Enslaved: Odyssey to the West deserved SO much better. #gaming
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00:00Video games aren't made to be one-offs.
00:02Every big publisher wants a 10-year live service brand
00:06that they can use as an excuse to print cash money.
00:09Sadly, though, the games on this list weren't lucky enough to receive such a follow-up.
00:14They're all awesome, but no matter how much I keep my fingers, toes,
00:17and every other part of my body crossed,
00:20the gaming gods have made it so that we'll never see a sequel, and here's why.
00:24I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:25and these are 9 amazing video games that will never get sequels, and why.
00:30Number 9, Sleeping Dogs.
00:32Ironically enough, pretty much everyone slept on Sleeping Dogs when it came out.
00:35At the time, the world was inundated with countless GTA rip-offs,
00:39and on the surface, this game looked like just another one to throw on the pile.
00:43But, my friends, let me tell you, this game owns.
00:47Acting as a throwback to Hong Kong crime movies,
00:50the open world itself was ridiculously detailed for the time,
00:53capturing the seedy, filmic underbelly of the city perfectly.
00:57Throw on top of that, it focused on martial arts melee combat as well as top-notch driving,
01:01and the game had more than enough to set itself apart from the competition.
01:05And, at one point, a sequel was planned,
01:08but it was canned in favor of a game called Triad Wars,
01:11a PC-only MMO spin-off that no doubt would have stripped away all the personality from the previous game.
01:18Of course, if you haven't heard of that, then don't worry,
01:20this was actually cancelled as well,
01:22meaning that we got no more sleeping dogs in any form.
01:25And that sucks, because it was those little touches that made sleeping dogs so special.
01:29You know, going to a karaoke bar to knock out a rendition of I Fought the Law
01:33after murdering a bunch of guys in the street, for instance.
01:37And it's a shame that we won't get more of that anytime soon.
01:40And all because the publisher wanted an MMO that they didn't even release.
01:45Number eight, Bulletstorm.
01:47At one point, developers People Can Fly were primed to be the next big video game developers.
01:51They'd become the protégé of Epic Games,
01:54who drafted the team in to work on Geys of War Judgment
01:56and a brand new first-person shooter titled Bulletstorm.
02:00The idea for this game was pretty simple.
02:03Created balls-to-the-wall FPS that rewarded you for exploration and imagination,
02:07freeing you up to use innovative weapons to chain together combo kills
02:10and use every part of the environment to dish out pain.
02:14Yeah, the story was naff, but that's not what people were here for in the first place.
02:18They came to cleave a dude's head off and then boot him 300-style into a cactus.
02:24Sadly, despite this awesome mechanic, the game wasn't a huge hit.
02:27And by the sounds of things, the devs haven't been able to convince anyone to bankroll a sequel,
02:32despite releasing a remaster to gauge interest.
02:35In an interview following said remastered edition of the game,
02:38the devs explained that they hoped the IP would get a second wind,
02:42but if it hasn't happened by now, Bulletstorm 2 probably never will.
02:46Number 7, Bully.
02:48Bully is one of those games that you could ask any random person on the street if they've played,
02:52and before they say,
02:53now get away from me, you scruffy creep,
02:55they'd say,
02:56of course I did, you scruffy creep.
02:58Rockstar's open-world prank simulator took their anarchic sandbox charm
03:02and meshed it with a playful school-ground setting to great success.
03:05It sold well, it dominated the cultural discourse,
03:08so why the hell didn't it get a sequel when GTA got a million and even Red Dead Redemption got one?
03:14Well, the answer is, it wasn't for lack of trying.
03:17According to multiple reports,
03:19Bully 2 has been in development a few times over the years,
03:22but has always hit roadblocks.
03:24Whether it's difficulty updating the game for a modern audience,
03:27or Rockstar's focus on other properties,
03:29it has never materialized,
03:31and at this point likely never will.
03:33A recent Game Informer report claimed that about 10 hours of the sequel
03:37were actually completed at the start of the 2010s,
03:40but the game was eventually cancelled as developers had to help out
03:44on Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
03:47Now, those games turned out awesome in my opinion,
03:49but they were at the expense of this sequel.
03:52Was the sacrifice worth it?
03:53Well, you tell me in the comments.
03:55Number 6, Cold Fear.
03:57You'd be forgiven for not remembering what the hell Cold Fear even was.
04:01This mid-2000s survival horror gem was an utter joy to play.
04:05Well, not really considering it was pretty damn terrifying,
04:08but you know what I mean.
04:09Being one of the games at the time to push what the genre could be.
04:12Set on a tanker, you were cast as a lifeguard
04:15forced to overcome a zombie-like infection
04:17with a gameplay style similar to Resident Evil 4.
04:20However, it was those similarities to Resident Evil 4
04:23which ultimately killed any chances of this becoming a franchise.
04:27Even though the two were in development at the same time,
04:30Resi beat it to the punch,
04:32and as a result it was very easy to write Cold Fear offers just to clone.
04:36It didn't help that Capcom's franchise essentially executed every idea better as well.
04:41Players had a choice between the two,
04:43and just about everyone went with Resident Evil,
04:45and you can see why.
04:47As a result, Cold Fear sold a staggeringly shocking 70,000 copies in the US.
04:53And the only title I know that sold worse than that is 50 Cent Blur in the Sand,
04:58and when you're being bundled in with that,
04:59you know something has gone terribly wrong.
05:02No game could come back from sales figures like that,
05:05and as a result, Cold Fear was dead in the water.
05:09Number 5, Stranglehold.
05:11Pretty much every person on the planet has watched a John Woo movie and had the same thought.
05:15I wish I was that cool.
05:17Answering all of our prayers then,
05:19the Hong Kong action director decided to take everyone's desire to be in his movies
05:23by giving them the next best thing.
05:25Letting them control one of them.
05:27Stranglehold is a direct sequel to the director's most iconic film, Hard Boiled,
05:32and players are free to shoot their way through levels in the most bombastic way possible.
05:36Max Payne by this point had already perfected slow-mo shooting,
05:40but this game mixed that in with environmental destruction and an even larger moveset.
05:45Jumping on a cart and gliding your way to perfect slow-mo headshots
05:49brought with it the kind of joy that you worry you'll never feel again.
05:52And, alas, you probably never would, because Stranglehold never got a sequel.
05:57Again, it wasn't for lack of trying, it looked like it would for a little while,
06:01and the original plan was to team up the first game star, Chow Yun-Fat, with Vin Diesel.
06:07An idea so good that I can't even think about it no longer happening without getting a little bit sad.
06:12Unfortunately, this was put an end to when publisher Midway went out of business,
06:16and the game never released.
06:19Number 4, Black.
06:20From one balls-to-the-wall action game to the next,
06:23Black still remains one of the most instantly gratifying first-person shooters you can play.
06:28It's not that the title had the most in-depth mechanics, the smartest AI,
06:31or the most inventive level design, but it did have one major strength.
06:36It cranked everything up to 11.
06:38The guns exploded like grenades, the grenades exploded like nukes,
06:42and the nukes, well, there weren't any nukes,
06:44but I imagine they'd have sounded like the world itself was blowing up.
06:47It was a pure, visceral joy, which is even more impressive, considering this was a first attempt.
06:53As always, a sequel was in development at some point, beginning production before the original game even came out.
06:59Which is when you know they're serious.
07:02However, as chronicled in a really good Reykjavik video,
07:04boring old disagreements between the devs and publisher EA allegedly led to lead designer Stuart Black,
07:10hence the title, leaving the project entirely and the sequel falling apart.
07:14However, a spiritual sequel, Body Count, did see the light of day,
07:18but sadly, it just wasn't the same, and a proper sequel never materialized as a result.
07:23Number 3, Sunset Overdrive.
07:26Insomniac have made some pretty damn awesome games in their time,
07:29but sadly, Sunset Overdrive never really received the audience it deserved.
07:33The Xbox One exclusive wasn't a system seller, but it was a solid, inventive open world game
07:39that blended the charm the studio is known for with tight combat and movement abilities.
07:44It was a difficult game to sell though, primarily because of its blend of styles that made it so good.
07:49In a way, it was kind of like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater,
07:52if you had a lot of mad guns and were fighting zombies instead of pulling off McTwists.
07:57Which sounds potentially like the worst thing ever, but I promise it wasn't.
08:01Still, though, that might partly be why the game ended up with soft sales.
08:05I mean, the grating, winking humour present in the trailers probably didn't help either,
08:09but I digress.
08:10And as a result, Insomniac didn't release a follow-up with Microsoft or work with them again.
08:14They still own the IP, and there was a brief glimmer of hope for a sequel
08:18when Sony bought the studio a few years ago.
08:21However, the new owners have made it pretty clear that Sunset Overdrive 2 isn't on the agenda,
08:26and that the focus will be on Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank going forward.
08:29Insomniac simply has too many profitable properties in the works,
08:33and Sony isn't going to put them on hold to revive a franchise that debuted on the competition's hardware.
08:40Number 2, Vanquish.
08:42The world was simply not ready for Vanquish.
08:45Platinum Games' shooter came out at a time where third-person shooters were practically
08:49humping cover systems and chest-high walls.
08:52And look, there's no kink-shaming here, but it did get very weird.
08:56And instead of playing along, Vanquish said stuff that and did its own thing.
09:00That own thing turned out to be the kind of breath of fresh air the genre needed at the time.
09:05Instead of being stuck behind cover all the time,
09:07you were instead courage to jet-slide your way around the battlefield in a sci-fi exoskeleton,
09:12blowing the complete piss out of everything around you.
09:15It didn't sell Gangbusters, but like a lot of Platinum games,
09:18it did find its audience and became a cult success.
09:21But sadly, not enough to greenlight a sequel.
09:24The devs moved on to other projects,
09:26and while there are constant rumors that a sequel might be happening,
09:29it all appears to be wishful thinking at this point.
09:32Number 1, L.A. Noire.
09:33Love it or hate it, L.A. Noire at least tried to do something new.
09:37The game invented a whole new technology that enabled lifelike facial animations,
09:42a feature essential in a detective story where figuring out if someone is telling the truth
09:46or spinning a web of lies is vital to solving cases.
09:50Likewise, its recreation of L.A. was stunning to behold and live in,
09:54even if there wasn't all that much to actually do in it,
09:56while the mix of casework and combat kept things interesting.
10:00Not everything clicked perfectly, I will admit,
10:02but after a tumultuous development,
10:04the foundations had been set for follow-ups,
10:06even if they weren't directly set in the same world or followed the same set of characters.
10:11Sadly, after the release, developers Team Bondi and publisher Rockstar
10:15had a pretty major falling out, which led to a breakup and the latter company keeping the IP.
10:20Team Bondi planned to release a spiritual successor using the same foundations called
10:24Whore of the Orient, but eventually went out of business.
10:28Rockstar, on the other hand, haven't released anything outside of a remaster
10:31and a VR detective experience based on the original game.
10:35Hopefully, they will get around to making a sequel eventually,
10:37but considering how long it takes them to craft a new project these days,
10:41that won't be anytime soon, if sadly ever.
10:44So that's our list, I want to see what you guys think down in the comments below,
10:47would you love to see these games get sequels,
10:49and are there any crushing disappointments I left off here?
10:53While you're down there as well, can you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
10:55and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:59Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.