Hey paisanos, and merry non-denominational holiday or regular-ass Sunday to you all, or what's left of it. Just because this is Christmas Day - or equivalent - doesn't mean that the Sunday Summaries ever stops. Except, maybe it does. Before I get into that though, please know that I've uploaded both my 2016 Game of the Year top ten list over here, and my usual comics-heavy awards blog over yonder. It was a joy to do the latter especially; I kind of feel like my stickpeople joke comics became a little played out, but it's fun to get back into the cartoonist mindset on occasion.
Anyway, to news: This will be the final Sunday Summaries. When I first conceived this feature, it was simply a means to force myself to write something, anything, that week, preferably on the games I'd played. Other recurring sections, like discussing the week's new releases or what I'd been up to on the wiki, were experiments that I intended to change up throughout the year but... well, inertia's a hell of a thing, it turns out. After fifty-two episodes of this lil' zine of mine, it's time to put it away and consider new alternative writing exercises for 2017 and beyond. My features generally don't last an entire year, so I'm making this sound way more mournful than I mean to. Folk weren't really into it - it can be a bit self-obsessed, if I'm being frank - and so it's naturally run its course.
Instead, let's talk about what features I'll have next year to replace it:
- The first is a weekly article on an Indie game I've been playing that week, as a means to do something about this ridiculous Steam backlog of mine. This isn't intended to replace the May Madness/Mastery month-long feature, which will still happen, but a means to push me to play more games next year and continue writing about them. It's been a bad habit of mine since diaper times to start some ridiculously long RPG and put the blinders on until it is eventually complete, and that left very little to discuss in these weekly round-ups as I entered the fourth or fifth week with the same game. I don't expect these "Indie of the Week" blogs to be particularly long - probably around 500-1000 words, like the game-specific round-ups below - but if I can just take fifty-two games off my "Backlog" folder in my Steam library, I'll consider it a success. They don't have to be good Indie games even. In fact, it'd probably be easier if they weren't; that way I won't still be playing them the following week.
- The second is a fun little project I've been devising inspired by TheAVClub's "Binge and Purge" feature by Josh Modell. In that series, Josh scanned through his entire record collection looking for areas where he could prune it down for the sake of his diminished storage space. He discussed each band that is represented in his collection, his memories and/or relationship with their music, and his decision to purge some or all of their albums from his music library. I'm also looking to free up some shelf space, Gerstmann style, by putting away my ludicrous number of PlayStation 2 games, but I'd like to leave a solitary row on my gameshelf for what I consider to be my all-time favorites for that system. I want that row to represent the best of the PS2, and what that system meant to me, and that means putting aside a hell of a lot of PS2 games that - in the grand scheme of things - don't really mean a whole lot to me at all, especially years after the fact. I'm still tinkering around with the name - "The PlayStation 2 Ark" or "The Top-Shelf" - but the goal is to make that weekly as well, and perhaps process anywhere between five and ten games depending on whether I decide to build each entry around a theme or stick to a fixed order, like chronological by release or alphabetical by name.
- The third is... well, I'm just calling it the "All-New Saturday Summaries" for the time being. Like this Sunday version, but nowhere near as long. Just going to pare it down to a few links to my week's writing and maybe a few words about other games I've played that week. You know, brief, like this feature was always supposed to be. I'm switching it to Saturday to time it with ZombiePie's Community Spotlights.
Despite this vast increase in the amount of weekly writing, I hope to still continue with one-offs, lists and reviews as the fancy takes me. I'm also taking a few lessons to heart from some prominent critics who have had some strong words to say about the current state of games criticism, and working on increasing how much I read next year as well. I can't really consider myself a writer without taking in far more literature than I do presently. Headlander and SOMA have awoken in me in a peculiar curiosity in classic speculative sci-fi, especially the genre-defining cornerstones, so that'll be my focus for a while. Maybe I can turn all that into a feature too. Going all "Giant Bomb Book Club" might put me out of my depth a little, critically-speaking, but it couldn't hurt to try at least. Who knows, reading up on dystopian fiction like 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 might help prepare me for the next four years.
And on that optimistic note, let's move onto the final iterations of the New Games! and Wiki! segments:
New Games!
Turns out people don't release games on Christmas Day too often, nor during the lead up to New Year's. There's nothing scheduled on consoles for this week (though of course Steam has like a thousand) so instead I'm going to briefly talk about all the 2017 games I'm looking forward to. Release dates subject (and very likely) to change:
- January's going to be insanely busy, dropping a gigantic pile of games that didn't quite make it out in time this year. The international versions of Tales of Berseria, Yakuza 0 and the 3DS port of Dragon Quest VIII. We'll also finally see what Gravity Rush 2 looks like, and I might take a long hard glare at Kingdom Hearts HD II.8 Final Chapter Prologue to figure out what's even going on with that title.
- February will give us another localization in the demonic guise of Berserk and the Band of the Hawk, a product that flies in the face of all convention by making me excited for a new licensed Musou game. We also have: the online Ubisoft brawler For Honor; Nioh, the Souls-like game from Team Ninja that's been in development forever; and, right at the end of the month if there's any hope, the E3 darling open-world robot hunting sim Horizon: Zero Dawn and the long-awaited Planescape successor Torment: Tides of Numenera. Those two are out on the same day even, so that'll be fun for reviewer outlets.
- March opens with a bang, giving us NieR: Automata. I've yet to try the demo - I'm all in regardless, so I'll just wait for the full game - but it's easily one of the top three games I'm looking forward to next year. The rest of that month seems relatively sedate, but there is a Danganronpa compilation for PS4 that I might consider getting, since I've yet to fork out for either on Steam.
The rest of the year's releases are a bit cloudy right now, at least according to Wikipedia's page on 2017 in Video Gaming, so here's a quick list of some other big targets:
- The Bard's Tale IV: One of two games I Kickstarted that will be released next year, so here's hoping it manages to prop up the classic series with enough modern quality of life concessions. I hope to play inXile's earlier reboot, Wasteland 2, sometime next year before Bard's Tale IV is due out in what they're anticipating will be an October release.
- Yooka-Laylee: This would be the other Kickstarter recipient of mine. I won't be getting the Wii U version, to perhaps no-one's surprise but my own, but I think I'll be just fine with a PS4 version instead. I'm very excited for this one, as evinced by the fact that I "bought" it eighteen months early.
- Persona 5: Holy shit you guys, Persona 5 is coming out in America and Europe next year. It has to, right? No more delays, it's been out in Japan for months already. I've been jamming out to the soundtrack, rewatching the trailers, trying to pull myself away from any spoilers coming from the Japanese-fluent crowd. That's going to be a hard one to top next year.
- Dragon Quest Heroes II: DQH surprised me by how much I enjoyed it. Turns out that Musou games make perfectly decent action RPGs if you bother to add the RPG part. I've always liked the world of Dragon Quest in general too; even if I'm not the biggest Toriyama mark, that series' affinity with puns makes me look like a humorless prig.
- A Hat in Time: Before Yooka-Laylee, A Hat in Time promised to be the vanguard of a new wave of Indie throwback projects which would finally take on the 3D platformers of the N64 era, rather than sticking with the 2D puzzle-platformers forever. It's had enough time in the oven, so I'm hoping it gives the self-proclaimed "Rare-vival platformer" above a run (and jump) for its money.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: I get occasional updates on this one from former GameSpot EiC Kevin VanOrd, and I'm looking forward to an even bigger and better version of one of 2014's best CRPGs. That is, if it gets completed in 2017.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: We know almost nothing about it, but the gameplay trailers are starting to show up. I hope that means a release soon, maybe even in the first half of next year. I always loved the planet exploration of Mass Effect, even as they reduced that aspect to a mini-game and then an even weaker mini-game. Here's hoping it turns out to be the second coming of Star Control 2 I've always wanted from the series.
- Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom: I liked the first enough to realize that, while it had room to grow and a lot of unnecessary padding to take out, the idea of merging a Level-5 open-world RPG with Studio Ghibli level production work is an entirely sound one. I don't care for the monster raising though, so if there's even more of that this time I might be out.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The big one. Assuming it's out next year, this could either be the greatest Zelda since... let's optimistically say Ocarina of Time, but probably Link Between Worlds is the more reasonable high bar to set, or the most pointlessly bloated one since Skyward Sword. A guy can hope for greatness though.
- Metal Gear Survive: ...Yeah, right.
Wiki!
No wiki work this week. I intend to get a huge amount done very soon, with all the GOTY podcasts, and have that Awesome Games Done Quick project in the bag before it begins on the 7th. Even if I don't make it before then, I'll keep working on it as it's airing.
I've already pretty much outlined what's to come wiki-wise next year in other recent Sunday Summaries, but in a nutshell I'm looking to fully complete the Super Nintendo Entertainment System library on this site's wiki, including all Super Famicom-only and Europe-only releases, all Satellaview releases (that I can dig up), all SNES Virtual Console releases and any other outliers. I'm also planning to do the same for the NES up to 1990: I've been working on pages up to late 1989 already, but there's a lot that still need the right release info, header images, etc. I also want to go back and give the Master System pages a quick touch-up, and maybe also the first few years of Genesis up to 1990 to match where I'm at with the NES.
As for less concrete plans, I've got designs on completing the rest of the PC Engine CD-ROM library at some point, working on all the pages for the Arcade Archive ports that Jeff is in the process of cataloguing via Quick Looks and - maybe, just maybe if I get everything else done - I'll start on the Super Nintendo's successor: everyone's favorite box o' fog that is the Nintendo 64.
It's going to be a packed year for wiki editing, yet all the same I'm scaling back how often I discuss the wiki considerably. From now on, it'll just be the big round-ups I put together whenever I complete a project. I realize a lot of these old games are only interesting to me, but that doesn't mean I can't keep reaching for the site to adopt a stronger game historian bent. I know Jeff's with me on this, if no-one else.
Doom!
I jumped the (big) (fucking) gun on my discussion on Doom due to all this GOTY business, so my views on this excellent reboot/remake from id Software are already out there for you to peruse. Essentially, what I like most about Doom is how it incorporates a huge number of distinct mechanics and features with the sole purpose of making this Doom feel more like the original. As I said in my GOTY list, it's like investing millions in modern technology to get Coca Cola to taste like it did when you were a kid.
Sometimes a reboot/remake/modernized throwback will find a happy bridge between the old and new, as was the case with Legend of Grimrock 2, Lumo and Wolfenstein: The New Order, the latter of which definitely felt like a precursor to this game. They do this by focusing on what worked best from those games and reintroduce them in the reboot, but in a way that mitigates or removes entirely the problematic archaic design decisions that accompanied them. People's memories of the favorite games of their youth seem strong, but what tends to persist is only the good and very little of the bad. To honor those rose-tinted memories, modern designers have to work their asses off to ensure that only the good is carried forward through time and the rest of the chaff abandoned to history. Fortunately, we have years of game design evolution and more than a few talented designers who know how to apply it, and that's how we end up with games like this 2016 version of Doom.
Doom has the countenance of a modern shooter. It has a sort of grimy, lived-in feel, even among the UAC's pearl-white corridors. Mars is particularly brown-red, and Hell a different shade of red-brown. Yet in some ways its visual design is still stuck in the 90s, purposefully and happily so, by the way its many power-ups, ammo types and health items all glow with distinct binary colors to highlight what they are and what purpose they serve even if you happen to be several dozen feet away. The enemies initially have a sort of disappointing generic alien look to them - the Hell Knights in particular look like beefy boys with xenomorph heads - but others, like the Revenants, Mancubuses (Macubi?) and Cacodemons, look almost exactly how you'd want them to in 3D, retaining the cartoonish malice of their MS-DOS forebears as well the gratuitous way they violently explode upon death.
It has jumping and scaling platforms, which isn't something the old Doom technically did but is used here to get around how old Doom would still resort to a lot of "platforming" type sequences, like maneuvering across a narrow walkway or running fast enough to clear small gaps between podiums rising from lava (or less wholesome fluids). It's a means of hiding items and secrets across a level that's more naturalistic than having everything at ground floor behind secret walls, or stopping the player moving upwards unless they're on an elevator, staircase or incline.
It has NPCs and NPC chatter, but all except the pragmatic and morally ambiguous UAC chairborg Samuel Hayden are as one-note as you'd hope. The station's AI is an unfailingly polite supergenius, the UAC's head scientist is a devil-worshipping crackpot, the Doom Marine is entirely silent except for his growls (and also a millennia-old warrior avenger kept in stasis for Hell's own protection? Way to write a fitting backstory, id) and everyone else might well be fodder for the demons or yourself, and were treated as much by UAC even before they were turned into undead peons or demon food.
The game's combat feels modern in the sense that you'll rarely see an enemy until you reach an "arena room", at which point you'll be attacked by waves upon waves of them. Yet, the Doom feel is still here by how you'll often be required to crowd control and strafe around from chokepoint to chokepoint, shooting enemies as they close the distance and snaking around their slow-moving fire. There are eight weapon types (though really only five, as there are three weapon pairs that share an ammo type) that the player will switch between as their ammo runs out or distance becomes a factor, and both the player and the demons move at such a fast clip that it practically requires you to be constantly in motion while shooting lest any of them get too close. There's a few powerful alternative firing modes that require you slow down or stand still, and they feel so limiting that the extra firepower scarcely seems worth it.
Most brilliant are how the chainsaw and the BFG work, since the game couldn't exactly leave either of them out. The BFG draws from a special and very finite ammo pool, and has the same effect it did in the original of instantly destroying everything weaker than a boss that is only vaguely near its trajectory. The chainsaw, however, also uses a very finite ammo source but gives you a huge stack of every ammo type in the game once you kill something with it, the intent being to use it as a last ditch effort once you've run out of everything else. The chainsaw has the draw of instantly killing any foe, but the downside that stronger foes take up more of the ammo source. A strategically savvy player might save it for weak opponents which don't cost as much chainsaw fuel to use, but still give out an equivalent amount of regular weapon ammo, though it might be the case that they might really need to take out a Baron of Hell in a hurry too and extra ammo's more of a secondary need.
Likewise, the game introduces a very modern video game concept - showy "glory kill" execution moves, which requires the player get in close and use the melee skill when an enemy is stunned - and uses that to enhance the game's flow by causing enemies to spit out health items after it "gloriously" dies. This helps mitigate the problem that is health pick-ups in a modern shooter context, as Doom tosses out regenerating health entirely (it wouldn't work anyway, since there's no cover system to hide behind either as your bar refills), and presents an instinctive risk vs reward system that encourages the player to involve themselves with the game's gore and more gore aesthetic.
Another modern concession is the great idea to bring back the "skill missions" from Wolfenstein: The New Order, where the player could upgrade their weapons with found collectibles, but could only upgrade them to their peak by completing milestone achievements which are related in some way to what you want to improve. Likewise, the player can acquire runes from difficult little timed challenges - like those in Bayonetta, say - that provide various passive boosts like longer stagger time for foes or armor boosts dropping alongside health after a glory kill. These, too, had little milestone achievements to pursue that would make them more effective. In having these challenges, the player can enter a regular encounter with a room full of enemies with a particular goal in mind, setting up combo kills or headshots or what have you as the milestones require. While it might seem limiting to force the player to pursue certain strategies while playing, rather than go fully freestyle every time, the variation involved with these milestone challenges actually forces the player to train with different guns and different alternative firing modes and give players more of a focus for the otherwise overwhelming fast and wild free-for-all combat, whereas conversely the freestyle approach might lead to more indecision and dithering.
I'm not sure I could fully enumerate, or even fully grasp, how many smart ways Doom merges together the old and new and still feel like classic Doom with none of the downsides. I think that, like the original Doom, a lot of very intelligent people worked on this to make the seemingly impossible possible. Along with Hitman, it's one of the more impressive game design feats to come out of 2016, and one I'll still be scratching my head about in years to come.
[Images to come later. This update was a late one, y'all. Happy holidays, once again.]
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