My 2016 in Gaming

Welcome to my second review of the year blog! This one is about them videogame things I love to harp on about. Why was  my first one about cinema trips then? Because it was far easier… I could probably just list the  games I’ve played this year and it’d be as long as my usual musings, but  A) it’d dull as dishwasher and B) I can’t flipping remember them all. Highlights it is then..

 

The other problem with talking the year in games is that most of what I played didn’t even come out this year. That’s because I like a bargain and I’ve only got so much spare time between this hobby, scratching my leg and staring out windows thinking about fresh air.

 

The game that took up most of my time in 2016 was the 2015 release Witcher 3. I spent about three months going through that fantasy land, cutting people’s heads off and watching awkward sex scenes. As much as videogame visuals have improved it still looked like that bit in Team America, but not as funny. Other stuff happened too, I think. I spent a long damn time on that game and right now I’m wondering if all I did was collect herbs and cut stuff. Hmmm…

 

Remasters took up a big chunk of my time, playing games for the first item that most gaming geeks finished ages ago. I started the year with Dishonored which now ranks as  one of my favourite things ever (though I haven’t got Dishonored 2 yet because I’m way behind on new stuff). Planning and patience made it a welcome change from most games I played, plus I love the visual style of it all. Boasting a similar look are the Bioshock games and this year I finally got to experience those. One and two are done with Infinite still to be played. Those are really great. The atmosphere and story are what really sets them apart but once I worked it out I was also a fan of the hacking mechanic and using your surroundings.  Gravity Rush and Tearaway Unfolded are both versions of PS Vita titles. They’re nothing like each other but then neither is like anything else out there and added some variety to the PS4 line up. Gravity Rush allowed to switch off gravity and soar through the sky or run up walls, whilst Tearaway had you using every feature on the controller to interact with a paper crafted world. Both were inventive gems.

 

The end of the year has that murky period of time when you’re saving for Christmas and you try not to treat yourself. Those months had me replaying old stuff, the extra nifty titles that stayed on my shelf instead of heading to CEX. The Last of Us is still a fantastic experience. Despite knowing what would happen each step of the way I was just as emotionally manipulated as before. It still scared me, still left me upset and my heart still beat 1000mph during that finale.  I could rave about game forever. My Wii U got a lot of love too, partly because It might get boxed up once the Switch hits in 2017. That machine excels at platformers with Rayman Legends being one of the best. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze might be the very best though. It’s just bliss to play and when you know each level off by heart (which takes about 80 deaths to get too) the pace and flow is smile-inducing epic-ness. The soundtracks a beauty too. 

 

Indies and download only titles… So many of them. This is the bit were I’ll struggle because I’ve played so many. Most of them are on the short side so excuse my memory not picking up some four hour experience I had back in the spring. Abzu, Hue, Freedom Planet, Bastion, Unravel, Volume, Fez, Gone Home, Nova-111, Everybody’s gone to the Rapture… There’s a bunch. In that list of titles I have been a hero made of wool, a spaceship, I’ve walked through empty houses in America and England hearing stories unfold, I have swam with dolphins and whales, I’ve sneaked past guards, I’ve shifted perspectives and I’ve ran really fast. It was all superb.

 

Last part: the actual 2016 games I played in 2016. Or at least the boxed ones, some of those indies were this year. Let’s not overthink my blog structure… StarFox Guard was a crushing disappointment. Fans have waited years for a strong new entry in the series and what we got was an unplayable mess that made me want to smash my controller. Maybe unplayable is harsh, I’m sure it’d work fine if I had two heads and the dexterity Mr Fantastic. No Mans Sky was another soul destroyer. For a good week and a half I was completely immersed in this game of infinite space travelling. It created a real sense of loneliness as you repeatedly mined planets in order to go to another planet in which you could feel lonely again. At the end of two weeks I quit the game because it genuinely altered my mood and ruined my happiness. Or maybe I was always an unhappy lonely git and just hadn’t realised. 

I’m halfway through Doom at the minute and should beat it by New Year’s Day. How fudging awesome is this game? I suck at shooters but there’s been few adrenaline rushes like charging around an enclosed area blasting demons in the face with a shotgun before ripping out their hearts and making them eat it. Fast, frantic and utterly barmy. The last big release I’ll cover for this year is probably my favourite. Uncharted 4. It’s not perfect by any means, with pacing issues early on and the difficulty taking a big jump near the end. When it’s on form though it is an excellent action title with some really nice character moments. The throwback to the developers past is nice, the halfway point mission that has the church bell and the chase scene is exhilarating and then there’s the ending which manages to pull off a wonderfully mature cap on the series. It’s not what I expected and I adored it even more for that. 

 

So that was my year in gaming. If your favourite isn’t mentioned then I probably just haven’t got to it yet. Currently owned but not yet played: Deus Ex, Ratchet+Clank, Inside, Firewatch, Steamworld Heist. When I’ve got through those there’s’ about twenty games I want in 2017 not including whatever Nintendo announce in just over two weeks. There’s to many games. I blooming love it.

My 2016 In Cinema

2016 eh? The year was defined by misery, politics and Pokémon Go. In other news: I went to the cinema…

I’m not going to pretend that is some proper review of the year in film, mainly because I've only seen like 15. This hobby, not a career damn it! So heres a blog about stuff I've seen. Other films came out too. Etc

I’ll begin by lumping together those films I’ve no strong opinions on. These have escaped my wrath but equally haven’t earned the praise of inner hyper ventilating child. 

Bridget Jones Diary. There’s nothing wrong with it (other than the chicken shit ending) but its not really aimed at me. That’s that. Fantastic Beasts. I liked it enough, it was fun.  Just like Harry Potter though it didn’t really click with me and I’ll probably have forgotten it by this time next year. That sounds a bit harsher than I mean it too. Rogue One. Controversial opinion alert… I did enjoy it but I didn’t love it. I kept thinking “if I had grown up as a big Star Wars fan then I’d like this more.” Basic reasoning, not criticising the film. Its fan service for the fan base and when the fan base is so fricking big then why the hell not? The Hateful Eight was grand. At times brilliant and at others a big old vanity project that needed someone to slap Tarantino and say ‘edit this shit down.’ 

Good or bad next? Ah let’s get the ranting out of the way… Independence Day. A painful exercise in creating nostalgia for something that was best left in the 90s. Pants. Ghostbusters. It’s just not funny, it’s a massive missed opportunity and Chris Hemsworth’s character is the worst thing I’ve seen in any film this year if not ever. Suicide Squad. Every time someone tells me that it’s not that bad I die a little inside. Character arcs and dialogue that make no fecking sense in a film that feels like the last ten years of good superhero films never happened. It’s a shitfest designed to appeal to emo teens and if people tell me they prefer it to Marvel because it’s dark then they’re getting punch in the privates. It’s set during night time, that’s it. It’s not darker in tone or theme, it’s just got a black sky as opposed to Marvel using daylight. Woop de flipping do. Now that I’ve got my blood boiling let’s move on to the worst film of 2016. Batman Vs Superman.

 Oh I hate it. It completely ruins and just doesn’t understand Superman as a character. It has Batman kill people, actually end the life of people. It has flashbacks which make no damn sense unless you’re sitting there with a DC encyclopaedia. It has Doomsday who seems to have sneaked out of the same 1990s Pandora ’s Box that some bell end yanked Independence Day out of. It has a Lex Luthor that challenges Leto’s Joker for the ‘how to fuck up an iconic villain,’ prize. It has the Martha scene. Do I need to explain that one? Shambolic, woeful and as well written as a 2 years old letter to Santa. 

Angry bit over!!! Let’s talk good stuff! Eddie the Eagle was nice and a future Sunday-afternoon-cosy film classic. Doctor Strange was another brilliant Marvel introduction. I seem to like it more than most folk do but the visuals were epic, the cape was great and I’m exited to see more. X-Men Apocalypse…  I know deep down that it’s not a masterpiece but I’ve loved those mutants for about twenty years and this was just a brilliant geek-gasm. Plus Psylocke… Deadpool was hilarious and beat all expectations. Can’t wait for that sequel. Outside of comic films I was also really fond of Room, in particular the performance of that kid. Simultaneously a depressing and lovely film.

Let’s wrap this up, my top three for the year in no particular order…. Civil War, Arrival and Kubo. You knew Civil War would be up there, a film that pits Avengers against each other, delivers a finale fight with real emotion behind it and introduces Spidey to this movie-verse. Loved it. Kubo is an animated picture that blends humour with Japanese mythology in to a fantastic adventure film. It’s just gorgeous, in both style and story. Most recent addition to the list is Arrival. This film surprised me. On its surface it’s a film about aliens and includes some military thriller type elements, but it’s the most human and most thought provoking drama I’ve seen in a long time. I came out thinking about it and wanting to talk about it, about the choices made and the feelings Amy Adams character must have had. Do not mistake or dismiss it as standard sci-fi. It’s something very unique and completely utterly brilliant.

And that’s my 2016 in cinema… Clearly the safest and sanest place to be during that mess of a year. I’m giving 2017 till February to be ok and If not then I’m hibernating in a darkened room with popcorn. It’ll be fun.

Black Friday: Great or Grating?

Black Fridays definitely a thing now. No matter what you think about the American tradition coming our way, it can’t be ignored. Last year I was quite the fan. I picked up three or four games and told the wife she was buying me them for Christmas. Maximising the present budget in style, keeping romance and the joy of giving truly alive. 

My purchases last year included Tomb Raider for £10. It had been released 22 months earlier. Tearaway for £20, it had come out in September and had pretty much flopped so the price drop was expected. Until Dawn for about £20 I think, it was three months old at that point. By now you’re wondering if I’m just gloating about my haul but really this is paragraph is just verbal foreplay for the point I’ll eventually get to. 

Check the black Friday sales of 2016 and you’ll see discounts on the likes of Dishonored 2, Watch_Dogs 2, Call of Duty, etc These games have been out for weeks... Not months. All three examples released in November, one of them has been out for ten days. If I had pre-ordered and bought on release day I’d be mightily pissed. 

How many folk did just that? Not that many it seems… I almost wrote a blog on Monday after the weekly sales data came out and yet again a new release was making headlines for how poorly it performed. Watch_Dogs 2 opened with sales of around 80,000. Its predecessor had opened with around 380,000. That’s quite the drop. There could be many reasons for that (including the lukewarm reception to the first game post-release) but I don’t think I’m mad when I draw a connection to the Black Friday sales.

Was it always going to go on sale 10 days after release? Doubtful. It’s likely that the slow launch combined with the marketing blitz every retailer has for black Friday created an opportunity. If it had launched well then it wouldn’t be cheaper on this day. If it wasn’t for the approach of black Friday however, would it have launched better? It’s impossible to say. But then this is an opinion piece so I’ll say yes. Factually proven with stuff from my head. 

So yeah everyone seems to have waited, and if it’s going to save you money then why wouldn’t you? I’m waiting even longer than you, so tight-fisted have I become with my gaming purchases. My chrimbo gaming requests are Deus Ex (released in august for £45, I got for £20) and Ratchet and Clank (released in april for £30, as of yet I haven’t seen a better deal than £20). These November games I’m blogging about will wait to 2017 when they’re cheaper again and I’ve cleared a bit more of my never-ending list of stuff I’ve yet to play.

The only problem with all this saving… Are these games now considered flops? Is there less chance of a Watch_Dogs and Dishonored 3? That’s got to be a concern. The gaming market is in a weird place in which it seems to more successful than ever but yet studio closures and job layoffs seem more frequent. Budgets are escalating and publishers are playing it safe. The main retail releases all seem to stick to standard templates (everything’s either open world or an online fps) whilst if you want variety and creativity you need to embrace the indies (read my last blog!! Please). There’s no middle ground. Dishonored is an exception, and the first game was blooming brilliant. Hopefully the sequel does well enough to warrant more of its kind, or at least show publishers that not every game has to be about driving around cities and machine gunning everything in sight. 

As admitted already I am part of the problem. I’ve bought very few games this year within release week and used vouchers for most of them. More frugality. The others included two Nintendo titles. I wish I understood how they do it but there games don’t come down in price. An HD remake of a ten year old Zelda was released in March this year. Quick check online and it costs £2 more than Dishonored 2 which released on November 11^th. Amazing. They love their ‘evergreen’ titles and seem to keep their big releases in the charts for yonks. Heck one of their Christmas releases is a slightly updated version of a near three year old game. Launch week performance means squat to Nintendo because their games will be charting for months on end. It seems the most sensible approach and weirdly it encourages me to buy day one because I know waiting won’t benefit me financially. Crafty.

So that was a blog. I can’t think of a witty sentence to end it with so just go back to shopping online and buying all of the things. Just don’t be complaining when that game you love but bought for a shilling doesn’t get a sequel. It’s all your fault. And mine. Enjoy.

Indie

Think of ‘indie’ and you’ll more likely get mental images of Blur vs Oasis, or maybe you’ll be singing along internally to that Killers university anthem. Unless you’re not 31 like me. Then who knows what way you think, strange young person.

So this blog is about music?! Wise up. As usual it’s about them videogames. Indie has become such an overused term in the medium and the rise of indie games has seen them make up probably half my gaming purchases. What counts as an indie game though? And what does that word even mean anymore to gamers? These questions and others will be explored below…

Still here? Nice! Thank you. So indie is obviously short for independent. So indie games are clearly those games made by small teams or individuals, outside the safety net of the big publishers. There you go, this blog will be short. Access your consoles digital storefront or Steam on the PC and you’ll have access to hundreds of indie titles.

Usually these titles are lower budget, cheaper priced titles. Like Child of Light and probably the opposite of No Mans Sky. Or not like those examples at all.

Child of light is a game made by a small team which I purchased for less than a tenner and here’s a screenshot to show it looks. 

Gorgeous but 2d and nothing like the technical grandeur of say a GTA or Batman. Except this game is not indie. It was developed within and published by the same gaming giant that produces Assassins Creed and Far Cry.

No Mans Sky is a game that’s huge in scope, that’s fully 3D and it retailed for £50. It was made by a team of around six people. It is indie. I’m not trying to confuse any of you, just trying to convey how some people use the term. Indie has become the go to word for downloadable, less expensive titles. If you can’t buy a disc version of it then its indie. If its 2d, its indie. Which of course is all a load of poop nuggets. 

Why does it matter? Well it grinds my gears a bit when folks say they don’t play indies, that they don’t like indies. That term does not describe a genre, it doesn’t relate to one definable type of gaming experience. Indie games include platformers, fighting games, horror titles, strategy, everything and anything. It’s the equivalent of not liking Indian and declaring you hate all food. It’s daft. 

It’d also be daft for me to then state I love indies. I love a lot of them. I’ve hated plenty too. There’s thousands more I’ve never played. The rest of this paragraph is just going to be a list of indies that I’ve loved… Shovel Knight, Guacamelee, Runner 2, Stealth Inc 2, The Unfinished Swan, Flower, Thomas Was Alone, JOURNEY!!! 

 

Next on my list to play is Hue. I saw it pop on a PS sale, watched the trailer and out of curiosity I tweeted asking for opinions on the game. A reply came from the developer themselves, obviously stating it was great but that was enough to clinch the purchase from me. Another time I tweeted about how much I enjoyed Mike Bithells Volume. Mike Bithell replied saying thank you. Amazing. I’ve tweeted my love for Nintendo a million times and yet they’ve never replied to me, the evil giant corporation. It’s a simple thing but I do like the idea that I’m supporting the little guys and that I’m getting an experience which has come from fewer creative minds, without being led or controlled by a team of marketing zombies. 

Indies are diverse. They can be rubbish, they can be generic but they can also be the most creatively expressive gems you’ll ever play. In a market which continues to see mainstream game budgets rise and studios close, indies have filled the gaps. They have provided me with plenty of palette cleansers between forty hour adventures and many more that make me ignore my gaming shelf. They’ve made me care about featureless squares, let me save the world with a shovel and provided me with a two hour masterpiece that stirred more emotion in me than I knew I had. Spread your gaming time, try something a little different. Don’t like it? Keep going, there’s an indie you will find that will join your favourites. Let me know what is.