With the release of “Crackdown 2” to lackluster reviews, we have officially entered the Age of the Crap Sequel. I started feeling like this was coming a few years ago, but I admit I was mistaken about its nature. I assumed games would go the way of Hollywood blockbusters, and crank out flashy but meaningless upgrades that neglected fundamentals in favor of pizzazz. I was quite wrong. When a re-up goes sour in this neck of the woods, it suffers from an unbearable familiarity. “Bioshock 2,” “Modern Warfare 2,” many of the “Madden” sequels, they all struggle to justify their existence as discrete entities.
There’s an interesting lesson to be learned here, however, and in some ways it’s good news. True, “Crackdown 2” pawning the same game off at you with marginal upgrades is annoying, but there’s no question that what goes on in the movie theater is worse. “Been There Done That” is nothing compared to “Oh God Please Make it Stop.” The night after you saw “Episode I,” tell me you wouldn’t have killed for a retread of “A New Hope.” The truth is, we’re pretty well off. A bad video game sequel plays it too safe, but a bad movie sequel trashes the legacy of its forefathers.
There are two reasons video games typically exceed the cinema in terms of quality output. The first is cost: it’s expensive to buy a video game. Movie tickets are an afterthought, even in today’s overpriced market, but a new release at “Gamestop” is a much more serious investment. That means advertisers have a much harder job convincing you to take the plunge. The second is time: video games are longer and more involved than movies. You don’t lease them from the studio in a darkened room surrounded by strangers and popcorn butter stains, you take it home and it becomes your property. Once it’s nuzzled its way into your living room, a game must survive a grueling endurance test to be considered “good.” Even the shortest games are still four or five times as long as movies, and people simply will not invest that much time without continuing returns. It’s easy to sit through two hours of junk, but twenty or thirty is another story.s
With these conundrums at hand, crass publishers had to find some way to circumvent quality like their brethren in the cinematic world. Quality is what the guy with money never wants to give you, because it’s expensive and time-consuming, and no one can ever guarantee it. And yet, in the world of gaming, it’s almost impossible to get around it. A horrible two-hour movie is easily sellable as long as you get some name talent in it, or just sink $40 million into the advertising budget. But nothing can protect you from the scowling gaze of a 14 year old with an Xbox 360 in his bedroom. If the game sucks, he just won’t play it for 40 hours, and you need him to play it for 40 hours.
A few noble attempts at ripping us off came out of the woodwork over the years. My favorite was “Kane and Lynch,” a not-terrible game which nonetheless intended to float by on hype alone. From the marketing to the game itself, “Lynch” tried to act like a big franchise before it was one, and although it fooled some people in Hollywood, we in the gaming community never took the bait. It turns out, you can’t intimidate us into a purchase, which is nice to know.
Recently, however, someone finally seized on a way to get the best of us: re-hash. “Bioshock 2” is the best example: hand the engine over to some other studio, have them crank out virtually the same exact thing, and then sell it to people who loved the first one. Yes, ennui will kick in, but at the same time, the gamer won’t really want to admit that it’s not the same anymore. They’ll come out the other end disappointed, but they’ll play through the entire thing nonetheless. And if there’s multiplayer, the crowd will automatically congregate in the most recent sequel, no matter how marginal the upgrades.
Still, the good news is, they can only pull this off after they make a game good enough to warrant it, and that’s the rub right there. They’re still stuck with no recourse but to make us happy with our purchase at least once, and until they figure out how to sidestep that, retreads will be as close as they can get.
