And now for our first contribution. Looking back at the gaming events of the past year, please welcome our very own
rudderless wrote:It’s been a pretty strong year for videogames – albeit one that promised slightly more than it delivered. This was, after all, supposed to be the year that developers and publishers acclimatised to the new console generation, but it was also a year where we saw yet more delays to key releases, and one stuffed with more remakes and remasters than ever before. Take your pick from Devil May Cry 4, Saints Row IV, God of War 3, Dark Souls 2, Darksiders 2, DmC, Gears of War, Resident Evil, and the Borderlands and Uncharted series – and that's not half the story.
If there’s been a lack of genuine innovation around, particularly in the blockbuster space, there’s still been plenty to enjoy. It’s been a year of sprawling open worlds: frequently strikingly designed but often flawed in some ways. Rocksteady’s Arkham Knight was widely lauded upon release, but doesn’t seem to have lingered long in the memory, and many were critical of the way the Batmobile was used. Mad Max’s storms and car combat captured the giddy thrills of the incendiary Fury Road, but too often settled for the drudgery of a typical sandbox shopping list.
The long-awaited Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was rightly acclaimed for the depth and variety of its interlocking systems, presenting players with an excitingly freeform stealth playground, but many complained that it felt unfinished. Perhaps pressure to get it released before it was ready had something to do with Hideo Kojima’s departure from publisher Konami, a split so acrimonious that even professional milquetoast Geoff Keighley was moved to comment when Kojima was prevented from collecting a prize at Keighley’s Game Awards ceremony.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, by contrast, received almost unequivocal praise. CD Projekt Red’s dark fantasy RPG caught up players in its epic sweep for weeks and months on end with its expertly realised world, solid combat and powerful writing. It was all the more remarkable that this had been crafted by a much smaller team than its open world contemporaries. The studio rewarded its fans’ support by releasing a raft of free additions – a rare treat in a year where many big publishers milked audiences with costly season passes and preorder bonuses.
It was a quiet start to the year for games, though Techland’s apocalyptic first-person survival game Dying Light picked up a cult following. With plenty of players looking for something new, Dontnod’s unassuming episodic drama Life is Strange also found an audience: after an uneven start, it blossomed into one of the most fascinating and talked-about games of the year. Complaints about its questionable dialogue faded in the face of an absorbing and frequently moving examination of teenage life, with temporal powers and detective elements giving the player plenty to do.
Perhaps there were a few lessons for Telltale here, which stuck firmly to type in its disappointingly rigid Game of Thrones adap and the fun but formulaic Minecraft: Story Mode – though the fizzy humour of Tales from the Borderlands suggested there was life in the old template yet. Elsewhere, Capcom offered a different type of episodic experience with Resident Evil Revelations 2, released over four weeks between February and March. Clearly designed to be released (and, perhaps, played) in piecemeal fashion, it was arguably superior to 5 and 6, with the memorably sweary Moira Burton certainly making an impact.
As far as hardware goes, Sony’s PlayStation 4 went from strength to strength, notching up 20m sales by March and 30m by November. Even many of its fans would admit that it seems to be winning almost by default, with Microsoft still playing catch-up. Halo 5 pushed Xbox One ahead in October’s NPD numbers, but this was a rare victory. More people own PS4s, and potential customers asking their friends what to buy are more likely to get a steer in Sony’s direction. There’s a strong case to be made that MS had a better year for exclusives: alongside Guardians, there was Forza 6, the good but overpraised Ori and the Blind Forest, Rise of the Tomb Raider and the exceptional value compilation that is Rare Replay, not to mention console exclusives on its Early Access-style Game Preview program like Elite: Dangerous and striking survival sim The Long Dark. Sony, meanwhile, stumbled into 2015 with the handsome but boring The Order: 1886, though in Hidetaka Miyazaki’s intense Bloodborne (one of the few games to truly warrant the adjective ‘visceral’) many would argue it had the outstanding game of 2015. Uncharted 4 slipping into next year was a disappointment, however, as was the publisher’s bizarre reluctance to properly promote the excellent Until Dawn, a campily entertaining horror with some of the year’s best writing.
It was often left to indie developers to pick up the slack, and Sony scored a winner with Psyonix’s Rocket League, a game about cars with hats playing football. Whether it was a stroke of genius or good fortune to release it as a freebie on PSN, it quickly found a large audience, even among those who didn’t ordinarily enjoy the sport. If that was the obvious indie commercial success of the year, there were artistic triumphs, too. The Chinese Room followed up Dear Esther with Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, an atmospheric 1980s-set post-apocalyptic drama with Jessica Curry’s dazzling themes providing one of 2015’s best soundtracks. Sam Barlow’s gripping FMV detective drama Her Story has already seen both writer/director and performer Viva Seifert win awards, and it would be a surprise if it didn’t star at next year’s gaming BAFTAs.
And what of Nintendo? It’s not had a vintage year for software in many ways, with 3DS in particular looking short of essentials; indeed, two of its very best games (Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, Majora’s Mask 3D) were remakes. Yet this was the year that Nintendo gave us both Super Mario Maker and Splatoon. The former was a creative tool of almost unparalleled immediacy, and one that makes the act of creating fun; the latter is one of the most innovative games of 2015, certainly the most creative shooter, and a sign of what the company’s younger developers are capable of when not shackled to an existing brand. Most importantly, in a year when we all bid an unexpected farewell to the late, great Satoru Iwata, it was a game that followed the president’s vision for Nintendo to the letter: it put smiles on faces.