While there were
many excellent games that game out over the past year, not every one
of them lives up. We've got through my list of Highlights for the
year, and just as always we too must go through the disappointments
of the year in kind.
Every year, I
usually find at least one or two games that end up on both lists for
different reasons. In compiling this year's collection, I noticed
that this happened with far, far more games than usual, for a variety
of different reasons.
As usual, just
because a game appears on this list doesn't necessarily mean it's
bad. All it means is that there are significant aspects of it that I
feel detract from the overall whole. Further, this list is presented
in a completely random order.
Without further ado,
the disappointments of 2019 are:
While I can
certainly heap praise on this game after playing it with my buddy,
Acharky, there's no way I couldn't just let it go without addressing
the elephant in the room.
It was certainly
surreal to see the Guardians of the Galaxy as the first set of
playable characters, but that is where my appreciation of the MCU's
influence comes to an abrupt and sudden end. To be blunt, I am tired
of every single Marvel crossover product being some variant of the
quest to obtain the Infinity Stones, culminating in some final
confrontation against Thanos, Ultron or whatever big bad happens to
be the primary villain of the MCU. I understand that it has to be
this way, because that's just what in the popular zeitgeist, but the
sheer homogeneity and over-saturation is starting to get to me.
But more than that,
Ultimate Alliance 3 felt... way too familiar. The last UA game came
out way back in September of 2009, nearly a full decade prior to The
Black Order's release in June. We've learned much about how to design
video games in the years since, even if the specific niche of
4-player online co-op games. I find it hard to believe that we can't
do more than just a series of linear corridors filled with enemies
and rudimentary puzzles.
There's also a sheer
lack of quality of life features like how heroes outside the chosen
party of four just don't gain experience in a game with a 36 playable
character cast just isn't acceptable anymore. I shouldn't have to
grind up another character just because I want to try something new.
In terms of online
play, Acharky had an issue where because I was the host player, and 3
of our 4 party members were on my profile, he wasn't able to
dynamically swap characters. If his was knocked out, he might as well
go grab a sandwich while I use the other 3 to either clean up or die.
This is actually a regression from Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2, where
we never had this problem.
Ultimate Alliance 3
isn't a bad game, but I just expect so much more at this point.
Far Cry: New Dawn
After the god awful Far Cry 5, this sequel's mere existence disappoints me.
Crash Team Racing:
Nitro Fueled
If you weren't
following what was going on with Crash Team Racing post-release,
you'll probably be surprised that this is on the list after I gave it
so much praise in my highlights post.
I stand behind those
words, but I can't abide by how Activision has treated it. At first,
I was excited about the various Grand Prix events, which allowed
players to grind challenges throughout the month in order to unlock
cosmetic items. Seeing Spyro join the ranks of playable characters
through one of these Grands Prix was like a dream come true for me.
As more of them were
announced, I began to shift my opinion. Specifically, I was getting
tired and worn down trying to keep up with them while also getting
enough free time available to play other games and deal with the
issues that crop up in daily life. Weak as I am, I even caved and
bought a few packs of “Wumpa Coins” to pay for some of the
cosmetics I wanted, which became available for purchase after the
game came out, reviewers had already submitted their opinions of the
game, and the ESRB had already green-lit the box-art.
A veteran of the
Overwatch special event economy, I had begun to comprehend what was
going on: That this economy was being created to milk the current
user base, exhaust them to the point where they feel compelled to
purchase enough Wumpa Coins to keep up with the items being released
during the Grands Prix.
It's hard to state
how difficult it is to swallow that one's own nostalgia is being
weaponized against them, but thanks the exact state I found myself
in, and so I cut myself off from it all and just gave up on all
future Grand Prix events.
I'll likely play
Crash Team Racing again, but given how far this version has fallen
it's hard to recommend it to people the way I want to.
Wolfenstein:
Youngblood
As a shooter, I had
fun playing Wolfenstein: Youngblood. While there isn't much besides
the wide-open Arkane Studios-designed levels and RPG systems
separating it from another cooperative first-person shooter, this was
a competently designed one of those.
The problem comes
from several crucial design decisions. One of them being that even
when playing single-player (Note: I still needed to be connected to
their servers), with an AI controlled partner, I wasn't able to pause
the game. If I ever wanted to take a break, I had to hope I was in an
area where no enemies could get to me, or just quit the game
otherwise. Yet, because the game doesn't have checkpoints, every time
the other Blazkowicz sister (read: The idiot AI) used up all of our
shared lives, or quit the game, I was sent back to the beginning of
whatever section was the most recent one to load. Losing thirty
minutes worth of progress to a game over was not uncommon.
On top of that,
being an always online game, with daily quests and a progression
system, it obviously included cosmetic items and one-time use boosts
that can be purchased with a premium currency paid for with
real-world money. That currency: Nazi Gold.... because of course it
is.
At least they didn't
have the gall to charge full price for this game.
Kingdom Hearts 3
This is going to be
hard to write about without getting heavy into spoilers, but I'll do
my best.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has
a problem where despite the seeming urgency of the plot at hand, not
much of note actually happens until the very end of the game, once
all of the Disney worlds have been completed. As a result, there's a
massive pacing issue where once the plot actually gets underway, it
goes by so quickly that events that have been building up for years
don't have the breathing room for players to feel their weight.
Beyond that, the
Disney worlds are exceptionally hit-or-miss this time around. Some of
them, like the Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Big Hero 6 worlds, do an
amazing job at remixing and working within the original source
material to create a great story that brings the best out of the
Kingdom Hearts original characters and the Disney characters.
Other worlds, like
Frozen, Tangled, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 just blatantly rehash
the story of the original movie while shoehorning some tasks
involving Sora, Donald, and Goofy that neatly section them off from
the actual story going around them. It gives off the impression that
Disney is being too precious with its IP and deciding that it doesn't
want to play ball despite being one of the companies most eager to
resell and re-brand classic fairy tales while pretending they own the
rights to them. I felt embarrassed for Nomura's sake when I saw that
there was a literal shot-for-shot remake of “Let It Go”, with
Sora interjecting with the occasional “Is that Elsa's voice!?”
and “Wow! Look at that!” in the brief pauses between stanzas
where the performer took a breath.
I'd say I expect
better, but this is Disney we're talking about. They're one of the
worst things to ever happen to IP law and this is completely normal
for them. Disappointing, but not surprising.
And if you'll
indulge me in minor spoilers: They did Kairi dirty.
Sea of Solitude
And while Sea of
Solitude does tell a story of a family going through a messy
situation through strong visual metaphors and motifs, I can't help
but feel that I've seen it all before. At the risk of sounding
callous, it felt like playing the “Sad, Artistic Indie Platformer,
Version 206”.
Having already
played the likes of Papa Y Yo, which this game strongly reminded me
of, it takes more than to impress me these days. There's nothing the
game does wrong, but nor is there anything that made it stand out.
Tom Clancy's The
Division 2
I could say I put it
on this year's list for Ubisoft's pathetic stance on politics in
games: That a game whose opening implies only gun-owners stood a
chance in the post-apocalypse, and makes the player's base of
operations the White House has no political leanings whatsoever.
However, while these facts are true, it would be disingenuous of me
to say that I had any significant emotions whatsoever on that topic
beyond finding the whole debacle hilarious.
I have no memory of
consciously dropping The Division 2. It was more that whenever I even
remotely felt the urge to launch it, I felt like there was always
another game that deserved my attention more or that I would have
more fun playing. And eventually, months later, I uninstalled it to
make space for something else in my hard drive... probably Hitman 2
after a content update.
I wish I had more to
say, but it's The Division 2. It's an Ubisoft shooter. You already
knew how you felt about that before you saw it on this list.
Magic the Gathering:
Arena
And while the
Standard play environment has been rock solid for the better part of
the year, the recent release of Throne of Eldraine, combined with the
rotation, has resulted in one deck archetype dominating all the
others, and then another different doing the same after that first
one got it's key card banned. As of the time of writing, enough cards
have been banned that the meta is starting to fall back into a
healthy place, but I cannot deny that, were it not for my Commander
format playgroup, my desire to keep playing might have been
thoroughly sapped.
With regards to
Arena specifically, it's also had its share of problems over the past
year. The first was the way it handled rotation, with the advent of
the new Historic format to allow users to play with cards that had
rotated out of Standard. The controversy game from the fact that the
Arena team decided to make Historic-only cards cost twice as many
resources to craft as regular cards. While they eventually backed
down from this change, the fact that they thought it was a good idea
at all left a sour taste in my mouth.
On top of that,
we've seen them double down some of the worst monetization trends of
the year. When the option to sell card packs already exists and is
fully implemented in the game, it feels like double-dipping to do the
same for cosmetics like player icon, card sleeves, and alternate art
for the cards I already own. Then I was floored when I logged in to
find an additional Fortnite-style Battle Pass system implemented on
top of all that. This has become more-or-less the only long-tail
service game I play, and even then I can't help but feel
nickel-and-dimed at every opportunity.
It's the kind of
thing that makes me want to quit, to be honest, despite how much I
actually love the act of playing Arena.
Telling Lies
And despite how much
obvious care and attention went into it, I don't think it's quite as
good as its predecessor, for two key reasons. First being that,
without spoilers, the “central mystery” was a lot easier to solve
this time around. Whether it was by design or by luck, I had already
figured out most of the major plot point conclusively before I had
even seen half of the available videos. There were obviously small
details I was missing, but nothing that changed the context of the
story.
Secondly, there's a
crucial UI change that drove me mad after about an hour after I
discovered it, and my playthrough was eight whole hours. In Her
Story, the base premise is that players are navigating a database of
video clips. By searching for a term or phrase, they get back the
five clips where that term is used most often. From there, then clue
onto new terms that can search up new videos and repeat until
satisfied.
The problem arises
once a video is selected for playback. Instead of logically starting
a clip from the very beginning, they start from the first mention of
the term searched. When that first use happens six minutes into and
eight minute clip, and the player needs to spend several minutes
rewinding it just to make sure they don't miss key terms or
information, that can be exceptionally painful. Doubly so when said
player is me and I didn't realize that was the case until I had
already seen an hour's worth of partial clips.
Since the clips are
from webcam conversations this time around, I would have also liked
the option to view them side by side to get the full context in one
viewing, as opposed to having to search for the other clip in the
conversation to get the full picture, but that's nowhere near as
problematic as the other UI issue.
It's a game I'm glad
I played, but a couple of serious UI issues make it more of a chore
than I would want it to be.
Death Stranding
It would be beyond
simple to just leave it there, or even worse, just spout meme after
pointless meme that has become the norm with Death Stranding
discourse in my particular friend group. But not only does that do a
disservice to the game, it does a disservice to my utter contempt for
the worst aspects of it.
The core gameplay is
surprisingly fun, and I grew to think fondly of the delivery
mechanics, yet I got the impression that Death Stranding was almost
afraid that they wouldn't be enough to pull their metaphorical
weight. Any time I found myself in one of the third-person shooter
sections, or in a boss battle against a giant tar monster, I found
the exercise exceedingly tedious. At no point would I ever call it
challenging, nor was I having an even remotely stimulating
experience. The same was true for the times I needed to sneak past
“Beached Things” to avoid risking my haul.
And if the “quote”
prefacing this section was any indication, I was never able to take
any part of seriously. When my friends and I all started, I had heard
its quality referred to as both “first-year film student” and
“stoned at Denny's” respectively, and by the time I finished that
feeling had only grown stronger.
Even if there was
more meat to the kind of message the team was trying to convey, it's
often undercut by various layers within the games own presentation.
It's downright distracting to have Sam Porter Bridges, played by
critically acclaimed Norman Reedus, to say a bike is so cool that itshould be on Ride with Norman Reedus, or drinking out of a canteen
and seeing the phrase “Monster Energy drink consumed” plastered
on my screen. Being simultaneously asked to take this third-grader's
view of how “disconnected we all are, maaaaaaaaaaaaaan-ah”
seriously while being subject to what certainly feels like crass
corporate sponsorship began to wear on my nerves in a way
that genuinely surprised me.
I wasn't one of the
people expecting this game to be the next godsend, but nor was I
expecting the writing to get this bad. I'm glad I played Death
Stranding, but now that it's done I never want to do so again.
Bloodstained: Ritual
of the Night
Normally, even this
should be unremarkable, but the downgrade was serious enough that it
caused me some eye strain until I managed to adjust: Actual, genuine
ocular discomfort. That's a sensation that I've been lucky enough to
never encounter before or since.
Metro Exodus
The biggest change
to the Metro formula are the semi-open levels, since the story has
protagonist Artyom and the group he works with escaping the subway
tunnels and exploring the world outside of their little hovel.
Sadly, the openness
of these specific levels never adds anything to the experience. It
felt much like the open-worlds in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom
Pain, where there were discrete areas of interest and a vast ocean of
nothingness between them. I couldn't help but think that I would be
having a better time if that walk was skipped and I just had a
loading screen separating me from my destination.
And unlike previous
Metro games, I didn't find myself interested in the story. By the
time I grew invested in whatever group of strangers my ragtag bunch
of Russian misfits had allied with for a particular section, we were
already set to move on and leave them to their fate.
Even when it came to
the moment-to-moment gameplay, there were numerous times where I
experienced a technical issue that caused me to keep to reload a
checkpoint, or the linear section I was in was so poorly presented
that I still somehow got lost. While the shooting is competent, it's
not interesting enough to soothe the pain I kept experiencing from
all of the little problems I had during my time with Exodus.
It's such a bummer
that the Metro trilogy ends on a sour note.
-----------------------------------
And there we go.
This was mostly a solid year, but there's no denying the modern
monetization methods detracted from more than a few games I would
otherwise have no problems with. Other games just had issues on their
own, but by and large, despite this list, 2019 was marked by games
that catered to exactly my interests.
Hope to see the same
in 2020.
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