The lights are on
Veteran Member - Level 12
I played a lot of great games this year. Despite all the shenanigans around single-player games and loot boxes, the gaming industry put out several great works of art. Since the best part of December is end-of-year lists, I rounded up my favorites.
So this week has not been great for Battlefront II. Players are boycotting, canceling preorders and starting a storm on the Battlefront subreddit. They’re mad that the final game is a player-unfriendly mess of loot boxes.
Like the title says, there was a surprising amount of loot box news this week. Battlefront II, Need For Speed: Payback and Hearthstone are all in the news for their random crates. Unfortunately, not a lot of the news is good. Anyway, check it out below.
Nintendo and other Japanese game developers (who have really had a renaissance this year with Persona 5, Nioh and Resident Evil 7) understand something their Western counterparts do not.
For a fan of a certain kind of video game, Visceral's shutdown couldn't be more bleak. From Game Informer's news post:
The SNES Classic looks great. The 16-bit era has a lot of games that have aged well. Looking at the list of games on the Classic is basically perusing all-time gaming classics. Taken altogether, it's an almost complete snapshot of the SNES's great games.
Modern video games are getting boring. It's a trend you see across genres and franchises. Developers seem to think if a game is longer, that means it's better. I get why they do it- players love feeling like they're getting good value for their money. If you're a kid with only a little disposable income, wouldn't you spend your $60 on the game that lasts longest?
It's been said elsewhere, but if you play this game, try to do it with the 3D on and using headphones.
I had it lined up perfectly. There was another platform maybe five feet away. Beneath it, hundreds of feet of falling water crashing into the sharp rocks at the bottom. All I had to do was make the jump. Then things went off the rails. The rocks beneath me began to crack, and I took off running. A last second leap from the falling boulder took me across the gap, where I grabbed the edge of the rock by the tip of my fingers.
Hit stun is the best part of the new Super Smash Bros game for Wii U. Forget the new characters. You don’t need new stages. Hit stun is the biggest change Nintendo made, and it’s awesome.
When Ubisoft made headlines this week, it was for all the wrong reasons.
The surprise hit me when I was browsing an old Game Informer. It came out a couple months after Mass Effect 2 and had a flow chart describing how to save your teammates during the suicide mission. Only something was off about Samara's entry.