It’s that time of the year – the time when we reflect on all of the great games that have been released over the last twelve months. The year kicked off with major releases like The Order: 1886 and Bloodborne. By mid-year we saw the release of Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm and CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. By the end of the year we finally got several games that fans have been waiting years for – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and almost out of nowhere Bethesda’s Fallout 4.
Joining the discussion for our last podcast of the year is:
The Official PlayStation Blog has opened up voting in their annual user lead series of polls for The Game of the Year Awards. As 2015 comes to a close perhaps it is time to reflect upon which games have left the biggest impact on you over the past 12 months before clicking on over to vote.
The year in PlayStation started off with a bang with the release of exclusives like The Order: 1886 and Bloodborne while continuing to amaze right up until December with massive open world games like Just Cause 3.
SCEA’s Social Media Manager Justin Massongill outlines some of the rules that Sony used in the selection of their eligible titles. Readers even suggested new additions in the comments section of the original poll, like Life Is Strange, and they’ve found their way into the official polls.
Here are the ground rules:
Nominees are limited to games that have never appeared on a PlayStation platform before.
Additionally, if a game has won for a specific category in a previous year, it’s no longer eligible to win in that category this year.
We tried to include a (very) wide range of nominees for each category, but if your favorite isn’t on the list feel free to write it inat the bottom of each form.
Voting is performed via a series of rather long polls available on the PlayStation Blog. Each category contains a number of titles – for example in the running for “Best PS4 Game” are Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Axiom Verge, Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, Broken Age, Black Ops III, Dying Light, MLB the Show 15 & more. So take your time and pick your favorites carefully.
Did your favorite game make Sony’s cut? 2015 was certainly a fantastic year for gaming!
Dragon Age is another in a strong list of BioWare franchises that has a strong, loyal, and sometimes fierce following; when games in their franchises try to hit a massive audience outside of their core user base things often get kind of messy and, unfortunately, as a result, good standalone games and franchise entries get dragged through the dirt. Inquisition is one of those games and, in an effort to try and re-establish itself with that wider audience and show some loyalty to its core audience, BioWare releases a Game of the Year edition to give those who either haven’t played the game at all or haven’t engaged in any of the extra content that’s available for the game.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Like most AAA role playing games, the first twenty minutes is almost purely exposition and introduction to the setting, the characters, and the gameplay: what you’re getting and what you’re introduced to is a blending of the previous titles in the franchise and looks to wrap everything up. Even if you’re a newcomer to the series, there’s not a noticeable detriment to coming into the franchise as you have options; you can either work with the default world state or you can experiment on Dragon Age Keep, a website that ties into your Origin account and allows you to mess around with world states, which is really cool. Due to circumstances out of my control, Dragon Age Keep allowed me to recreate the world state in saves I had used in previous titles.
Introduction to combat doesn’t happen without too much hand-holding and it’s done within the narrative so it doesn’t feel as though it creates too much of a interruption in the experience. The first bit of this game is exactly what I expected to see from a BioWare title.
In my humble opinion, they took everything that succeeded in both of the former titles in the franchise and blended them together to provide the framework that this game is built around. BioWare knows that if they have a vision they know how to bring it to life and that’s something they’ve done for as long as I’ve known them and their role playing games have been spot-on for this. Inquisition is absolutely no different in this as it provides an experience that feels just as great at being a game as it is a wonderfully presented narrative.
One of the largest things that stand out for this game is that it was made with two ideals in mind: broad appeal and taking advantage of current generation technology. It’s very clear that they’re trying to create a singular type of experience and if you’re a fan of the franchise like I am, this is exactly what you want. I came in with a certain set of expectations and I feel that Inquisition hit every one of them. I feel that one could dive in as any kind of player and feel that you could be immersed relatively quickly.
The graphical and audio presentation is extremely satisfying – on current generation consoles, the game looks, feels, and sounds marvelous. Voice acting is very well done and, surprisingly so, the lip sync is actually done pretty well, most times. There’s rarely any slowdown.
Its greatest strength, however, is also its greatest failings: I feel that the experience does not transfer over in the same way into previous generation’s systems. The appeal is so broad that, at times, it feels watered down. It’s clear to me that Inquisition was tailored for a very specific experience and everyone else that has any different demands from the game gets to suffer.
There are trivial issues that I could list off that are nothing more than just pet peeves but there are enough of them to note that I feel they should not be featured in the game the way that they have been: the worst of all is the removal of mana and healing magics. This means that, between rest stops and reload points, you’re limited to a certain number of healing potions and that is it. That’s creating a false sense of difficulty and that’s a terribly lazy design choice. In previous generation systems, there are a massive amount of pathfinding and collision detection bugs that can break the experience of traveling between locales. Story progression happens in spurts and the spots in between those spurts really only cater to those who greatly enjoy the lore of the franchise.
While this defines me, gameplay and story progression only rewards those who greatly enjoy both. If you feel that one or the two are lacking, it will taint the other experience. This game would be awesome if only it were way more refined, smooth, and immersive.Read More
Tonight at the Video Game Awards, we were finally told what this year’s Game of the Year award is and that game is The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is an episodic downloadable title from TellTale Games and has been the topic of much conversation in the gaming world.
The Walking Dead managed to beat out other games like Journey which also been hyped to win the game of the year after Journey’s video game music composer Austin Wintory was nominated for a Grammy this week. Among the other nominees that were beaten were Mass Effect 3, Dishonored and Assassin’s Creed III.
The Walking Dead also won for Best Downloadable Game.
