Devil May Innovate 1.5

While playing Devil May Cry 4 the other day I noticed the game really hadn’t changed all that much from DMC3, which I played for the first time a few months ago. The biggest change is an additional move that allows you to grapple enemies from afar and either bring them to you or bring you to them. Other than that it is DMC3 with a new coat of paint and at least so far (I’m only halfway through) a few features taken out.

Is this bad though? For most fans of the series, they haven’t played a new Devil May Cry since 2005. Is that enough to warrant a shiny new version of the same thing? Is time even a major factor?

When movie and book sequels come out they generally are more of the same style you have come to expect from the series. The major difference of course is a new story with established characters or a continuation of an unresolved story.

This line of thought obviously can’t seamlessly make the jump over to video games however. Games have to be more than just a story, and sadly most games are still everything but a story.

The most important part of a game is how it plays, this is what we spend the most time doing during a game (except maybe Metal Gear) and this is why we play games rather than watching a movie or reading a book. So once a game has established a fun and unique play style, shouldn’t we want them to just make small improvements to it over time rather than reinvent the wheel every game?

I think we as a community are conflicted on this point. Take Halo for example. When Halo 2 came out everyone loved it for its Live functionality, but a big complaint was the gameplay really wasn’t all that different. Aside from some new weapons and dual wielding it felt like you were playing the same game in new maps. Fast-forward to Halo 3 and people are praising it for going back to its roots with Halo 1. The dual wieldable weapons are better balanced, the default weapon is the Assault Rifle from the first game, and overall the game feels and plays more like the original. People, myself included, are happy about this, yet we complained that Halo 2 didn’t change its play style enough.

How much can you change until it feels like an entirely new series? And how much different do we want sequels to be after we’ve already fallen in love with the series gameplay? Fallout 3 is significantly different from its predecessors, but is able to stand on its own merits. This of course was due to the change in development team and while Fallout 3 is considered to be a great game, it could almost be a brand new series rather than a sequel. If Interact had made Fallout 3 exactly as Bethesda did would gamers applaud the changes or complain it was too different. It wasn’t a problem this time because change was expected out of a different studio.

The same goes for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts however, which did come out of the same studio. It was largely ignored because it was nothing like the previous N64 platformers, but certain people liked it enough to nominate it for their favorite game of last year. Ironically, this was in large part due to Brad Shoemaker, who admits he never played the originals. I wonder if this game would have been better received if they hadn’t used an already established franchise.

Another series with a lack of gameplay change is Zelda. Just about every game in that series, save for The Adventure of Link and Majora’s Mask play the same. Every games story is even some variation of the same thing. Generally though, no one has a problem with this. The reason is Zelda games are able to differentiate themselves from each other through their unique dungeon puzzles and boss fights.

So what do we want out of sequels? If there is too much change we complain it no longer has this cool feature, or it doesn’t feel the same. If the series stick to its roots we say the sequel is more like “Game Title 1.5” instead of 2 and berate it for lack of innovation. Sequels dominate the major release lineup, and despite everyone rallying for new IP’s we buy any proven title with a number behind it. I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, but we should think about what we want out of a sequel before hating on a game that just did more of the same.