Sequels. Remember the day when sequels were on-par with movie tie-ins? When sequels were just merciless cash-ins by developers, just recycling old content and calling it new? Where sometimes, just occasionally, there would be clunky new features that even more away from the game, and marred the memory of its predecessor?
It's just a faint memory now, isn't it?

Let's take the Assassin's Creed series. The first was a big success, but it had some flaws. Assassin's Creed II blew the fans away, with tons of new features and content that greatly improved on its predecessor, and gave sequels a good name.

The most frequent installment, Brotherhood, broke some of the rules, and tore away from expectations-adding more features, keeping with the same character, the same feature, and though disregarding much of what made the other Assassin's Creeds so great, but still became a solid sequel.

Naughty Dog's Uncharted have a similar success story, changing very little of the actual game play, but ramping up the locations, story and high-octane action with every installment.

The seemingly never ending Final Fantasy Titles just get a better and better reception, and Dragon Age's add on sequel, Awakening and it's ability to combine with its predecessor to make not quite a sequel, but a longer version of the same game.

Fighting games change very little of their actual premise, just adding more and more depth to the combat system, silimar to how platform games like Mario change very little but the locations and features. Shooting games such as Modern Warfare, add too little to warrant the $55 price-tag.

Though we've come far from the days where all sequels were to be automatically avoided, but there are some games, which will go unmentioned in this column, that still think it's okay to completely recycle. And with the wealth of great sequels out there, it's so much easier to fall into a $50 waist of time.

We all know what combat is, it's probably in every video game, with some exceptions (FIFA, NFL and Dora the Explora: Journey To The Purple Planet being obvious). Basicaly, combat is killing things so that they stop annoying you. That's all there is to it. Or is it?

Combat seems to be a damn important part of a game. Prince of Persia, The Sands Of Time, an all round Brillient game, had it's Achille's heel in the form of boring, tedious and pointless combat. There was the one combo, the vault and a few "Sand Powers" and you were done. The End, Coul De Sac, Game Over. Literaly. This game tried tomake combat interesting by flooding you with High health enemies. It wasn't easy, but nor was it challenging, because when you did dye, it wasn't your fault. It was the game's. You have to wonder why they even put it in.

Outside of this trilogy, the New Prince Of Persia has a much more exciting combat. It takes the form of rythmitic, paced one on one duels. Butten mashing will get you no where, as the name of the game is the longest possible ever. Oponents are always on the offensive, so it's hard to get a hit in. And when you do, you want to make it count by draining as much of it's health as posible. It's easy, but not overly so, and it's damn fun.

Kingdom Hearts is a mixed bag when it comes to combat. On one hand, it's entirely custimisable. There are around one hundred moves in the combat system. On the other, grossly disfigured hand, there is only one butten used for combat: X. Well, actually, Square can be used for blocks and dodges, but the attacking is all on that single button. Moves are hard to preform because there's so much of them, you can't single out the one that's right for this sintuation. One redeeming quality it has, however, are the Reaction Comands. Most enemies have a reaction command, a cinamatic move that can be exacuted under the right curcumstances with Triangle. They deal alot of damadge, and are fun to watch. All in all, the combat here is fun.

God of War. This is the game where combat reached it's peak. Or so they say. I've never played it myself. But I have seen the Youtube videos. It looks pretty damn amazing. Enough said.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was pretty much horrible. With five spells, how the hell are you suposed to fight differently. There is only one winning formula, stun, quick attack, finesher. With about ten more spells, the game might have held some stratagy, but no.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, however, shone. On one particular level, couldrins asemble into a giant, fire/steel THING, with only Ron, Harry and Hermoine to stop it. And stop it they do. Hermoine is the only one with the spell, Glacious, that freezes creature, rendering it open to the only damadge dealing speal "Flipendo". It may sound tedious, but it is alot of fun.

Soul Calibur IV is one of my Favourite PS3 games. The combat mechanics are good, solid stuff, but at the same time, kind of..............well, not ideal. Some characters do better against some then others. It is very hard for a player with Talim to kill someone playing as Agoroth, but then again, Taki's quick moves and variety of kicks are perfect to take down Agoroth. This system is slightly flawed, but that only means more skill is needed when facing certain foes. All in all, fantastic game.

So, There's a few games and their combat. My favourite game out of all of them is Kingdom Hearts, more for story than anything else.. All in all, combat is what makes a game. A developer who thinks combat is unimportant won't have a good future in this buisness, but games do need something other than combat to even it up. Prince Of Persia does this with puzzles, Kingdom Hearts with story and minigames, Harry Potter with exploration, Quidditch and Potion making. Soul Calibur and Tekkan don't break it up, but that's fine to do whith the quality combat they have.

No matter how games approach combat, they had better approach with caution, or be forever remembered as forgettable.