (1997) was actually a sequel of sorts, loosely based on the world of Wasteland (1988), but Interplay Entertainment were unable to get their hands on the rights. Interplay also had to redesign what was to become the SPECIAL system when Steve Jackson Games, a popular tabletop game maker, wouldn't allow them to use the old-school system. Fortunately, with it's own identity and redesigned innards, Fallout was a big success, with critics praising it's style, humour, storyline and free choice gameplay. Unsurprisingly a sequel was on the cards, with Fallout 2 landing just a year later, giving fans more of the same but not really developing the gameplay. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (2001) and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004) came later but deviated from the original format. Fans of the original games had to wait until 2008 for a true sequel, but they weren't disappointed. Fallout 3 clung to many conventions of the originals, such as using an open-world where players make moral decisions and choose how to approach quests, but it also reinvented the game into real-time and introduced V.A.T.S to bridge the gap between action and turn-based play. Traversing the wasteland had never looked and felt so realistic, but it was still stylistically and viscerally similar to the originals. The game radiated the humour and depth of character from its predecessors to keep fans of the series satisfied, but also attracted a legion of newcomers, creating a legacy that would continue on through Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4.