You can't swig a dead cat (preferably Bubsy) without hitting a sequel in the world of modern video games. Franchises are the name of the game, and blockbusters series like Call Of Duty are some of the biggest earners in the market, frequently selling in excess of billions of copies. So you can see why, instead of working on a original IP, a developer is more likely to stick to a tried-and-true title that's going to bring in the megabucks if it's the sequel to something. It's another one of the ways that gaming is becoming similar to Hollywood, with the constant churn of remakes, reboots and new instalments in long-running series. Which can be a bit of a creativity killer, sure, but can also ensure that games which might not otherwise have earned follow ups live on in other ways. They've sort of been a thing previously in films, books and TV shows, but video games have really pioneered the idea of the "spiritual successor" - titles which aren't necessarily sequels in name, story or character, but which carry on the philosophy, gameplay mechanics or development approach as previous games. So not so much Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as, say, Super Mario RPG begetting Paper Mario. Not actual sequels, but there's enough shared DNA in there for them to be "spiritual successors". That got us to thinking of how many other stealth sequels are out there which we totally overlooked. How many of the triple-A titles we're spending hours engrossed in are, in fact, not blazingly original takes on the first-person shooter genre but the latest in a long line of such games? Is Dark Souls not as unique a cultural phenomenon as we thought? Has a new Fallout game come out right before our eyes, and we didn't even notice? You'll just have to read about the ten games you didn't realise were sequels and find out...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
