I just want to take time to apologize for the recent lack of updates. I had an entire Blogpost written depicting my first impressions of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in German and English. Unfortunately though, my entire post was lost and I was unable to repair it. My motivation on rewriting it, was rather limited which is why I haven't been posting anything. However, there has been a topic which I wanted to discuss for quite some time and that's how utterly disappointing this year was for the gaming community. Now, I'm not saying we haven't got fantastic games. Undoubtedly, games such as God of War, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Read Dead Redemption 2 have been great games which kept the community engaged. My criticism is not as much aimed towards the games released and more towards how the policies of the gaming companies negatively effect my prospect for 2019. I will first start of by taking a look at Nintendo. In the next couple of days I'll take a closer look at the other big companies and their contributions this year.
So, first of, we have Nintendo which had a decent year, at best. The most positive thing I can say is that third party support was really great for the Nintendo Switch this year and really helped in establishing it as a true competitor. Also, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is great. I would like to mention Pokémon Let's Go and Super Mario Party. But, as previously mentioned, the former has no long term motivation (my section regarding Pokémon Let's Gos abysmal postgame: https://nischara.blogspot.com/2018/12/pokemon-let-go-maingame-yeah-postgame.html), whereas the later is lots of fun, but is extremely depended on certain occasions. The light-hearted gameplay is really fun while battling friends, but offers little to no motivation of playing by yourself. And unfortunately, the lack of a competitive scene doesn't provide helpful either. So we have one great and some decent to good first party games. Third party games were good, for the most part. The decision to include superfluous easy modes with overpowered characters in both, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and New Super Mario Bros. U, and label them as the only addition to the game, seems wasted potential. We also have a terrible online support which just fails on every level, but I might cover that in a separate post. So this was a really port-heavy year with only a few new released games. I'm not too upset, since 2017 was great and I can look forward to several anticipated games such as Yoshi and Fire Emblem which will be released in the early half of 2019. 2018 could have been better though and the online service really dragged this year down for Nintendo.
What's your opinion of Nintendo this year and what do you expect for 2019?
2018 was a good year for Nintendo. We got Smash as the absolute top-game, pokemon as a console-seller for casual players, and a few smaller titles ranging from decent to good like mario Tennis Aces and Super mario party. Put some Console exclusive third party stuff like Octopath Traveller, and ports of games that have previously been absent from Nintendo consoles like Civ or Cities Skylines into the mix, and finish it up with the good, but controversial decision of further porting Wii U games, and we had a good year, dragged down into mediocrity by the abolute clusterf*ck that is Online, but in my opinion saved by Nintendo finally opening up towards small western indie developers.
ReplyDeleteWhat further made this year feel sub-par is that we just got out of the hype of 2017. Odyssey and breath of the Wild were simply too big a pair of shoes to fill. Couple that with the honestly baffling decision not to go for dlcs for Odyssey, and the very good year Sony had with god of war and spider man.
But while I am currently seeing a downward trend for Sony, seeing more developers getting into the Switch gives me a lot of hope for the future.
My biggest wish for 2019 is that Fire Emblem doesn't suck. It's the first (kinda) home console FE since Radiant Dawn, I really really hope it's good.