Paige FTW: Sequel Hunt
Video games are an industry where sequels are … expected, honestly. If you make a fantastic standalone game (like The Last of Us), the first question you should expect is when the next one is coming out. Movie franchises make people sigh, but video games usually only encourage calls of more, more, more.
This year is full of sequels and remakes (the aforementioned The Last of Us, myriad Nintendo properties, and so forth), but there are a few franchises that haven’t yet announced their next title — and this week, we are going to look at three fantastic standalone titles that need a followup.
Horizon Zero Dawn
This fantastic PlayStation exclusive focuses on tribal societies trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic robot monster-inhabited world. The first game explained why this happened, but there is so much more to mine — other societies, the post-credits scene that sees ally Sylens salvaging the enemy you spent the whole game killing. It’s a pity that nothing much has happened, but word on the street is that Guerilla Games is waiting for the PS5…
The World Ends With You
This one might be more tenuous, given that creator Tetsuya Nomura has overseen a “remake” (of sorts, for the Switch) with extra content and teased that that hip, trendy alternate Shibuya may also be somehow connected to Kingdom Hearts. But at the same time, it was one of the jewels of the Nintendo DS, and I would love to learn more about this crazy world.
Spec Ops: The Line
I don’t particularly want a sequel to this specific PC title in the conventional sense — based on the classic novel Heart of Darkness, this was a shooter that was surprisingly cerebral and critical of the war machine it gamified. I would love to see another title that attempts to do the same thing, without falling into the Call of Duty mode.
