Gaming is like an old friend to me. It’s always there, always ready to please me when I am interested. Unfortunately, that time is not now. I made a conscious decision to make some big changes in my life. These changes, for the most part, preclude gaming. I can’t say I will never post again, but the odds are low. I will probably still play games casually, but I no longer have the time to really get into them hardcore and write about them.
To me, 2014 is the year of hope. All of the next gen consoles have been released. Several games have been announced for them. Now, we all wait in anticipation, hoping the games will be as good as the developers say they are. We spent a lot of money on these consoles. We want revolutionary games that will make that money worth it.
I have looked at the games that are expected to release in 2014 and made my predictions on the best in each genre. In general, I do not cover game genres that I do not play. However, this year there are several big games in other genres that have won awards in the past. I decided to add a Special Mentions section for these games. I am not experienced in those genres, but their franchise histories are enough to warrant possible contention for Game of the Year awards.
I make my predictions based on a combination of factors, such as the hype surrounding the game, the developer’s history of games released, the previous games in the series if it is a sequel, and what I personally think from the preview footage of the game. I generally weight full game releases higher than expansion packs. An expansion pack has to be perfect to beat a new full game. Unless the company has history of making superb expansion packs, I usually will not even include them in the list of contenders.
It is time to look back and see how I did on my 2013 predictions. My results this year were a little better than last year. A couple of my picks for top games were correct. In the other genres, my 2nd or 3rd game in the list was usually the top game, but I my predictions were particularly bad in the Strategy genre. Some of this was because of games being delayed, but a few games did much better than I foresaw.
Predicted Winner: BioShock Infinite
Actual Winner: BioShock Infinite
I think my prediction for BioShock Infinite was correct. While it did not live up to all the hype, it was still far better than the other action games released this year. The gameplay was seen as nothing new, but the story and world the developers created was praised. Many thought it may have been better as an adventure game or role-playing game with exploration being the focus instead of shooting. It did not have the longevity of other action games (no multiplayer), but most players had a lot of good to stay about it.
My order for the rest of the games was pretty far off though. Several games were not even announced when I made my prediction. Others turned out better than I expected. The next two games had to be Metro: Last Light and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Both games scored roughly equally high for different reasons. Metro: Last Light, which I did not think would release in 2013, was praised for its atmosphere and setting. If it had more polish it may have been a contender for best action game this year. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was praised for being a refreshing take on the Metal Gear world, while the developers of Metal Gear 5 get some time to make it a polished game.
Gears of War: Judgment, ARMA 3, and Crysis 3 all got average reviews. I kind of expected that with Gears of War: Judgment. The story was over with Gears of War 3. Judgment felt like a retread, with no new gameplay unlike Metal Gear Rising’s refreshing gameplay. I did not expect ARMA 3 and Crysis 3 to score so low though. ARMA 3 did not have enough content at launch to satisfy most players. Crysis 3 had a weak single player campaign, which was surprising given its pedigree.
I totally forgot about Dead Space 3 when I made my predictions, but it also had a flaw. Many of the horror elements were replaced with more action, causing the game to lose some of its identity. There was also controversy about the single player microtransactions, which felt like a cash grab to many players.
I wrote down Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the next game in the series ended up being Call of Duty: Ghosts. Players seem to finally be getting tired of Call of Duty, as its sales were lower than last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. I expected there to be slightly lower sales, but not such low review scores. Usually, the single player just gets a pass. Players have so much fun with the multiplayer they do not care about the campaign. This year they were tired with the campaign, and the multiplayer felt like the same old thing. Battlefield 4, which had not even been announced when I made my prediction, seemed to be a mirror copy of Call of Duty: Ghosts. Few people liked the campaign, so everything was dependent on the multiplayer, which was pretty much the same as Battlefield 3.
Aliens: Colonial Marines turned out exactly as I predicted. It was a licensed game. Licensed games are almost always bad. Aliens: Colonial Marines was a bad game. Sega was able to really hype up players while delaying the release of reviews to get pretty high sales numbers. Pretty soon disappointment stories from the players started appearing everywhere.
These are the select few games that entertained me more than any others. Some of them had amazing replay value, that I played again and again for years. Others were shorter but so original and impressive as to make up for the lower value.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (2006) – I remember seeing the first Oblivion screenshots in game magazines and thinking “Wow! This is next-gen!” The graphics were better than even PC games at the time. At the time I was still more of a console gamer, so a gaming PC was out of the question. I knew then Oblivion was a game I had to get, and that meant buying a next-gen console. The game itself was somewhat disappointing. While I loved exploring the world and seeing all the NPCs, the level scaling, randomly generated loot, and tiny voice cast really got to me. It may not have been a perfect game, but it defined what next-gen could be.
Portal 1 (2007) – You cannot talk about the seventh generation without talking about Portal. This game came out of nowhere. No one had heard of it, but just one little video was enough to turn heads. Without an expansive voice cast, fancy graphics, or orchestral score, this game easily became 2007’s most original game. It was just solid game design from start to finish. People will talk about Portal for years to come. There was so much fun to be had in throwing portals around to get through puzzles. There was a lot of freedom in the later levels. Different players had different solutions.
Mass Effect 1 (2007) – This game took some time to grow on me. I do not know what it was, but when I first played it I just could not get into it. A few months later I was obsessed with it. I ended up doing a full playthrough with all 6 classes. I really liked the direction they were going with the series, how each game got more epic. Mass Effect 1 did not have the best game mechanics, but it was a good start. It just needed some polishing to be an amazing game, and I was hopeful Bioware would deliver with Mass Effect 2.
Dragon Age: Origins (2009) – Although I liked the Mass Effect games more, Dragon Age: Origins was still an amazing RPG. It combined the classic Baldur’s Gate-style gameplay with an original world created by Bioware. It was a little too dark for my liking but overall a great experience. I only wish it was bigger. Compared to the Baldur’s Gate games, the maps felt small. I did not get the same sense of exploration as the older games. There seemed to be less NPCs to talk to. Also, the dungeons sometimes lasted too long, with the combat becoming repetitive and dull.
Mass Effect 2 (2010) – I think Mass Effect 2 excelled at the story and character development. Compared to Mass Effect 1, it was night and day. Mass Effect 2 felt like a Hollywood movie. It could have one Oscars if it was a movie. Unfortunately, I did not like the direction they took the game mechanics. Even though the mechanics in Mass Effect 1 were weak, at least there was something to dig into. Bioware pretty much did away with all the potential, the original mechanics had. It was no longer an RPG to me. It was now an interactive movie with shooting galleries in between the story. Still, the movie quality of the game was easily enough to outweigh the bad gameplay decisions.
Starcraft 2 (2010) – Out of all these games, I was probably the most hyped for Starcraft 2. For so long Blizzard had focused on World of Warcraft. I thought they would never go back to their old franchises. I enjoyed WoW immensely, but my interest was waning. Starcraft 2 came at the perfect time. Even better was that I got a beta invite on the very first day of the Closed Beta. I felt like a VIP. Only pro players or a members of the press got invites that early. Everyone wanted a beta key.
I had recently graduated from college and could not find work. Seeing all the tournaments going on, I thought maybe I could make a career out of it. I spent a massive amount of time with this game. When I was not playing it, I was watching pro matches to find ways to improve my play. Ultimately, pro gaming as career was not meant to be for me. I just was not good enough to reach the top and suffered a lot of stress trying to play perfect every game. These days I only play Starcraft 2 occasionally, but I will always remember this game for the impact it had on my life.
Civilization 5 (2010) – This game started out as a dud. Well, I did play it for about a month after launch, but it just did not hold up compared to Civilization 4. The strategy was almost deterministic. There was an easy right answer for every decision in the game. Luckily, Firaxis got their act together and came out with two great expansion packs. Now there are actually “interesting decisions” as Sid Meier calls them. I still prefer how some things work in Civilization 4, but Civilization 5 is now my primary Civilization game. I play at least one game every month. There are always new starting conditions to try out. It never really gets old. It can become tedious but never old.
Portal 2 (2011) – It is impossible to mention the first game without mentioning the second game. Portal 2 pretty much improved the game in every way. Now that Valve knew the concept worked, they put some real money into it. The production value was there with great voice acting, improved graphics, and amazing sound. It was a real treat to explore more of the Aperture Science labs, especially learning about its history. This is one of those few games that anyone can have fun with and understand, whether they are a hardcore gamer or a non-gamer.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (2012) – Skyrim was the game Oblivion should have been. Bethesda Game Studios pretty much fixed all the major problems that Oblivion had. The level scaling was much improved. The loot system still had randomized elements, but there were many hand crafted unique items to find. They also greatly increased the size of the voice cast. There was definitely some repetition after playing the game hundreds of hours but no where near as bad as Oblivion. Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls game that I discovered and explored every location on the map. I also got all the DLCs, which I felt were far better than Oblivion’s DLCs.
Fallout 3 is a strange game. I do not think is has the best gameplay. I do not think its story is that great. I am not even sure the virtual world is that great, but there is something about it that I just love. I think it is just how different it was from any other game I had played before. I had never played a post-apocalyptic game before Fallout 3. There were other games that did this, including Fallout 3’s own predecessors and Wasteland, but none of them caught my attention like Fallout 3.
The first hour or so you are in what feels like a clean-room environment, a hospital really. Everything is neat and orderly. All the people are clean. It is a perfect little world. In the back of your mind, it feels like something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint it. Slowly as you play and get to explore it becomes clear: there is no freedom here. There are a set of rules that everyone must follow. A man appears at first like a benevolent father taking care of his children, but then you start to see he is more of a dictator. He even has guards to enforce his rules. Finally, you get to rebel and escape to freedom.
I will always remember the stark transition from the tutorial section to the game proper. the blinding white light as your eyes adjust to seeing sunlight for the first time, the vast open expanse before you to explore. At first I felt happy to have escaped. I had my freedom. As I started to see the destruction and lawlessness outside, I started to wonder if maybe the dictator, the leader of the vault, was right. Maybe he did know best, and I should have stayed there. There was no going back there now though. I just had to adjust.
Like the early segments of the game when you are a baby, this game literally made me a baby. To a baby pretty much everything is fresh and new. They are new in the world. They have not experienced much. This is how I felt when playing the game. Sure, there were game mechanics I have seen in other games, but the whole setting, theme, even the retro music was totally new to me in a game. All I can hope is that the next generation will bring a game that feels this fresh to me.
Notes
It has been a little over a year since Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) went free-to-play (F2P). Now is a good time to review my time in the game. There were some things I liked and some things I disliked. Overall, I had a good experience, but it definitely took some work to make that experience good.
I should be clear: my sole interest in playing SWTOR was the class stories. Over the last year, I was able to level one of each class to 50 and see all of the stories. While my favorites were Smuggler and Imperial Agent, all of the stories had good moments. I would not say any of them were bad. Some of them I felt were a little slow moving, but I ultimately enjoyed all of them. Getting to that point involved spending some real money and a lot of grinding, however.
I played my first character to around level 30 before the F2P restrictions were starting to annoy me. It was then I started looking at the Cartel Market to see how much it would cost to unlock all the restrictions versus paying a subscription. Obviously, the subscription was the better deal upfront, but permanent unlocks were a better deal in the long run. That changed when I found out players could sell these unlocks on the Galactic Trade Network (GTN) for in-game credits.
Account-wide unlocks on my server went from around 150,000 to 1 million credits, depending on the type of unlock. Me being a free player, I had a cap of 200,000 credits. That put many account-wide unlocks out of reach. The solution I came up with was to subscribe temporarily to remove the credit cap, speed my character to level 50, farm credits every day, and then buy the expensive unlocks while my credit cap was removed.
It took a lot of grinding. I was probably spending 4-6 hours a day just farming credits. I would do all the dailies plus the daily flashpoint and daily hard mode flashpoint. If I had any time left, I went to Section X and just farmed monsters for credits drops. I also picked up all the crafting materials I found in the world. I had my companions farming crafting materials too. The crafting materials and any other saleable items were put on the GTN. I made between 300,000 and 500,000 credits per day. Most days I was able to buy an unlock, some days more than one.
In the end I had to subscribe 3 months to get enough credits to buy all the unlocks from the GTN. On the third month, I finished about 15 days early. I spent that extra time farming more credits to buy all the Legacy unlocks. I originally planned to only buy unlocks directly related to leveling, but I wanted to really get my money’s worth out of that subscription time.
So it cost me $45 to level 8 classes to 50 and see all the stories. That was not all in 3 months; I finished the last class earlier this month. I would estimate I spent about 3 days “/played” per character on average. It was much higher on my first character per side. On later characters I “spacebar’ed” through the planet quests that were shared by all classes. Most classes seemed to have the similar generic responses to those quests, with the original dialogue saved for class quests.
That is good value for money in my mind, but the sad thing is that the stories are over. Unlike what Bioware originally said, they are not going to continue the class stories. Without new class stories, I had no reason to play the game. It is now uninstalled. If Bioware ever continues the class stories, I will be happy to return and pay for the new level cap. Unfortunately, the game is likely to stay in this Cold War-esque mode for the remainder of its life.
Most people understand what indie movies or songs are, but when it comes to games, there is still much debate on what “indie” actually means. Whether a game is considered indie or not is largely based on how much creative control the developer has. Creative control is almost entirely based on funding. Whoever puts up the money has the final say on what gets released. In general the more funding a game gets, the harder it is to call it an indie game. There is no consensus within the game industry on what an indie game is. What I have listed here are the most common definitions.
This is the most pure definition. Without any outside stakeholders, the developer has absolute control over what gets added to the game and what does not. Usually, the funding will come from the developers themselves (their bank accounts and other assets) or a crowdsourced funding campaign such as Kickstarter.
Minecraft is a good example. Minecraft‘s success is seen as the prime example that this definition is the most fitting. There was no precedent for a game like Minecraft. No publisher would have funded it at the time. It could only be done by an indie developer.
In this definition, the game is allowed to have a publisher but it cannot be a large publisher. Large publishers have been known to influence development of games by requiring changes for sales and marketing reasons. Small publishers are more likely to let developers do their thing after providing the funding. Some people will consider this enough to call it an indie game.
One example is Torchlight 2. Runic Games, the developer, is owned by Perfect World Entertainment, and PWE published Torchlight 2. I read many articles during the game’s development describing it as an indie game despite having a publisher, so for some people a publisher is okay as long as it is not too big.
This is a more recent definition that has sprung up with all the crowdsourced funding that is happening these days. It leaves open the possibility of hiring a publisher solely to market and distribute the game. Most developers are specialists in developing, not these other activities, but those activities can greatly increase sales of a game. The developer has creative control for the entire development phase. The publisher just helps with a few things at the end. Of course, the publisher can still cause problems. Bad marketing has killed many games, such as Spec Ops: The Line.
Electronic Arts used to have a publishing label named EA Partners that was specifically for this purpose. A third-party developer could make a game on their own and hire EA solely to help with marketing or distribution. This arrangement was used most commonly to get games on retail store shelves. With digital sales becoming more popular, there is less demand for this service. Electronic Arts closed the EA Partners program. However, marketing is still important for a game’s success, and a publisher might be better suited to it than a stressed out developer trying to finish their game on time.
Everyone has their own way of playing games. For myself it could be summed up in one word: completionist. Throughout my life, I have never had the extra money to just buy games on a whim. The more time I could spend on one game, the fewer games I would need to buy over time. While I do have a little bit more money now, I still try to buy fewer games and put the saved money to better uses like paying down my debts faster or donating to charity.
I would not call myself a pure completionist though. I do not complete all content at all costs. It depends on the game, but I have come up with several types of content that I will ignore. Usually this is stuff which I have limited control over, such as content that requires a lot of coordination between players or progress based on random luck instead of player skill. Because I have no control over much of that, I will not feel obligated to play that content in a game. In addition, I might ignore content that I feel is too grindy.
For me fully completing a game depends on the game genre:
| Platformer | Complete all stages, collect everything, and get all achievements. |
| Real-Time Strategy | Complete all campaigns with all factions, try every faction in multiplayer, and get all achievements. |
| Turn-Based Strategy | Beat the game and all scenarios with all factions, and get all achievements. |
| Role-Playing Game | Complete the game and all available quests with all character classes, obtain the best items, and get all achievements. |
| Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game | Get all classes to level cap, complete all solo quests, see all group content at least once, obtain the best items (within reason), and get all achievements. |
| In General | Complete all solo content, try out all multiplayer content, and get all achievements. |
However, sometimes I do become bored with a game, not because it is a bad game but because I have simply played it too much. In those times I like to switch around to different games, slowly making progress until some of them get completed. To that end, I made up three progressive levels of “completing” a game.
The first is what most players would call beating the game. I go through the whole story one time. Whenever I buy a game, I may not be ready to dive in and do everything. I will just beat it once, so I do not have to worry about seeing spoilers later on. No matter what, I have to beat the game once to consider it completed.
The second level is completing all the content. Depending on the game, this can be fast or slow. Some games like RPGs can take hundreds of hours to complete all the content. Shooters, on the other hand, can be completed in one weekend. As I wrote above, I will not always do everything. For example, in Diablo 3 I do not worry about getting the absolute best items because it is too luck-based that I would find the right items. Likewise, I do not concern myself with hardcore mode because bad luck with my internet connection could prevent any hardcore goals from being completed.
The third level is completing all achievements. I do it in this order because many achievements will be completed automatically on the way to completing all content. Achievements are most likely to be ignored based on my limitations above. For example, I ignored the achievements in Starcraft 2 to get 1000 wins with each faction. When I have an interest in playing multiplayer Starcraft 2, I am happy to make progress in those, but I do not make it a requirement for having “completed” the game.
Last year I came across a forum thread asking readers if there were any games they had bought but had not completed. This inspired me to make a big spreadsheet with all my games and my progress in each to keep track more formally. I have a lot of games. Some I had thought I had fully completed actually still had content I never experienced. Whenever I do not know which game I want to play, I just take a look at the spreadsheet and pick a game to make more progress on.
It is fun to check off a game as fully complete. By the time this happens, I have played the game so much, I will probably never play it again. So the spreadsheet has the dual purpose of letting me know whether I can uninstall a game or whether there is an ounce of gameplay left that I can extract from it.
