{"id":3639,"date":"2015-01-30T07:57:51","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T21:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=3639"},"modified":"2015-01-30T07:57:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T21:57:51","slug":"2014-gaming-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/features\/2014-gaming-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"2014: A gaming retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be remiss for a tech-based site in this day and age to not have at least one article that looked back on the year past. On\u00a0Reckoner, that job has fallen upon me. thus, our contribution arrives\u00a0in the form of gaming.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the human race celebrates another rousing job well done navigating the Earth\u2019s orbit around the sun, we do so with alcohol, parties and a virtual overflowing bin containing \u201c[insert topic name] of the year\u201d posts. It\u2019s a discussion we could have, it\u2019s what the major gaming sites do (Polygon<\/a>,\u00a0Giant Bomb<\/a>,\u00a0Kotaku<\/a>), but it would just be my opinion.<\/p>\n

Plus, I didn’t play\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0game that came out in 2014.\u00a0In fact, I didn\u2019t play half of them! You\u2019d just be angry that \u201cMr Twinkles Kitten Mansion 3<\/a>\u201d wasn\u2019t my number 1 when Destiny is. Oops, I\u2019ve told you my game of the year (GOTY): it\u2019s Destiny. Now you can all hate on me and not read the rest of this article.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve gotten to the next paragraph, so I\u2019m assuming Destiny is your GOTY too! Either that, or, you\u2019re not 8, don\u2019t comment on YouTube videos and are genuinely interested. Hoorah! So, instead of going down the aforementioned path, I wanted to take a look back at some of the gaming going-ONs for 2014 and what the going-TOs may be because of it.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Oculus<\/div>\n

VR grew some balls<\/h1>\n

Chalk this one up to\u00a0Facebook buying Oculus<\/a>\u00a0for a cool $2bn, along with Sony coming to the party via Project Morpheus. You’ll\u00a0quickly see that VR is getting an almighty push down the road to general consumerism.<\/p>\n

The tech is incredible — the experience of using one of these is fun, but the very real problem still exists of how to get to make them a true \u201cMa & Pa\u201d consumer product. It\u2019s a huge shift in how we\u2019ve been viewing and interacting with content, and it\u2019s one that\u00a0-for the time being- is relegated to nerd culture.<\/p>\n

Then again, so was \u201ctorrenting.\u201d Now I\u2019m pretty sure the 70 year old in the apartment next door does that now too.<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/p>\n

We can see the process beginning now though. Samsung introduced their \u201cat home\u201d VR solution, the\u00a0Samsung Gear VR<\/a>\u00a0(powered by Oculus), a light-weight, cordless VR headset. It makes use of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to power your experience.<\/p>\n

So far, it’s\u00a0been coveted as the most comfortable and accessible VR experience\u00a0available,\u00a0and an important step to mass market of what\u2019s to come.<\/p>\n

Google too has jumped on board in a much (much) lower entry-to-market product in\u00a0Google Cardboard<\/a>. In what could\u2019ve easily been written off as a prank Cardboard is a rich, true, VR experience and shows off just how low the barrier to entry can be for this exciting next step in entertainment.<\/p>\n

Microsoft too, has jumped onboard\u00a0the VR train with their recently announced HoloLens<\/a>. That means\u00a0the only big name left in the game without a product seems to be Apple. You can be sure they have something buried beneath that Spaceship they’re building too.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Driveclub\"<\/div>\n

Broken games<\/h1>\n

Sadly, it seems that Sim City\u2019s dismal failure in 2013\u00a0somehow\u00a0encouraged<\/em> developers to release more broken titles. In 2014 we saw\u00a0big-name titles, one after the other, required zero-day patches or continual care to even remotely resemble a playable game.<\/p>\n

DriveClub, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and arguably the biggest,\u00a0and most shameful of all:\u00a0Assassins Creed: Unity<\/em>. All of these games have been plagued with problems and while some have come to rise above them, others, *cough<\/em> DriveClub\u00a0cough*<\/em>, have seemingly just given up.<\/p>\n

\"Master<\/p>\n

Why is it happening? Unrealistic annual releases of iterative titles, publisher pressure, market demand. There are more reasons than I care to count and\u00a0appropriate in-depth analysis of them<\/a>, but it\u2019s a trend that needs to stop.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve come to expect there will be\u00a0issues in our games and that\u2019s just not OK. You wouldn\u2019t accept a washing machine that washed your clothes on every 3rd cycle, but somehow a downloadable firmware patch a week later that\u00a0might<\/em>\u00a0fix a\u00a0problem with your game is\u00a0fine?<\/p>\n

As a gamer, there\u2019s little more than we can do but vote with our dollars. Campaigns driven by social media calling for refunds and reform have been met with some small\u00a0success. Some games have\u00a0had\u00a0refunds issued with extreme caveats<\/a>\u00a0or downloadable content provided at no cost. At the end of the day, it does little to instill confidence in purchasing on launch day\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n

In what sounds like an oxymoron, it\u2019s actually been nice to see upcoming titles\u00a0delayed<\/em>. CD Projekt Red\u2019s upcoming Witcher 3\u00a0has been\u00a0delayed a further five months to ensure that a number of \u201csmall errors\u201d were attended to. This is definitely\u00a0a\u00a0tactic Ubisoft & other publishers could learn from in the titles\u00a0to come.<\/p>\n

\n
\"The<\/div>\n

Next-gen re-releases<\/h1>\n

In a sub-title and now opening sentence that has too many hyphens than I care for, a continued trend is the up-rezing\u00a0and\u00a0up-polygoning of previous-generation console titles.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an unfortunate by-product of any new generation, and a way for developers and publishers to make bank on hits of old, but 2014 was also the year we expected big things to come of these new gaming workhorses.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really complain about this though. I bought \u201cThe Last of Us: Remastered\u201d so really? I\u2019m just an enabler. I did manage to show some restraint when it came to GTA V, but then again, that could\u2019ve been because I\u00a0couldn\u2019t buy it from Target<\/a>\u00a0more than anything else (idiots).<\/p>\n

\n

GamerGate douchery<\/h1>\n

I have to be a little bit careful about this one. While it was all going on and the likes of Adam Baldwin (best known as \u201cthat guy from Firefly\u201d) was busy tweeting their thumbs away, I honestly couldn’t make sense of it all. Had it not been for a \u201cPointless<\/a>\u201d episode I recently listened to where\u00a0Nilay Patel<\/a>\u00a0from The Verge and host\u00a0Kevin Pereira<\/a>\u00a0discussed the wild extremes of the \u201cmovement\u201d? I\u2019d still be none the wiser.<\/p>\n

What began as a lengthy public outpouring of allegations and vitriol from a scorned ex-boyfriend, quickly spiraled out of control to become a series of personal attacks against women. In some cases, these women were forced to move from their homes for\u00a0fear of personal harm.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, a separate series of attacks began against gaming journalists and sites for alleged pay-for-coverage tactics used to promote gaming titles. This too, spawned from the same originating post, which highlighted a relationship between the writer\u2019s now ex-girlfriend and a gaming journalist.<\/p>\n

Today \u201cGamerGate\u201d is largely a horrid nightmare of the past,\u00a0\u201d[It] has since swelled into an unwieldy movement with no apparent leaders, mission statement, or aims\u2026\u201d<\/em>\u00a0states England\u2019s Telegraph. In its wake, the gaming community is left scarred. Already a media scapegoat, gamers definitely did not need the further compounded bad press GamerGate provided.<\/p>\n

\n

What\u2019s to come<\/h1>\n

2014 was, by popular opinion, not gaming\u2019s shining year. That said, we were able to enjoy a variety of fantastic titles. Titanfall, Destiny, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Mario Kart 8, Hearthstone & more. All incredible experiences that were polished pieces of entertainment that I enjoyed immensely.<\/p>\n

\"the-order-1886-listing-thumb-ps4-us-09un14\"<\/p>\n

For 2015, the first quarter has more titles that I\u2019m excited about than most of last year. Bloodborne, The Order: 1886 & Evolve all out before the end of March but to name a few.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hopeful the next-gen consoles truly come into their own this year. With Xbox getting back to gaming in a big way, Sony continuing to power on with their current dominance and Nintendo to make a showing with their new title updates, it\u2019s shaping up to be a very good year for gamers indeed.<\/p>\n

For me, I\u2019m probably hitting it a little late, but PC gaming has triggered my interest more. With the Oculus being so close to a consumer release I want to be there with it, and graphically the PC has been doing what next-gen is just hitting now for the past few years.<\/p>\n

What really seals the deal for me though, watching the Star Citizen presentation at PAX Australia this year.<\/p>\n

Mind blowing.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

* Mr Twinkles Kitten Mansion 3 is not a real game. Not to the best of my knowledge anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be remiss for a tech-based site in this day and age to not have at least…\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"2014: A gaming retrospective","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[133,193,43,107,747,369,70,119,48],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}