God this year sucked. Video games should be a relief, and in many ways they were. But in other ways, they were just as messy, unhappy, and broken as the year itself.
Some of the big disappointments with video games in 2020 were minor setbacks or ordinary harassment – the kind of things that could get bigger any other year if they weren’t so crappy and, at worst, downright overcrowded harassment, abuse, and exploitation. There, the term “disappointment” almost feels like an understatement, except in that it accurately categorizes the Slowburn realization that long festering horrors recently exposed are not being addressed as quickly and uncompromisingly as they should be.
2020 was the year gaming went mainstream more than ever, as folks who observed social distancing and home assignments got used to new releases in ways they might not otherwise have, but that didn’t stop them to be full of disappointments big and small, trivial and serious.
Halo Infinite Will be delayed
2020 should be the year Halo Infinite finally came out. Instead the first new one gloriole in five years slipped to 2021and Microsoft’s only first-party provider exclusively for next-generation consoles. Delays are better than speeding up a game’s release and forcing developers to grind in the process (although they can sometimes result in more crunch) but dragging around Halo Infinite goes beyond the release dates. The game was shown extensively in Microsoft’s July showcase and immediately dwarfed by fans for its seemingly lackluster graphics and last-generation feel. The Craig meme was born and 343 Industries was quick to announce it Take the negative feedback into account. Then in October the game lost another of his directors
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Buying a next-gen console is a shit show
The rising death toll, economic devastation and daily complications that have resulted from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 A weird year to bring new hardware to market, but the companies got up and did it anyway. The excitement of a shiny new box to play with had the potential to be a joyful distraction for some, but 2020 had different plans. PS5 pre-orders were a messy glove to navigate, and those for the Xbox Series X / S, although the timing was clearly communicated in advance, didn’t get much better. Months later, consoles are still sold out almost everywhere, and potential buyers are forced to battle bots, scalpers, and archaic ordering systems to secure one. Next-gen consoles can run some games in 4K at 60 fps with minimal load times, but there’s still no way to simply fund a company to send one of these to you when it becomes available. Maybe one day. Until then, have fun being glued to Wario64’s Twitter account and checkout roulette with Best Buy and Walmart.
Cyberpunk 2077
Announced in 2012, re-announced in 2013 and released earlier this year before being delayed three times. Cyberpunk 2077 is as Kotaku Editor-in-chief Riley MacLeod put it this way impressions in its first 30 hours, a mixed bag full of ups, downs and a lot of stuff in between. “Cyberpunk 2077” is also an abbreviation for much more than just a blockbuster science fiction role-playing game by the makers of The Witcher 3. It’s a game that requires the most demanding PC builds to function well, and it can still be done extremely flawed. It’s a game whose console versions were so bad. CD Projekt Red hid them from the press offices before it was released. It’s the game that was such a mess Sony removed it from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds, with Microsoft and even brick and mortar stores like Best Buy and GameStop soon doing the same. Clips of Cyberpunk 2077 Glitches went so viral even The New York Times reported When the game got off to a difficult start, the rollout is described as “one of the most visible disasters in the history of video games”. This is all before considering CDPR’s broken promises not to get its employees to ship the game and games edgelord marketing campaign what occasionally acted in complete transphobiaNone of these can be reversed by future patches that fix the underlying game.
Nintendo’s war against the fans
The desk continues to dominate, especially during a busy year with people stuck at home. Many found an immense amount of comfort and joy in Nintendo’s chilled neighborhood sim Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But there was nothing cold of the company’s continued stance toward some of its most passionate fans. It remains extremely strict when it comes to fan games inspired by its own and includes projects inspired by the Ocarina of Time-based Missing link spin-off to the very NSFW project that’s been in the works for eight years Peach’s untold stories. Nintendo was even more surprising a whole shutdown Super Smash Bros. competition about using a mod called “Slippi” to make Smash Bros. melee combat viable to play competitively online. The company then canceled a Splatoon 2 Tournament livestream after typing teams with names like #FreeMelee.
Longtime Nintendo watchers have gotten used to things like this, but the company really seemed to outperform itself in 2020. Earlier this year, Nintendo’s legal department went in honor of after selling custom Joy-Con controllers called Etiquons the late Youtuber Desmond “Etika” Amofah. The proceeds from the sale went to the JED foundation for emotional health and suicide prevention. Nintendo brought the project to a halt with an injunction. according to creator Cptn_Alexbecause the Joy-Con included the words “JoyCon Boyz,” a phrase popularized in one of Etika’s viral videos.
The ugliness around The last of us part 2
Stephen Totilo:: The last of us part 2 was never intended to be a pleasant experience. His focus on ultraviolence was an effort to explore ideas about anger or revenge. Could be. For some, it’s just too scary. Good or bad, if that was the whole discourse The last of us part 2
Instead, the exclusive PlayStation was rightly examined a culture of game development crunch It leaves people underpaid, burned out, or worse, with few empowered to improve. And then there were those Attacks on the creators of the game for the boldness of presenting a diverse cast and arming this conversation about the crisis with bad actors –certain angry players– to justify their contempt for the game’s supposed politics. When did it get so bad? Generally a long time ago, but for this game, likely after a stunning pre-release leak of crucial scenes that this crowd used to complain about the game’s content.
And add a Review embargo too restrictive that left Last of us part 2 Reviewers talk about a small portion of the game just a week before it launches. That skewed the discussion of what the game was and what it wasn’t. There’s a lot to like or dislike about what’s in the game, but most of the time the drama has been just an ugly display of some of the worst trends in gaming culture.
The absolute mess at Ubisoft
Ash Parrish:: Ubisoft had a bad year. A Twitter thread sparked a seemingly endless wave of people reaching out to describe their details Harassment and Abuse by Ubisoft employees. The allegations ranged from inappropriate comments to assault, while employees expressed frustration that HR and leadership knew about anything and everything did nothing to stop it. CEO Yves Guillemot he apologized to “everyone who was hurt” and promised to take action against bad actors. As a result, there were several people fired or resigned including Chief Creative Officer Serge Hascoët. A internal survey The company-wide implementation showed that 25% of the respondents experienced or had experienced misconduct at first hand, while one in five stated that they did not feel “completely respected or safe” in the work environment. Uff.
But wait, there is more! There was that time that they left out all female assassins in one (n Assassin’s Creed Promotion (after becoming famous for the women, they are too hard to animate gaffe.) Oh, and there was the time they had to to apologize for using Black Lives Matter symbols to represent an in-game terrorist group in theirs Tom Clancy Mobile game – at a time when Black Lives Matter campaigned for social justice and the right not to be murdered by the police. That was great.
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