It seems like 2016 is going to be a very strong year for video-games.
I'll shoot through this with my youthful, accepting, forgiving mind and see what happens.
DOOM - Never had much interest in the Doom series, heard bad things about MP, heard good things about SP.
Will probably grab it on sale, it looks like a decent shooter. In singleplayer games, I usually need plot and context to get invested in the game, and Doom has never been about that, but a shooter with medkits and movement-based shooting as opposed to regen-health and cover-based shooting sounds like a nice change of pace.
No Man's Sky - Much like all the games that came with the trend Minecraft and DayZ started, it sounds great on paper but it gets dreary pretty quickly when you actually play it.
Maaaaybe on sale, but I doubt it.
Homefront: The Revolution - Looks okay, but
I'll just hold out for now. I've already got Far Cry 3 if I want an open-world, outpost-based, optional-stealth guerilla shooter, thanks. It's kind of funny how this series just keeps attempting to jump on a bandwagon too late. First, it was trying to compete with CoD by being CoD in every sense except with somehow even clunkier gunplay and worse writing, and now I guess it's going to be Far Cry in every sense except with somehow even clunkier stealth and worse writing.
Mafia III - It looked interesting at first, what with the setting and the characters plus the turn away from the old crime story we've all seen many times. But then I saw that they turned the story-focused linear game into a repetitive open-world where you takedown outposts one by one with stealth or gunplay like every single game as of late, so
no thanks. That plus the driving, half the fun in Mafia 2 was trying to enact chases with a somewhat realistic driving mechanic, seems like that's gone now too in favour of grabbing more GTA fans.
Battleborn - Tried the free beta,
no interest. I don't like the art style, the visuals, the gameplay is trying to combine Borderlands with Team Fortress and MOBA games and feels okay but not my kind of thing. Should stop being compared to Overwatch, though, they're completely different games mechanically even if similar visually.
Anything from the FF series -
I have never been a fan of JRPGs, thanks.
Battlefield 1 - What am I supposed to review, the completely cinematic laughably "in-engine" cutscene that EA called a trailer? I say Battlefield 4 again, with less full-auto weapons. Which isn't too much of an insult - Battlefield 4's MP was okay, and the support for new maps and weapons after release was incredibly good after about a year.
Will need to see more before I make an opinion, but for now it's a no.
Overwatch - Genuinely intrigued, I really enjoyed the open beta, and
looking forward to seeing what comes next, though it's MP only and it's a Blizzard game, so I'm not going to be very optimistic about the game's future. It's Team Fortress 2 meets the Disney art style, if anyone needs an idea of what kind of game it is. I doubt it will hold much interest to the majority here so I won't go further into it.
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst - I enjoyed the first one, but yet again they're turning it into one of those tedious collect-everything open-worlds where you have to take-down outposts between missions. It used to be that the phrase "open-world" actually excited me, now it's just weary and overdone. Especially with the repetitive kind as opposed to the exploration kind.
Sceptical, will wait and see. But the gameplay looks nice.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and
Dishonored 2 - Stealth games with sprawling levels and skill sets where you can affect the ending through a fairly simple consequence system. My favourite kind of game, but the actions of both game's publishers have left me feeling pessimistic about both games.
Will have to wait and see that they haven't cocked them up.
Horizon: Zero Dawn - It's a PS4 exclusive.
I'll stay on the side for now.
Dawn of War III -
I have never been a fan of the Warhammer 40K series, thanks.
So, my final verdict is that all the good series are getting a hyped-up sequel, and that the AAA industry is getting more unique with its new ideas. Not a bad start, but I wager only about half of them will turn out as good as expected. Still, it was better than 2014, and for all the damage the new console generation did to game standards, this is actual progress. Looking forward to the future as much as I can without getting excited for anything.
So, yeah. Basically I don't give a shit about the hypetrain of 2016. Only game I want is Overwatch and only games I'm willing to give a chance is Battlefield 1 and Deus Ex. The rest just seem like triple-a garbage to me or I simply don't care about them. I remember way back when I was younger and I actually looked forward to triple-a games and there were so many I wanted to get and I was so amazed by them time after time. And now look at me. I feel like a bitter old hag who's yelling at kids about how nowadays sucks. Whatever. Triple-a games can exist for those who enjoy them. I'm fine with that, I got my indie titles anyway so it doesn't bother me. Still, I never thought that this is how I would end up.
Don't fret,
people actually make money off being bitter and cynical about all hype and critical about every game. Seems like the ideal job for everyone here.
