10 Video Game Sequels That Played Things Way Too Safe

10. Crackdown 2/3

It is crazy to think that a franchise spread across so many years has all of its games so indistinguishable from each other despite being released years apart.

There are just zero opportunities to innovate taken as visuals look startlingly similar across all three games, and the gameplay is pretty much copy and pasted wholesale to the sequels from Crackdown, right down to the criticisms the gunplay got in the first instalment.

Crackdown 2 was released three years after the first, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was released at the same time as it is by and large the exact same game. The entire development cycle appears to have been devoted to creating the lone zombie enemy type that was introduced.

The third game was even touted as having massive citywide destruction that would have injected the franchise with some much-needed freshness and given players something unique to look forward too. When the game was released, however, the feature was completely absent and it was back to the same drive, jump, shoot gameplay loop set in stone twelve years prior.

Both Crackdown sequels are quite literally the first game on repeat. They're the bare minimum of what you require for a sequel.