Ten big things that happened to us gamers.
10- Sony and Microsoft become little piggies- that is, the ones that went "Wii, Wii, Wii", all the way home.
At this point, you've probably heard of Playstation Move and Microsoft Kinect, both companies blatant attampts to cash in on the sucess of Nintendo's massively popular Etch-a-sketch (also a gaming system, apparently), the Wii. Well, both of these cash-grabs hit stores this year, to surprising acclaim from the idiot masses who apparently didn't have Wii's yet. Proof that Americans have way too much disposable income?
9- StarCraft II- part 1 hits shelves.
The game that most of us have been waiting to play for more than a decade (apparently), Starcraft II, his shelves last summer. Blizzard, apparently deciding that the wait could be capitalized on even after the games release, decided to release the game in three parts, only packaging one third of the actual game in the box at release. Thanks, Blizzard. As if WOW doesn't make you guys enough money.
8- Fanboys bitch about FFXIII
You cannot appease fanboys. After five years of hyping up FFXIII, the game came out in March and was immediatly set upon by outraged fanboys proclaiming the death of their beloved franchise at the hands of it's beautiful graphics, stirring music, in depth story, and fantastic combat system. Way to go, you self-entitled brats. Whats more, many of these fanboys immediatly changed their opinion of FFXII, their previous punching bag, upon playing FFXIII, possibly because Balthier wasn't in XIII. Take notes, Square- if Balthier is in your game, everything is ok.
7- Yet another godd*** Pokemon game is announced.
After oversaturating the youth of today with it's grind-tastic creature-feature RPG series Pokemon with no less than eight titles within the last years- three of which were main series installments- developer Game Freak is looking to create an all new wave of devoted mind slaves- excuse me, fans- with Pokemon Black and White, departing from the recent gemstone asthetic of previous Pokemon games for something a little more racist. I haven't played the games, but if I had to hazard a guess as to the plot, it would involve a young child off on a grand adventure to become the best Trainer while single-handedly thwarting the efforts of an evil organization to dress in skintight leather and use Poison-type Pokemon a lot.
6- Kingdom Hearts beats Metal Gear in terms of confusing storyline.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep was released this year, a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts that tells the story of three keyblade bearers who are off to save the various Disney worlds- seriously- from the Heartless... er, the nobodies... oh, the Unversed, a species of enemy that will never appear again. Along the way, a third character named Xehanort appaears, only he's the same guy as the previous ones, someone with the same voice and appearance as another character awakens the heart of a third character, and a girl dyes her hair blue. If you're confused at this point, it's no wonder.
5- Kratos kills more stuff.
Not being satisfied with murdering pretty much every monster in greek mythology, Kratos, the ever-angry antihero of the God of War series, starts picking off the Gods in God of War III, the final (not really) installment of the series. Kratos's motivations are clear- he wants to kill Zeus, because his family was killed by someone else, Pandora looks like his daughter, and Zeus's beard looks stupid. Oh, at this point, we don't really care. Go have fun, Kratos.
4- Nintendo finally does something right- almost.
We all know that Nintendo can't be taken seriously as a console manufacturer anymore, if simply for the fact that the Wii sucks for everyone except for hardcore Nintendo fans and for three year olds. When it comes to handhelds, though, Nintendo still reigns supreme. Their latest handheld, the Nintendo 3DS, was announced at E3 this year, instantly earning Nintendo the forgiveness of every disgruntled fan when they saw that the system was capable of putting out gamecube-quality graphics and would have a Virtual Console for Gameboy titles. Nintendo then promptly ruined things when they announced to the public not to play the 3DS for more than thirty minutes or risk eye damage. Ah, Nintendo, it's the Virtual Boy all over again. Congragulations, you guys are morons.
3- Fanboys bitch about DMC
2010 shall forever be regarded as the year of the Whiny Brat, with every title, from FFXIII, God of War III, Call of Duty Black ops, etc, being complained about for the crime of not being a carbon copy of their previous iterations and for daring to do something new and different. Possibly the biggest example of this is the overwhelmingly negative backlash against the newly outsourced Devil May Cry reboot, which portrays a new, younger Dante, who *gasp* has black hair. This has caused the ultimate insult to be hurled against the game- that the new Dante looks like he was from Twilight (pardon my language).
2- New Vegas is dead on arrival
Fallout 3 was another game that was whined about upon release, but most people have figured out by now that it is a fantastic game. Of course, a sequel was inevitable, and therefore Obsidian (the studio known for making quick, cash-grab, unfinished sequels to games like KOTOR) was called upon to make New Vegas. The game was, as per Obsidian standards, released unfinished and nearly unplayable due to bugs and framerate issues. Several massive patches later, the game still runs terribly, especially on the PC. Obsidian is to be congragulated for their absolute failure of the year, having inflicted Alpha Protocol- a less buggy but more broken WRPG- upon us earlier in the year.
1- MMOs galore
There have been many attempts to unseat WOW from the MMO throne, and all have been unsuccessful. Final Fantasy XIV, a game which shouldn't have been a numbered FF in the first places, is the latest challenger to limp home with several broken bones. Then, in December, the latest WOW expansion was released, cementing Warcraft's immortality and buying Blizzard another solid gold house.
Happy New Year
No comments:
Post a Comment