1. Actual Games - The Good
It's really only for games like Titanfall, Tearaway, Watch_Dogs and Beyond: Two Souls that make me excited about the near future of video games. When David Cage spoke in front of a room about 200 people, I was sat in the back of the room with my eyes fixed upon the stage as the man behind Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls spoke about titles with no game over screen, titles that can be enjoyed by people without any knowledge of video games, titles that push technology and narrative storytelling forward and titles that produce a unique experience every time you play them. More importantly, he spoke to why I find I find games more compelling that any other medium. Interactivity. Interactivity is key. It is the only thing that separates us from the film and television industry. It's the way that video games takes advantage of that makes for something truly special. Then, when I played it, he was so right. Beyond: Two Souls is unlike anything you have played, even Heavy Rain. I would sit and tell you all about it but I fear for the potential of spoilers. On the face of it, Watch_Dogs does honestly seem like just another open world game. Run around for a bit, jump in car, jump out, duck behind some cover and put virtual caps in virtual asses. However, it's the way you interact with the open world that makes Watch_Dogs special. As you move about the in-game Chicago, small prompts for Square appear in your HUD that let you tweak your environment in certain ways. Things like bringing up underground bollards or changing traffic lights to mess with your pursuers or bringing down forklifts to create or dissipate cover. While it may not be groundbreaking but it does change the game enough to make it slightly more interesting that just another sandbox title. Tearaway and Titanfall too are not avant-garde revolutionary takes on their respective genres but that add in mechanics and change up enough of the formula to make it enticing to look forward to and exciting to play. Tearaway, from the Little Big Planet creating Media Molecule, takes the stereotypical platform experience and tweaks it with the features of the Vita hardware. As in the opening stages you cannot jump, tapping the back on the Vita on the touchscreen makes your character jump. To clear a path rub the back on the Vita and a massive virtual finger bursts into the environment to wipe away the debris. Then, every time the sun appears, the front-facing camera turns on and your face appears within it, one, reminding me how ugly I really am and, two, fulfilling the Teletubby based dreams on my childhood. It really is joy personified. Well, if a video game was an actual person anyway. Titanfall was, undoubtedly, my game of the show. Every other first person shooter I have played since just pales in comparison to the pure excellence that is the first offering from Respawn entertainment. The controls are as tight you would expect from the people that made Call Of Duty, but that is not what makes it special. Your character, known in-game as a pilot, can jump. Not so magical. But, you can double jump, meaning you can leap gracefully and directly into a second story window to catch opponents unawares. Then you can jump out of that window, double jump again into a wall, where you automatically wall run, which you double jump out of. So basically, you can move across the entire map without even touching the floor. It's totally seamless and it's totally as awesome as I totally don't make it sound. On top of that after about two minutes into a match, a message comes across the radio telling you that your Titan is ready. Press down on the d-pad and your over-the-radio personal assistant tells you to "prepare for Titanfall" a phase which tingles my balls to this day. Your Titan, a personal, customisable mech, falls from the sky and you climb in and commence ripping up of the environment with various heavy weaponry. However, it's not unbalanced. Players in Titans can use rockets to take down other Titans but can also take out the Pilots on-foot with machine gun fire and even stomp on them too. On the other hand, if you are a Pilot, you are equipped with anti-Titan weapons to help you combat while you are not in your own personal robot. What is most ingenious about Titanfall is the post game. Rather than just YOU LOSE appearing in fancy text across the screen, YOU LOSE is still splashed across your TV, but you are given the chance to evacuate the area. If you succeed, you are accredited with extra experience points. Conversely, if you are on the winning team, you must take out as many of losing side before they get to their leaving helicopter. Not only does it add in an extra few seconds of gameplay but allows for the losing team to grab some XP and feel like they haven't wasted their time because they are slightly less sucky than the team that secured the win. It is moments of ingeniousness like those previously mentioned that, while not necessarily changing the game, push the industry forward in a fantastically progressive way. Although titles like Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag and Call Of Duty: Ghosts are perfectly fine games in their own right, without that small spark of creativity combined with a dash of risk-taking and a drop of stunning confidence that games like Titanfall or Beyond have, the medium of entertainment that I love will become stagnant. Neither you, nor I, want that at all. A world without new ideas and advancements is not a world I want to live in. So, I leave you with this Mr. & Mrs. Video Game Industry. When you are good, you are really good. When you are bad, you are the goddamn worst. However, the immediate future look pretty damn fantastic. Even though the insensitive moaning and whining and bitching will forever continue and every year will see the same few titles with barely a fresh coat of paint slung on top, every few months gaming gold comes along and renews my faith in you. Of course then the trolls who have to be contrarian and pedantic come along as moan and whine and bitch and the cycle starts all over again. But hey, I love it, otherwise why would I still be here.
Yours, in eternal hope,Dan HobbsPart-time Lothario, Full-time self-important videogamesman