As 2016 was drawing to a close and everybody was scrambling to compose their end-of-year
best-of lists - a task I do not envy them by the way considering how many great games
came out last year - I figured there'd be little value in me making one such list.
So instead I decided to run through all the games I'm looking forward to playing this year.
Now understand I'm not advocating for you to buy any of these games since they aren't actually out yet
and even the ones I've played are not even close to finished.
For that same reason, I'm also not ranking them in any way.
Ultimately, the only criterion for a game being on the list is my personal interest
in it but I've tried to keep things varied and I'll do my best to explain what makes
each one compelling to me as I go along.
I'd like to start with a game whose developer, Supergiant Games, I hold in very high regard
because the only two games they've made up to this point are amazing in close to every respect.
While I played Bastion mostly for the story, well fine, for the narration, Transistor is
actually one of my personal favorites of all time.
Supergiant's thing seems to be to never make the same game twice.
In fact, apart from a few, mostly artistic signature details, there's not much, certainly
not mechanically, to betray the fact that Bastion, Transistor, and the upcoming Pyre
all hail from the same studio.
Pyre, then, seems to essentially be a redemption story, told by way of religious soccer.
And that's every bit as interesting as it sounds.
The game will center around you and a number of fellow exiles trying to regain your status
in society by taking part in some sort of ritualistic competition that involves picking
up a small sphere and using whatever abilities your companions have to get it into the enemy's
goal, being careful, all the while, not to come into contact with any of the enemy team.
In between fights, you're trying to learn new abilities for your party members and I
suppose forge connections with them.
The first thing I thought when I saw this system was that it would be perfect for multiplayer
integration and lo and behold not that much later actually it was announced as a feature.
It's local multiplayer only, which is a slight disappointment, but I'll take it over none at all.
I adore the game's painterly aesthetic already and the music, unsurprisingly, promises to
be just as amazing as Transistor's and Bastion's was.
I'm seriously excited to see how this one turns out.
I expect great things, I only hope I won't be disappointed.
For Honor looks like it's a game fans of Chivalry will gladly spend their time playing if you
go by the setting and the fairly visceral combat in both games.
Still, it's a fundamentally different experience.
Despite the fact that it has quite a number of factions to choose from, all of them seem
to rely on you acclimating to a more weighty, deliberate game feel than you might be accustomed
to from Chivalry.
Additionally, as much as I like Chivalry, that game only had so much depth,
whereas For Honor appears at least a little more complex, offering some decent class variety
and a host of impressive-looking finishing moves, as well as a much different way of
defending, just to name a few.
There's an open beta scheduled for sometime in February so with any luck I'll get to spend
some quality time with the game then, but right now all I have to go off of are second-hand
reports, though it is worth noting they were all extremely positive.
The separate story mode that goes along with the game, in all honesty, felt like little
more than a contrivance to be able to justify having a medieval game with Knights, Vikings,
and Samurai in it, though truthfully, I couldn't care less as long as I can be a Samurai fighting
a Viking.
I suppose I am a man of simple needs.
Speaking of Samurai, martial arts is probably an underexplored concept in games, not just
thematically but mechanically as well.
Absolver dives deeper into the ins and outs of hand-to-hand combat than just about any
other game I'm familiar with.
It's an online RPG set in a rather intriguing, mythical world but what's truly remarkable
to me is the movement system, specifically how customizable it is.
Attacking, dodging and parrying are not prescribed in this game.
You get to craft and then continually evolve and enhance your individual style of combat.
You're given four basic stances to fill with moves of your own choosing that you can then
chain together in whatever order you wish.
The resulting series of movements invariably looks quite slick, as does the art style,
I may add, but more than that it looks authentic.
It's not quite clear to me exactly how relevant the narrative will be but, in any event, the
combat looks to be so engaging that I don't see this game needing to rely too much on
its narrative to be addictive.
As I started outlining a video that I'm not sure I'm actually gonna make yet about my
reasons for intending to buy the Nintendo Switch when it finally releases, I realized
that at least a sizable chunk of the reason was this game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath
of the Wild.
I'll be upfront about this, much of my intrigue about this game is based in my never having
played any of the previous Zeldas, but it does go a little deeper than that as well.
In one of the episodes of his series titled Game Maker's Toolkit, Mark Brown pointedly
remarks how guiding open world games have become.
Instead of encouraging the player to traverse the world by themselves, more often than not,
they're shown a literal line on the ground or at least an icon somewhere in the distance
to lead them to their target.
Games that rely on you traveling large distances should - he feels and I agree - get you legitimately
excited about going somewhere and then provide you with just enough pertinent info for you
to find your own way.
But unfortunately many simply fail to actively contribute to that much-coveted feeling of
adventure, providing not much more than some nice scenery along the way.
Breath of The Wild, I'm hoping, won't fall into that same trap.
I can't be sure of course, but judging from what we know so far, the game seems to have
all the ingredients I can think of that it would need to create a real-feeling environment.
The trailers and the gameplay don't just show Link cooking and hunting and swimming and
climbing cliff sides, he's also faced with different climates, weather conditions, and
landscapes.
And not only are almost all of those things that, from my understanding, have never existed
in a Zelda game but they also make it abundantly clear that this game is not reliant on you
following the main questline to provide you with lots of stuff to do.
Even more telling considering how vast the map is said to be is the fact that despite
that massive scale, you can supposedly walk from your starting point in the game straight
to the final boss.
It's not advisable of course, but the fact that you can tells us a great deal about the
design philosophy Nintendo is approaching this game with.
It should allow the world to feel truly dynamic and alive, as though things are going on even
when you aren't around.
At least that's the hope.
There's so much hype behind this game already that it'll likely be impossible for it to
live up to all of it.
The sheer scale of the game alone makes it incredibly ambitious and the fact remains
that achieving complete non-linearity without relying on copious amounts of repetition is
an inherent design obstacle many open adventures have yet to overcome, so I'm trying to temper
my optimism, and yet, I have to admit I can't help but be at least a tiny bit excited.
The 5-second, slightly reductive but still appealing elevator pitch for Everspace would
likely be the following: A rogue-lite dogfighting space game, that, at the most basic level,
strikes a very similar tone to FTL.
Much like in FTL, you're in command of a lonely ship on a mission to fight and explore its
way through a number of randomly generated sectors.
Every time you die you retain the currency you've earned during the run, which you'll
use to improve various aspects of your existing ship or to buy new ones with the goal of making
it that little bit further next time around.
However, where FTL focused on strategic crew management for its gameplay, Everspace uses
real-time combat with 6 degrees of movement.
I'll admit is hasn't yet managed to draw me in quite as much as Elite: Dangerous did,
which is the only other game I've played that I could compare the combat to, but then again
it's still a ways away from being finished so I wouldn't pay that any mind just yet.
Plus, as a matter of personal taste, Elite is a lot more visually and aurally understated,
which I happen to prefer.
Not that Everspace isn't beautiful in its own right, the aesthetic is just a much brighter,
more vibrant take on space exploration, and for some odd reason I like my space games
to feel cold and dreary.
There appears to be a story to Everspace, judging by the occasional bits of dialog you
get in the current build of the game, though as of right now I have absolutely no idea
what it will entail so I don't feel comfortable commenting on it.
Children of Morta, by most metrics, is a fairly standard RPG that tells the story of a family
living in a land that has been corrupted by an evil force which you're tasked with hunting
down and presumably destroying?
I'm not quite sure.
It's not exactly most original premise for a game, I'll admit, but the execution leaves
little to be desired.
Every playable character handles completely differently, some focusing on blocking at
the right times, others on agility, and others yet again on long range combat.
The game allows you to choose which ones to play and upgrade based on what type of combat
you prefer and, to that end, the level design seems to accommodate all of those playstyles.
I suspect there's some dynamic level generation going on to make that happen.
If there is, it's quite excellently done, though, because the the levels never felt
particularly random or excessively long or as though there were unfair difficulty spikes
as I played.
I've noticed a few rough edges during the time I've spent with the game so far, such
as the narration switching tenses for no apparent reason, but that's really a minor nitpick.
Nothing as of now has managed to outshadow the competence displayed in other areas, the
animation being prime/chief among them btw.
It's great to see a resurgence of pixel art games that don't just use their aesthetic
choice to cut corners, but instead find ways to be expressive, maybe even a little unconventional
and inventive with it.
Children of Morta is one such game.
I've not played too far into it; generally, I like to hold off until games are finished,
but this one has tempted me to just play a bunch.
That's about as much of an evaluation as I feel comfortable giving at the moment, but
I think it bodes well.
If you haven't heard of Cuphead at this point, well, you simply have to tell me what it's
been like living on the moon for the past three years.
But seriously, I'd be surprised if you'd managed to miss it.
The appeal of Cuphead doesn't require much explaining.
It's essentially an interactive old-timey Disney cartoon.
From the lively animations to the bebop-esque soundtrack, to the strange bosses that look
like they came straight out of a fever dream and move to the beat of the music, everything
about this game screams commitment to that concept.
I'm slightly concerned that the gameplay, from what I've been able to discern, doesn't
look equally distinct or dramatically innovative.
Much of it seems to consist of little more than running to the right shooting stuff.
However, we don't have nearly enough information to say with any kind of certainty if the entire
game is built like this or if it's just the opening levels.
I have to admit I put the game on the list mostly on account of it looking incredibly
dapper and stylish and unlike anything I've ever seen.
Not that that's enough to necessarily justify spending money on it, but it is enough to
at least get my attention.
The game is now slated to be released in mid-2017, which means the answer to that nagging question
as to exactly how good it is, is tangibly close.
Every now and then I peruse Kickstarter to find new games and occasionally I back the
ones that catch my eye, which I know I shouldn't because it's a gamble but among the ones that
I deemed promising enough to risk losing money on, Need To Know stood out the most.
It's self-described as a "political thriller", but in essence it's a puzzle/management game
in the vein of Paper's, Please, only instead of focusing on border patrol, it has you scale
the chain of command of a hypothetical spy agency, all the while confronting you with
ethical dilemmas at every step.
Can I justify spying on this innocent citizen?
Do I use the knowledge I've gained for my own benefit by selling it to an interested
party or do I leak some of the stuff that I find unethical to the press?
In a sense, the idea of it reminds me of a game that came out earlier in 2016 by the
name of No Pineapple Left Behind.
The premise of that game, similarly, was a harsh outlook on the ethicacy of systemization,
in that case of the school system.
A friend of mine and fellow Reviewer by the name of Rye Roen, felt that the game lacked
depth in a variety of ways and had little to offer besides its superficial criticisms.
Need To Know, on the other hand, might just turn out to be what No Pineapple left behind
wasn't: a game with a strong message, in this case, a political one, and - much more crucially
- the mechanical depth to back it up.
I'm not yet sure if that message will be an unequivocal "mass surveillance sucks" or if
it will let you figure out the benefits and pitfalls of it for yourself.
Personally I'd probably prefer the latter but either way, it seems like a game to look out for.
The last game I want to mention is Starrmazer.
This game is special because it's an unconventional combination of mechanics, and - as Overwatch
has sufficiently proven - that can be a very enticing thing indeed if done right.
Starrmazer is a melding of arguably two of the oldest genres in existence, half a point-and-click
game, half a shoot-em-up.
As such, I would imagine that this game plays on a lot of nostalgia heartstrings.
It doesn't for me but I still appreciate the attempt to make a holistically old-school
game that uses several elements as opposed to just one, namely pixel art, to construct
its main selling point out of.
According to the developer, both the combat encounters as well as the story bits will
be procedurally generated.
I tend to be reasonably skeptical when it comes to randomly stitched together gameplay
elements, and taking that same concept and applying it the story?
That's another source of uncertainty unto itself.
But I can't argue with the amount replayability that procedural generation can offer and if
only because I've never seen one, I am curious to play a point-and-click adventure based
almost solely on an algorithm.
Incidentally, Ken Levine, the man responsible for creating the stories of System Shock 2
and the Bioshock games, has been exploring the idea of systemized, replayable stories,
something he calls "Narrative Legos", for quite a while now, and if he believes it can
be done, frankly, who am I to disagree?
Or at least I hesitant to until there's an actual game to critique.
All things considered, 2017 is already shaping up to be a year steeped in excellent games,
but even so, it's often the unexpected gems that end up being the most distinct, and especially
with the Switch releasing this year, we're bound to have at least a few more of those
than usual.
You should take everything I've said with a grain of salt just the same, though.
I'm not saying any of these games will necessarily turn out great, I just think they have the
potential to and I did my best to focus on that aspect.
That's why I didn't go into too much detail about how any of these games might fail, either.
I just want to make clear, I'll reserve judgment until I can actually get my hands on the games
in question and I suggest you do the same.
Also, this is by no means a comprehensive list so I'm curious, which games would you
have chosen for it?
Is there perhaps a game that you think I overlooked?
If so, feel free to let me know.
And while you're at it, any feedback you might be able to give me as to what you thought
about the video would, of course, be highly appreciated.
Otherwise thank you very much for watching and I'll see you soon.
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