The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to most everything in the realm of entertainment/art, and videogames are no exception. Off the top of my head here are a few examples to illustrate this: -Tomb Raider (The first game was a revolution in action/adventure gaming, a near perfect mix of puzzle-solving, guns-blazing action and a genuine atmosphere of mystery, not to mention a fantastic, haunting score, and while it hasn't aged particularly well graphics-wise it's still hugely playable. Tomb Raider 2 and 3 attempted to add to the established formula with the inclusion of more human encounters, varied locales and branching paths etc. but at the expense of the inspired level-design, narrative cohesion and, most importantly, the atmosphere that had made the first game stand out, resulting in a rather bland series of third-person shooters and a downward trend which Tomb Raider has ever recovered from. Lara has yet to top her first effort) -Wild ARMS (The first game in this series was a fantastic title, an RPG that blended wild west elements with a fantasy/steampunk world reminiscent of FF6 [that's FF3 if you're a yank], an innovative take on the 3D ATB battle system and a focus on getting the most out of it's three central characters through the tools system, which affected puzzle-solving and interaction with the world as well as unique abilities in-battle. The story, while sporting a fair few clichés, was excellent, with all the demon-slaying, dungeon-crawling, guardian-summoning, golem-driving, Calamity Jane-encountering, Elw world-visiting goodness you could ask for. And Boomerang. We love Boomerang. But like Tomb Raider, subsequent installments have trampled all over the original by attempting to shoehorn further "innovations" on top of a perfectly good existing formula, at the expense of narrative cohesion, characters you actually cared about and the gameplay that had made the original stand out at a time when FF7 was dominating the RPG landscape) -Silent Hill (This series fared slightly better than most, with not one but two classic titles before the rot started to set in. Silent Hill 1 was a triumph of survival-horror with the emphasis on horror, crafting an atmosphere of fear and oppression and then populating it with some of the most twisted visions ever beheld in videogaming, threaded through with an understated and very human storyline about a man searching for his lost child. Silent Hill 2 built upon this foundation but added to it a psychological element that further deepened the sense of dread and paranoia encountered in Silent Hill, and the gameplay, centered around exploration of the damned town and it's nightmarish otherworld, punctuated by intense bouts of combat (and Pyramid Head!), has never been better. 3 was a step backwards, overcomplicating the mythology of the series with a truckload of long, tedious monologues about "God" and a narrative that, despite it's best eforts, failed to emotionally engage, and took far to long to locate the player in Silent Hill itself, including a mall level, a sewer level and a subway level that rank among some of the most dull ever seen in the genre, let alone this series. 4 was an abomination, as was Origins, and Homecoming makes all the mistakes three made and more...) However, as with music, movies and literature there are some videogames that buck the trend of diminishing returns, for example: -Resident Evil (RE1 might have seemed revolutionary in 1996, but with some truly awful VA, a B-movie storyline and clunky gameplay mechanics it was, in hindsight, more of a trial run than a fully-fledged revolution in gaming. RE2 however came from the Ridley Scott School of "B-material, done A", and while it retained many of the cheesy elements of the original it also included a brilliantly realised game world with a variety of grim locales to make your way through, plenty of puzzles to sink your teeth into, two characters with two scenarios apiece, guest character segments, some awesome boss fights and a fantastically nail-biting climax, all of which came together in brilliantly blockbuster fashion. 3 was a continuation of this, and while it didn't throw too many new elements into the mix, the inclusion of Nemesis [He can follow me from area to areaffffssgshs!!!!11) was another step in the right direction for the series. 4, it hardly needs to be said, is one of the greatest games of all time, reinventing the series as a balls-to-the-wall action franchise. 5 might have failed to live up to the extremely high standard set by 4, but it's co-op gameplay was incredibly fun) So what about it guys, what game series for you illustrate the law of diminishing returns in gaming, or alternatively, what games defy this trend?
Well as you said at the beginning, all games display some amount of diminishing returns, but as gamer, I really care about what else the game producers are bringing to the table. As long as something new is being introduced, I have no problems with having, for example, the controls of a game remain the same while introducing a new feature that can be controlled by the player. No game can defy the law of diminishing returns, currently, in my opinion.
The series that probably stand out the most here for me would be the Gothic series, Gothic I was great for it's time but it still stayed in niche RPG land. Then Gothic II was released and it was just perfection, combat was real time and actually challenging, graphics was awesome for it's time and everything was streamlined and worked well. Fast forward a three years and Gothic III was released, this time with a game-crashing bug every 5 minutes, graphics that looked like Gothic II but crippled even the fastest of machines, a skill system which was confusing and at the same time still managed to be shallow. The story line made little sense and the game world was tedious to walk through. I have no idea how they managed to fuck up the game I was most anxious about but I remember almost crying after just 10 minutes of playing the game. "They ruined my favourite series *sob*"
Don't forget Pokemon, when Red/Blue/Yellow was released the game was innovative, although Digimon was released earlier. Then as the sereis progreesed, we just got newer pokemon but the same old story hashed & rehashed.
Digimon was earlier. But, there were huge differences in Digimon before and after the release of the Pokemon series. Before Pokemon, Digimon was only looked at a tamagotchi and had as I remember one SEGA Saturn game, which aswell was just the same tamagotchi with just color. Once Pokemon was released with all its glory in videogames, toys, anime etc. Digimon followed suit, with it's own series of anime (which I liked better than Pokemon), and more Digimon videogames (Which have continuasly been badly marked in reviews). I know this has pretty much absoloutly nothing to do with the actual topic itself, but I felt like talking about Digimon and Pokemon.
