# 2015: A bad year in gaming (spoiler warning for Life is Strange & FO4)



## Reindeer (Nov 6, 2015)

_Note: This contains a lot of my own opinions. I'm not trying to convince anyone to think the same._


I've never wanted a year in gaming to end so badly as this year.

2015 has not been a good year to many kinds of gamers. Some only had minor setbacks in the form of delays, while others saw their beloved franchises crumble. And in between all of it are people like me, who possibly caught the worst of it.

At the beginning of the year, everything looked great. Life is Strange released its first episode, Metal Gear Solid V and Silent Hills were in development by Kojima Productions, Nintendo released the New 3DS (in Western regions) as well as Majora's Mask 3D. Of course, there were the minor annoyances, with games like Limbo and Slender being released on yet more systems, but we've had those every year, so nobody paid those any mind.


*Konami*

We didn't have to wait long for the first major setback though. In March, it was revealed that due to internal struggles, Konami had suddenly decided to restructure the entire company. Kojima Productions was robbed of its name, Hideo Kojima's name was torn off all the Metal Gear games while the man himself was turned into a contract worker, the development team was forced to rush MGSV while also experiencing layoffs, and Silent Hills was unceremoniously cancelled after the release of a fantastic demo in 2014.

A lot of people just wondered: why? Why did Konami do this? After a while it was reported that their restructuring was so they can focus on the mobile market, and (off the record) on their gambling machine business. Apart from that, the large amounts of money spent on creating Metal Gear titles by Kojima had made the higher-ups angry. And thus, in one fell swoop, Konami committed corporate suicide, and effectively became the most hated game company of 2015, even beating out the likes of EA and Ubisoft.

The release of MGSV could have been handled better, as well. The game would force a server check-in whenever the game was started up, but with servers not functioning 95% of the time in the first two weeks after release, people would often be sat at a loading screen for several minutes, waiting impatiently to play their game. Some PC gamers couldn't even start up the game on the launch date because it wouldn't run at all (their CPUs didn't support SSE4.1, which the game needed at the time).

Through a series of patches and server updates, things did eventually get better. But fixing these didn't fix the bigger problem: the obviously cut content. A few story elements in MGSV are never explored further or properly finished, leaving large plot holes in between MGSV and the games that follow it chronologically.

Now it's also been confirmed that the small studio in Los Angeles, created specifically to work on Metal Gear Online, has been shut down before the PC version of MGO has even released, and with console gamers saying MGO is unbalanced and (surprise) the servers are unstable. While there are gamers who will possibly be inconvenienced by a buggy mess that won't work, there are now people looking for a job right before Christmas.

And as if all that news wasn't enough, after the cancellation of Silent Hills, Konami made sure to tell us Silent Hill wasn't dead and a new installment was being worked on... in the form of a pachinko slot machine!


*Nintendo*

I feel 2015 was just a really unlucky year for Nintendo. They had a strong beginning, a good line-up of games...

During E3, people were largely disappointed by the Nintendo Direct. And that while there was some great news in there, like the reveal of Star Fox Zero and Hyrule Warriors Legends, as well as more details on Super Mario Maker and the long-awaited SMTxFE.

There were many things to be disappointed about. Honestly, I thought it was an all right Direct for the most part, with the same amounts of excitement and disappointment I felt with nearly every one of their Directs. Something did hit me hard though.

Metroid. For years, fans of the franchise have been waiting for a proper follow-up, after Other M bombed so hard. The title Metroid was dropped, getting people's giddiness up high, only to reveal...!
A spin-off co-op title with Samus Aran nowhere to be seen. Great.

But the main thing that happened with Nintendo this year, was Iwata's passing. For many it was unexpected. I personally didn't believe the news at first, thinking it was another ?Bill Cosby died? joke that was being spread around the internet. Sadly though, it was no joke. One of the most charismatic and inspirational people in the video game world was suddenly gone. The saddest thing about it was that he, even as he lay dying, apologized to the people that complained about the E3 Direct.

Iwata has given form to a lot of the games I play and enjoy today. The development teams at Nintendo appreciated his input and his hard work. And while many people berate Nintendo for its current home console, you can't deny that the Wii revolutionized gaming as Iwata foresaw. Knowing he was heavily involved with Pokemon GO when he was still alive, I have a lot of faith in that game.


*Minor things*

The rest of the year was fairly uneventful, to be fair. There were delays of some major games, like The Legend of Zelda U, Star Fox Zero, Persona 5... I personally don't mind those. I'd rather they delay and deliver the best product they can, than deliver a broken mess, but I know it's pretty disappointing for the people hyped for those games.

Life is Strange had a crap ending. In the style of Mass Effect 3, your choices eventually didn't matter and it all boiled down to just two possible endings; save the town like you originally intended or become a lesbian. Good work, Dontnod, you really delivered on expectations there.

There were some great things this year as well. EA decided to stop being awful, promising free content updates and DLC in several of their games, and even setting up a new studio with Jade Raymond at the helm. Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon returned to the roots of the series, leaving behind the disappointing entry that was Gates to Infinity. And Undertale released, becoming Indie Game of the Year in a matter of hours.

But now...


*Fallout 4*

The leak of this game happened. Fallout 4 has been laid bare, and just as I expected, it's a piece of ****. It was incredibly suspicious how Bethesda announced it at E3 with a late 2015 release date and only showed some parts of the game, then released literally nothing new for months. It's only now in the few weeks before release that they're busy advertising it like they should have been.

The graphics are lacking. Even on the highest possible graphics settings on PC, buildings appear as boxes with windows painted on to give the illusion of depth. Looking at any such building from the side just shows it's two-dimensional. Models look like plastic. Dogmeat, in all his unoriginal glory, looks like he stepped out a PS2 game. The seamless world that we were promised isn't there, as you still open doors that lead into loading screens so the world behind the door can be loaded. Bodily animations are wooden, facial animations are often buggy, contorting characters' faces in ways they shouldn't.

The writing is just as atrocious as it was in Fallout 3, even...


Spoiler: Fallout 4 story spoiler



to the point of the plot being the exact same as FO3's.


The story dismisses the established plot of the series. The voice acting is terrible and flat, which is to be expected from a company that just hires 10 people to do all the voices of their 200+ characters. The leveling system ignores everything that made the Fallout series unique.

This game is in a state where a company should be ashamed if it were to be released. But the Bethesda drones pipe up, yelling ?MODS WILL FIX IT?, because apparently the consumer is now responsible for the quality of a product. The exact same happened with Skyrim, and the same shills are already popping their heads out of the ground to try and justify Fallout 4.

And the quality of the game isn't even from publisher pressure. It's happened many, many times that a publisher would pressure a developer to ?finish? a game, leading to the product being buggy and/or obviously unfinished. Hell, that's what happened to MGSV just this year.
Bethesda is the developer and the publisher of Fallout 4. They are happy with the way this is being released. They're happy with it looking awful, they're happy with their writing being uninspired, they're happy with using the same songs from FO3, they're happy with everything in FO4 currently, even though to anyone that can think straight it's obviously lacking.


*On to 2016*

There's nothing that can make this year any better for me at this point. Three of my favorite franchises of all time (Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Fallout) were killed by companies that couldn't give less of a damn. I've seen a man that was an inspiration to many apologize while on his death bed. I've seen people defend an obviously lacking product.

2016 can't come too soon. 2016 is the year of Hyrule Warriors Legends, a new(ish?) Zelda on the Wii U, Star Fox Zero, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Pokemon GO and other Nintendo mobile games, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, SMTxFE, Persona 5, Rise of the Tomb Raider...

I just really hope that 2016 isn't the year of more bull****.


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## oath2order (Nov 6, 2015)

Nintendo was meh this year, I agree. I don't know what the hell they were thinking with the new Paper Mario game, giving us a mash-up nobody wanted.

Fallout 4 looks amazing, I don't know what your issue is. I just feel like you're one of those people who can't get past "oh muh gawd new vegas was the best game evuh"


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## NerdHouse (Nov 6, 2015)

The legendary _Castlevania_ series has also been reduced to pachinko slot machines :/


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## oath2order (Nov 6, 2015)

Chroma Red said:


> The legendary _Castlevania_ series has also been reduced to pachinko slot machines :/



That's a shame. I played one of those.

I suck at 2D games


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## Reindeer (Nov 6, 2015)

oath2order said:


> Fallout 4 looks amazing, I don't know what your issue is. I just feel like you're one of those people who can't get past "oh muh gawd new vegas was the best game evuh"


Fallout New Vegas was unable to reach the concept of the original FO3 (Van Buren) due to the limitations of the Gamebryo engine. Fallout 2 still remains the best in the series.


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## v0x (Nov 6, 2015)

Pachinko....
Yayyyy


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## bloomwaker (Nov 6, 2015)

While I find delays disappointing, like you, I prefer that they happen when it means a better experience (and I sincerely hope this is the case). 

I think the passing of Iwata is what hit me the hardest, but it's interesting to think that no matter how much I felt like crying, I also wanted to smile. Those are the kind of fun, genuine memories that man left me with. 

Because I don't have a lot of money for gaming, the scope for what I get hyped for has to be pretty limited. I never got to play the Metal Gear games, or the Silent Hill games, but even *I* was hurting when I watched the disaster that was Konami unfold. 

Three words are ringing in my head right now...

HIT THE LEVER. 

I hope Konami sinks, but their gambling machines seem to be a bit too popular for that at the moment.


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## Jawile (Nov 6, 2015)

>still complaining about fallout 4's graphics


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## oath2order (Nov 6, 2015)

Jawile said:


> >still complaining about fallout 4's graphics



inb4 that's actually a glitch in FO4 though


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## ZekkoXCX (Nov 6, 2015)

2016 may have ****
Oh look! A new PS2 game!




Whatever,it may will have good gameplay


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## Bosca (Nov 6, 2015)

Not with those animations lol, but still it's early days. Also I don't really understand why the op thinks Limbo coming out to more consoles is a bad thing. But yeah, a lot about 2015 did suck, but there's also been a lot of great things about this year too, it's been way better than 2014 imo.


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## Tao (Nov 6, 2015)

Jawile said:


> >still complaining about fallout 4's graphics



I don't think the graphics for Bethesda's games would even be an issue if there was evidence that the time and money saved not making their games look beautiful was obviously spent elsewhere to make well polished games that aren't jam packed with bugs and glitches. 

Mentioning 'bad' graphics is pretty much just putting the cherry on top of of (what's usually) an already bug ridden and half arsed cake...A cake that is just flour and eggs, thrown to the customer and told "bake it yourself".




Bosca said:


> But yeah, a lot about 2015 did suck, but there's also been a lot of great things about this year too, it's been way better than 2014 imo.



I can't really recall any major 'events' or anything from 2014, but I think there were at least more good games released than in 2015.

I can literally count all the games I liked from 2015 on one hand, with one of them being a re-release (so it barely even counts).

Though on saying that, I'm pretty sure I said last year that 2014 wasn't very good for games...Maybe 2015 just came along and said "don't worry, I can be worse".


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## MegaAquaKat (Nov 7, 2015)

but this year was really great for a bunch of Mother fans since Mother 1 and 2 were released on the WiiU
and we got Undertale and LISA which is based off of Earthbound (and they're both a great game on my opinion)
I don't know though. Maybe you were with the wrong crowd?? There was a lot of good games that came out this year. They probably just look bad since people immediately call them overrated once they seen a buttload of content of the thing more than one day.


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## radical6 (Nov 7, 2015)

Fallout 4 looks fine to me honestly. I wasn't a big fan of fallout 3, and I love New Vegas, but I'm actually pretty excited for FO4. I heard the story is okay, I wasn't expecting much, Obsidian is a lot better at writing the story.

Life Is Strange I've been meaning to play but hearing about the ending makes me go :/

I think this year was okay at best. I've mostly been playing old games.. I was about to say dragon age but then I realized that came out at the very end of 2014, not 2015. Oh well. (i love it tho)


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## Trent the Paladin (Nov 7, 2015)

Jawile said:


> >still complaining about fallout 4's graphics



Why complain about the 2008 graphics when I can complain about a barebones story and a game that's bound to crash multiple times?


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## radical6 (Nov 7, 2015)

Tom said:


> Why complain about the 2008 graphics when I can complain about a barebones story and a game that's bound to crash multiple times?



theres no need to be mean


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## Reindeer (Nov 7, 2015)

justice said:


> Fallout 4 looks fine to me honestly. I wasn't a big fan of fallout 3, and I love New Vegas, but I'm actually pretty excited for FO4. I heard the story is okay, I wasn't expecting much, Obsidian is a lot better at writing the story.


The reason I already dislike Fallout 4 so much already is that Bethesda might as well have released an HD texture pack for Fallout 3 and gone "here's Fallout 4, guys". Graphics-wise it wouldn't make much of a difference, story-wise and character-wise it wouldn't make any difference, you'd still be stuck with a similar "seamless" open world that Fallout 4 has, the RPG gameplay mechanics would actually be better...

It's not just about one thing or the other. If they had failed to deliver on the graphics but everything else had been done well, I'd go with it. If the story was uninspired but they delivered on their other promises, I'd go with it. It's the fact they failed to deliver on all fronts, and moreso failed to deliver on any of their promises made right after E3. For a normal company, if they announce a game in June for a late same-year release, June should be around the time that a game is a few months from completion and the product is going into bug testing & fixing. You can't tell me Todd Howard didn't know he was lying out of his ass just to build hype.


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## oath2order (Nov 7, 2015)

Tom said:


> Why complain about the 2008 graphics when I can complain about a barebones story and a game that's bound to crash multiple times?



go back to weeaboo 4 dance all night


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## Llunavale (Nov 8, 2015)

I'm kind of expecting Fallout 4 to be pretty disappointing to be honest, but I'll just have to wait and see!

I am looking forward to gaming in 2016, though! Some decent 3DS games lined up, including all the niche ones I love so much, then stuff like Fire Emblem and Bravely Default. Hopefully more news on the NX too, and maybe some word of the next Pokémon game, what with it being the 30 20 year anniversary next year and all...


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## Tao (Nov 9, 2015)

Llunavale said:


> and maybe some word of the next Pok?mon game, what with it being the 30 year anniversary next year and all...



Won't 2016 be the 20th anniversary of Pokemon though?


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## Llunavale (Nov 9, 2015)

Tao said:


> Won't 2016 be the 20th anniversary of Pokemon though?



Yep, you're absolutely right.
I guess I should refrain from making posts at 3am...


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## Bosca (Nov 9, 2015)

I think I can agree with most of you that 2016 is looking to be better than 2015. So many fighting games, Pok?mon Z (hopefully), FF15, The Last Guardian and so on. Of course that's just what I'm personally hyped for, but I see so many big hitters from all sorts of genre landing next year, let's hope they all deliver.


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## Stalfos (Nov 10, 2015)

The only positives from 2015 was The Last Guardian, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shenmue III getting announced at E3.


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## radical6 (Nov 10, 2015)

actually 2015 had one good thing and that was the release of Shadowrun: Hong Kong =^)


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## Kairi-Kitten (Nov 11, 2015)

I actually never looked at the ending of Life is Strange that way, but yeah I guess that is a good point; I still loved the whole gameplay aspect regardless and as of 2016 I am at least very excited for Zelda Wii U since open world and FE: Fates, I hope these two titles live up to my expectation.


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