Mission Pack Sequel: Difference between revisions
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== [[Action Game]] ==
* Besides the license involved, all the [[Lego Adaptation Game
* The ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' trilogy for the NES were all developed on the same engine, although the sequels made some subtle changes to the original game system and each installment had at least one exclusive power-up (namely the somersault attack in the original, the red shadow clones in ''II'', and the sword extension in ''III''). Oddly enough, ''III'' is the only game in the trilogy that doesn't have the pseudo isometric perspective as the first two games.
* The ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' series on the Playstation used the same game engine for five games, but each game had better graphics than the previous game, new mechanics such as sprinting and monkey swinging. By ''The Last Revelation'', the graphics haven't improved a lot and the game mechanics remained generally unchanged, save for one or two new abilities. By ''Chronicles'', the game literally recycles a lot of the textures and sound effects, along with the game mechanics from the last game so nothing ever changed.
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== [[Driving Game]] ==
* The ''Fast and the Furious'' arcade game from Raw Thrills received a
* One can easily argue that the various ''[[San Francisco Rush]]'' arcade games are Mission Pack Sequels of the original; while the tracks and graphics have changed, the fundamental gameplay and emphasis on real-world physics does not. Averted with the home console versions, which add additional modes that don't involve racing around a track.
* Similarly, the ''Cruis'n USA'' series (''Cruis'n World, Cruis'n Exotica,'' and the [[Spiritual Sequel]] ''California Speed'') is made of Mission Pack Sequels to the first game.
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* The second ''[[Brothers in Arms]]'' game, ''Earned In Blood''. The first half are different takes on the same mission as the first game, or missions that occured in-between. The rest of the game is completely new.
* ''[[Doom (series)|Doom II: Hell on Earth]]'' is a good example of this trope being done right. The game engine is identical, it plays the same and there's only one new weapon and seven new enemies, one of which is a [[Palette Swap]] (compare to the original game's eight normal monsters and two bosses). The main attraction is the 32 new levels featuring sublime design, which is one of the reasons many ''Doom'' fans consider ''Doom II'' the best game in the series.
** In turn, ''Final Doom'' was a
* ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]] Infinity'''s ''Blood Tides of Lh'owon'' was basically just ''M2'' with more levels. As the title indicates, however, ''Infinity'''s main features were really [[Game Mod|Anvil and Forge]].
** The first game also had the 20/10 Level Pack, which would introduce 20 new single player levels, 10 new multiplayer maps, and the shotgun. The Level Pack was never actually released as intended, though; it added so much that it was released as ''Marathon 2: Durandal''.
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== General ==
* Any "standalone expansion", like the ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' episodes, ''[[Company of Heroes]]'' expansions or the various ''[[Guild Wars]]'' campaigns, straddles the line between [[Expansion Pack]] and self-admitted
* Many, many low-profile games have a Mission Pack Sequel. To name just a few, ''Age of Wonders'', ''Warlords Battlecry'', and the various ''Caesar III'' spin-offs.
* Come to think of it, this is practically endemic to certain genres, like [[RPG
== [[Hack and Slash]] ==
* ''Warriors Orochi 2''. While the rest of the ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' series just barely avoids this trope by using new character models and maps for each iteration, even if they all have the same story, ''Warriors Orochi 2'' is literally a
** It turns out that [[Warriors Orochi]] 2 was, in fact, an expansion, whereas [[Warriors Orochi]] 3 - titled Musou Orochi 2 in Japan, is the true sequel. Thanks for the confusing name scheme, Koei!
== [[Mecha Game]] ==
* The ''[[Armored Core]]'' games are notorious for doing this. Every game with a number at the end of it are brand new games, but every game with some kind of [[Word Salad Title]] is just a
* The ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' series, albeit this merely in terms of overall concept, which is pretty identical in all incarnations (turn based strategy with big robots as units). Otherwise, the game engine has undergone revisions and the list of series and the plots vary from game to game.
== [[Platform Game]] ==
* All the later ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' NES games, and some of the ''[[Mega Man X]]'' games, as well. The gameplay is so similar across each series that hackers have created [[Speed Run|speedruns]] of ''[[Mega Man X]]'' and ''X2'' and ''Mega Man 3'', ''4'', ''5'', and ''6'' by running several [[Emulation|emulators]] on the same controller input.
** ''9'' is [[Retraux|intentionally]] designed to be a
** All of the ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' games, the two ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'' games, and the ''[[Mega Man Battle Network|Battle Network]]'' and ''[[Mega Man Star Force|Star Force]]'' games could all be stuck together and nobody would notice (in fact, they ''did'' do so for the ''Zero'' series). Mega Man's bread and butter is Mission Pack Sequels.
* The main reason Nintendo of America changed an unrelated game into ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]. 2'' was because the Japanese ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' was a
** Given that the American ''Super Mario Bros 2'' was well-received and while being different, had a lot of its features and elements become Mario staples, Nintendo probably made the right choice. The Japanese version was released as part of ''Super Mario All Stars'' as 'The Lost Levels', and notably allowed players to save on each level rather than each world.
** This was also one of the complaints about ''New Super Mario Bros.'' It was seen as a
*** Its sequel, ''[[New Super Mario Bros Wii]]'', got similar flak despite having four-way multiplayer.
* ''Sonic & Knuckles'' was actually a literal case of this: ''Sonic 3'' was originally intended to be an extremely, hideously long game, but, the developers, pressed for time, released only the first few levels of the game as ''Sonic 3'', and then released the rest as ''Sonic & Knuckles'' six months later. But since the new ''Sonic & Knuckles'' cartridge could be locked on with a ''Sonic 3'' cartridge, the two can be played together back-to-back as they were originally intended (and as a plus, joining ''Sonic & Knuckles'' with ''Sonic 2'' lets you play the latter game with Knuckles as a player character to boot).
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* The Infinity Engine games released by Bioware and Black Isle between 1997-2002 (''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' 1 and 2, ''[[Icewind Dale]]'' 1 and 2, and ''[[Planescape: Torment]]''), all used the same engine and play style, with only cosmetic differences, graphic updates, and a few rules tweaks here and there. The games are compatible enough that there exist mods that package the entire Baldur's Gate saga in a single game, or to run Baldur's Gate II in the Icewind Dale II interface.
* ''[[Digimon World Dawn/Dusk|Digimon World: Dawn and Dusk]]'' for the Nintendo DS, when compared to the first ''[[Digimon World DS]]''. Aside from changing up the numbers, adding new [[Mons]], and creating new evolvution paths, it's pretty much the same game with almost the exact same graphics and everything. The same goes in turn for their [[No Export for You|unexported]] sequel, ''Digimon Story: Lost Evolution'', to the point where practically no-one has bothered to put out adequately translated information on what's going on because of the sameness.
* Both ''[[.hack GU Games|.hack//]]'' series mirror this trope, but as each set of games is intended to be one massive game in four (or three, in GU's case)
* Strongly averted by the newer Bioware RPGs. ''Mass Effect'' is an RPG with third-person shooter elements; ''Mass Effect 2'' can be more accurately described as a third-person shooter with RPG elements. Likewise, ''[[Dragon Age Origins]]'' is a relatively slow-paced tactical RPG. While ''[[Dragon Age 2]]'' is definitely still an RPG, it much more closely resembles an action game due to the changes to combat system and streamlining of the inventory.
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== [[Sports Game]] ==
* Most officially licensed sports games, such as the ''[[Madden NFL|Madden]]'' series and other related franchises that release a new installment each year, with the only differences being extremely minor tweaks and roster updates. You can basically skip nine out of ten ''Madden'' games if you don't want to sort through all of the
** The Madden games get a bit of an exaggeratedly bad rep due to Real Gamers feeling that its user base is tainting their pure blood. There have actually been years in recent memory where new Madden games weren't made, and some people actually do not buy the new ones if they don't make enough improvements between versions (more people are content to play a favorite game they already own then pay $60 so the Packers can lose Brett Farve than you might think).
*** EA has been trying to prevent this in the past few years by shutting down the servers for the old games when new ones come out.
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== [[Third-Person Shooter]] ==
* The third ''[[Syphon Filter]]'' game, despite having you play as a variety of characters, was nothing new. Every character was just a skin, and handled exactly the same as Gabe, to the point of being the same
** The second game was also this. Like above, Logan and Xing controlled exactly the same; the only new things to the engine were a few additional weapons.
* ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]: No Remorse'', a game of 15 missions and a surprisingly detailed storyline for a mid-90s shoot-em-up, was followed up with ''No Regret'', a game of 10 missions (though they were longer and more difficult), a few new weapons (and some weapons removed), a couple of new graphical touches, a couple of new enemies, a very straightforward plot (thought admittedly featuring live-action cinemeatics with improved CGI effects), a few of Origin's trademark awesome [[Feelies]], some background information on the setting, and not much else. A mixup in the factory led to many copies of ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]: No Remorse'' being mislabelled on the CD as ''No Regret''.
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* The three ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' games for the GBA (''The Sword of Seals'', ''The Sword of Flame'', and ''The Sacred Stones'') have largely the same sprites, battle animations, items, and game mechanics; ''The Sacred Stones'' was easily the biggest shakeup of the three, but its additions were nothing particularly crucial.
* In Japan, ''[[Shining Force III]]'' was released in three scenarios, each of which presented a different character's side of the story (see also: ''[[Suikoden]] III'''s "Trinity Sight" system). (America [[No Export for You|only got the first scenario]].)
* The status of ''[[Total War|Napoleon: Total War]]'' is sometimes argued as such by fans of the series; some maintain that the game is a stand-alone expansion to ''Empire: Total War'', and so should be ''praised'' for the relatively high level of improvement and innovation which it shows, while some see it as a
== [[Turn Based Tactics]] ==
* ''[[X-COM]]: Terror From The Deep'' was the same game as the original with re-drawn graphics and very minor additions, such as a few more melee weapons, two-stage missions, stat mods, and FLYING (well, swimming, really) Chryssalids.
** They also made it [[Nintendo Hard]], because no one realized that the difficulty settings in the original didn't actually ''work'' - so when some players complained that "Superhuman" was too easy, the remake crew cranked up the base difficulty without ever noticing the dial was disconnected. The bug wasn't found and fixed until years later, by modders.
* Played partly straight with the sequels to ''[[Silent Storm]]'', both of which run on the original game's engine with a few enhancements. ''Silent Storm: Sentinels'' is a stand-alone expansion pack but feels like a cut-down version of the original. The addition of the post-mission gather button feels like it could've been done in a patch. The addition of a weight-based backpack system (to the already-existing size-based one), a monetary system for equipment, and weapon degradation only serve to annoy players. Unlike the original, '''S3''' has only one campaign (shorter too), and less options for the main character's voice (no Russian accent for a game made in Russia). On the other hand, many of the characters from the original game (both sides) are now available to be recruited. ''Hammer & Sickle'' takes place during the height of the [[Cold War]] in the same setting. The game is more RPG in style than a tactical shooter, but the essentials are the same. However, ''H&S'' does not have [[Game Breaker
** The ''[[Night Watch]]'' and ''Day Watch'' games are also based on the same engine, but the use of magic and another dimension add a whole new gameplay element. While the game includes pistols, they are [[Guns Are Useless|almost useless]] and cannot be targeted at body parts.
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** The ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' games, actually, are the definition of [[Mission Pack Sequels]], as, in addition to not deviating from format overly much, they also get harder, requiring more and more lateral thinking and harder logical conclusions. Try playing the first case of Ace Attorney and the first case of Trials and Tribulations and see what you think. This trope is likely the reason why fans often refer to the cases as 1-1 through 1-5 for the first game, 2-1 through 2-4 for the second, and so on, as if each game is just a part of one big game.
** The general fan explanation for this is that the games are a lot like novels, so as long as the writing and plots get better, and the games become more difficult, the gameplay doesn't have to change much.
* Largely due to the nature of [[Visual Novel
== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==
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* '' [[Wii Fit]] Plus'' is near-identical to the original except for new exercises and "balance games". It even allows you to [[Old Save Bonus|import your save data]] from the original. Really, you might as well just trade in the original game when you get it, because it's useless if you have Plus.
=== Non-video game examples
== [[Film]] ==
* The
** I'll see that and raise you ''[[The Hangover]]: Part 2'', which really does feel like part 2 of ''The Hangover'' part 1, except replace "Vegas" with "Bangkok, and is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] by the cast with repeated utterances of "It happened again" and its variants.
** Another good example is what ''[[Home Alone]] 2'' was to the first movie.
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