Everyone seems to have their takeaway from 2014. I know some who think of it as an excellent first step; still others regard it as a total flop. If one thing’s for certain, it was that there was trouble in paradise not too long into the year everyone said we would call the year of next-gen. After a year of delays and launch day disasters, I’m inclined to think that in these past 12 months, 2014 was all things awful and some things awesome in its own peculiar ways.
Gamers wondered aloud where the new ideas were this time last year and why the console cycle seemed to be spinning its proverbial wheels. Surely this new generation of software should be further along, people thought. We should’ve had something more to look forward to in 2014 than a few annualized series entries and last-gen makeovers. Surely 2014 taught us the hard lessons about expectations. Almost every game of interest we looked forward to this year has a 2015 date attached to it and, a year later, our shiny new machines were all dressed up with nowhere to go.
As I watched this year’s E3 trailers, I was taken back to 2007. I think it was Uncharted 4‘s announcement that cemented it for me. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was, for me, where the last generation truly began — it came out of nowhere and gave me a game experience I never could have had on older consoles, showcasing not only the best graphics I had ever seen until then, but an attempt at cinematic storytelling on par with any action film of Hollywood’s. Of course, the new Uncharted isn’t a game out of nowhere; it’s another sequel a year into this console generation. Games that fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it, but by all accounts, it seems that this generation learned a lot.
Looking back, the Xbox 360 didn’t have much going for it a year after its debut. Dead Rising was a biggie, but the big guns didn’t come out until 2007, starting with Crackdown in February and Gears of War 2 by November. Meanwhile, the Playstation 3 was a wasteland until 2008 and Metal Gear Solid 4, with nothing much turning heads besides Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank in that sorry freshman year of its existence. In that light, 2014 should track more like 2007 did…and that’s exactly where it stands. We’re less a year into the current console generation, and it’ll be that second year where the good stuff starts to show up. Like then, the struggle is finding the fantastic in the mundane.
It would be a lie to say that 2014 came and went without its fair share of new franchises, nor would it be true that they were without good intentions. That pre-orders live and die on hype is one of the industry’s oldest tenants and their decline should come as no surprise from what you’ll hear the average gamer say. Titanfall? Call of Duty with robots. Watch Dogs? The Grand Theft Auto: Call Waiting. Destiny? Halo Lands of Warcraft…once you get past the first 50 hours. Every one of them seemed like a good, basic framework for a game – and still a good six months or more away from launch.
That mad dash for that elusive “next-gen” gaming experience could be seen as the motivating factor behind the reckless abandon in most of the blockbuster titles rushed to market this year. Blockbusters have, for their part, earned a dubious distinction as the games sold at the highest price for the lowest cost. In their philosophy, “Bigger equals better,” and it’s a tenuous science then of inching that goal post forward, not too fast and not too slow. To that end, the AAA circuit is a mess of pit crews working like clockwork to churn out a product faster and faster every year. Blockbusters are little more than a blur of motion in race just to get cars on the track at all. Leave one screw loose and they all crash and burn.
Another year of broken games and empty promises saw no different of a result. Driveclub’s online never left the garage and even the mighty Master Chief Collection couldn’t escape its own matchmaking hell soon enough. At the center of it all was Ubisoft, whose freakish glitch faces will never let me think of a virtual Paris the same way again. This time, there was no red ring of death and or paralyzing price tags keeping our consoles at bay. What I know there weren’t were finished games. Gamers want their games, studios want to make them, and console manufacturers want to have them. Without the painstaking beta testing that went into games like Destiny or Warlords of Draenor, online games are the stuff of crapshoots. This year, impatience failed everyone.
All but Wii U owners, that is. It’s rather difficult to say where Nintendo’s games stand in the generational sense. Surely they’re better than anything on the Wii; arguably they’re a nice little stop-gap between gens. Say what you will about the system; that doesn’t have enough power, that it doesn’t have enough games, or, heaven forbid, you still hate the name. This year certainly proved it had all three going for it. It was certainly powerful enough to run Super Smash Bros. in 60 frames-per-second and native 1080p and I have yet to log into Mario Kart 8 with a hitch. That’s not to mention the wonders that Bayonetta 2 or DK: Tropical Freeze did for my eyes and ears. I won’t be one to endorse Metacritic as any sort of crystal ball, but all the 85s or higher you see attached to the Wii U’s library surely count for something.
We can thank heaven for indies in the same breath, then. Thank the developers who took the time to craft such pint-sized marvels like Transistor and The Banner Saga. For pennies on the dollar, there’s no end to what a few, talented individuals can do in the industry’s farther corners. We all need the comfort food of our Battlefields and our Call of Duties. Sometimes, it’s a balanced diet of the chewy stuff that lets us keep our head in check. Sometimes we need to munch on a Shovel Knight when we’d rather guzzle a Resident Evil.
In the meantime, how do we heal the blockbuster bite? That the blockbuster is dead or dying is ever more unlikely with every passing month in 2015’s calendar. What’s true is that the blockbuster of 2014 is tired, demoralized, and sorely out of shape. Annualized binge releases stops where your wallet does and the time’s long overdue to just say no. A half-baked game is no game at all, and it’s time that the industry moves with that fact. It wouldn’t hurt for studios to trade hands making the best at what they do. The industry has an equal lot to learn from Rockstar and Bethesda, the folks who give us a (new) Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls every five years they count. A Far Cry one year and an Assassin’s Creed the next. Pace yourselves and you’ll have your bigger, better games and keep your customers’ loyalty too – maybe even more money day one. I for one won’t take any more leaps of faith on broken games.
This past E3 didn’t hesitate to glimpse the many things that next year can be about, either; a chance to trim the fat and get the generation pumping iron again. There’s probably no year on record to have as many AAA series updates as 2015 already does, and the prospect of having Zelda, Uncharted, Batman, The Witcher 3, Halo, and Metal Gear Solid V 12 months within release of another downright terrifying. Even a cursory list of titles slated for launch next year paints a picture of a spectacular year to come, one that just might hit the highs we experienced in 2007 with genre-defining classics like Gears of War, Mass Effect, Persona 3, Halo 3, Portal, and BioShock. Be glad for the developers that are taking their time to make their games the very best, because at least someone is.
I must admit that my optimism about next year amounts to little more than a gut feeling. Isn’t that really what keeps us interested in the medium — a visceral, instinctive response? All I know is that I haven’t come away from a year like 2014 feeling this positive about the next since, well, 2007. Certainly there’s room for skepticism, but surely 2014 taught us, for better or worse, the hard lessons in what we want and what we need. I see in the games industry signs of a massive ship correcting a dangerous course before running its keel around pure disaster. When I look back at 2014, I don’t want to hear that it didn’t try. Why do we fall, Master Wayne? So we can pick ourselves back up again.
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Tell us: What did 2014’s games mean to you? Do you own any of the new consoles? Were you pleased with what they brought to the table? Share your thoughts with us down below.