Video Game Tuesday: The Best and Worst of 2015

Michael Blaker
Game Industry News is running the best blog posts from people writing about the game industry. Articles here may originally appear on Michael's blog, Windborne's Story Eatery.

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Hi all this week for Video Game Tuesday I’m going to be looking back at the last year. It’s The Best and Worst of 2015!

The Worst:

Destiny: Taken King might have revitalized the game, but after months of PUDs prior to and then further PUDs after it’s release Bungie has shown time and again over the past year and 3 months that they can’t be trusted with anything. They consistently backpedal on issues like Patch Note inconsistencies and mess with unnecessary things while refusing to budge on their own stupid quest to achieve “Balance” while fucking up the game for the majority of the players. I’m sick of this shit, and so is most of the Destiny community. This coupled with the fact that real bugs that affect gameplay, hello “random death to landing funny” bug, take months or at this point over a year for the one I just mentioned, to get even acknowledged is pathetic and shows serious lack of staffing that Bungie shouldn’t have. Destiny has destroyed the company that brought us games like Marathon, Oni and Halo. It’s pathetic and shows lack of foresight by the leaders.

Launching Broken Games: Wow, I thought 2014 was bad for this with the release of the Master Chief Collection, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and Destiny. But the crap that’s occurred with Batman Arkham Knight topped it all. The PC release was launched bugged and still has issues to this day, half a year later. Can’t we agree to stop launching shit that’s broken and take our time with making games and do it right the first time?

Konami: Boy did Konami shit all over the community with their near slavish work conditions and their handling of Hideo Kojima. I’m seriously disappointed in the company, nearly as much as I am with Bungie. Removing his name from the series he made and barring him with legal bullshit from accepting an award he earned for it is unacceptable and I refuse to buy a Konami game from now on.

The Best:

Final Fantasy XIV: I started playing this early this year after being fed up with Destiny and I’ve never regretted that decision. It’s got a real storyline with excellent plot, characters and enough stuff to do to last me a lifetime! Heavensward has only raised the bar of expectation for me and many others, with it’s storyline being some of the best we’ve ever seen from Square Enix, or Squaresoft for that matter. The gameplay is also pretty good, even on a PS4 using a controller.

Rocket League: This game came out of nowhere and has pretty much shown what a small team can make with a simple idea, some good programming, and artists. It’s probably the best small Indie game I’ve ever played and is the only PS+ free game that has stayed on my hard drive through the year since it was released via the service. It’s fun, simple and competitive. Gaming at it’s best.

Tales of Zestiria: I’ve gone on and on about how much I love this game, but despite it having a significantly smaller development team than any recent Final Fantasy game, it’s the best JRPG I’ve ever played. Also Rose is freaking awesome and I love her character. Naysayers can go twiddle their thumbs.

That’s it for this year’s Video Game Tuesday! I’ll see you all in 2016!

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