I've been debating whether or not I had anything useful to say about a game that's now been surpassed by its sequel, and ultimately relegated to a terminal wind-down period. It won't be long before we see the Destiny servers shut down in favour of Destiny 2, or even a third by the time it all rolls around. Despite there being an active community of players stuck on the first Destiny, it's no secret that the title is on its way out.
Viewing entries tagged
shooter
In the last few years I've been increasingly turned on to the whole re-imagined 1980s style that's brought on some interesting interpretations of alt-retro-isms. I don't know if it's been around the whole time, but all the amazing synthwave music and neon-fueled art has become some of my favourite retro-media these days.
In a time before broadband internet and the proliferation of online video streaming, the only way to see footage of games before they released was to find a web site hosting a file, then wait weeks for it to download over a dial-up connection. This is how it was when Unreal Tournament 2003 was due to be released, and I dutifully sourced a keynote speech from Cliff Bleszinski where he talked about and showed off the latest tech to feature in the game. I think it was only about a forty-five minute video, but seeing those rag-doll effects and new weapon models for the first time really blew my tiny little mind.
Rhythm games are another genre that I've never been all that good at, but love to play. Perhaps it's because I'm a big music fan, but it could just be because Audiosurf is one of the greatest games ever made. However, unlike Audiosurf, most rhythm games are stuck to a rigid progression tied to some average music. There's no better case of an entire genre living and dying by the quality of its soundtrack.
A long time ago, in a basement not so far away; a friend and I spent an entire afternoon trying to get Doom II running on their PC. They had a brand new 16-bit sound card to try out, and I had a copy of the full game backed up on about sixteen floppy discs. It was astronomical to conceive of such a huge game that used the cutting edge technology of the time. When we finally got it running, the 16-bit grunts of the Pinkies would forever be etched into my memory.
This year has been insane so far when it comes to quality big game releases. So much so, that my backlog of recently released games is pretty stellar with Nier: Automata and Horizon: Zero Dawn waiting patiently for their turn. However, after being convinced by the beta, I did manage to spend over a hundred hours messing about in the huge open world of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands.
What's that saying? Fool me once… fool me twice… blah blah blah… being fooled repeatedly is equal to foolishness. I'll admit, I've been a fool with the Battlefield series, and with EA in general, but I'm consistently amazed at how one series can be so terrible and beautiful at the same time.
Let me tell you a story. You know the one about those games that big studios like to make every now and then as short experiences packed with quality production. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger stands as a tightly paced tale of compelling gun-play and some interesting ideas. These short AAA games are a good example of how it's not the size of a game, it's the way you use it.
Let's not beat around the bush: last year's E3 stage demo for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands was a terrible way to market the game, and if I hadn't been able to get my hands on it through the recent open beta, I would never have given it a second thought. On paper, Wildlands is as generic as they come and barely offers anything unique, but it got its hooks in me… and I don't know why.