2014 had the potential to be the greatest year in gaming since Nolan Bushnell brought video games to a home console. Developers had two brand new game machines to play with, and a third console was catching its second wind. Cloud processing was available, the ability to utilize tablets as peripheral devices was now a reality, and kick-ass AAA titles were lined up on the horizon as innumerable as grains of sand, each promising a next gen level of gaming nirvana. Did we achieve gaming nirvana this year? Nope, instead we got buggy messes that were rushed to gold, network vulnerabilities exploited, idiotic policies, predatory practices, and gamer misbehavior. They blew, we blew it...everybody blew it. Here are the culprits, in no particular order.
WTF Ubisoft?
2014 will be remembered as the year that Ubisoft could not get its shit together. Ubisoft showcased Watchdogs at E3 2013, and the stylized hacker/shooter hybrid generated a ton of hype. The game looked great and featured the ability to hack Chicago’s cTOS network to the player’s advantage, and even infiltrate another player’s game world and hack that player in real time: the possibilities were very exciting. Watchdogs was delayed, presumably to polish the game and add some last-minute awesomeness...but this was not the case. When the game finally shipped in May, it looked like shit, wasn’t any fun, and the story was a disappointing Deathwish-inspired revenge fantasy retread featuring a bland protagonist. Fuck you Aiden Pearce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY13MHHd988[width=650,height=366]
Watchdogs also brought the phrase “console parity” into the gamer vernacular, by making every version of the game, regardless of the individual machine’s processing or graphical power, look exactly the same as its lowest common denominator, in this case the XB1. Do not compare the actual game to the clips shown at E3: it will almost certainly make you vomit with rage, if you’re a PC gamer.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity hit much later in the year, but it hit with a wet, messy thud. The follow-up to Black Flag contained a lengthy list of progress-impeding bugs and, as if to add insult to injury, assaulted the consumer of this $60 AAA title to buy more shit, to join Ubisoft clubs, and to add Ubisoft apps to other devices. Take a break, Ubisoft, but I’m not done with you yet.
Microsoft’s Tiny Balls
Microsoft announced some very grand plans concerning policies of game sharing, persistent online authentication, and adding a fully integrated and updated version of the Kinect with every console. The backlash over these policies, as well as what many perceive as a poorly presented product at the XB1 reveal and E3 2013, put their funny black box way behind Sony’s machine at the start of the new gen console war.
Instead of sticking to their guns, the Xbox guys buckled under criticism and reversed these policies almost overnight. Maybe Microsoft sees themselves as quickly responding to the needs of their customers; I see it as gutless acquiescence and a lack of conviction. While I’m not incredibly keen on DRM, it can be problematic (as we have recently witnessed with Far Cry 4), but I don’t pirate games and I expect this policy to materialize again in the future. That being said, the game sharing thing would have been cool.
Later in the year, Phil Spencer steps into the position left vacant by the departure of Marc Whitten, and suddenly the Kinect is no longer a vital part of the XB1 console, and Microsoft shaves $100 off the retail price of their new console to compete with Sony. I can only imagine the impending annoyance of gamers who bought this watered-down version of the console. You saved a hundred bucks, and got half a console. Sucker! This is the equivalent of buying a 360 with no hard drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=objRh-WjKm8&index=3&list=PLC4DsV6v5v0g50...
This decision is now having a ripple effect in the development community for folks who were making Kinect games. These are companies who have invested money in making Kinect games for a game system where every single console should have the hardware necessary to play the games that they were developing. I personally feel that Kinect games are uninteresting, but there is a market out there for those types of games and they’re getting better all the time. Microsoft’s lack of testicular fortitude has almost guaranteed that only the most popular Kinect games will continue to be developed. I hope you guys like dancing and exercise games, because that’s what you’re going to get. Here’s a tip for Phil Spencer and his team: the next time you’re on a stage telling gamers about the newness, say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s just that easy.
Always Online
SimCity players got an early taste of the failure to come. Always online policies are greasy, steaming piles of shit and completely unnecessary for single player. The first inherent problem with an always online title is that it relies on distant servers and connectivity to function. Why the fuck do we need to be connected to the internet to play a single player game anyway? Here’s what I expect from my single player game experience: to play the game, by myself, whenever I want to without being at the mercy of my ISP or a publisher’s inadequate server network. I ran into this problem while trying to play The Crew: I spent as much time trying to connect to Ubi’s shitty servers as I did playing the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq29daDNAU0[width=650,height=366]
The other downside to always online is that I was forced to play with other gamers. This was not voluntary participation with friends or other 2o2p members, this was mixing with the dregs of gamer society in the most painful manner imaginable.While this was a natural fit for many gamers, the rest of us felt like we were thrown into the deep end of the pool with in a full-body bathing suit made of bricks: it sucked. I got my ass handed to me in Titanfall, completing the game as both factions, while never winning a single match. Not one. I’m not a social gamer, and if I wanted hear a twelve year old describe a highly improbable sexual escapade with my mother I can pop in Midnight Club LA or MW3 and deliberately choose multiplayer. This type of practice also makes the ESRB rating invalid. Sure, the game would be completely appropriate for a kid, if you don’t take into account the online element that is always there and cannot be circumvented by even the most cautious and diligent parent. Every always online game should have, at the very least, an MA rating.
Shitty Racing Games
After 2013 disappointed us with Forza 5, and NFS Rivals had run out of gas, racing game fans were ready for some next-gen racers to fill the void. Grid Autosport looked promising but ended up being a last-gen only title that had a lot of tracks but was short on car choices, livery options, tuning, and fun. What the hell happened to Codemasters? They used to make good games.
The Crew was hyped as some kind of open-world racing game of the gods, but like other Ubisoft games this year, was a turd in a shiny box. I spent more time trying to connect to a fucking server than I did actually playing the game. When I did manage to get in, I was disappointed in the miniscule car selection, track diversity, and all the non-racing activities that had to be endured to actually get to the racing parts.
DriveClub did not fare much better with Playstation racers. A small car selection, arcadey handling, and an huge environment that could not be explored left the Sony exclusive at the impound yard. The only saving grace came in the form of the surprisingly good Forza Horizon 2 and its overpriced but highly rated Storm Island DLC.
This Game Blows
2014 was the year of the full retail beta. How many broken-ass games got shipped this year? The Halo MCC multiplayer was broken, Assassin’s Creed: Unity was unfinished, DriveClub had QC issues, and Far Cry 4 has some sort of authentication error that doesn’t allow players to play the game that they purchased.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmJRKgHt_D0[width=650,height=366]
Last year was also a breeding ground for full-on idiotic concepts that had no business being sold as entertainment. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes was boring but mercifully short. Duck Dynasty was probably the worst concept ever for a video game: take a shitty cable television show and make it worse. Mission accomplished. Murdered: Soul Suspect would have actually made an interesting movie, but it wasn’t fun enough to be a game. When the most exciting part of your game is crawling through air ducts as a cat your stupid game is in trouble. The Amazing Spider Man 2 had an interesting take on killing a successful game franchise: take everything that people like about your games and remove it all. I am officially done with pre-ordering games.
Reuse, Recycle, Remaster
A lot of the “new” games that came out last year weren’t new at all. GTA V, Limbo, Halo: MCC, Minecraft, Castle Storm, The Walking Dead, Terraria, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, and Tomb Raider are all games that I have just finished playing on the old console. These games aren’t old enough for players to be nostalgic for and there’s nothing new to warrant another run through, much less another purchase. Yeah, they may have DLC from the original and updated graphics, but how is a slightly sharper-looking game worth another retail purchase? Microsoft sent me a free code for Limbo, and I gave it away because I haven’t finished the fucking thing on the 360 yet. Too soon, amigo...too soon.
Gamers Sucked in 2014
Gamers placed themselves in the critical spotlight of public opinion last year by swatting their online rivals, sexism, racism, misogyny, camping, glitching, doxxing, spamming, and hacking themselves into society’s gutter. Online gaming empowers normally docile and pleasant people with the bravado of anonymity, allowing them to do or say things that they would never dream of in real life. Picking a fight online is nothing new: I have picked several fights, even here in the forums at 2o2p, but being an adult I either apologized when I was wrong or rubbed it in when I was right. I said I was an adult, I never said I wasn’t a dick. However, it’s hard for me to conceptualize being so angry that I send a SWAT team to somebody’s house or put someone’s personal information out on the internet. Maybe this behavior is indicative of a new breed of sociopath that doesn’t have a name yet, but it needs to go away.
Female gamers have historically been treated like shit, for no particular reason, since the inception of gaming. If anyone reading this can explain why a woman is incapable of rolling dice, pushing buttons on a controller, or rolling a killstreak over their male counterparts, please enlighten me in the comments below...I would love to hear that explanation. The flip side of this particular scandal is that gamers are blaming their misogyny on game journalists. How does ethics in game journalism equate to treating female gamers like shit? What is the connection? Somehow, these Gamergate guys have justified their behavior by blaming the press. Is this mass idiocy or classic misdirection?
Merry Christmas
Yeah, Christmas sucked. Somehow, our game networks are extraordinarily vulnerable to hacking and DDOS attacks. Playstation gamers had their credit card information stolen a few months back, but we all got fucked on Christmas by some wannabe hackers playing the Grinch to get their lolz.
Resolutions for 2015
2015 may have started off with a whimper and a reskinned Saint’s Row IV and Resident Evil HD, but there are some promising games on the horizon. Silent Hills, Telltale’s take on Borderlands, Project CARS, Forza 6, Evolve, and a console version of The Elder Scrolls Online are all slated for the near future. As excited as I am about gaming in 2015, I am not pre-ordering games and I’m not buying anything without a preliminary rental. I also promise to be nice to girls, not blame my shortcomings on IGN, and to treat my fellow gamers with the respect that they deserve...except maybe for Dixon.
