matthoerig

[matthoerig]

Football Season

This is not a piece of persuasive writing. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, I’m just documenting where I’ve come to stand after over two years of reflection. I’m not judging anyone for having a different stance or demanding boycotts.  

I’m done with football in all its forms.

This past spring, Comcast/Xfinity announced they were dropping The Big Ten Network from cable packages for subscribers who didn’t live in Big Ten states. As a Washington resident, this meant no Ohio State spring game and no unknown number of lower-tier Buckeye games that wouldn’t be part of the Big Ten’s new deal with FOX or picked up by ABC/ESPN as a marquee game of the week. Within an hour of learning this, I’d cancelled my Comcast cable service and was a PlayStation VUE subscriber with continued access to The Big Ten Network.

Before my freshman year of high school, two students at my high school who were also members of the football team beat a mentally disabled man with baseball bats outside an elementary school. As best I remember and as best as documentation from 1996 shows, neither was punished by the team or school system during football season for the assault since it happened outside of the school year and the football team’s “training period.” I think one boy was kicked off the team for an unrelated possession of tobacco incident. The other played the season out. I remember being in the marching band, playing our school’s fight song when he returned a kickoff for a touchdown.  

Over the past two plus years, the nation has seen a former Super Bowl runner-up QB go from sitting during the national anthem to protest police brutality against people of color, to kneeling for the same reason during the anthem at the advice of a teammate and US service veteran, to being out of the league. Protests against the extrajudicial killing of unarmed black people has been characterized as a distraction, unpatriotic, and used as a wedge issue by politicians to stoke a racist base.  

Ratings for the NFL are fine, actually outperforming traditional scripted series and other content.

Colin Kaepernick was statistically not worse than many options employed by NFL teams in 2017.      

Earlier this evening, Ohio State University suspended their head football coach Urban Meyer and Athletic Director Gene Smith because they “went too far in allowing [assistant coach Zach Smith] to remain as an employee in the face of repeated misconduct.” That misconduct includes allegations of spousal abuse. Meyer's suspension will be longer than many American workers’ annual allotment of paid vacation/sick time. There was a rally during Meyer’s initial time on leave during the investigation to show support for him.

The University of Maryland has fired one coach following the training death of one football player during conditioning and is investigating a culture of dangerous practices. 27 College football players have died in the 17 years since NFLer Korey Stringer died of heat exhasution.

The average NFL career is between 3 and 6 years, based on competing claims and data from the NFLPA and the NFL, respectively. It is not uncommon to read during contract negotiations about “greedy millionaires” only looking out for themselves and refusing to take less money for the good of the team.  

According to data from 2015, the average NFL owner was worth $3 billion. According to data from 2017, 70-78% of stadium construction and capital improvement costs had been born by taxpayers.  

Jerry Richardson owned the Carolina Panthers until he decided to sell the team following the league itself finding he had engaged in multiple incidents of racist and sexually inappropriate behavior.  

Greg Hardy. Zeke Elliott. Ray Rice. Baylor. James Franklin and Vanderbilt. Joe Paterno and Penn State. Steubenville. Maryland.

Football is a fetishized, exploitative endeavor built on the backs of exploited labor at the collegiate and professional levels, propped up by a disgusting culture that values winning and supporting the systemized status quo over the basic human rights of anyone who dares demand to be treated with dignity.

I can’t go back in time and not play the fight song for a criminal.  

I’m not watching college football. I’m not watching pro football. I’m not playing in the fantasy league I’ve been a part of for ten years. I took the money that I would have spent on Madden 19 and donated to Colin Kaepernick’s I Know My Rights camp. I’m going to spend my Saturdays and Sundays doing other things. This doesn’t make me better than anyone. I don’t hate my friends who will continue to live and die with the Browns or bleed Scarlet and Grey. The things I’ll spend my weekends doing instead, like playing video games and reading sci-fi and fantasy, have their own set of issues around fair labor practices and treatment of marginalized people.  

In the end, all I ask is that when you hear this year that “NFL ratings are down,” please consider it’s not necessarily because those not watching were turned off by “anthem protests.” Maybe, like me, they had enough of everything around the sport.    

[matthoerig]

E3 2018 Press Conferences – Something for Everyone?

 E3 began today, Tuesday, June 12th, with the official opening of the expo floor in Los Angeles. It feels, for those of watching from afar, like E3 ended this morning with the last of the publisher press conferences/presentations/ media briefings that began on Saturday and traditionally feature the biggest reveals and news about the coming years in games. Starting with EA on Saturday and through this morning's Nintendo Direct, here are my quick (editor's note: ha!) thoughts and takeaways from each presentation.  

EA kicked things off on Saturday and did every other company a favor by setting such a low bar to clear to appear interesting. Their sports lineup was represented with announcements for FIFA, NBA Live, and Madden. Madden 19 will mark the franchise's return to the PC, which immediately had me worried about hacking. It's no secret these games' Ultimate Team modes make EA tons of money via microtransaction-driven card collecting/team building and I imagine within hours of release the more creative members of the PC scene will have accounts with tons of in-game currency and/or the best cards available in the mode. There was also a bit of a lackluster showing of Anthem, the new game from Bioware that's poised to be EA/Bioware's Destiny. I enjoyed having the developers speak, but I didn't come away feeling like I have any idea if Bioware is making a game that I would expect and want from Bioware vs simply aping the model of Destiny. We also got a tease of Respawn's Star Wars game, with studio head Vince Zampella revealing the name (Jedi Fallen Order) and that it would be set between Episodes 3 and 4. No gameplay or trailer was shown, just a name given and a release date of "Holiday 2019" that I would already bet is actually more like "Spring 2019." Finally, the Star Wars Battlefront II team from DICE addressed overhauls to progression and upcoming content updates, saying on stage they got things wrong at release. It was nice to hear, but I'd bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in yours that NO ONE at DICE made the business decisions that led to Battlefront II launching with the broken, exploitative progression system and loot box set-up they took so much heat for. EA's CEO, Andrew Wilson, was there to say all kinds of nice things about the upcoming line-up, it would have been better to see him eat just a bite of humble pie for the disastrous decisions behind Battlefront II.  

Sunday was a much better day, with Microsoft and Bethesda having strong presentations outlining defined futures for their companies. Microsoft touted 50 games being shown and equally impressive numbers of "world premieres" and "exclusives" even if those phrases mean less and less and the market changes. Of the 50 games shown, the things I'm excited for are: Gears Tactics, an Xcom inspired strategy and tactics game in the Gears of War universe, Crackdown 3, which was delayed again until February 2019 but still looks like the open world toy box you want from Crackdown, And Forza Horizon 4, which brings changing seasons to the open world driving franchise. Some other announcements got my attention, like Chis Avellone writing Dying Light 2, a sequel whose predecessor didn't connect with me at all, very good trailers for Tunic, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Metro Exodus. Microsoft also announced they were beefing up their 1st party studio portfolio by acquiring 5 new studios, including Playground Games (Forza Horizon), Undead Labs (State of Decay franchise), and Ninja Theory who released the underrated Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice last year. Even if some of the big reveals didn't connect with me (Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice), it was a strong showing for a company that's been on the defensive since the poor reveal and launch of the Xbox One. They ended with a trailer for CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077. That game has a look and a tone already that I'm into to the degree I'm almost prepared to say "Show me no more until I can download it and play it myself."  

Bethesda spent the first half of their event covering the bases they needed to: service games like Elder Scrolls Online and Elder Scrolls Legends (both of which I enjoy!) got stage time to mention upcoming content or changes, but those types of games see updates and changes so frequently that their communities are better served by dedicated streams or community events. Quake Champions is still alive and being supported. Wolfenstein; Youngblood was announced as more Wolfenstein, focused on BJ Blaskowitz's now grown twin daughters. Pete Hines also announced a VR Wolfenstein title, "Wolfenstein Cyberpilot" that is part of their "never ending mission to bring the message of 'Fuck Nazis' to every platform possible." Todd Howard then spent 30 minutes or so doing what I wish Bioware had done for Anthem, explaining what the game would be and how it would differ from prior, mainline Fallout experiences. I'm eager to play with friends after seeing what they had to say. And then they teased Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, which I'm imagining won't be actual products until 2020 and 2022, respectively.  

Square Enix kicked off Monday with a video presentation. They showed almost nothing new that interested me; I was already going to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Dragon Quest XI, and Octopath Traveler. It was still nice to see trailers for them. The Quiet Man was the only intriguing new thing to me, and even then I have no idea what the brief mixed live action/gameplay thing they showed was or what the game actually is. That's not a bad thing – sometimes a "teaser" does its job by "teasing" you with what may be.  

Ubisoft had a typical Ubisoft presentation, opening with a dancing panda bear accompanied by a marching band. I could tell you it was to promote the latest entry in the Just Dance series, but would it matter? It was still a dancing panda bear and marching band and was wonderfully weird with or without context. Beyond Good and Evil 2 made an appearance with an impressive trailer and some pre-alpha footage. Less impressive was the announcement of a partnership with Hit Record to crowdsource assets for the game. Don't do spec work, and multibillion dollar companies should pay the people who make their products. Also worth mentioning, The Division 2 got its first extended trailer after an earlier appearance of gameplay at Microsoft. I enjoyed aspects of The Division, and it sounds like the dev team is aware of less than stellar aspects of that game that were a drag, i.e. bullet sponge enemies. I have incredibly mixed feelings on The Division 2; the trailer includes the phrase "America is on the verge of collapse," and, like, maybe read the room in a nation hurtling towards being a fascist police state? Also, when your game explicitly focuses on a world where government-sanctioned agents operate as an ad hoc paramilitary organization, it's disingenuous at best for the developers to say the game is "apolitical." On the other hand, the shooting feels good and the loot treadmill sure was rewarding in the original The Division. It's out on March 15th, 2019, so maybe the impacts of the repeal of the US's net neutrality protections will be clear by then and help me make up my mind about playing an on-line only game. The pirate game Skull and Bones had a significant presence and looks intriguing since it's the boat combat from Assassin's Creed Black Flag turned into its own game. Assassin's Creed Odyssey also got a full reveal and while I was looking forward to more time to complete AC: Origins, that game was so good I'll happily play the next entry.  

Sony embodied the feeling of "something for everyone, but maybe not a lot for me" I felt during a lot of E3. They opened with The Last of Us 2 which is 100% my jam. The trailer/demo they showed opened with protagonist Ellie at a barn party for her community, clearly watching another young woman dancing with some guy. The music shifts to a slower song, and Ellie and her crush, Dina, then dance, having a genuine moment that showcases developer Naughty Dog's ability to do human interaction, emotion, and storytelling better than almost any other AAA developer. There's a kiss that's impressive in its techincal aspects and in Sony any Naught Dog being willing to show an openly queer character as the lead for their major tentpole release, and it fades into black and returns with a 7-8 minute gameplay section highlighting stealth and combat. Animations are fluid and natural, and the attacks, be they up close stabbings or gunshots, appear to have a weight behind them. It's technically impressive, but I worry about the balance between the story and character moments I enjoy from a Naught Dog game and these frankly brutal sequences of intense gore and violence and how they'll be balanced. While I have those doubts, the trailers ends by returning to Dina and Ellie, with Dina making a comment to Ellie that resonates in the context of the two contrasting scenes and Ellie's facial expression changing in an amazingly natural way, both in terms of the technical animation aspect and in the context of the small story we've seen play out. On the "fun violence!" side of the scale is the PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game that looks like a ton of fun with plenty of combat powers to explore and combine in protecting New York. Other big Sony exclusives Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding (from Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear fame) look technically impressive but just do nothing for me in terms of story or gameplay.  

Nintendo closed the presentation part of the show the same way EA kicked it off: disappointingly, at least for me. They did confirm a new Fire Emblem title is coming to Switch in Spring of 2019, which is great news, along with a remake/rerelease of The World Ends With You. Mario Tennis Aces and Octopath Traveler are out this month, and Captain Toad; Treasure Tracker hits for Switch in July. The rest of the show was mostly focused on Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, the latest entry in the Smash Brothers series. I have zero interest in Smash Brothers, and a good 30 minutes of the presentation were dedicated to revealing the entire roster – all 64 characters – and going into the minutia of every kind of change you could make to a fighting game. Details abounded about action animations and stages returning and new costumes for fighters and oh god please make it stop.  

Games are for everyone. Not every game is for every person. I'm glad I saw a number of things I can be excited about, and I hope the people who really love other franchises and styles of games get what they want from the titles that spoke to them. But boy am I excited for Cyberpunk 2077.  

[matthoerig]

Game of the Year 2017: What it is? And what isn't it?

2017 was an amazing year for games. My numbered list couldn't be cut down below 16 in good conscience, and I felt like with that number I might as well shout out a couple of trends or themes I appreciated, and that swelled the list to 18, but with about 8 more games listed among those two new entries. It will make more sense when I publish my list. But what is my list?  

My Game of the Year list is largely inconsequential. It's a way for me to reflect and collect my thoughts on the games I played in the prior year. It's heavily focused on games that were released in the year in question, but 2017 has really put that to the test. Prior years saw me keep a spot open for Hearthstone because I've continued to play it almost daily since its release in 2014 (and before given its time in closed and open beta). The same goes for iOS title Marvel Puzzle Quest, and both of those games have been the tip of the spear for games that are released and supported continuously with new content and changes to gameplay. PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds started down that path from Steam's Early Access in 2017 before even being officially released. While it's scheduled to exit Early Access in December, would I not include it on my list because of an arbitrary version number given that it dominated the gaming conversation for a huge chunk of the year and I played a lot of it AND had a ton of fun with it?  

While my game of the year list is focused on titles from 2017, it's ultimately MY game of the year list – a reflection on games that were available to be played and that made some kind of a positive impression on me in this year.

What my Game of the Year list isn't in 2017 is comprised of any of the following games. These are games I played some of, but not enough to make a final ranked decision about. This doesn't mean I've finished everything on my GotY list, but I feel like I've played enough to have an informed opinion about it. So here's my partially annotated, unranked list of games that didn't make the cut.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Torment: Tides of Numenera

Cosmic Star Heroine

Prey

Resident Evil 7

These are all single player titles with play times ranging from a few hours to dozens and dozens of hours. I either didn't have time to start them despite wanting to (Edith Finch, Prey) or started and played just the barest minimum before getting distracted by something even more awesome (Torment, Cosmic Star), or just wimped out because I was too scared to keep playing (RE7)

Splatoon 2

Mario Kart 8

Puyo Puyo Tetris

Three fun Switch games that I just didn't play as much as three other games that did make the list. Fun and nothing at all wrong with them.  

Halo Wars 2

Ghost Recon Wildlands

Tactical military shooter and console-ified real times trategy title that I had a lot of fun with for literally an hour or so each. I suspect Wildlands will get mentioned elsewhere in anotehr contect but wanted to shout it out here too.

LA Noire Remastered

Final Fantasy XII – The Zodiac Age

Two remasters, one of a PS2 game I never finished and one of an Xbox 360-era title I finished the main story, every side quest, and found like 85% of all dumb collectibles. They both look much better in HD (4k and HDR for LA Noire), but FFXII gets a bit more credit for making some improvements to the older gameplay elements. La Noire is just a visually enhanced version of the previously released game.

Gwent

Elder Scrolls Legends

Collectible card games in the vein of Heathstone that have both held my attention for periods of time, but never captured my attention the same way. ESL is still installed on my iPad, and both are on my PC (there's no mobile version of Gwent yet).

Nier: Automata

I'll be honest, I have zero interest in playing Nier: Automata even though people who I greatly respect have said laudatory things about the themes it explores and the impact it has had on them, but I don't like the look of the action and playing through it seems like a slog. If it ever comes to Playstation Plus or Xbox Games with Gold, MAYBE I'll download it for when I've played through every other game I own.  

West of Loathing

Assassin's Creed: Origins

I lied that this list was unranked. These two are my favorite of the games that didn't make my too big final list, but I haven't played enough of them to, in good faith, put them both anywhere on the list. West of Loathing is a traditional RPG by the people who made the text-heavy Kingdom of Loathing web based multiplayer game. It's quirky, charming, and legitimately funny which is not common in games. The problem is I'm so paranoid about missing something funny or interesting, that I've played for almost 80 minutes and not left the starting tutorial area. I'm reasonably sure the developers would claim there's not an hour's worth of stuff to do or see in the opening area. I just can't get past my own weird hangup and leave.

Assassin's Creed: Origins suffered a bit from a similar problem, plus it was released on the same day as two other games that fared pretty well on my ranked list. The pull of those games plus the knowledge that Origins was a huge game and had 4k and HDR upgrades for the Xbox One X made it easy to set aside until that system launched in mid-November. I've since gone back and played 8-9 hours of the game, but I'm having so much fun exploring the world and doing side quests that I've seen almost nothing of the main story. The year away for the franchise has done it good – the climbing is more puzzle-focused than in recent prior iterations and the addition of an RPG-like loot system freshened up combat for me. I adore what I've played so far but realize I've barely scratched the surface.  

Game of the Year 2017

As always – spoilers ahead.

18. Sports Games I Enjoyed (Madden NFL 18, MLB The Show 17, and Fire Pro World Wrestling)

I play sports games every year, and Madden 18 and MLB The Show 17 stand out for making their card collection-based modes not just palatable, but actually engaging for someone who plays primarily single player games. Both made the expected forward progress in terms of visual fidelity and gameplay improvements. Madden 18's Madden Ultimate Team has slowly evolved into THE reason I play the game, collecting players from card packs to earn in-game currency to buy more card packs to get better players and on and on into infinity. The number and types of quests (called "Challenges") is greatly improved, and ranges from single play quests to completing one drive to playing a full game. It's the perfect way to kill a few minutes or an hour and feel in either case like you're making progress and improving. MLB The Show 17 comes almost as far with its Diamond Dynasty mode, improving on the "Conquest" mode and having more ways to collect and improve on the players in your binder.  

Also on my annual play list are the WWE games from 2k. These are bad games – they play poorly, don't look good, and haven't improved in at least 7 years. Fire Pro World Wrestling, a Japanese-developed game in Early Access on Steam, eschews any professional wrestling league licensing to focus on 16-bit style gameplay and customization. The inclusion of Steam Workshop support means a dedicated community has already sprung up around the game to fill the gap from not having any license to create literally thousands of custom characters that not only look like their real-world counterparts, but behave as them too thanks to deep move set and logic customization.  

17. Live Games (Hearthstone/Elder Scrolls Online/Marvel Puzzle Quest/Typeshift/Hitman/The Division)

The way we play games has changed phenomenally in the past few years, and there may be no more vicious fight coming than the fight for player retention by making your game "sticky." I have played Hearthstone almost every day since it was in beta, and the just-launched Kobolds and Catacombs expansion introduces a new single player mode that has me playing even more often than I anticipated it would. I have played Marvel Puzzle Quest every day for over 960 days. Elder Scrolls Online launched a few years ago and took some time to find its footing, but multiple content updates and refinements made it a game I played for several months and have every intention of playing more of for the foreseeable future. The same goes for The Division. Typeshift is another mobile game like MPQ, with daily challenges and multiple post-launch updates. Hitman launched last year and was damn near my Game of the Year, and got another mini-campaign late in this year after the developer, IO Interactive, worked out ownership of the IP after a split from their publisher and former owner, Square Enix. Season 2 is slated for 2018 and I couldn't be more excited. As long as game makers and publishers find a way to provide meaningful updates, both free and paid, there's no reason to write off games released in prior years as meaningless in the current conversation.

16. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Guerrilla Games, makers of the PlayStation exclusive first-person shooter series Killzone, made an open world game. I was never a big fan of Killzone, and the thought of the same people used to making a corridor shooter set on futuristic alien worlds making a third-person open world game set in a more natural, "futuristic native" setting with bows and arrows and spears and robot dinosaurs...I was not sure this would be up my alley. Not only does the game run well and look gorgeous, but the story of Aloy and her society and how the world they inhabit became what it is (with robot dinosaurs!) is pretty great. There's a bit here that seems to familiar, like stealth in tall grass being overpowered. I also found the combat to be rote, repetitive, and challenging more in its pacing than its design, but the characterization of Aloy and the people in her world is fantastic.  

15. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

Ubisoft created the Rabbids to be the Minions, those ubiquitous, irritating yellow creatures, before the Minions were an afterthought in a bad kids' movie. Mixing them up in a world with Nintendo's beloved characters from the Mushroom Kingdom seemed like a weird decision for Nintendo...and it seemed even weirded when it was revealed to be an XCOM-style turn based tactical strategy game where Mario gets a blaster and Luigi gets a sniper rifle. Again, it shouldn't work, but "Mario in a simplified XCOM game" is pretty great. The turn-based challenges mix mobility options with those XCOM tactics in a simplified manner to be more of a puzzle game, where there's a right answer to how to complete the scenario with your tools the "right" way. Exploring the overworld and finding alternate paths and collectibles is fun, but the whole game sticks around just a biiiiiiiit too long to be considered exceptional.  

14. Injustice 2  

Injustice 2 is a better Justice League story than the Justice League movie. NetherRealm, makers of Mortal Kombat and the series' previous entry, Injustice: Gods Among Us, goes back to the well of DC characters split along the lines of totalitarian prick Superman and brutal, anything goes resistance leader Batman again, plus they added collectible loot with cosmetic changes and stat bonuses that can push you to trying a new style or enhance the way you already play. As some who is terrible at fighting games, the story was fun and the rotating challenge towers gave me enough reasons to keep coming bac k for a while, earning more loot to spec out my Batman, Robin, Harley Quinn, Robin, or Supergirl the way I wanted.

Superman is still a prick.

13. Golf Story

It's been a long time since we had a good golf game – EA's golf series was in decline before Tiger Woods's...troubles...and has never really recovered. The Golf Club and its sequel have tried to be the realistic golf replacement people are looking for. But what if we didn't really want realistic golf, but old school three click meters in a 16-bit style reminiscent of JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Earthbound? The golfing is passable, the story is a little cliché for a 16-bit style RPG, and the characters and quests are nothing special. Altogether, it all combines to be more than the sum of its parts. This may be due to the initial dearth of games on the Switch, but I enjoyed my time with it nonetheless.  

12. Hidden Folks

This mobile gem is the result of someone who grew up on Where's Waldo taking advantage of the technology available today and making a deviously difficult version of that game that uses the interactivity of modern touchscreens. I feel like this is one game where the less said the better, except to say that you should fight the urge to move on from one area until you've found everything in one place. It's the most rewarding mobile experience I had this year.  

11. Pyre

Supergiant Games has made three games, and I've loved each one more than the last. Bastion's story was fantastic with lauded twin stick shooter gameplay that didn't connect with me. Transistor moved more towards tactical gameplay and retained the writing I loved from Bastion. Pyre finally mixes an engaging, moving, meaningful story about relationships and redemption with gameplay that works beyond its elevator pitch of "Blitzball from Final Fantasy VII with three characters." Each character you recruit brings new tactical options, opens up the story, and challenges you to find new ways to maximize your team's abilities. Pyre not making my top 10 games of the year is a testament to how amazing 2017 was that a game I loved this much has an eleven next to its name.  

10. Persona 5

Persona 5 might be the game I've played the most, with over 100 hours logged in one playthrough. There's a part of me that wants to go back and see sidequests I missed, take different paths with party member affinity, and just spend more time in this world. The problems are there are too many good games, and the story is split between meaningful allegory for free-thinking and control and what can be generously called "complete anime bullshit." This isn't a surprise – it's exactly what you sign up for when starting a Persona game. The game does have an undeniably sense of style in its look and sound, meaning I'm sure I'll come back to it someday.  

9. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

If I was surprised that Persona 5 and Pyre were so low on my Game of the Year list, I'm honestly stunned The Legend of Zelda isn't my Game of the Year. It's an incredible game, breaking conventions that have been part of the series since it debuted in the 80s. Nintendo, for all their failures to adopt modern conventions in online account structures and old game sales and cross generation purchase support, have made what may be the first true next generation open world game. Systems layer upon systems in a way that interact smartly and naturally and encourage exploration and experimentation. Shrines dotted throughout the world provide for bite sized chunks of gameplay and also invite hours of exploration to keep finding more.  The gripe that sticks with me, and it's an intensely personal one, is that I HATE weapon durability, which is implemented here in a way that encourages weapon experimentation. Despite the best possible use of this type of system, I still hate it.  

8. Tacoma

The game studio that made Gone Home is back with their sophomore effort and made another game similar to Gone Home. As opposed to Gone Home's early 90s Pacific Northwest setting, Tacoma is set on space station Tacoma, allowing for a slightly less linear experience. You play as a contractor sent by the Venturis Corporation to retrieve AI data the physical core of the station's AI after some kind of accident. During your time on the station, you can use your own AR interface to relive the last days of the station crew and piece together what happened before they went missing. These AR scenes play out across constrained spaces, but with different crew members interacting at the same time in different areas; the station engineer and botanist may be having a conversation in the rec room while the administrator dictates a letter back to Venturis in her office and three others are planning the evening's dinner. You're free to pause, rewind, and fast forward these conversations and move about with the participants as you see fit. Not only do you pick up bits and pieces of the main mystery, but your freedom allows you to rifle through these people's lives and find out who was in love with whom, who missed a long deceased sister, and who was working every connection he had left to find another job – any other job – away from the station. It was one of these "optional" areas where I turned on a character's radio and heard the song "Driving" by Floating Room which may end up as my favorite song of 2017. It's a wonderful song on its own, and also perfectly placed by the folks at Fullbright in this place and this moment. It was these quiet moments I enjoyed the most, although the strong cyberpunk narrative spoke to me as well. Tacoma didn't have the same personal level impact as Gone Home, but I think its overall message hits harder and shows a novel approach to storytelling in games.

7.   XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

A brief history lesson – X-COM was a 90s PC game that I played for hours with my friend Kyle. It had a turn-based strategy layer where you tried to guide a squad of soldiers in repelling an alien invasion. IT was hard. X-COM 2: Terror from the Deep was that game's sequel, set underwater. In 2012, Firaxis, the people behind the Civilization games, resurrected the franchise as XCOM: Enemy Unknown and it was very well received. The released an expansion pack named XCOM: Enemy Within which was good and added missions and maps and some new enemy types and new solider types for your squad, a new enemy faction, and new story missions. It was generally well received too. XCOM 2 was released in February of 2016 and made some more incremental upgrades – new soldier and enemy types, a brand-new campaign story where humans lost the first XCOM war and you are now overseeing a human resistance, and some new mechanics around squad concealment and mission/campaign timers. It was, again, generally well received but my impression of it and its reception was along the lines of "This feels like another expansion pack." That's a bit unfair, as a lot changed, but it didn't have the feel of drastic change.  

This year's XCOM 2 expansion, War of the Chosen, feels revolutionary. I hopped back in after not having played much (at all, maybe?) since the winter of 2016. War of the Chosen doesn't just add new factions and soldier types for both you and your opponents, but deep stories around them and systems upon systems upon systems that govern how you and your soldiers interact with the world, prioritize missions, and generally think about and play the game. I was enjoying myself with it but feeling a little overwhelmed, so I did a quick Google search for expansion-specific info and tips. I found one key video from Eurogamer.com that spelled out 112 new things from this expansion. War of the Chosen launches as its own executable. For my money, War of the Chosen is XCOM 3 and may be the game on this list I come back to the most often from this list. Enabling that is the ability to create a character pool, ensuring my new recruits are named after friends, family, and people I follow in the gaming industry. There's a certain satisfaction above and beyond just finishing a mission when you're able to bring home your best friend, cigarette and all, and his clutch grenade landed the final blow on the final enemy, or destroyed that alien's cover to allow someone else to take a better shot.  

6. Destiny 2

Destiny 2 occupies a weird place, where it will probably have a place on this list for many years as one of those "live games" I mentioned all the way back in item #17, like 2,100 words ago. For many players, the original Destiny launched to great hype, disappointed, and rallied thanks to post-launch support from developer Bungie. I had a different experience, being excited at the launch as many but quickly realizing my own worsening chronic health condition made playing a game where you are always online and can't pause in the middle of a battle a non-starter. To be fair, this is also a problem for other groups of people like "parents" and "non-crazy people," but it forced me to reevaluate what kinds of games I could play and what experiences like this, which seemed to becoming more normalized, meant for me.  

Destiny 2 launched almost a year after I underwent surgery to correct that health problem. What Destiny 2 really is, when viewed with a harsh critical eye, is a mediocre story with a loot grinding treadmill enabled through various types of events that can be done solo or with groups designed to keep that treadmill moving, all supported by some beautiful graphics and tight first-person shooting combat. With the game's first expansion just launched, there's still some unrest in the community about high-level post-game content, but for someone like me who wants to play for a few hours a week, get my few high level guaranteed gear drops, and check in after the weekly reset – it's fine. The fact that I can put in hours grinding for an exotic gun or armor piece means more to me than the frustration of never finding it, or finding it a day before everyone can just buy it from the weekend exotic item vendor.  What elevates this for me over games I LOVED like Tacoma and XCOM: WotC is what Destiny 2 represents in terms of the ability to experience a game like this without fear or anxiety beyond my control.

5. Heat Signature

Heat Signature has a simple but effective elevator pitch: Hotline Miami's top down look and combat, but in space in the future and with the ability to pause at any moment to get your bearings and plot your kick-ass next move. This is all enabled by standard weapons of combat like wrenches, swords, and various guns, but also with items that let you teleport (yourself or enemies) or hack electronic systems and turrets or even turn shielded enemies' weapons against them by making sure those shields reflect bullets fired from inside them instead of out. There's a satisfying story and strategy layer that sits above all of this, but the draw is really figuring out if you can stealth your way through a ship, get the cargo you came to steal or hostage you came to rescue, and then escape unseen...or knock out every bastard in your way including the ship's captain and fly his own vessel back to your home. There's even a set of tactical considerations in planning your mission loadout – do you take a grenade launcher to deal with armored enemies you know will be on the ship you're infiltrating, or do you go for the bonus objective of not killing any enemies? Or maybe you don't care about the no killing bonus but don't have a grenade launcher to deal with those armored enemies, so you take a teleporter who can launch enemies into space, and a shotgun that can't pierce their armor but sure as hell can blow up explosive canisters, sending them and you into space where they'll suffocate but you can maneuver your transport pod to pick you up, return you to the enemy ship, and carry on with your mission. I feel like Heat Signature is a game I can play for years and never begin to scratch the surface of what it allows with systems and weapons interaction because I’m just not that creative.

4.  Night in the Woods

Night in the Woods can best be described, in terms of gameplay, as a combination 2d walking simulator and adventure game with some slight branching paths. I realize this might not be everyone's bag, but this speaks to me. It also has anthropomorphic animals as its characters in a really unique animation style that makes looking at it for 10-12 hours pleasant. There are some light puzzle elements that were frustrating because I tried to play them on a new, improperly calibrated tv, so the truth is that's on me. These sections also involved finding ghostly musicians who ended up playing a more chill Golgo Bordello-style track in each segment that made it all worth it. All these elements would add up to a game that probably struggled to crack my top 10 this year.  

Where Night in the Woods becomes something special is in its treatment of the three main characters, its environment, and the secondary characters. Set in a dying rust belt town, Night in the Woods tells a story centered on Mae – a recent college dropout returned home – and her friends Greg – a loveable burnout – and Bea – an ambitious woman pushed into the family-owned retail business by financial realities. How these three interact in this dying town makes up the core of the game, and I found it all too easy to see myself or parts of myself or alternative versions of myself in each of these main characters, especially having grown up in a dying rust belt town. Even the secondary characters interactions have some weight behind them, from the genuine love and warmth I felt from Mae's mother that was tinged with some serious conflict at time to the two...let's say "yokels" who stand outside a bar and trade empty platitudes about the local sports (I assumed football? I don't recall know if it was ever spelled out) team. Even those two characters, who do nothing else, have a bit of an arc between them.  

I think it's unfair to say Night in the Woods has "a message," and more accurate to say it has multiple messages. You may click with some and not others, all of them, or absolutely none of them. For me, a LOT of Night in the Woods hit home. I don't know if I'll ever pick it up and play it again to see paths I didn't take, but what I did see is going to stick with me if I never launch it again.

3. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

It's hard to ignore a game that's sold 24 million copies and dethroned DOTA 2 as Steam's most concurrently played game. Those two facts would have probably placed PUBG on my Game of the Year list alone, but the fact that I had a blast playing and watching PUBG meant that I couldn't justify it being any lower than 3 on this year's list. And I have such strong feelings about my numbers 1 and 2 games that I can't see anything else having been released that would have topped this.  

By now, if you follow games, you know PUBG is a Battle Royale/Hunger Games inspired multiplayer game where 100 players are thrown onto a plane, parachute out over an island, and then scavenge for weapons, armor, and other helpful equipment in an attempt to be the last man or woman standing. In addition to other humans, there are occasional bomb zones that can kill you, and a creeping blue wall of electricity pushing the action towards a more and more constrained circle. I'm terrible at multiplayer shooters, but something about PUBG hooked me. There's never been a multiplayer game like this where I both went into each round expecting to die quickly but walked out of every round, regardless of how I did, tense. I wanted to do well, didn't expect to, but the uncertainty of every encounter just ratcheted the adrenaline up a notch.  This is also one of a few games I've enjoyed watching as much as playing, thanks largely to Giant Bomb's regular Murder Island feature. It's a game where watching people play well is as rewarding as watching a squad bumble around on the outskirts of the map, struggle to find weapons or vehicles, and then die due the blue wall. Some of that probably has to do with the squads I was watching, but I still had a hell of a time with PUBG in 2017. And for the record: Solo 5th with one kill once, 5th with 0 kills once, and I doubt I'll ever top either of those rounds. Although it won't be for trying.  

2. Super Mario Odyssey and 1. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

I have a hard time thinking of these games separately because of how complementary they are in broad strokes. It also doesn't hurt that they were released on the same day (October 27th) and were so good and felt so essential that I felt like I couldn't even think about Assassin's Creed: Origins until I had finished both of these games, and I've loved a lot of Assassin's Creed games.  

Super Mario Odyssey is a 3d platformer where our titular hero terrorizes multiple worlds by asking its inhabitants to consider what it means to be "alive" or "conscious" by invading their bodies with the aid of magic hat. Kidding, of course, it's a lighthearted game where Mario's new power is using Cappy, the aforementioned sentient hat, to possess other things in the world (living and not) in order to use those things' means of travel or tools to solve puzzles and reach areas he couldn't have before. This is all done to find Power Moons, some of which are hidden and some of which are out in the open and only hidden behind what creature you need to use to reach them. This is all being done in service of powering up Mario's new ship, the Odyssey, so he can fly after the kidnapped Princess Peach and Bowser to prevent the former's forced marriage to the later. The less said about the story the better, not because it reinforces tired damsel in distress tropes (it does, even if Peach gets a pretty cool "liberated woman who don't need no man" post-credits life), but because it's old and boring. Mario has saved Peach in a million games and will continue to do so as long as Nintendo makes games. Where Odyssey excels is in creating fun worlds to explore where the payer is rewarded for asking "What if I jump here?" Or "Can I use this to get to that and then to here?" The power moons serve as a minor gate to moving from world to world through the story, with seemingly every bit of investigation and exploration resulting in another moon for the player. Odyssey is perfect to fire up for 15 minutes to find a moon or two, or to keep playing for hours because you want o know what's over that hill, or figure out how to get to that rooftop, or find the secret area in this 2d homage to the original Super Mario.  

Where Mario's story feels like a tacked-on afterthought to a brilliantly controlling and joyous game, Wolfenstein's story is THE reason to play it. Mechanically, I felt like Wolfenstein 2 was poor to passible, with bad systems for player feedback in its first-person combat, shooting that was okay but unrewarding thanks to bullet sponge enemies, and stealth sections or options that were terribly designed and implemented to the point of being detrimental from the game as a whole. I realize none of this sounds like a Game of the Year write-up, but my god the story this game tells and world it builds screams "Game of the Year 2017" to me.  

Where Mario was a lighthearted romp, the lighthearted moments in Wolfenstein come from a gallows humor where the world is in tatters. Picking up directly where Wolfenstein: The New Order left off, the Nazis won Word War II and we're in the 1960s where their control has spread to include the United States. The opening twenty minutes or so show a wheelchair bound BJ Blaskowicz fighting Nazis on his formerly secure commandeered U-Boat home, experiencing flashbacks to his childhood with a racist, wife-beating, anti-Semitic, abusive father, and witnessing the execution of a dear friend at the hands of an equally cartoonish Nazi villain. The rest of the game's combat that I denigrated earlier is absolutely worth enduring, even if on the lowest difficulty, to experience the world and character building Machine Games put into The New Colossus. Major and minor characters have conversations in the halls of your U-Boat, the Eva's Hammer, that flesh out their world and experiences under Nazi occupation. Encountering Grace and Horton are more impactful moments for what they say about building resistance movements and the importance of the act of fighting than more bombastic cutscenes that get more attention, like a jail break gone wrong or a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, or even a scene somewhere unexpected with THAT Nazi leader and a surprising cameo from a terribly overrated actor. What's even more impressive is not that the unsettling part of Wolfenstein 2 is not asking the question "What if Nazis took over the US" but is in the subtle answer it provides to the question "How can this happen?" The presumed ease with which occupiers are met is shockingly relevant in how the roots of the video game's hypothetical spring from the unpleasant, unreckoned with roots of America's history with white supremacy and the supposition, too easily supported by facts, that oppression of others but comfortable for a ruling white class would go unchecked. Wolfenstein 2's 1960s America is not a funhouse mirror reflecting our current political climate back to us through a distorted lens, it is a microscope examining parts of our history and present that ruling classes try to minimize and gloss over or sweep under the rug.    

2017 has been an amazing year in games and, for many, an absolute trash fire in reality where we have to fight the rising tide of global fascism with marches and calls to elected officials whose loyalty to big money donors over constituent wishes is all too clear. Wolfenstein taps into this moment with biting satire – the profile of a "dapper Nazi" and two jackbooted thugs decrying political violence are just two examples where many exist – and a cathartic message that "Things may suck, but you can always find a reason to keep fighting." That's what I'm choosing to take from 2017, and Wolfenstein is the game for its time.    

[matthoerig]

Injustice is for All

Last spring, following the release of Street Fighter V, I thought I was done with fighting games. This had nothing to do with Street Fighter's troubled launch, but was more the acceptance of multiple realities. I had almost no history with fighting games outside of some Mortal Kombat II with friends in junior high and high school and occasional casual play of a few others. I've never been very good at competitive fighting games on the few occasions I did play. I had an, at best, rudimentary understanding of key fighting game concepts like zoning, footsies, and rushdown. I've always been a button masher; even if I knew certain combos or special moves, I struggled to input them successfully and have never had a feel for the key concepts of when to use them and how to do so effectively. Finally, Street Fighter's launch without a story mode to keep me engaged as a casual player crystalized that these types of games simply weren't what I come to games looking for. I appreciate well honed mechanics and responsive controls in all games, but execution for execution's sake isn't what I'm looking for – I want either a story that I'm participating in a la The Witcher or Persona or Mass Effect, or a story I'm helping to craft like in Skyrim or even in sports titles like MLB The Show and Madden. The problem is I'm a sucker for loot in video games. The bigger problem is I'm a sucker for Batman.

Injustice: Gods Among Us was a 2013 fighting game from NetherRealm Studios, the people behind Mortal Kombat. While they had made a DC vs Mortal Kombat game years ago, Injustice was focused solely on DC Universe characters and told a story of Superman, driven mad with power and forming a regime (cleverly named The Regime) to end all crime and war on Earth at the expense of minor annoyances like freedom and free will. The heroes and villains of the DC Universe reshuffled themselves in support of Superman or, of course, Batman in an effort to shape the world into either the terrifying hellscape Superman envisioned or the terrifying hellscape that more closely resembles the modern world. Like all of NetherRealm's games since Mortal Kombat 9 in the Xbox 360/PS3 generation, it played really well and told a story that I wanted to follow. I didn't really have the same connection to the story of Mortal Kombat, but news of an Injustice sequel piqued my interest enough for me to watch some previews, follow roster reveals, and still think this wouldn't be the game for me.  

I really am a sucker for Batman. Even though I wasn't impressed with some of the other roster decisions (Captain Cold? Really? When we know you're going to put Mortal Kombat's Sub Zero in the game as a cross-over thing?) I thought I might be enticed by the addition of loot – gear that is character specific that you can apply to your characters to boost their stats. Fighting games have so far resisted the gaming trend to add aspects of other genres and their systems, but this RPG-like feature spoke to my need to get better equipment. I bought Injustice 2, expecting to play through the story on Very Easy mode once and maybe get pulled back into the comic book series based on this story arc. Injustice has surpassed every (admittedly low) expectation I had for it and turned me into a die hard fan of the series, even if that might not translate to fighting games as a whole.  

Injustice has a pretty good tutorial that helped ease me into the game. It certainly didn't hurt that you play as Batman. But not only did it demonstrate basic inputs and built on those into combos, it also explained some very, very rudimentary things like air dashes and air escapes and wakeup attacks – all concepts I was aware of from hearing people talk about fighting games but didn't really understand their application. There are also character specific, guided tutorials for everyone on the roster, showing key moves to be familiar with and starting to give you a feel for the character's style of play. This is immensely helpful, as the story has 12 chapters, and each one has you fighting as a different member of the DC Universe, or possibly choosing between two paired characters for each fight in a specific chapter.  I completed each fight in one early chapter as Black Canary, jumped into the tutorial for her husband Green Arrow to see how differently he handled, then completed each fight in the same chapter with him using a completely different style. By the time I completed one playthrough of the story, I felt like I had a basic enough understanding of Batman, Harley Quinn, Black Canary, Aquaman, Cyborg, and Supergirl that I could complete match without just button mashing. I probably wouldn't win, but I'd at least know what I was TRYING to do with each character.  

But what would I do once I finished the story? Besides replaying the chapters where you choose to fight as one character or the other and playing the ending to see the non-canon "Superman wins" ending, I had no intention of playing online multiplayer. Fortunately, NeatherRealm has built in two modes that I do find fun: The Multiverse and AI Battle Simulator. The Multiverse is the DC-flavored spin on Mortal Kombat's Challenge Towers: you're presented with a series of fights and completing that series will result in rewards (more on those in a moment). Each series of fight may have modifiers like "Gift of Health" that sees health "power ups"  appear in the stage and give whoever touches them first a small boost of health. There may be a "meta challenge" to complete each fight without jumping, or you may be prohibited from using any special moves. These are time limited but refresh regularly, providing new challenges and new options to earn loot boxes. Finishing these fights and completing pre-defined objectives results in being rewarded with various tiers of "Mother Boxes," a blind box with one to 5 pieces of gear for a character. Gear is further tiered into Common, Rare, and Epic, and each piece changes the character's cosmetic look and can enhance one or all of their core statistics, like health or strength. I love Diablo. I love Borderlands. I love this game in the same way for letting me find a new way to improve Batman. This also encourages me to try out other characters; that cool Aquman trident looks awesome and makes me harder to beat – let me mess around with him and level him up to where I can equip it!

The mode I'm having the most fun with is AI Battle Simulation. In this, you set a team of three defenders, then are provided with a list of other teams available for battle. These are set by real humans, but you don't actually fight them. You see their chosen characters and each character's level, then choose who from your roster you want to attach with and the battles play out with both teams controlled by the CPU. It's a blast to watch, you can alter your AI behavior some by changing a character's gear and some more meta-stats like focus on rushdown or escapability, but the fight is largely out of your hands. You can even speed these up and watch at 2x, 4x, and 8x speed. It's a blast, and, winning a fight gives you a "gold" tier loot box (up to 5 a day while attacking) while losing nets you a "bronze" tier box. There is a limit on how many loot boxes you can win per day while attacking, but winning fights still adds some XP to your characters who participate and your overall profile level. You also win boxes if you're chosen to defend by another player, and I don't know if those are time limited. The mode is a blast and rewards me for watching DC characters fight without the stress of having to be good at anything beyond stat management.  

I'm honestly stunned to be enjoying Injustice 2 as much as I am. I love that the story embraces its comic book nature, is over the top, and makes Superman a real jerk. I feel like even if I'm not good at the game, I am getting better and understanding the concepts behind fighting game strategy and character strengths and usage. And the "loot lust" to get one more piece of better gear keeps pulling me back in for a few more rounds in the Multiverse or AI Battle Simulator. And of course, if you want a friendly match, expect me to use my main, Batman. (You'll still win)

[matthoerig]

Game of the Year 2016

I restrained myself to a Top 11 list this year. Here they are. The hardest omission from these year end lists has been No Man’s Sky, because I think it’s a pretty cool thing, but the work the dev team continues to do makes me think it’ll be an even more cool thing in the future, and it wasn’t as good as these 11 games.

11. Quadrilateral Cowboy 

Quadrilateral Cowboy has been years in the making; I think I've been waiting for this game to be released for 4 years. While I traditionally go for more story-based games, Quadrilateral Cowboy is a puzzle game with a blocky future steam/cyber-punk mashup aesthetic...but it's a pure puzzle game. The puzzles require you to use command line tools and manage systems and robot tools to complete heists. I'm a sucker for games that promote the use of command lines and programming: HackNet, Human Resource Machine, TIS-100 are all great games in the tradition of Uplink, but Quadrilateral Cowboy is the cream of the crop. 

10. The Division 

I honestly believe The Division would be in my top 3 games of 2017 had it not been released in 2016, and that's more a function of how I've been able – or unable in this case – to play games that seek to be a "lifetime" investment. Like Destiny, this is a game that requires an on-line connection and funnels the player through a story towards repeatable, high-level endgame missions and Player-vs-Player content that has a unique twist to encourage cooperative play until you stab each other in the back for sweet, sweet loot.   The Division had problems at launch, and Ubisoft delayed their DLC plans to address player feedback and make the endgame content more rewarding. Unfortunately, games like The Division which stress on-line coop for completing story missions were games I couldn't play due to a 15 year struggle with ulcerative colitis that worsened as games like those became more popular and prevalent. Without the ability to pause a game IMMEDIATELY when I needed to step away, I felt unable to group up to complete missions, and missions were scaled for groups of players.  The game, despite these drawbacks, was far from unplayable for me. There were enough side missions and "open world" activities that I was able to essentially over-level my character and found that most missions were solo-able if I was two to four levels above the recommended level. Unfortunately, the story wasn't interesting or engaging enough to make me want to come back and keep playing knowing that the endgame would funnel me into more of the online content.  So why would this game do better with me in 2017? I touched on one reason: the developers have listened to player feedback and improved the endgame content to be more varied and engaging. On a personal level – I don't have ulcerative colitis anymore after two surgeries. The downside is that there's a real potential this game has passed me by. If you're not running endgame missions at the highest level with optimized gear and skills, no one will want to group up with you, and you can't find or earn the gear you need without completing these high-level missions. Hopefully, in 2018 or 2019, I'll be ready to join in and invest in The Division 2 from the start.

9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition 

It's Skyrim, redone on consoles with better graphics, mod support, and all the open world jank you've come to expect from Bethesda games. But again, it's SKYRIM. I've put over 85 hours into this reissue after playing 130+ hours in the original 2011 release. I've killed dragons and emperors, I've snuck through caves, I've pickpocketed merchants, mixed potions, made old weapons into magical instruments of unstoppable death, and smithed roughly 3 million iron daggers. And I'll keep doing all of those things. It's Skyrim, it's great, and it's still fun. 

8. Oxenfree 

Oxenfree is a tightly paced story about teenagers on a haunted island and how they interact with each other, but more importantly it's about how their relationships grow and change through trauma. While people avoid spoilers for AAA blockbusters, the less that's said about this game the better because major story beats share importance with quiet, conversationally driven moments. There's a little too much backtracking through areas, but not too much to distract from the story significantly. For a one or two sitting, emotionally engaging and creepy as hell at times experience, grab Oxenfree, clear a few hours, and just go with it.      

7. Firewatch

Firewatch wraps up my double shot of narrative-driven games that look great, have simple controls, and stick with you past completion. Firewatch has a mystery tucked into a story about loss and loneliness and making human connections while messing with punk teenagers shooting off fireworks IN A DRY-ASS NATIONAL FOREST. TEENS ARE THE WORST. Firewatch looks great and gets bonus points for implementing a map mechanic where your firewatcher character's map is an actual paper map he holds up to his face. The less said about the story the better as it hits harder if you don't know what's coming, but I feel comfortable saying "Come for the Olly Moss visuals, stay for the narrative gut punches."  

6. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End 

Uncharted, as a series, has long has great stories, breathtaking visuals, and amazing, cornerstone set-pieces. Uncharted 4 added some stealth elements that made avoiding the tedious gunfights between these moments more palatable. Nolan North as Nathan Drake, who has done voice acting for every game released since 2005, is joined by Troy Baker, who has done voice acting in every game released since 2010. The good news is their characters have chemistry and make believable brothers, with each fitting somewhere on the slimeball scale that keeps them endearing but, you know, still kinda slimeballs. I want to believe this is the final story of Nathan Drake, mainly because Naughty Dog nailed the landing of giving him, Elena, and Sully a satisfying send off after 4 games and didn't ruin the pathos by introducing Baker's character of Sam Drake. Where Oxenfree and Firewatch told good to great stories with more simple gameplay elements, Uncharted 4 continues the series' tradition of great story, great action, and games that look like nothing else available on consoles.   

5. Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 illustrates why so many were disappointed that the original Titanfall had only a series of bot matches with voice-overs for its "campaign." Titanfall was made by Respawn Entertainment, a studio built from the ashes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's creator Infinity Ward after a falling out between the leadership of Infinity Ward and Call of Duty's publisher, Activision. After essentially creating the modern first-person shooter campaign and multiplayer progression structure, Titanfall was a thin experience for people averse to on-line shooters. That said, the original Titanfall remains the only multiplayer shooter in which I've ever "prestiged," and Titanfall 2 keeps the fast-paced player movement and expands on it...when you're not marching around the battlefield in a giant war machine. There are more options for Titans too, with multiple loadouts for multiple frames, although why anyone would choose a Titan besides Tone is beyond me. But Titanfall 2's single player mode is something special. The story of aspiring Titan pilot "Jack Cooper" and the Titan he inherits during battle is one of the more emotionally engaging stories told in games in 2016,with the bond between pilot and Titan growing in between periods of you controlling both of these characters and simply doing dope shit. The standout moment is the entirety of a mission named "Effect and Cause," and has the player mostly on foot, using a unique mechanic in modern shooters to solve combat and platforming puzzles. I'd have played an entire game like this, but the confidence of the Titanfall 2 team to put this mechanic in place, blow the player's mind, and then go back to other things they want to do with their robot shooter has me very excited for a possible Titanfall 3. Respawn also deserves recognition for the "Network" feature they built into their multiplayer game, where players with the same interests can group up, find games together, and enjoy a bonus XP "happy hour" once every day. And all this would be for naught if the movement and shooting didn't just feel so damn good.  

4. Stardew Valley 

Stardew Valley has been described as the best Harvest Moon game in years, and while I have no experience with Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley wormed it's way into my heart and took over my gaming life for a period in 2016. Stardew Valley is a top down 2d farming simulator that sees the player break up his or her day into farming, fishing, mining, and socializing with the people of the town which you have moved to and taken over the farm of a deceased family member. The daily structure gives a player a time limit they have to manage and there's always one more task to complete – one more crop to plan or water, one more tree to chop down, one more fish to catch or crab pot to empty, one more floor in the mines you can explore for ore and treasure. There's a deeper story about restoring the town's dilapidated community center that wraps around you building your relationships with the townspeople, and it's all just charming as hell. The Civilization unofficial motto of "one more turn" became "one more day" for me as I built my farm from a rocky mess to a lush, productive cash producing giant. The recent release on consoles has me excited to play again and still always have more thing to do.

3. Hearthstone – The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan 

Hearthstone has been on my Game of the Year list since the year before it was officially released. From closed beta to release to ongoing adventures and expansions, Hearthstone (known as Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft until late this year) is a digital card game that reinvented competitive play this year by introducing "standard" mode that rotates which cards are legal as new sets are released and "wild" where anything goes. The latest expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan also introduced a first for the series in tri-class cards which are explicitly synergistic with three of the nine classes in the game; cards had previously been either class specific or truly neutral. New sets – the Gadgetzan expansion, the One Night in Karazan solo adventure, and the year's earlier Whispers of the Old Gods expansion kept shaking up the metagame, made my brief forays into the competitive ladder each month fun, and sated my gaming loot lust by giving more card packs to open. I fell out of doing my Hearthstone daily quests at the end of 2014 s I moved cross country, picked it up again in 2015, and fell off again as I spent some time in and out of the hospital. It was easy and comfortable to pick Hearthstone back up when I felt up to it, and knowing Hearthstone will be updated on a regular schedule each year will keep this somewhere on my Game of the Year list indefinitely. 

2.  Hitman 

Hitman is the most improbable entry on this list. The legacy of Hitman as an unforgiving stealth-based series seemed to have reached its peak with 2006's much loved Hitman: Blood Money and been retooled for a fanbase who didn't appreciate change in 2012's Hitman: Absolution which was...not well received. 2016's Hitman seemed to have the deck stacked against it from the start by announcing it would be an episodic release without elaborating on what that meant and failing to clarify it as the game faced delays. Additionally, multiple options for purchasing the game as a "complete experience" or a "starter pack" with little insight into just what customers would be getting. Since 2012, "episodic game" has generally meant one thing: a story-driven experience where gameplay is based on dialogue choices or often cumbersome quick time events, player choice leading to minor variations in the story, and frequent delays in publishing episodes after the first one. This is the model Telltale used to great critical and commercial to success with The Walking Dead, then to diminishing returns with Fables. And then Borderlands. And then Game of Thrones. And then Minecraft and then The Walking Dead again and then Batman and then The Walking Dead for a fourth time and will repeat with Guardians of the Galaxy and then Game of Thrones again and so on and so on until the inevitable heat death of the universe or until we run out of properties to license and commodify. There was no way Hitman, a stealth-based third-person action game would fit into this model and thankfully, IO Interactive broke this mold in every conceivable way. While the series stayed true to it's roots as a third person stealth action game, each episode was a mission or set of missions set in a murderer's playground. "Opportunities" guided the player through ways to complete their mission by following discrete steps to infiltrate areas that would be off-limits without the proper disguise, procure tools to set up tragic accidents that would leave your targets dead and you walking calmly away while security investigated the "accident," and show glimpses of ridiculous areas of the map and other tools you could use to achieve the same ends with a little quick thinking and more daring exploration.  Hitman used its episodic structure to encourage players to use the time between episodes to seek out these strange, new ways to kill targets. Finding items throughout the map, using disguises, and completing various kills rewarded the player with experience points that leveled up your "mastery level" for that specific map. Higher master levels led to more places where you could start a mission and already be in a specific disguise, more places to hide smuggled items that could help you get through the level, such as a lockpick, a vial of poison, or an explosive, or more weapons you could choose to bring with you or hide in those smuggled spots for retrieval and use when necessary. Playing through each map multiple times revealed the clockwork nature of the AI routines that served as your opponent, but your actions never felt rote; there was always another thing to try or another path to take to see if you could complete one more ridiculous kill, like dropping a giant stuffed moose on a Swedish banker or killing a secluded mafioso with an exploding golf ball, or getting close to a rock star by disposing of the hired session drummer before he met your target, impersonating the drummer by playing a wicked solo, and snapping the target's neck as you met secretly to discuss joining the band. Hitman has an overarching story tying each episode together, but more of a draw were the "Elusive Contracts," time-limited assassinations for you to complete during a set period of 2-7 real world days that were gone forever once time ran out, you completed the mission, or you attempted the mission and failed. Unlike the core game, there was no saving during these missions; fail and your only option was to truly "save scum" and quit before your character was killed and try again from the beginning or take your loss like the professional you are. These were something special for the community, and as someone who didn't get invested in the game until much later, missing the first dozen or so is one of my greatest gaming regrets from 2016. The 5 episodes of Hitman that made up Season One have been released, but Elusive Targets continue to appear, there's a holiday mission using the game's excellent first episode map, and Season Two has been confirmed. For a game that had the deck stacked against it in terms of expectations from its format and prior series release, Hitman came out of nowhere to surprise me with a killer 2016 experience.

1. Mafia 3  

Mafia 3 isn't without its problems: I found the gunplay to be sloppy to the point of unmanageable without copious assist from auto-aim. Driving was squirrely at best. Mission structure wasn't just repetitive – there really seemed to only be three types of missions repeated across 40 discreet missions, making the game seem padded out in a way it didn't need to be padded. And while there were reports of techincal issues with the PC version at launch, many games and PC ports suffer from these "launch window" issues that are unfortunate but frequently corrected quickly, and I had almost no issue playing on PS4. These complaints still weren't enough to keep me from naming Mafia 3 my Game of the Year for 2016. Mafia 3 used storytelling methods rarely used in video games to tell a revenge tale that harkened back to the Blaxploitation and pulp revenge genre films as much as its titular mafia category, with memorable characters and a story I was amply rewarded for seeing through to the end.   One of Mafia 3's best traits is how it's an open world game without the distractions that pad out most open worlds. All side missions funnel into increasing your source of cash or favors from recruited NPCs and the copious amount of collectibles in the world are completely, purely optional. There is one resource that needs to be collected in order to construct phone bugs which are then used on junction boxes kind of like how most open world games treat climbing some kind of tower to reveal more of a map, but Mafia 3 makes this completely optional, meaning these junction boxes provide extra intelligence about an area; they're not required to access an area or complete missions at all.   The second way Mafia 3 excels is in it's creation of a time and place: 1968 "New Bordeaux," an obvious New Orleans analogue. Playing as an African-American main character (Lincoln Clay) in the late-60s American south has gameplay impacts that could even be used in a more modern game – police are slow to respond to poor, majority minority areas of town if they respond at all while Lincoln can be put on the run for walking into a segregated establishment in the rich, white areas of town. The caricatures of white supremacy are clear signposts for that time and place the game is trying to evoke and perform their function well enough, but not as well as the casual racism you encounter not from foes, both major named villains and the nameless cannonfodder thugs that populate every mission, but from allies of a different color who easily toss around racial epithets, or those NPCs who are presumably otherwise indifferent to your existence, your struggle to right the wrong done to you and your extended family, and who just talk like that because it's okay. In a more positive way, Mafia 3 uses licensed music to help set that sense of time and place as well, relying on tracks well known and more obscure to set the signpost, "This is the SIXTIES, man!"   The soundtrack is large and varied, and used in a creepy, subtle way to signal a shift for the game's final mission. Approaching this mission in game requires a lengthy drive. This drive starts with Sam and Dave's "Hold On, I'm Coming" playing on your car's radio, but the music transitions into a series of the same songs you've heard throughout the game, but more modern, frequently more sinister versions. This is helped by the game's narrative conceit; you're seeing this story told in flashback in modern day, with interviews from some of the key figures in Lincoln's life. This allows for multiple potential endings, and I like to pretend my ending where Lincoln left town and spent some time in California before dropping almost completely off the map has an unspoken coda where he had a son who now goes by the name Marcus Holloway who has joined DeadSec in their attempts to take down another corrupt system in Watch Dogs 2. But the real, actually in the game, and just as batshit crazy as it sounds payoff is a mid-credits scene where John Donovan, a former CIA intelligence agent who worked with Lincoln in Vietnam and then helped with his efforts to take down the mob in New Bordeaux, reveals during videotaped Senate testimony that he did all this just to get the names of those people who participated in the assassination of JFK, the committee chairman was implicated in documents Donovan recovered after Lincoln completed his time in New Bordeaux, and kills the Senator chairing the committee during the hearing, again on tape, as a warning to all those who were involved. I swear I am making none of that up and hope to any all deities that this is the set-up for Mafia 4.  Mafia 3 was probably too long and too repetitive for its own good. While combat got repetitive, stealth was a perfectly viable method of dealing with combat areas and gunplay was functional if unspectacular. But the story it told and its willingness to look at race in America in a critical light through gameplay and as part of its story makes it my favorite game of 2016, warts and all. 

[matthoerig]

The Not-Quite-Games-of-the-Year

The games below are all games I really liked to some degree. I either didn't like them as much as the 11 games that made my year-end Top 10 list (shut up, it's my list) or I felt like I didn't play enough of them to fairly evaluate them. So as a compromise and to stop myself from writing too much, I'm listing them here with ONE SENTENCE ONLY about them. Buckle up – you may see some very long sentences with tortured construction. This list is no particular order.

Batman – The Telltale Series: Telltale break out of what I would consider a slump with a fresh Batman story and new mechanics that take advantage of their aging tech and strong dialogue and narrative work.

The Witness: The Witness is a gorgeous pure puzzle game that teaches you how to solve its puzzles that I will never finish because I'm too stupid to learn how to express the waveform of a bird chirping with lines on a panel but boy it sure is pretty and fun when it's not amazingly frustrating.

XCOM 2: New enemies, new tactical and strategic options, and new stealth mechanics ratchet up the tension in a sequel where you canonically lost the first game because of course you lose when you have an entire army of alien-hunters who can't hit an alien with a shotgun at 2 paces despite a "98% chance to hit."  

Civilization VI: One more turn...one more turn...no, just one more turn...forever and ever and ever.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: In what's been a down year for the franchise sales-wise, Call of Duty released a game with a truly interesting campaign thanks to optional side missions, flight sequences, and stealth mechanics that felt like the developers actually wanted to try something new.

Forza Horizon 3: Instead of recapping how beautiful the game's environment is or how good the cars feel to drive or I how I prefer the open world approach of the Horizon series to mainline Forza's focus on tuning and racing, I'll just say that Horizon games have a good amount of music from Chvrches in them, and I really like Chvrches.

DOOM: The fact that iD Software was able to make something that recreated how you think you remember the original Doom playing is a absolutely stunning achievement in a game that's fun to boot.  

Overwatch: Team-based competitive shooters give me great anxiety due to my poor ability to play them and worry I'm letting my teammates down, but Overwatch's world and characters are so bright and vibrant and fun I didn't care enough to stop playing just because I sucked.

Darkest Dungeon: This is one tense-as-hell rogue-like with a cool gothic horror aesthetic that I really enjoyed despite my characters' constant descent into madness and untimely deaths.

Final Fantasy XV: I've played roughly 30 hours of this game, enjoyed well over half of my time spent with it, but have barely advanced the main plot, feel little motivation to do so, and can see the sidequests becoming less and less rewarding in the mess of a flawed but mostly fun game.  

Watch Dogs 2: It was remarkably hard to leave this game off my final list given how it treats its diverse characters with respect and makes them a group you want to spend time with, but I just don't find that it plays well, from the driving to the hacking puzzles to the stealth mechanics.  

[matthoerig]

E3 2016 Thoughts

“Hey, Matt, what did you think of E3 this year?” is a thing that I get asked quite a lot by the voices in my head, so I thought I’d take the time to briefly collect my impressions and figure out what, in fact, I thought of E3 this year. 

Sunday and Monday were the big days for people like me who weren’t at the show. EA and Bethesda streamed their events for the public on Sunday, with Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Sony following on Monday. Tuesday was less of a time commitment, with just Nintendo on the schedule, but with a highly anticipated reveal of gameplay footage from the new Zelda title. IF you had asked me on Monday or Tuesday, I would have said I came away most impressed with Microsoft, most disjointedness with Sony, and everyone else falling somewhere in the middle. With some more time to reflect, I think every show actually grades out about the same: each company showed some things I’m super excited to play, some things I”d like to see more of either because I’m intrigued by or unsure of what I saw, and some things that just don’t hold much interest for me personally. 

I Want to start with the items that just didn’t do it for me, because I don’t want to dwell on the negative. Many of these things came from Sony’s press conference: The Last Guardian, LEGO Star Wars, a remaster of the Crash Bandicoot series, and Death Stranding - the new game from Hideo Kojima - all just landed very flatly with me. LEGO Star Wars and Death Stranding did so from the opposite end of the spectrum, too: I know what the LEGO games are and don’t enjoy them, while the trailer for Kojima’s new game was simply pre-rendered footage of “weird shit” (apologies for the highly technical term) on a beach. I need to know a lot more about what the new thing from Kojima is before I can muster up an ounce of interest after turning so hard on Metal Gear Solid V after roughly 20 hours. EA showed a willingness to take some risks with their sports franchises by putting a story-driven single=player mode into FIFA 17, but I’ll be far more interested if and when this makes it to the Madden and NHL franchises, as I just don’t enjoy the FIFA games like everyone else on the planet. As for Microsoft, I thought Scalebound looked really unengaging in terms of moment to moment action, and Final Fantasy XV demoed very, very poorly. I still want to play the later given what else I’ve seen, but the former has a lot of work left to sell me before release in 2017. The Dead Rising series has also never been my cup of tea, but I’m glad it’s back for the people who loved it. Ubisoft lagged with For Honor, which seems innovative but just not like something I’d spend a lot of time with; I also didn’t enjoy South Park: The Stick of Truth and am not especially excited for the sequel: South Park: Superhero Game Based on The Joke “Isn’t This Racist Slur Funny When Said by Kids?” That’s not the actual subtitle, but...it should be.

I came away from E3 cautiously optimistic or intrigued about an almost equal number of games. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands looks pretty, but I need to know if it’s just The Division: Central America Skin. I will say that seeing it and Ubisoft’s commitment to The Division got me to play more of the Division for the first time since March, so that’s another win for them. Sony and Microsoft both trotted out franchises abbreviated as GoW; Microsoft’s Gears of War 4 was a known quantity and looked very pretty, but I don’t know how much I want to play another Gears game. The same thing goes for Sony’s God of War, which showed an intriguing willingness to move away from series conventions with a new camera angle and style of third person play, but I’m put off by the apparent similarities to the Dark Souls series, which I truly despise. Sony also debuted a new title named Days Gone, which looks like a zombie game and didn’t look great to me, but I want to see more about what they have to say about the game’s story and actual moment to moment game play before writing it off entirely. EA didn’t show much of Mass Effect or their new Star Wars titles, but what they did show looked very, very nice. Microsoft also showed off a new Witcher 3 tie-in of a stand-alone Gwent game featuring a new single-player campaign and sure, I need another collectible card game to play in addition to my daily Hearthstone addiction, the coming Elder Scrolls Legends game, and the occasional draw back into digital Magic: The Gathering. 

There were a handful of games that I walked away from E3 truly and legitimately excited to play. I’ve not mentioned anything from Nintendo yet, and that’s partially because their show was focused mostly on one title - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wind. This game looks phenomenal, and I already know I’ll buy it for the Wii U, which was shown at the show this year, and for the NX when that new console is available. This new title appears to have gear and loot and crafting and cooking, which are all new for a Zelda title, plus the standard dungeon experiences you expect from the series. Close competitors for my personal game for the show would be Titanfall 2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn. Titanfall was fairly criticized for a lack of a single player campaign and a shallow progression system in multiplayer, and Respawn have promised to correct both. What I loved about the original in spite of those shortcomings were the sense of movement and freedom you had in a first person shooter, and they look like they’ve doubled down on that with more options for getting around and putting yourself in a good situation for individual firefights. Horizon: Zero Dawn in a post-post-apocalyptic RPG and the lengthy demo Sony showed of the female player character riding a robotic elk-thing and taking down a rampaging spider-ish robot looked like combat was fluid and dynamic. Further reports from people at the show confirmed there’s a robust quest system which has me thinking this could be my 2017 version of The Witcher 3 - a game I love but get so overwhelmed while playing I don’t know what to do next and simply walk away and feel great shame. A few other sequels seemed very exciting, as Watch_Dogs 2 and Forza Horizon 3 made strong impressions. I believe those are both 2017 titles, which is fine since Bethesda is releasing Dishonored 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition in 2016. I will play both of those games, and I will play a LOT of both of those games.

Due in part to pre-show leaks and publishers showing games like Watch_Dogs 2 off on special announcement streams in the week before E3, it didn’t feel like there were any truly shocking or surprising reveals. We got trailers and release dates for some known quantities, some new IP announcements that seem to be two years or more off, and and information about incremental improvements to known franchises and coming games. For what this E3 seemed to lack in surprise and quantity, it made it up for me in quality.           

[matthoerig]

Vacation Planning

I’m taking next week off of work, and not going anywhere. Since November of 2014, my big chunks of time off of work have been used like this:

Packing to move cross country

Driving across country

Entertaining my parents in my new city/taking care of a dog just discharged from surgery

Travelling back to Ohio for a concert

I’m not complaining! Those were all fun or, in the case of packing and moving, done in support of something I WANTED to do. This is different - I’m taking time off with nothing that I HAVE to do. No planes to catch. No time constraints on the fact that I have 6 meals in two days and 15 restaurants I want to visit. Unfortunately, I don’t even have to worry about getting up at X hour to walk and feed Brutus. 40 to 60 hours of the week that would usually be dedicated to work are MINE. So I’ve started coming up with a project plan.

Of course this is insane. It’s also in part to keep me from going insane - there’s a million things I want to do! And there are some things that are time constrained - it’s no coincidence this time off is the same week as E3. I’ll be watching the Giant Bomb livestreams of every press conference on Sunday and Monday, plus their nightly live shows with people from the industry. Sunday is also the Tony Awards/Hamilton coronation and Game of Thrones. So Monday morning will be catching up on those so I’m not hopelessly out of the cultural loop. 

Beyond that, I have a stack of physical video games up to my waist, plus my Steam library and digital games that I Want to make a dent in before the fall rush of games. And I want to cook! And take time to do some deep cleaning I wouldn’t get to otherwise. And I can name 3-4 books I want to read and another 2 or 3 I want to re-read!

Suddenly an extra 40-60 hours doesn’t seem like a lot. So I’m trying to put some semblance of structure in place, because otherwise my entire week will devolve into naps and playing Overwatch. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I’d look back and think I should have done more. 

So I’m going to play a lot of Overwatch, huh?    

[matthoerig]

Software as a Service

At E3 2013, Ubisoft debuted a trailer for Tom Clancy’s The Division (Note: I’m going to insist on using the full name of the game, Tom Clancy’s The Division throughout this post because it’s just the right kind of ludicrous). Details were scarce, but it was a modern third person shooter set after a cataclysmic event on Black Friday. Enthusiasm was high, as this was the first new Tom Clancy product from Ubisoft in a while and was a new IP for new consoles. 

We’re in early 2016 and after numerous delays, Tom Clancy’s The Division will be out in a little over a month. My initial interest waned as the game was delayed and delayed again, and a focus on multiplayer action seemed to dominate the recent information released by Ubisoft. But last weekend saw Ubi host a beta for the game, and an hour and a half of watching the Giant Bomb team play solo and multiplayer missions convinced me there was something worth trying out. I spent 3-5 hours playing Tom Clancy’s The Division and am. again, really intrigued. The shooting felt good mechanically, the story beats on display in the beta were good enough, the environments felt alive and dangerous, and the loot and experience loop felt like it would be enough to keep me playing for a while. 

The multiplayer component even got me excited - there’s a portion of the map designated as “the Dark Zone” with it’s own enemies and experience and currency, and loot you pick up here has to be extracted - you can’t just walk out with it. Other human players can help you or “go rogue” and kill you while waiting for your loot to be extracted (or at any time, really), but they’re penalized with a bounty and loss of Dark Zone experience and currency if killed while rogue. It’s a fun risk/reward system made more tense by the enabling of location chat. Even if I wasn’t officially grouped up with people, I could hear them talking to themselves if we were close to one another. As soon as I heard two people say “Maybe we roll with him and take any loot he grabs...” I booked it in the other direction before they had the chance to double cross me. It wasn’t all backstabbing though, as I spent all my time rolling solo in the Dark Zone and helped a dozen or so people extract loot and hold off rogue agents, and got help on a few occasions myself. I had a lot of fun with the small slice of the game available.

Then it hit me - I only played a small slice and Tom Clancy’s The Division is going to be structured to keep my playing to the detriment of every other game. This is not the first game to take this approach, but it’s becoming more and more common and I’m uneasy about it. 

Diablo III and Destiny are games where advancement in level and loot drawe the player back in to run one more dungeon, do one more strike, complete one more daily quest. And despite liking both games, I hit a point where I felt I couldn’t keep up and slowly drifted away. I find myself wanting to go back and play each of these games, but feeling daunted at the prospect. Could I find others at my level to complete the co-op multiplayer aspects that find you the best loot and open up endgame sections? Is there an accepted meta-game regarding the weapons, armor, and skill builds use that I Would be completely unaware of and thus seen as a detriment to a team? Is putting up with the forum-speak and jargon that’s grown up around each community worth learning to be barely competent? Do I give a shit with 50 more hours of Fallout to play?

And then I realize there’s a hypocritical aspect to all of this: today is the 298th straight day I have played at least one match of Marvel Puzzle Quest on my phone. I know because every day I do so, I get a small reward to entice me to keep playing,and it counts each day that I do. If I’m being honest, there’s a part of me that’s simply afraid to NOT play one day and see if I just miss out on that day’s reward or if the clock gets set back to 0 and I have to wait 299 more days to get that 1000 units of in-game currency on tap for tomorrow. But I enjoy the game, it’s easy to play on my phone and doesn’t require lot of time commitment on a daily basis. I bet if Tom Clancy’s The Division can manage to be fun, provide regular rewards for gameplay, and not require a lot of extra effort to find a community, it’ll be a staple of my gaming routine. At least until the next console game with daily or weekly quests comes along. I bet it’ll be sooner than I anticipate.         

[matthoerig]

My Top Games of 2015

Mobile and Episodic Games: An Addendum

In my rush to publish last night, I left one a mobile game and a sort-of episodic game that deserved recognition in their respective categories. Fallout Shelter only got it hooks into me for a month and a half or so, but those hooks were in DEEP. Announced and playable on the night of Bethesda’s E3 press conference that also saw the reveal of Fallout 4, this simple strategy and management game had me uncomfortably close to practicing electronic eugenics to make sure my Vault Dwellers were happy and secure. Continuing the trend of episodic games I didn’t play but damn sure will in 2016, Until Dawn was not episodic in that it released as a full product for the PS4, but takes a similar structure in its storytelling to episodic games and does really inventive things with narrative gameplay. Under the guise of a playable teen slasher horror flick, you can play into the well-known gener tropes or subvert them with your decisions and actions, and every playable character can die or be saved from death. A “butterfly effect” mechanic shows you how decisions ripple and impact your playthgrough, and this can be completed in one very long sitting or broken up at sensible stoping points when your perspective shifts from character to character.

Now, onto the list. These are my Top 20 games of 2015. The numbering may be arbitrary, as I have another game I Want to write about that would have been on here above games 20-18, but not 17 or 14. And better than 10 and 8 but not 9. It’s really messed with my head in the few days since I played it.  

Matt’s Top 20 Games of 2015

20. Cities Skylines (PC Exclusive) – This is the game we all wanted when EA announced they were bringing back Sim City in 2013. Then EA made an on-line only, social focused game with build areas too small to create the kinds of megalopolis we had all been dreaming of, plus the servers were broken for a long damn time. Cities Skylines fixes those problems, allows for user mods, and flew under the radar because it doesn’t have the SimCity name and because its publisher also released a game named Cities XXL this year from a different developer that was bad. I feel bad only having this at 20, but it’s being penalized a bit (and a bit unfairly) for merely fixing the sins of the genre’s founding father. Considering my list of games to consider started at 120, 20 isn’t bad!

19. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void (PC Exclusive) – It’s more StarCraft. They messed with unit balancing like they did for the previous two…chapters? Expansions? Releases? of StarCraft II, but they finally focused on the Protoss, my favorite race, and made significant changes to how units are spawned. As great as it is to see Blizzard finish off StarCraft II, I’m just as excited to see what they do with the franchise next, given how well Diablo III has been supported post-launch, and what Blizzard does next in general with one of their major teams presumably free to work on other projects.

18. Hand of Fate (PlayStation 4) – This was a little title I hadn’t heard much about until right before release, but had a lot of fun with by myself and showing it off to friends on a visit back to Ohio. It’s a video game adaptation of deckbuilding games like Ascension and Munchkin, with some fair to middling third person combat/trap dodging isometric action. I like card collection games, so this made the final 20 cut.

17. Prison Architect (PC Exclusive) – The shadow if SimCity hangs heavy over the bottom of this list. There was a time when there was a SimEverything – SimCity, SimFarm, SimAnt, and even SimGolf (which is great!) with each entry taking a different look at building an environment. The team behind Prison Architect asked “What if we took the building and management aspects of a Sim game and applied it to the for-profit Prison Industrial Complex of the United States?” Prison Architect is grim, it’s challenging in multiple ways, and, in its own way, a certain kind of fun.

16. Pillars of Eternity (PC Exclusive) – We’ve had throwbacks to SimCity and a throwback to StarCraft with…StarCraft, so let’s keep the nostalgia train chugging along with a throwback to Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and traditional western computer role playing games. Yes, I backed this on Kickstarter, so I hoped it would be good, but would not be afraid to voice disappointment. I’m not disappointed.

15. Splatoon (Wiii U Exclusive) – I would have never expected a Nintendo-made first person team-based shooter to make my top games list, in part because I’d never expect Nintendo to make a first person team-based shooter. Apart from it being outside of their development wheelhouse, Nintendo’s on-line infrastructure and account management is poorly managed. Yet Splatoon’s solid shooting/paint splatting mechanics, chill community, and sense of fun in the game made this my surprise go-to early in the year for some quick shooter action.

14. Rock Band 4 (Xbox One) – Yeah, it’s more Rock Band. But I spent a ton of money on DLC for Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Rock Band 3, had a ton of fun playing those, and all that DLC ports over to the new generation. I don’t know that I would have asked for anything different from Rock Band 4, and I’m just grateful to have plastic instruments back in my life to annoy my neighbors.

13. Massive Chalice (PC) – A disclosure – I backed this on KickStarter at a tier that allowed me to create a House for the game’s lineage system. Again, if I were disappointed, I’d have no problem making my feelings known. The tactical level of this game is top-notch, evoking X-Com in all the right ways but with the added difficulty of not having an overwatch mechanic. Different enemies, when they connect, can also impart status effects that significantly impact not only that tactical gameplay, but the strategic layer, where you manipulate the great Houses of the land like George R.R. Martin, only you WANT your favorites to live. My only gripe with the game is the seemingly random nature of class distribution. You can influence this via the strategy layer, but my most recent play though saw me with only the hunter class or its derivatives not even halfway through the lengthy campaign. While I prefer to play with the ranged hunters, having the option and diverse tactics available by mixing in melee-focused caberjacks and are-of-effect alchemists would have made for a more interesting game, and attempts to acquire those classes and integrate them into my kingdom were not successful. Overall, the game’s a blast and random happenings like my hunters only experience show there’s a million different ways to tackle the challenges presented.

12. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) – I have almost no history with the Metal Gear Solid franchise, apart from trying and failing to play earlier iterations due to obtuse controls and nonsensical expectations of the player. I watched all of the Giant Bomb “Metal Gear Scanlon” series, as fellow newbie to the series Drew Scanlon played through the four previous console titles with the help (“help”) of series super-fan Dan Ryckert. I was dreading giving this a try, but the mechanics were shockingly modern, allowing for conventional third person shooting and sneaking that felt satisfying. The base-building mechanic that encouraged me to approach situations non-violently and use a fulton recovery system to increase the number of soldiers available to me at Mother Base, and their proficiency in research, intel gathering, and other systems, was engaging a created a meta-game I Wanted to engage with even if the story didn’t keep me interested. Then I hit a wall. The same style sneaking missions were repeated over and over with only minimal changes to the setting and tactics I could use. Sure, I COULD have tried new equipment and approaches, but Konami’s real world changes to the in-game economy to move towards a free-to-play model encouraging micro-transactions just put me off the game. I Sit somewhere around 30% completion (with the main story reportedly complete somewhere around 50-60% of the overall completion tracker) and have no desire to revisit this game. It was fun while it lasted.

11. Batman: Arkham Knight (PS4) – This was another game that could have been higher on my list had there actually been less of it. I finished the main story and enjoyed it, even if it did hew too closely to the pattern established in Arkham Asylum and especially Arkham City. The presence of Riddler Challenges, incorporating everything from puzzles to hidden item searching to combat arenas were mostly welcome, but tying completion of almost 300 of them to see a “true” ending to the game is irritating. The much publicized inclusion of the Batmobile was largely a miss for me as well” the car controlled poorly and the tank portions were either overly simplistic or overly challenging; the vehicle sections simply needed another round of balancing, preferably by someone who hadn’t spent years working on the game. While I have little desire to go back to either MGSV or Arkham Knight (although the last bit of season pass DLC for Arkham Knight is getting solid reviews…), I feel infinitely more satisfied with my time spent with the Caped Crusader than with MGS V’s Boss.

10. Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (Xbox One) – I love Borderlands. This presents the base games and all DLC from Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel on one disc or one digital collection for the new generation of consoles. I still consider Borderlands 2 one of my favorite games of all time, and this package does nothing to change that. I still consider Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel a wholly unnecessary game with an irritating oxygen mechanic that limits your ability to explore and enjoy yourself like a traditional Borderlands game, and this package does nothing to change that. Whenever Gearbox (who did not develop The Pre-Sequel) decides to return to Borderlands, that new game will probably fall ass-backwards into my top 3 games of that year before I even put it in my console or download it via Steam. I love Borderlands.

9. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Xbox One Timed Exclusive) – Rise of the Tomb Raider is the game on this list most likely to be higher up if I were to revise this in 6 months. I’ve loved every minute I spent playing it…I just haven’t spent a lot of time playing it. Part of that is terrible release timing on the part of Microsoft, as it launched the same day as Fallout 4, the year’s 800-lb gorilla in terms of game releases.  Crystal Dynamics builds on the solid foundation of 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, but creates a semi-open world with meaningful collectibles, the ability to upgrade Lara Croft and tailor your playstyle how you like, and optional “challenge tombs” that are more of the puzzle platforming I miss from another upcoming entry on this list. I plan to finish this off in early 2016, and am hopeful the reportedly poor sales numbers tick up when it’s released on PC in January and PS4 next fall.

8. Rocket League (PS4) – What if soccer was played by cars that could drive up the domed walls of the arena and jump and do sick flips and shit to hit the ball to their opponent’s goal? If I need to say anything else to sell you on this game, you’re already dead inside. Consistent support from the developer in the form of cosmetic DLC like a DeLorean to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future and a hockey-like mode are icing on the cake. Play Rocket League.

7. Invisible, Inc (PC Exclusive) – Invisible, Inc is a turn-based tactical game focused more on hacking and stealth than out and out combat. There’s a time pressure added, as each turn brings more defensive systems on-line to thwart your attempt to save a fellow spy or extract corporate secrets and lucre. There’s a roguelike-lite element too, as each of your early, inevitable failures helps open up new options for controllable characters with different abilities to make future attempts play out differently, if not easier. Invisible, Inc is a tense, challenging thriller of a game.

6. Star Wars: Battlefront (PS4) – Do you like Star Wars? This is the best looking and sounding Star Wars game ever. The lack of a single player campaign mode is disappointing, and there have been criticisms about the depth of the game and lack of variation in the number of levels and weapons to unlock and use. However, I don’t want to spend 60 hours unlocking the best gun I need to be competitive in an on-line shooter. I dip my toes into Call of Duty every year, but I’ll never be competitive with high level players. Battlefront is more accessible and perfectly suited for a few short play sessions every few evenings, or a long session over a weekend. This was exactly what I wanted for a Star Wars shooter.

5. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Xbox One) – After last year’s entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Unity, was terrible in terms of both design and technical issues, I thought there was very little that could bring me back into Assassin’s Creed. Putting out the best game in the series since 2010’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a good solution! There’s still a lot to do in the world of the animus, but the game isn’t as plagued with map icon vomit as Unity was, as many of the activities feel satisfying, if not meaningful. I’ve spent more than a few hours at a time simply wandering the 1850s London environment collecting beers and posters and opening chests, doing nothing to advance the storyline, and still feeling like I was accomplishing something. The side missions are all presented by famous historical figures like Marx, Darwin, and Dickens, plus you’ll run into Florence Nightengale and Alexander Graham Bell during the main campaign. I did a bit of eye-rolling when I saw EVERY person from that era in one place, asking for help from your characters of Jacob and Evie Frye, but the goofiness grew on me. The use of multiple lead characters was also handled very well, with experience earned for both concurrently, allowing you to level them both up and advance them along the same skills tree, evening out the stealth-focused Evie and combat-heavy Jacob to be more balanced with each other. As I sat down to finish a memory sequence the other night, I found another time rift that took me to a new historical era with more collectibles and missions to undertake. I was initially irritated by the bait-and-switch, but then thrilled by the new setting and by having more to do in a game I was already struggling to finish, but was enjoying anyway. The game isn’t without things I consider flaws – traversal has been made even easier as an obvious benefit to the series, but I do miss the puzzle aspect to climbing major structures in the original game plus the sequel and Brotherhood. Sure, it’s fun to use a rope launcher to pull yourself up to the top of Big Ben, but I would personally rather spend time looking for nooks and crannies to use as hand-holds to shimmy my way to the top, making the gorgeous panoramic view of London presented feel more like a reward.  I’m still happy to have the rope launcher and just use it almost exclusively to move horizontally, not vertically. I’m super excited I gave Assassin’s Creed another shot since this year’s entry was simply fantastic.

4. Super Mario Maker (Wii U – Exclusive) – What a goddam delight. Being a kid growing up in the mid 80s through mid-90s meant playing a LOT of Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, and Super Mario World. These were the games that created and popularized the 2D platformer and remain the gold standard by which their contemporary peers and modern takes on the genre and judged. Nintendo even realized this by going back to the well for the Wii with New Super Mario Brothers, a 2d platformer that updated the graphics and physics to use more modern hardware. Super Mario Maker gives you the tools to make the Mario levels you always dreamed about from any of those games, limited mostly by your own creativity. The nostalgia hit is strong, but what’s even more impressive is how a game that’s basically a toolset for level creation feels so friendly and intuitive. This is partly thanks to the shared language of Mario that most people coming to the game have, and partly because such simple but clever design existed in the original games to guide us. See a walking mushroom thing, learn you can jump, jump on walking mushroom thing. Hit block, thing comes out of block, get thing, become an improved version of yourself. Recent updates even started to address some initial gripes, like the lack of checkpoints and the inauthentic behavior of power-ups – put a mushroom in a block, it stayed a mushroom instead of morphing into a fire flower if you were already Super Mario – and made baby steps to fixing the game’s biggest problem, which is discovery of user-created levels. Further attention to that and the ability to string together your own created levels into coherent worlds are exciting propositions for the future. In the meantime, I’m going to play some random levels which could range from deus ex Machina self-playing creations to nightmarishly difficult puzzles that have sprung from the minds of people like me who grew up with these games. OF any game on this year’s Top 20, Super Mario Maker probably has the most staying power.

3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4) – The Witcher was a damn near impenetrable PC game with deep systems, complicated combat, and colorful NPC interaction in a low-fantasy setting. The Witcher 2 was a damn near impenetrable PC and console game with deep systems, complicated combat, and colorful NPC interaction in a low-fantasy setting that was improved by impressive post-launch support. Care to guess what makes up the bones of The Witcher 3? What sets The Witcher 3 apart from its predecessors is a more open world, deeper sense of identity in the places you visit, and more accessible combat to compliment the deep and well-written quests. Also, the game is friggin’ gorgeous on whatever system you choose to play it on – I don’t remember sitting and looking at sunsets or weather effects in a game for as long as I have with The Witcher 3. After 30 or so hours into the game, I’m nowhere near completing it but have enjoyed all my time with it, and don’t see that changing even through what I know is a laborious end game. I also don’t feel like I have a good feel for some of the systems, like weapon and armor crafting and use of runes, but I’ll get the hang of it…or won’t and will continue to play as I have been for 30 hours. Finally – there’s a card collecting and battling mini-game named Gwent. I’d be happy with a Gwent spinoff. Please let them make a Gwent spinoff…after I’ve finished the full game.

2. Fallout 4 (Xbox One and PS4) – That’s right, I’ve played 30 and 20 hours on the respective consoles of this one game, and those versions are technically inferior to the PC version I plan to pick up in a year or so once the mod community has really hit its stride and the game’s part of a Steam sale for an obnoxiously low price. If you look even a little bit, you’ll see criticism that boils down to “Fallout 4 is “more Fallout” in the vein of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, but with worse dialogue options and a confusing settlement building system.” My response to that is “Yes, but I LOVED Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and the settlement stuff is engaging enough to dip my toe into messing around with this new thing.” So call it Fallout More if you want, but when I wanted more Fallout, that’s not a problem. I will admit, Boston (Or The Commonwealth as it’s known in game) is more boring to me that the Capitol Wasteland of Fallout 3 or the promise of the New Vegas Strip. However, the time and place that I was in while wandering the Capital Wasteland, both in game and metaphorically during Fallout 3’s heyday is squarely in the past. I don’t think many places could complete with the glitz of the Strip of the many iconic places found in DC proper. Boston has a golden dome I think is Faneuil Hall, and a The Old North Church, which I couldn’t pick out of a lineup of Old Directional Churches. They did, however, recreate Boston’s greatest landmark, complete with two people sitting at the end of the famous bar – one in a postman’s outfit. There’s also Fenway, a.k.a. Diamond City, where I helped repaint the Great Green Wall. I’m still playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I’ll continue to do the same with Fallout 4 for many years.

1. Her Story (PC) – In order to understand what I loved about Her Story, I need to explain the basic mechanics of the game and relate an anecdote I discovered thanks to Austin Walker of Giant Bomb. Her Story is a game that replicates the interface of a 90s database, with a poor search functionality. This database serves up 5 video clips at a time, ranging in duration from 4 or 5 seconds to a few minutes. They’re all of a woman, speaking to an unseen police interrogator. There are 200+ clips to find and piece together the story of what’s happened to this woman and why she’s being questioned, using only this limited search feature and the ability to tag clips with keywords of your own. There is no definitive grand reveal about the truth of the woman’s story or what really happened. On the Steam forums, a user posted a topic stating that he or she realized what you were supposed to do – look for the clips for information – but was unsure of what to do next. Another user replied “It’s up to you to decide when you’re satisfied with the information you’ve found.” The response from the original poster was an unintentionally amazing simple question: “how do I decide when i am satisfied?”  

How do I decide when I am satisfied?  

That’s the real question around any work of art, isn’t it? Did I enjoy this thing and why? Did I not and why not? How do these things make me feel about myself or the world around me? Was it a fun way to kill a few hours? Did it evoke a powerful response, positively or negatively? Her Story took me 3-4 hours to play through, seeing all the video clips and taking notes on what I saw, and heard, and thought. But I keep thinking about it and questioning my own conclusions and interpretations of an intentionally ambiguous story. It’s a story told and sold well by a solitary actress, Viva Seifert, and an experience I simply can’t shake. It’s without a doubt my favorite game of 2015, a very satisfying year overall.

[matthoerig]

Almost Game of the Year 2015

This is the year I’m going to write less about my year in games. So here’s a bunch of rambling about the games that didn’t make my top 20 list, which is looking like it’ll clock in around 3200 words. Enjoy!

 Mobile Games!

Phones and tablets are great. They provide the perfect opportunity for games that can be played in bite-sized chunks but hide more depth and replayability that you might expect. It’s probably unfair to segregate them from console and PC games since it feels like it ghetto-izes experiences that possibly couldn’t be had on a console due to input methods and take different approaches to the commercial side of games in what is becoming the largest segment of the industry by player count. These are the games that I played this year, will probably continue to play next year, and can’t imagine heading to the bathroom without. This is an unordered list…

…except for Marvel Puzzle Quest. This wasn’t released in 2015, but this was the year I started playing. I’ve played at least one match for every day for 261 straight days. I’ve improved my Marvel roster to the point where I can routinely complete all of the Deadpool daily quests in order to pick up a new cover to improve my roster even more, so I can play more, so I can earn more character covers to improve my roster…it’s a REAL satisfying loop. The match three gameplay common from Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga is used to power up superhero powers to attack your opponents. I’ve never been into match 3 games, but the Marvel hooks in this game keep me playing and looking forward to seeing who gets added to the roster next for me to chase obsessively. If I were going to name a mobile game of the year, this would be it for 2015, the odds-on favorite for 2016, and the leading contender for 2017.

Marvel Puzzle Quest was a bit of a gateway drug for match 3 games, and another licensed property snuck in the door at the end of the year with Magic Puzzle Quest. The basics of match 3 remain, but a Magic: The Gathering layer speaks to the huge nerd in me that played a ton of that game in high school. Completing gem matches adds to your mana pool, which you use to cast creatures and spells from a hand that requires more active management and strategy than Marvel’s power management. IF this is supported as well as Marvel has been, I can see myself continuing to play. IF they don’t add more single player content and character variations, I might fall off rather quickly.

Star Wars released a new movie this year, maybe you’ve heard? There was a ton of merchandise released for it, including two mobile games I spent some time with. Star Wars Uprising is a mobile role playing game that had some interesting ideas, but presented its mechanics and systems in such an opaque way that I gave up trying to understand them and haven’t looked back. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is a Star Wars skin placed over the game play and systems used in the mobile behemoth Hero’s Charge. Game play is simple turn-based button presses to fire powers to attack, buff, or debuff others in the service of gaining more character shards to unlock more characters, or more gear to improve your existing characters. It’s not a great game, but it’s a great way to kill a few minutes with some Star Wars flavored stuff on your phone.

The three games I played quite a bit of above I continued playing to the detriment of some other good games: Alphabear is a fantastic little word game and probably the smartest of the games I played on mobile. Card Crawl uses a playing card aesthetic to present a challenging, dynamic dungeon crawling experience, which has been updated several times since I last played to add more depth. The Room 3 continues the legacy of The Room and The Room 2 with great little touch-based puzzles on iPad. Downwell and Subterfuge are games I’ve downloaded and played a few minutes of before going back to Marvel Puzzle Quest, and I need to remedy this in 2016.

 Episodic Games

Since Telltale released The Walking Dead, I’ve found myself in a bit of a Catch-22 with episodic games: the episodes are generally short enough that each one would be a good 2-3 hour experience and way to take a break from bigger, more involved experiences, but the cliff hanger nature of each episode makes me want to wait until a complete season or collection is released so I don’t find myself waiting months to see what happens next. Given Telltale’s dominance of the genre and…unpredictable…release schedule, I find myself gravitating to the “wait and binge” method of playing. This means I only played the first episode of Game of Thrones and have five more to play, and waited completely on Tales From the Borderlands. Those two Telltale games are joined by Ubisoft’s Life is Strange, an episodic tale of growing up with time shifting sci-fi powers. I can and probably will finish all of these off in a weekend, and my expectations are high for Life is Strange and Tales From the Borderlands based on word of mouth.  

[matthoerig]

The Force Awakens

I’m not going to go out of my way to post spoilers for The Force Awakens, but in writing about my reaction to it, I’m probably going to give away some major plot points or enough information to infer events of the film. You’ve been warned.

No, seriously, turn back now. I’m going to write freely. 

Last warning. 

I walked out of The Force Awakens around 12:30 this afternoon, having seen a 10:00 am showing at the Regal Cinemas in downtown Seattle. The theater is nice enough but not as swanky as the Cinemark, and it’s not the fancy 70mm IMAX screen at Pacific Science Center which is the “true” way to see the movie if you’re into being that elitist. Which I sometimes am. But this place had tickets available on-line on a whim on Wednesday night for this weekend and is a quick walk from home - I pass it on my walk home from the office in the evenings. The early buzz from people like Patton Oswalt convinced me this was something I needed to see sooner rather than later. 

I walked out of The Force Awakens bought into Star Wars like I haven’t been in 20 years or more. I remember watching the original movie on VHS over and over and over, thanks to my Aunt Phyllis taping it off of HBO and passing it along to my dad. It’s a miracle I didn’t wear out the tape. Just last weekend, I was texting with my best friend and reminisced about the time we spent waiting in line for a midnight showing of The Phantom Menace in our small Ohio hometown. While neither of us will ever admit it, we walked out of that having had a good time and liking the movie. We saw it again that weekend, or at least I did.

I walked out of The Force Awakens, came home, and literally bought back into Star Wars. I’m impatiently waiting on a BB-8 droid from the Apple store. A toy store in Virginia, via Amazon, is sending me Lego versions of Poe Dameron’s X-Wing and Kylo Ren’s command shuttle. Aftermath, a novel published this year by Chuck Wendig, is on my Kindle. And I just finished watching the premier episode from a few years ago of Star Wars Rebels, which a trusted friend and several internet writers had said was very good. Dark Forces, TIE Fighter, and Knights of the Old Republic are installed on my PC; I”m even feeling the pull to get back into The Old Republic. 

I spent an hour or two trading thoughts on the new movie and the path for the next two with the former roommate of a friend from home via Facebook message. She and I barely knew each other through a shared friend (shared GWAR concert attendance notwithstanding), but the pull to talk about this movie was so strong it was easy to go from casually, occasionally liking each other’s jokes or political sentiments on Facebook to honestly and earnestly geeking about a franchise I didn’t know I cared about anymore. I didn’t know I could care about it after the Special Editions and so many side stories and Han shooting second. 

I can already see the backlash forming, because nerd culture is predictable and tends to eat its own. The current conventional wisdom seems to be “Well, it’s good, but not great,” said in the same sniveling tone you would use to read a two and a half star Yelp review of a pretty good local restaurant from someone whose entree was just a bit on the lukewarm side and not presented with the same je ne sais quoi I’ve come to expect from...”  and on and on.

Yes, the story told in The Force Awakens is very familiar to people who love Star Wars. You’ll recognize story beats and moments and call backs and call outs. But in the moment, you’ll laugh and you’ll smile and you’ll tear up. And then, hopefully, you’ll remember that the core of Star Wars is a Hero’s Journey myth that is told over and over again in Westerns and space operas and high fantasy and low fantasy...well, okay, low fantasy as we know it now would see Luke Skywalker beheaded in the first hour and the focus shift to some third-born son of House Kenobi, but it’s still the hero’s path. And The Force Awakens does everything it needs to do to acknowledge the story that came before, the movie that came before, and set us up for two more movies with new characters treading ground that will undoubtedly feel familiar, but new and fresh and invigorating. 

There’s family, and love, and growth and betrayal and earnestness in life. Add in something called The Force, and you have a Star Wars movie. The Force Awakens is a Star Wars movie, and I can’t wait for Episode VIII and the side stories Disney/LucasArts are creating. 

[matthoerig]

I Can’t Drive

Electronic Arts has a service called EA Access available on the Xbox One. For a monthly or annual fee, you’re granted early access to EA games for ten hours the weekend prior to release, a discount on digital EA purchases from full games to DLC to microtransactions, and “free” access to the EA Vault. This means you can download and play a number of EA games with no restriction as long as you maintain your EA Access subscription. For me, this service makes sense because I play a lot of EA games. I had planned for this piece to be a review or some early impressions of today’s release Need for Speed. Instead, I spent a few hours with the game over the weekend and came to the conclusion that we may have reached a point where modern driving games just aren’t for me. 

In my two or so hours with Need For Speed, I came to the conclusion that I was going to invoke Wolpaw’s Law to say definitively that Need for Speed isn’t a very good game. Wolpaw’s Law was coined by former game reviewer and current game writer at Valve and has two main components: an amazing ending to a bad game doesn’t redeem everything that came before it, and if a reviewer played a terrible game to completion instead of stopping after realizing it was terrible, the review wouldn’t be different. In my short time with the game, I was disconnected from the game and dumped to the main menu three times and couldn’t adjust the brightness to account for the fact that the game is almost completely at night. The game never pauses while in menus, which makes navigating a pain in the ass and actively encourages you to teleport to places in an open world driving game instead of driving through the open world. The game has a few things going for it, such as terrible but occasionally terribly entertaining FMV sequences, but those tell a milquetoast story focused on characters who remind me of the people I spent 4 years at a public university trying to avoid standing next to at a party. 

Modern games in popular genres have a control language that transcends individual titles and makes most games accessible to people who have a passing familiarity with that genre. Ever since Call of Duty 4, modern shooters can be broken down into their most base mechanics as “left trigger to aim, right trigger to shoot.” Driving games have a similar shorthand; left trigger to break, right trigger to go really fast, probably a button press for an emergency brake and maybe another for a some kind of boost mechanic.  Need for Speed is no different, but where I expected it to set itself apart was in some streamlined handling customization options. While games like the Forza series or Gran Turismo cater to car fetishists who want micro-levels of control over a car’s setup, I don’t know what a read differential is nor do I care to know. Need for Speed offers a simple Drift/Grip bar that allows you to tune your ride for more drifting or a tighter grip on the road, and some submenus if you want to want to go into a little more detail. I was pretty sure I favored a grippier set-up and completed four or five of the early races. Then came trouble. 

MY next event was a drift competition. I failed miserably, probably because my car was set up with the handling slider set almost all the way to “Grip.” I went back to my garage, changed it to total Drift, and replayed the mission. My goal was to finish in first or second place in this timed competition. I finished 5th out of 6 competitors. I was beaten by one AI racer who I had accidentally forced off the course and who I saw spinning her tires while driving into a wall trying to rejoin the course on two subsequent laps. Two. Subsequent. Laps. I tried four or five more times, and eventually improved to where I was consistently finishing third...and well behind 2nd place by scores like 12,000 points to 2500. I came to the conclusion I hadn’t improved, but the rubberbanding AI had simply backed off all the other competitors and told me to just perform at a basic level of competency for someone who had held a controller and played a racing game in the last twenty years. I failed.

I HAVE played racing games before. I loved Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit and Need for Speed: High Stakes for the original Playstation. The Xbox 360 version of Hot Pursuit was a damn fun cops and robbers racing game with a fun open world set-up that I probably love just as much for introducing me to Lupe Fiasco. And I played a TON of Burnout Paradise for the Playstation 3, bought it super cheap on a Steam sale for PC and plan on it being the test case for my Steam controller and living room PC this week AND bought it for the Xbox 360 this year based on just the rumor that it would be playable on the Xbox One when backwards compatibility is rolled out in November. 

If I’m being honest with myself, I have a darker history with racing games than I want to admit. While I’ve gotten into F1 racing in recent years, the games from Codemasters remain inscrutable to me. I’m barely able to pass the tutorial phase where you’re assigned to a real-world F1 racing team for career mode, and usually end up with perennial back markers like Marussia or Force India. I’m almost entirely unable to navigate a turn of any serious degree, and this carries over to the aforementioned Forza series, where I play with most assists turned on. Hell, I even have most assists turned on when playing the more forgiving, less simulation focused Forza Horizon series. And I can feel the car slowing down when I need it to go faster, because if it didn’t try to discourage me from cutting a small corner on a roundabout, it would also let me drive headfirst into a turn at speed with such force that it’s wonder my driver avatar isn’t dead from a heart attack before his head would have gone through the windshield and into a wall.

There’s a thrill to the feeling of going faster than you should. I think that’s why I love Burnout Paradise; it gives me that feeling married with the sense that I’m doing so while staying in control. I will never get the chance to pilot a multi-million dollar F1 car, but I wish I could feel like I knew what I was doing when chasing that feeling with a game controller. Something about the language and execution of racing games has escaped me. Thanks to EA Access, I was able to discover this before spending another $60 to be reminded of it again. At least I got to see some first person FMV fist-bumps.     

[matthoerig]

Law and Order Character Rankings, Day 1: A Two-For

Yesterday’s passing of Fred Thompson led me to dash off a Facebook post ranking the Law and Order District Attorneys. MY friend Kyle and I had a bit of a back and forth about ranking every Law and Order character (Mothership Show Only) by class, and I’ve decided I”m going to do just that during my month of consistent writing. While the DA list is finalized and just needs the explanation, I”m starting with two lists of two characters only: state-utilized shrinks and the 27th Precinct leadership lieutenant. While each category only has two names, ranking two people is harder than it looks when both are good in their role. Each list will be presented in ascending order so as to build drama when we move from two person lists to slates of ADAs and detectives that make the GOP debate stage look roomy.

The Shrinks

2. Dr. Emile Skoda: Coming in second on a two person list is no shame, Dr Skoda. While each characer is going to be judged on their merits, it’s impossible to not compare what Skoda brought to the show with his predecessor, Elizabeth Olivet, and the answer is: comparatively little. Skoda was an expert witness and occasional profiler, and occasionally disagreed with the police and DAs on case matters. Nothing against the good doctor, but he’s just not as varied or interesting as our number 1 head shrinker...

1. Elizabeth Olivet: Elizabeth Olivet was far more combative with the police and DAs, and her adovacy for treatment over incarceration let the show take a look at (but rarely a stand on) issues of the prison system as a means of rehabilitation vs punishment. She was introduced at a pivotal time in the sow’s history - after the poorly rated first season - and helped build detective Mike Logan into the character he was as his grief counselor. The affair from season 2 was brought up again almost 15 years later as a testament to the longevity of the series and dedication to continuity. Oh, and she was permanently damaged herself by a sexual assault while trying to implicate a rapey gynecologist who the police and DA couldn’t convict otherwise, leading to her having incredible empathy for victims of sexual assault where the largely male police and DAs sometimes fell back on victim blaming when a case was too hard to make initially. Skoda’s a good character; Olivet was a deeper character.

27th Precinct Leadership

2. Lieutenant Anita Van Buren

1. Captain Donald Cragen: Longevity is important, but Lt. Van Buren is hurt by the fact that her storylines usually felt tacked on or superfluous. Both Van Buren and Captain Cragen were capable leaders who made sure the 27th ran efficiently and closed cases, so there’s no question of competency. When Cragen became part of a story, it was organic due to his past involvement with a suspect or former officer (one and the same in one notable case), or a prior series of actions during his younger days. Van Buren’s notable moments were her mugging and killing of the suspects, her discrimination suit against the department, her cancer arc from the final season, and the excellent “ Myth of Fingerprints” episode that sees her question her whole career. Of those four, only the later was organic in the context of the police procedural format. The mugging episode isn’t bad, but puts the focus squarely on a character where the series excelled when the characters came to life through their work. The discrimination suit storyline always had the potential to be interesting and take a hard look at the politics of promotions and policing, but was mostly relegated to throwaway scenes in an era where the series tried to hard to give the procedural show a bit of a serial feel with continuing arcs for Van Buren and Lenny Briscoe. Van Buren’s cancer arc in the final season was a low point of a low season, seemingly used to provide a few asides about medical marijuana and a potential easy out if contracts needed to be cut for Season 21.  

[matthoerig]

Ruthless Mediocrity

Annualized video game franchises always - ALWAYS - struggle with the transition to new consoles. The change means new hardware, possibly new toolsets for the developers, and sky high expectations from an entrenched player base. The WWE 2k fanchise is no exception, and last year’s game, WWE 2k15 struggled to meet expectations. Character models were improved for some marquee Superstars but looked poor compared to past years and prior console generations for others, controls remained sluggish, and many player creation tools were removed. This year’s game looks a bit better and has returned some, but not all, of the removed creation tools, but still suffers in key ways. WWE 2k16 struggles mechanically, in key design areas, and most surprisingly, in presentation. 

WWE 2k16′s mechanical issues are probably the least surprising but most frustrating part of the experience. The main culprit is the inconsistent and frustratingly difficult reversal system, which remains largely unchanged from prior years. Players are prompted to hit RT or R2 to reverse an opponent’s strike or grapple, but the window to do so is amazingly small and seemingly inconsistently applied. The prompt to hit the button is clear enough above the player’s head, and feedback comes in one of three ways: a reversal animation occurs or it doesn’t and “Too Fast” or “Too Slow” appears above the player’s head to provide some context for why. After playing a dozen or so matches with multiple characters and fiddling with various menu settings to adjust the timing of the window, I still have no feel for why I fail on more than 50% of my reversal attempts. Hitting the key as soon as the prompt appears results in “Too Slow” as often as it does “Too Fast.” I’d be more willing to write this off as me being a poor player if I hadn’t had a similar experience with basic inputs. Using the same string of inputs with the characters in the same state and position frequently resulted in vastly different, and often unintended actions, by my character. Attempting to suplex my opponent from a standing grapple had a seemingly equal chance of resulting in a suplex, submission hold, or body slam. This carries over into specialty match types; I understand the need for contextual inputs in a complex game but I’m certain I never hit the button that would have me clothesline a ladder while my opponent is on the ground outside and victory hangs above that ladder. 

I wish the mechanical shortcomings, the same as they have been in previous Yukes-developed WWE games, were the strongest reason to say this is a bad game. Unfortunately, the game has two major design flaws that highlight the questionable focus the team had in making this game. The reversal system, written about at length above, is limited for the first time in series history. Each player has a set numbr of reversals they can use per match, although this number slowly replenishes over the course of a match. This isn’t a bad idea, but combined with the inconsistency of the system it supports, it’s almost completely useless. Failed reversals thankfully do not deplete your reversal pool, but the feature’s inclusion makes me wonder if the game was ever play tested by anyone from outside the development team to see if it actually added the strategic thinking it was seemingly meant to inspire in players. 

My second design complaint is the more sinister of the two and focuses on the MyCareer mode. Career modes in sports games can give a real sense of triumph and accomplishment; you start at the bottom of a ladder and progress your way up to the big club and from bench warmer to MVP. Previous WWE games have been the same, moving from development territory NXT to the major shows as a mid-carder and eventually headlining Wrestlemania. Part of making this rewarding is starting off weak and improving your character but this year features an optional $10 “Kick Start” microtransaction to raise your created character's stats to 80 overall immediately. For context, you start with an overall rating in the mid 60s, and struggle to be competitive in your early matches. For further context, even the worst of the games roster is rated at 80 or higher, with one or two exceptions in the roster of over 90 different superstars. This struggle means it’s very difficult to earn the points needed to improve your character to be more competitive. There’s no nice way to say this - the whole thing feels gross and exploitative. I don’t know how to offer microtransactions in a career mode and let the booster-free progression feel meaningful, but WWE 2k16 has found a way to do exactly the opposite and make me feel like I have to spend extra money to have an enjoyable experience. 

Finally and just as disappointing is how WWE 2k16 fails in its presentation, which is exacerbated by how good the WWE is at presenting its content otherwise. The 2k Showcase mode that highlights an era or a particular Superstar’s career returns for the  4th year. After focusing on the Attitude Era (WWE 13), Wrestlemania (WWE 2k14), and specific rivalries like John Cena vs CM Punk and HHH vs Shawn Michaels (WWE 2k15), this year focuses on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. The problem is that I spent my time with mode with a feeling of déjà vu, not nostalgia. The mode opens as you might expect, with Austin’s win at the 1996 Survivor Series and the famous post-mach promo that declared “Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!” and spawned the Stone Cold phenomenon. Without double checking, I’m almost sure I’ve played this match before in WWE 13′s Attitude Era mode. And I’m sure I played some of Austin’s biggest Wrestlemania matches in WWE 2k14. And I KNOW I can simply watch these moments on the WWE Network either by looking fr the matches themselves or in a seemingly endless number of repackagings of the Attitude Era or the Monday Night Wars, aka the modern apex of professional wrestling’s popularity. For fans of wrestling, the continued reliance on nostalgia highlights the lows of the current product and the creative bankruptcy on display weekly. Also a major disappointment is the massive roster, which includes over 90 characters but has some major padding; there are three different versions each of Sting and the Undertaker, multiple “Triple H” characters and yet another separate “Hunter Hearst Helmsley” and five - yes, FIVE - different Steve Austin characters. However, there was no way to include Charlotte Fair, the current Divas champion, or Becky Lynch or Sasha Banks. These three have been the major focus of a “Divas revolution” story line designed to take advantage their incredible work, both in the ring and as charactersm in NXT. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that failing to include Sasha Banks means the game is missing the WWE’s best performer. 2k has, disappointingly, said the trio will “never” be available as proper characters, meaning fans need to rely on the admittedly robust character creation tools and community download features. Still, those three deserve better.

The same can be said for fans of pro wrestling and wrestling games. Yukes has made small feints towards an interesting overhaul of the game; MyCareer grades matches on how well they’re performed beyond winning and losing by taking into account move variety and swings in momentum. This shows a bit of promise towards treating wrestling as the spectacle it is, with predetermined outcomes and where you’re graded on how well you perform and entertain a crowd and interact with your opponent/performance partner in the context of that predetermined outcome. Instead, I look forward to WWE 2k17, featuring the riveting story of Recently Resigned Legend Du Jour and Era We Can’t Move Past 2.0. WWE 2k16 remains more of the tepid same, which is exactly what weekly viewers of WWE RAW are used to seeing on their screens.     

[matthoerig]

E3 2015 Roundup

After the video game industry’s biggest week of the year, these are my semi-collected, semi-coherent thoughts on the surprises, announcements, reveals, and moments of E3. 

* Bethesda and EA are both attempting to get some of Blizzard’s Hearthstone money by announcing collectible card games sent in the Elder Scrolls and Star Wars universes, respectively. These announcements make sense, but I have my doubts. Hearthstone has succeeded due to its balance and ethical implementation of free-to-play mechanics, allowing enjoyment of almost everything the game has to offer with no need to spend real money. EA has struggled to implement free-to-play in a way that doesn’t completely alienate consumers, but has the Star Wars universe license that will certainly draw interest. Bethesda has less of a track record to look at with free-to-play, but I also don’t think The Elder Scrolls universe is as much as of a native draw as Star Wars. That said, I had zero connection to or interest in World of Warcraft, but Hearthstone was great enough on its own to become a staple of my gaming routine. 

* Nintendo’s “digital event” they held in lieu of a traditional press conference was fantastic, at least in terms of style. Muppet versions (yes, Henson workshop made puppets) of Mr Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime, and Miyamoto brought a kind of charm that made up for a lack of thrilling announcements. They presented enough games that were interesting to me like StarFox, Fire Emblem Fates, Paper Mario Paper Jam, and even a new Mario Tennis entry, but little that really seemed to have system-selling resonance. The exception was Super Mario Maker, which looks to be pure fantastical magic. The presentation they gave was also amazing, having Miyamoto present the original paper design concepts and maps for Super Mario Brothers. 

* The biggest surprise was Microsoft’s backtracking on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility for the Xbox One. I don’t think it’s fair to say this is a move made out of desperation, but they’re rapidly falling way behind Sony in terms of hardware sales for this generation and need to find a way to convince the millions of 360 owners who haven’t upgraded to Xbox One to do so. Considering that at the launch of the Xbox One the former head of Xbox referred to backwards compatibility as “backwards thinking,” this is a major shift. It’s also a major, although smart, investment of resources on Microsoft’s part, as they’re not emulating individual games, but emulating the 360 operating system so the games are played “natively” on the Xbox One. It’s a smart approach that also allows the One console to see the emulator as a “game” and preserve features like Twitch broadcasting, screenshots, chat, etc. 

* Ubisoft’s press conference is always a bit of a beautiful mess. Aisha Tyler’s a great choice for host and I think her enthusiasm is genuine. But other aspects of their presentation are rough. Even more concerning is no gameplay demo of this year’s Assassin’s Creed. Given how terrible AC: Unity was technically and stale it was in design, they need to show something that says “We’ve learned and this game isn’t garbage!”

* The best developing trend is announcing that things you’re showing off for the first time will be available this year. Fallout 4 is the big example here, but StarFox was debuted the same way, and the Gears of War remake for Xbox One took a similar approach with their beta being available shortly after the Microsoft press conference. 

* Finally, I’m unbelievably, indescribably excited for Fallout 4 and thrilled it will be out this year. However, Fallout 3 and New Vegas weren’t without considerable technical issues, and Bethesda is showing off some pretty cool but complicated features with their deep crafting system and base/outpost building system. I hope the whole game doesn’t fall over under the weight of new additions. 

I’ve only scratched the surface of great stuff announced or shown this year, and didn’t touch virtual reality or augmented reality at all. I think those have tremendous potential and can’t wait to try them, but you have to experience them; even Microsoft’s great Hololens demo doesn’t give the full picture of how amazing these technologies are. 

[matthoerig]

Hardline’s Soft Launch

At the end of last year, I listed Battlefield Hardline as one of my most anticipated games for 2015. It wasn’t because I’m a huge fan of the Battlefield series, but because Hardline seemed like such a bad idea on multiple fronts that I was fascinated by how it would launch, both technically and socially. 

If you’re not familiar with Battlefield Hardline, it’s the latest entry in a first-person shooter series published by Electronic Arts that’s been heavily maligned in recent years. Known and mostly loved for it’s massive multiplayer scale, the franchise took a major hit with the broken release of 2013′s Battlefield 4. Server issues made the game nearly unplayable online, and those issues which surfaced on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 continued on the Day One launch of Battlefield 4 with the PS4 and Xbox One. Given other EA launch problems with online experiences (SIm City) and core gameplay (NBA Live), Battlefield 4 was another high profile failure for one of gaming’s biggest publishers. 

E3 2014 saw the announcement of Battlefield Hardline and the simultaneous release of an open beta for the game, set to launch in late 2014. Reactions were not kind on multiple fronts: player counts for multiplayer matches were smaller than previous games and many walked away from the beta unimpressed and comparing it to a Battlefield 4 mod, questioning its need to exist as a separate, full retail product. Also seemingly problematic was the single player mode’s conceit, presented as a gritty cop story told episodically and glamorizing police acting on their own. While one outlet pressed the developer, Visceral Games, on this approach in the shadow of a live Los Angeles car chase, no one could anticipate the focus on policing that would follow.

Hardline’s launch was delayed due to the poor reception of the open beta, but the fall and winter of 2014/2015 would present new challenges to launching a story of cops taking the law into their own hands. Three separate incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City would spark a national conversation on topics including race, income inequality, and police power and outfitting. Suddenly, the idea of publishing a game that glorified heavily armed police officers taking a “shoot first and ask questions later” attitude seemed, at best, tone deaf to legitimate concerns of citizens and police forces alike. Following the game’s delay, a major re-unveiling took place at The Game Awards on December 5, 2014, following weeks of protests and reprisals due to grand jury inaction in the Ferguson and New York City cases. 

With the launch of Hardline days away, it appears EA can’t buy a PR break. A Department of Justice investigation was released recently that found widespread, embedded, institutionalized racism in the Ferguson police and court systems and several officers have been fired or resigned, including their former chief of police. IF EA was counting on stories like this to be “old news” for the Hardline launch, they clearly miscalculated. 

While it’s nearly impossible to separate the content of the single player narrative from the time in which it’s released, a weekend preview of the game for EA Access subscribers has me hopeful and intrigued for multiple reasons. With only the Prologue and Episode 1 of the single player campaign available, it’s impossible to fully judge the story in the context of recent national events. At the outset of the game, you are shown the player character, Detective Nicholas Mendoza, on a bus in an orange jumpsuit being moved as a prison transfer, and it’s clearly not part of undercover operation based on the scene’s dialogue. Other gameplay moments lead me to believe it’s just as likely this is a flash-forward to a midpoint of the game where Mendoza has been framed by a dirty (or dirtier?) former partner. Another option is that you, as Mendoza, “take the law into your own hands,” “cross the line,” execute many other bad cliches from police dramas, and are punished at the end for your misdeeds. I think these are both interesting options, but not the reason I’m more excited for Hardline than I was a week ago.

If nothing else, a few hours with Hardline’s single player storyline has given me hope for a police procedural video game. You’re presented with the option to “freeze” criminals by flashing your badge and arresting them, and this rewards you with more XP than simply taking them out with a stealth takedown or taser shot. Scanning your environment for evidence helps build case files; while this doesn't seem as deep or critical to game play as La Noire’s evidence collecting was it’s a sign that story based games have room for slower, more investigative moments. 

Battlefield Hardline will be judged harshly on its technical and story merits for EA’s past technical sins and as a consequence of the time in which it’s being released. There’s no way to know how the online experience or the story will be received by the population until Tuesday’s launch, but based on the available preview, Hardline is an occasionally beautifully looking game with interesting mechanical ideas. It’s going to be so much more or less than that, and I can’t wait to find out on which side it falls.