2010 was a great year for gamers. Ripe with quality titles right from the get-go, there was a wealth of enjoyment to be spent across all platforms. It also marked the official launch of the Motion Control War with Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move entering the battlefield with guns blazing high – the quality of titles might have been considered less than stellar, there was at least a lot of support from many high profile publishers and developers for both controllers. Though there were many cases to be cheered, the year wasn’t without loss; there were layoffs, studios were shut down and more lawsuits than you could waggle a Wiimote at. Let’s start with how the year kicked off.
In the beginning…
The year started with a bang. Starting mere days after the New Year Bayonetta and Darksiders were released, soon followed by Army of Two: The 40th Day, MAG, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and Mass Effect 2. And this was just in January. What makes this significant is that this particular time of the year usually sees very limited releases due to it being the post-holiday season.
February also saw a massive launch line-up with titles like Bioshock 2, Dante’s Inferno, Aliens vs. Predator reboot, and Heavy Rain. And then there was March – Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III, Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, Just Cause 2, Red Steel 2, WarioWare: DIY… Phew. To put it simply, if you love games, chances are you spent a lot of money on them for the first half of 2010 with little disappointment.
Mass Effect 2 saw huge success throughout the year, being a contender for (if not the) Game of the Year of 2010 by many publications.
The year of sequels.
Whether you like it or not, franchises have become a huge part of the games industry. 2010 was rife with continuities and spin-offs, thankfully with only a low number of them not matching the standard of their originals. Here’s a quick list of some of the sequels released last year:
- Super Mario Galaxy 2
- Army of Two: The 40th Day
- Bioshock 2
- Mafia 2
- No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
- Crackdown 2
- StarCraft 2
- Metroid: Other M
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Mass Effect 2
- Gran Turismo 5
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Sid Meier’s Civilization V
- Dead Rising 2
- Puzzle Quest 2
- Sin & Punishment: Star Successor
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Splinter Cell: Conviction
- Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver
- God of War III
- Monster Hunter Tri
- Super Street Fighter IV
- Lost Planet 2
- Puzzle Quest IX
- Supreme Commander 2
- Skate 3
- Scribblenauts 2
- Donkey Kong Country Returns
- Various sports titles
- Plus more.
Resurgence of traditional arcade and platforming games.
Another abundant group of games to come out were platforming (yay!!) and arcade titles. Many independent (and some large) developers managed to gain massive amounts of attention and praise to themselves with a myriad of great titles that harkened back to fun, traditional gameplay. We saw the rise of games such as Limbo - an atmospherically sombre platformer of a boy trapped in purgatory among the childhood nightmares of dark horrors and death; Pacman Championship Edition DX – the hyper-addictive spiritual successor to 2007’s Pacman Champion Edition, with all-new bullet-time and ghost-conga-line-eating mechanics; Super Meat Boy – a frustratingly brilliant homage to uber-hard sidescrolling platformers of the 1980s & 90s; Donkey Kong Country Returns – another nod to classic sidescrollers, this time featuring fully-rendered 3D graphics and an all-new adventure starring Donkey and Diddy, from the folks that brought us the Metroid Prime trilogy Retro Studios; and Angry Birds – one of the biggest mainstream successes of 2010 where you fling wingless birds at fortified structures to demolish them and exact revenge on the pigs that ate your eggs (and it’s a smartphone game!).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game was a great sidescrolling beat ‘em up inspired by classic brawlers like River City Ransom.
Unfortunately, not everything was lollipops and rainbows. Though Sonic Team made their first real attempt at recapturing what made the world’s fastest hedgehog a landmark series in the 90s, Sonic 4: Episode 1 didn’t quite cut it. The nice aesthetics and great soundtrack just weren’t enough to draw attention away from how un-Sonic the game felt – no player momentum, often frustrating level design and an abrupt, unnecessarily difficult end-boss fight left a sour taste in many gamers’ mouths. Which brings me to my next bolded heading…
Disappointments.
Sonic 4 aside, there were some rather large disappointments in the industry over the last year. Let’s run down some of the bigger ones:
- Krome Studios sees a drastic reduction.
Australia’s largest game development company saw the close of many of its studios across the country. Founded in 1999 Krome has developed titles for most major consoles over the last couple of generations and is most famous for its Ty the Tasmanian Tiger games. Unfortunately financial crises forced the company to close their Adelaide (once called Ratbag Games with its staff being acquired in 2005 by Krome after closure from previous owner Midway) and Melbourne branches, followed by layoffs at their Brisbane establishments. Though most reports say Krome has been shut down, it’s been purported that they are still functioning as a developer, albeit with very limited staff.
- Over-hyped games.
It happens every year, and though they most often than not turn out to be fine games, they also fall short of their ambition and hype. The bigger offenders being Sonic 4: Episode 1, Medal of Honour, Fallout: New Vegas, Gran Turismo 5, The Force Unleashed 2, Fable III, Epic Mickey and (if you’ve been following my blog) Final Fantasy XIII. Also, to anticipate any heat for the mention of GT5, let me just say this: any game that boasts a six year development cycle with constant delays for refinement yet has absolute minimal crash damage (like, merely a small cluster of pixels after a head-on collision), long load times despite an hour-long install, cockpit view with only a handful of cars out of its catalogue of 1000 and the fact it barely looks better than its 2004 predecessor on on the PS2 is most definitely over-hyped.
- More layoffs.
Unfortunately Australia wasn’t the only country to be affected with developer layoffs. Other large companies like EA, 2K Games and Activision let go of portions of its staff across a number of their development studios. The most notable of which being…
- The Activision vs. Jason West & Frank Zampella fiasco.
Though this isn’t really much of a gaming disappointment, it was definitely one of the bigger stories of the year. Infinity Ward’s (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, 2) higher ups Frank Zampella and Jason West were fired by parent company Activision in March, supposedly right before they were to receive their royalties from the release of Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated games of 2009. It was claimed by IW that Activision sent security into their offices to quiet and intimidate staff while West and Zampella were under questioning. According to Activision, the two heads of IW were intentionally having quiet meetings with their competing publisher EA, thus expelled them for insubordination. Since then the duo have filed a lawsuit against Activision for their lack of royalties and are now working for EA. Activision however is still publishing Call of Duty games, with their most recent offering Black Ops (developed by Treyarch) becoming the fastest grossing game of all time, making over $1 billion by the end of the year following its November 9 release.
- Still no R18+ classification in Australia… Yet.
It’s been a problem for Aussie gamers for many years now, but never before has the issue seen this much attention nor have we ever been this close to attaining it. With Michael Atkinson (the once most vocal opposer on the matter) stepping down as Attorney-General of South Australia following the SA elections earlier in the year, gamers were more motivated than ever to have this issue brought to the public eye. Two of Austarlia’s biggest video game retailers, GAME and EB Games, hosted nation-wide petitions in-store to get the public to understand the importance of this matter. No R18 rating for games means violent titles (such as Grand Theft Auto IV, God of War III, Call of Duty series) are being rated at the MA15+ level despite being restricted to adults everywhere else in the world. With numerous news stories being televised across the country and many news/blog posts being posted online, tripled with the huge response from petitions (GAME claiming to have received over 89,000; the largest response to a “wet signature” petition the country has ever seen), on December 10 the subject was discussed at the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. However following a highly tense waiting period that day the issue was declared non-conclusive for now. Though this may seem another step backward, it was also declared that a draft of a refined classification system will be drawn and presented for the next SCAG meeting. What does this mean? It means that by end of the next SCAG meeting in March, we could finally have a balanced ratings system for games.
Gamers4Croydon were a South Australian political party rallying against Michael Atkinson as the Member for Croydon. They didn’t win, but they definitely made their point and contributed to pushing the R18+ debate as a public issue.
As it turns out, having bad E3 press conferences for a few years in a row can work out to your advantage – it gives you the chance to stock up on the big guns then let lead fly. At 2010’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, after a rocky start with technical difficulties while showing off the next Zelda’s new gameplay mechanics, Nintendo’s press conference was nothing short of a spectacle. Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Golden Sun, GoldenEye, Dragon Quest… Then there was the 3DS and its own enormous list of upcoming titles. With Nintendo pulling out all the stops with most of its biggest franchises laying waste to consumers’ wallets over the next year, one can’t help but beg the question: what’s to come at next year’s E3? At this point we can only speculate, but here’s hoping to a new home console – one with HD support and un-embarrassing online service. Oh and user names.
The motion control war has officially begun.
For almost four years Nintendo held the monopoly in motion controlled gaming (though the PS3 had its offering since launch with SixAxis, but… come on). That all changed with the inevitable releases of Sony’s and Microsoft’s controllers Move and Kinect, respectively. What makes this so important is now that motion input for each console is different, simply porting a motion game between each platform is going to (read: should) take more effort, thus hopefully leading to more innovative and exclusive gameplay. Though the current releases so for have proven to be relatively average (bar Kinect’s Dance Central), they are of course launch titles, and as everyone knows in the gaming world the first wave of software for any console shouldn’t dictate the quality of the hardware. We’ll just have to wait and see what’s coming in 2011.
Last year was great, and this year’s shaping up to be the same if not better.
With the holiday season now finished and Nintendo’s 3DS just over the horizon (supposedly being released worldwide by March 31st), what does 2011 have in store? For Nintendo fans there’s the aforementioned 3DS and its gale of releases, plus The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Pokemon Black/White and Okamiden for DS. PS3 owners are in luck with a slew of exclusive games such as LittleBigPlanet 2 and Mass Effect 2 in just a couple of weeks, SOCOM, Killzone 3, Twisted Metal, inFamous 2, DC Universe Online, Resistance 3, ICO & Shadow of the Colossus HD remakes, The Last Guardian, Yakuza 4, and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Lastly Xbots have Gears of War 3, XCOM, Forza 3, plus multiplatform titles like Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3, RAGE, Crysis 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dead Space 2, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Dragon Age 2, FEAR 3, Portal 2, Bulletstorm, de Blob 2 and finally after thirteen years of development, Duke Nukem Forever.
Golly gosh. It’s a good time to be a gamer!
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