third title syndrome
by Matt on Jul.23, 2010, under Uncategorized
I was discussing skate 3 with my brother tonight, we chatted briefly about how the fun factor didn’t last very long, how you really didn’t have to learn the world in order to do the “do anywhere” challenges, and it just lacked the seamlessness that was found in skate 2.
And then it dawned on me. How often does the third game in a series turn out to be brilliant? It seems the first game has a new and fresh idea, the second game expands upon the core of the first game, adding the polish and ideas that the team didn’t have time to put into the first title. The third title though, seems to suffer from far too much temptation to do something different
Of course with every rule, there are exceptions, but aside from super mario 3 and grand theft auto 3, all of the third title games I can think of that aren’t suspect are driving games (burnout 3, forza 3, GT 3). don’t worry too much though, there’s always driver 3 to even things out.
With so many sequels with 3 in the title slated for later this year, I’m a little worried, I suppose we’ll see if my little theory holds up, or whether its just confirmation bias, but I’m hoping that we wont need to revisit the third title syndrome!
