It is tradition for me to do a Black Friday post. I’ve done one every year since the beginning of this blog. It’s one of my favorite times of the year. I literally refer to it as “Gamer Christmas”. But this year feels weird. For some reason I’m just not in the spirit of the holiday this season. Maybe it’s COVID, maybe it’s the fact that my home country is still fighting over the Presidential election results, or maybe I finally just own enough games. Whatever the reason, I’m just not that excited or motivated about Black Friday this year. But tradition isn’t about excitement. It’s about commitment. Whether I’m excited or not, Black Friday is coming. So as is tradition, here’s my Black Friday post.
Last year was a great Black Friday. Looking back at the haul from 2019, I bought a lot of stuff. I picked up 21 games plus some other items. What’s also impressive is that when I look back at my goals for Black Friday 2019, I now own everything on the original list except for four games. That’s a high percentage of successful acquisitions.
Black Friday 2019 List
This year I have a very modest list and I’m much less enthusiastic about it. But I will still buy what I can for the right prices. Hopefully with the new consoles now launched prices for the last gen stuff that I want will go down considerably. With a shorter list, I’ll hopefully be able to get everything I want with little to know effort.
As per usual, I have created a graphic showing the things I want and the prices I’d like them for. I’m once again calling on you to help me find the deals I’m looking for. So if you see anything on the list at the prices I want or less, please tweet me a link @GameChangerDOC. I’m not doing the core list and extended list this year. The list is short enough to not need to make a differentiation. Here’s the full list of games and hardware I’m hoping to get during Black Friday and holiday sales this year.
While I wouldn’t say any of these are must haves this year, I really do want to find Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for $20. It’s appalling to me that games released later have already dropped lower than that game in price even with all their DLC included. All the other From Software games go on sale all the time. But this samurai adventure game simply will not drop below about $40. And it has no story based DLC. I simply can’t understand what the reason is for the game being price managed like a Nintendo title. Especially given that other high quality samurai themed games have since then released. So really if I can just find that at the price I want I’ll call it a successful Black Friday.
As always, happy Thanksgiving to my American readers. Happy Black Friday, and may the deals be ever in your favor!
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
Last week marked the seventh anniversary of my weekly gaming blog. I wanted to publish this last week but the post about games of the last generation seemed more appropriate given the launch of the new consoles. I’m happy to report that I plan on continuing this blog for at least the next year but I assume years to come. I love this blog and I’m very happy with the things it has accomplished. But I will also say that I have improved my streaming endeavors a lot in the last year and really started to build regular viewership. I have improved the quality of my streams at a technical level considerably in the last year and have even started to get support directly from some developers/publishers including big names like Ubisoft. I’m very proud of this growth and I will continue streaming regularly. If you aren’t hooked into my Twitch channel, please consider checking it out. My reason for mentioning this is that I could see the potential for doing more types of video content and at some point that might mean the end of the blog, in its current form anyway, in exchange for a more video focused format. For now that is not the plan, but it is something I’ve been thinking about more in recent months.
This last year was hard on everyone for various reasons. We have a global pandemic, various political issues, and even in the world of gaming there have been a lot of snafus, delays, that should have been expected, and crazy acquisitions like Microsoft buying Zeni-Max. So I won’t be insensitive and say it’s been a great year in general. I will say that I have personally been blessed to have not been too badly affected by most of the issues plaguing the world, because I live in Taiwan. Though the constant fear of China finally invading has worn on my wife and I a lot as of late, mostly because of the Presidential election in the United States. Sadly we live in a world where hard working people in one country have to care about the political choices of the citizens of another country. In my case, I actually am an American citizen and did vote in the election, so it’s a bit closer to me, but as my wife is Taiwanese, she has a lot more to worry about if her native country is invaded than I do. But let’s get back to the games.
One would have predicted that I would have been able to set a record amount of gaming in the past year given the pandemic, but that was not the case for me. Living in Taiwan means that I actually wasn’t confined to my apartment for an extended period of time. They only had/let us work from home for about two months. I’ve been back to my office full time since like June. My marriage and dog, in no particular order, have also worn away at a lot of my gaming, and writing, time. This is also one of the reasons live streamed video content has become more manageable than writing this blog. No additional time for editing required and the planning isn’t too time consuming for the type of content I’m currently generating. I’ve also been playing an exorbitant amount of open worlds and RPGs. It seems every game is open world with RPG elements now. And those games have only gotten longer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but certainly can be and was with some of the games I’ve played in the last year. While it’s on the list, I’m actually not done with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey yet, even though I’m more than 150 hours in. That many hours for one game becomes untenable when you have a stack of open world RPGs to tackle, which I do. So while the list of games I completed since the last bloggiversary is by no means paltry, it’s not nearly as impressive as I would have liked.
I put up 26 completed games in last year’s bloggiversary post. This year I can happily report 30. So I did manage to improve thankfully. But if I’m being honest two of the games listed are DLC expansion packs and, as previously stated, one is still unfinished. But that is still 27 completed games over last year’s 26. Here’s the complete list of games that I beat in the last year.
I want to take this time to once again express how thankful I am for all those who read and share my blog posts regularly. I do have regular readers and I do see and appreciate your likes. I get the notifications to my phone and they do matter to me. I recently realized that a lot of comments have been going to spam for some reason, so I will try to be better about managing that so that your comments do appear and we can have more discussions based on the posts. That is the ultimate goal of this blog after all. So thank you for your continued support and engagement. Here’s to another year of gaming, writing, and engaging!
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
This week both the XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5 will launch, barring some last minute Cyberpunk 2077 level troll. This is a momentous occasion as it means that we have officially started the next generation of gaming. As expressed in last week’s blog post, I still don’t know if I really consider these consoles truly next gen worthy yet but the fact is that these are what we have for the next generation of gaming. But that’s not really what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the last generation of gaming.
While the consoles will still be supported for presumably and hopefully some years to come, the fact is that the time of the PS4 and XB1 is officially in its twilight. These consoles are now the walking dead in the throes of their death rattle. This is not meant to be inflammatory or argumentative. It’s merely factual. Our current/last gen consoles are now in the final stretch towards obsolescence. So I wanted to take the time to discuss the high point(s) of the last generation by “officially” naming the Game of the Generation (GOTG).
GOTG =/=Guardians of the Galaxy
I have seen many discussions, Twitter debates, video posts, and gaming news site articles about what the Game of the Year will be, with the debate centering around Ghost of Tsushima versus The Last of Us Part II, due to the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 missed the cutoff. In my opinion, Ghost of Tsushima should win between those two and when/if the time comes to discuss it (probably in like a week or two) I will do a full post about it. But let’s not talk about 2020 today. Let’s talk about 2013 – 2020.
It’s always hard to differentiate gens because of the overlap at the beginning/end of each gen and cross-gen titles. So for the purposes of discussion I will only include games that launched between November 2013 and November 2019. I’ll also not include any games that launched as cross-gen titles on either last-gen (PS3/XBOX 360) or next-gen (PS5/XSX) consoles. I will only include Switch games for Nintendo’s part in the discussion, though an argument for Wii U titles can certainly be made. And I will not include any ports for any platform. I will allow full remakes, but no cross-gen remasters, which are just glorified ports. So Link’s Awakening remake, yes but The Last of Us remastered, no.
The real question is what defines the GOTG? Like with GOTY (Game of the Year), it’s a very nuanced debate that too many people try to rush through with a simple level of reasoning, usually based on their own personal preferences. The truth is that it can’t be as simple as which game you liked the most, which game got the best review scores, or even which game sold the most. I believe it’s a combination of those things but also so many other things, many of which are almost impossible to measure completely objectively and this early in the discussion. And yes I realize that I’m using the term early even though we’re literally at the end of then generation.
I think there are a number of different factors that need to be considered when discussing the GOTG, and I’m happy to admit that a number of them aren’t exactly easy or even possible to objectively answer or even necessarily compatible to be asked in the same discussion. So here’s a list of 10 questions that I think we should consider when trying to determine the true GOTG. Note that these aren’t even all the questions one could ask. I started with 15 and whittled it down for the sake of time.
When was the game released?
I think time plays an important role in this question. As I’ve said, it’s hard to differentiate gens when many games overlap. Another issue is that certain games are rushed out at the beginning of a gen to get launch status and boosts in sales. It’s also apparent that games launched at the end of a gen can struggle because people are waiting for the next gen consoles. Really it’s the games in the middle of a gen that get the right amount of time to develop something great while already having enough data from other games to really push a console to its limits. Marvel’s Spider-Man is a great example of this. That’s not to say that a game launched at the beginning of a gen, such as Dragon Age: Inquisition, or at the end of a gen, such as Ghost of Tsushima, shouldn’t be serious contenders for GOTG.
2. How many people actually bought the game?
This matters because game development, while art, is also business. Sales numbers also help to measure appeal. If no one was willing to purchase a game, was it really that good? Yet there are countless examples of games that actually were really good that people didn’t buy, such as Alien: Isolation. The game is criminally undersold. At the same time, there are plenty of trash games that sell millions of units. Annual sports games being the best example. We also have to account for the fact that many games are free to play or launched free as a promotion. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was one of the most downloaded games in the PS4’s history. It also launched free for PlayStation Plus subscribers. So you have millions of people playing a game they didn’t pay for. That also happens to be Fortnite’s story. Does it matter that people probably wouldn’t be playing these games if they had to pay for them? Conversely, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was not free on Steam and yet has millions of users on that platform as well.
3. How many people actually played the game?
Hidden gems are fairly common in the gaming industry. There are simply too many games to play and many aren’t published by big companies with massive marketing budgets. So it’s easy for a lot of great games to fall through the cracks. But is it right to award GOTG to a game very few people played? Even Among Us was able to build a following eventually. At the same time though, the idea of not having a big marketing budget keeping you from being a contender for GOTG seems extremely unfair. Yet it wouldn’t make sense to name a game nobody played as the defining experience of a generation. Another issue to consider is exclusive titles. The fact is that far less people played Ratchet & Clank (2016) than Devil May Cry V simply because the latter was available on more platforms, allowing for a wider net of potential players. At the same time though, God of War, The Last of Us Part II, and multiple other PS4 exclusives outsold many multiplatform games, including Devil May Cry V, in the last gen.
4. How many people actually finished the game?
This one is pretty straight forward. A lot of people start games but often don’t finish them. No matter how much fun a game is, if people aren’t willing to finish it then clearly something is wrong. Some games are too difficult for some people, such as Dark Souls, and some games are really good but simply too long, such as The Witcher 3. But should we punish a game for providing too much content or being too challenging for mediocre players even while being totally fair/acceptable for average players? There needs to be some middle ground with this topic but how does one even try to measure that?
5. Was the game actually good or were the people behind the game just really popular?
This is the problem with brands being part of the discussion. Many games sell well based on franchise popularity or studio prestige while not actually being a good game. Again, all the annual sports titles fall into this category. They aren’t bad games but there’s not really anything innovative or new about them from year to year. They just up the graphics a bit and update the rosters. But let’s consider an even more obvious example: Death Stranding. That game is proof that people will do anything to support Kojima, including convincing themselves that delivering mail is fun. Yet I would bet that the people who argue the game is actually great wouldn’t be willing to die on that hill if it wasn’t a game by Kojima. It’s impossible to fully divide a game’s popularity and sales based on its own merits versus loyalty to the brand, but it does need to be considered in the discussion.
6. Was the game good at launch or did it require several post launch improvements to become something worth playing?
While we’ve had patches since the last gen, this was the first generation where genuinely bad games launched and then were fixed over time to become not just serviceable but supposedly good games. No game exemplifies this more than No Man’s Sky. That game launched terribly and was met with huge outrage. But over time it has added several large scale updates and transformed into a highly favorable game. But is this acceptable in a discussion about GOTG? Should a game that was only made better because of backlash at launch be considered a triumph? In a way though, it does express what the experience of gaming in the last gen has been like. Post-game patches, updates, and sometimes large scale changes are here to stay. This also factors into games with large amounts of DLC, whether paid or free, and expansions. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was great, but a huge part of the game’s success came from the impressive expansion packs and the extremely fair pricing of post launch content, including a bunch of free DLC. So do we grade the game in totality or only in its launch form? Because we have to apply the same criteria to all games. Some win big when you include post launch updates and content, while some lose or get no extra points.
No Man’s Lie eventually became No Man’s Sky
7. Are certain genres excluded from the GOTG discussion?
This is an issue that can anger many people, because there are many types of gamers. Some, like myself, play for the story. Others hunt trophies. Many people hate single player experiences and only want to play multiplayer games. There are so many different types of games and people that play them. So how does one pick the best of a generation when no matter what game it is large swaths of people will hate it? For me, I’d eliminate all games that don’t have a single player mode driven by a story, but many people would vehemently disagree with that decision.
8. Are our expectations for GOTG the same this generation as they were last generation?
I think this is one of the most important questions a person can ask in this discussion. The fact is that what gamers collectively called good games last gen is different from this gen, for better or for worse. Today some of the most popular and profitable games are those with no single player mode, no story, and run on constant microtransactions with no cost to jump in. Many require an always online connection as well. In the PS3/XBOX 360 era, these types of games were hated. Constantly maligned for their terrible business models and called lazy cash grabs for their lack of meaningful content. Today they’re championed and given special award categories just to keep praising them long after their release. Clearly there has been a fundamental shift in the way games are viewed and judged within the community and that needs to be accounted for in a GOTG discussion.
9. Do GOTG contenders have to have won previous awards?
This is an interesting question because often games get snubbed. But at the same time if a game couldn’t win any meaningful awards then how can it be considered GOTG? It would be easy just to look at all the GOTY picks since 2013 and compare them but I think that’s a bit too easy. Also, there are several game awards. The Game Awards is just one show with one set of awards every year. But there is probably something to the idea of focusing on the games that have won the most awards overall.
10. Does a game’s length factor into the GOTG discussion?
This is one of those questions where the answer is objectively supposed to be no but there are also clear nuances to the discussion. A game can be too long and most open worlds are. But a game can also be too short. And I definitely think value has to play a factor in the discussion of GOTG. Value also happens to be relative though.
When I try to pick a single GOTG that best encompasses all the greatest aspects of the last seven years of gaming, I draw a blank. There are simply too many games that were important, for different reasons. I can come up with a short list, but it still seems impossible to pick a single game. And that’s ignoring the fact that I didn’t even get to play every game. Or even every game actually worth considering. Of course there are specific games that stand out amongst the sea of great titles we experienced. God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Witcher 3, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Bloodborne, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Ghost of Tsushima, Assassin’s Creed : Origins, and Monster Hunter: World just to name 10 I’d happily consider off the top of my head. And I could keep going. Now I could easily cut that list down to five. I’d quickly eliminate The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Bloodborne, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Ghost of Tsushima, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for various reason. We could also quickly remove Super Mario Odyssey, because while the game is great it certainly doesn’t stand up as GOTG. And I’d say the same thing about Monster Hunter: World. So that leaves us the big three: God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and The Witcher 3. Now it’s hard.
I think it’s interesting that those three remaining games are all established franchises, though this iteration of Spider-Man is an original game series. When it comes to gameplay, it’s a toss-up between Marvel’s Spider-Man and God of War. When it comes to writing, I think it’s easy to default to The Witcher 3, but in reality all three games are fairly well written. For game length it’s of course The Witcher 3, but for pacing I’d say God of War takes it with Marvel’s Spider-Man close behind. We could do this all day. Going through every criteria between these three games will never net a clear winner. And that’s the bigger point that I think needs to be addressed. It’s not really realistic to choose a GOTG. Because the choice could never be totally conclusive. It makes much more sense to name Games of the Generation, as in multiple titles.
A generation of games is simply too many to choose from. And choosing a single one to fully encompass everything the generation had to offer is laughably impossible. What makes much more sense is to choose a collection of games that together expresses what this last generation was able to achieve. Obviously there will still be debate over what games should be included, and there should be. But I think creating a list of titles that together delivers the overall experience of what the last generation of gaming was makes way more sense than trying to pick an all-encompassing game to represent the Switch, PS4, and XBO over the last seven years. So let’s make a Games of the Generation list.
For me, a Games of the Generation list should not simply be the top 10 games of that generation. While that would be an excellent collection of games that would certainly be worth playing, it wouldn’t be the best list of games to fully express what the last gen was about. Rather I want to select the most appropriate games that together distill the last generation of gaming into a single well curated collection. Similar to what the PlayStation Plus Collection intends to do on the PS5. The first thing I’m going to do is not choose 10 games, but instead choose 12. Why 12? Because then you could play one game each month of the year and by the end of the year you would have gotten the full eighth generation gaming experience. So here’s my full list for the Games of the Generation with an explanation for each game in the collection.
Games of the Generation (A Collection by DJMMT)
This list is not in any particular order. It has not ranking and is meant to be played as a collection with each game taking up to a month to complete. Some games are top shelf experiences and others are not, but together the collection is meant to express the overall experience(s) that truly defined the last generation of gaming.
Fortnite
I hate Fortnite. I hate the battle royale shooter concept and experience. I hate the microtransactions, the lack of single player modes, and the fact that these games are so popular. But I’d be flat out lying to not include this game in the collection because BR shooters were a huge part of the last gen of gaming. Epic Games made more money from Fortnite Battle Royale than all their other in house developed games combined, and it’s a free to play game. So many people got into Fortnite that random franchises and people went out of their way to get involved in the craze. Travis Scott held a concert in game, Thanos made an appearance, and people I never would have expected became addicts. Even my sister, who never played a shooter before in her life, got into Fortnite. It simply has to be included in a list expressing the essence of the last seven years of gaming. But note that this game is not included only because of how prolific it is. It’s included to express the entire BR shooter genre. PUBG, Fear the Wolves, Hyper Scape, and countless other battle royale games came to be during this generation. The genre solidified itself as a staple part of modern gaming, for better or for worse (let’s be honest it’s worse).
Honorable Mention: PUBG, though no longer as popular, and not nearly as creative, started the modern concept of the battle royale genre.
Tetris 99
I included this game because though it started with shooters, the battle royale experience in general became a huge part of gaming as a whole. Nintendo especially showed that the battle royale concept didn’t have to be limited to any specific genre. People just like the concept of playing a game they already like competitively with a large amount of other players. Tetris 99 started this idea of branching the battle royale model out to other types of games. This idea proliferated and ended up being used in games such as Mario 35 and culminated with the creation of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout by Mediatonic. But I still chose to include Tetris 99 here because it best expresses the idea that anything, even the simplest of games from decades ago, can be made into a successful battle royale game.
Honorable Mention: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is currently the most successful non-shooter battle royale and has more modern gameplay than Nintendo’s takes on the genre.
The Witcher 3
I struggled a lot with which open world RPG to include. The open world genre has saturated gaming. It seems every new game that isn’t an FPS is an open world RPG with way too many objective points and bloated maps. Ubisoft is responsible for a lot of these like multiple Assassin’s Creed titles, multiple Ghost Recon titles, and multiple Watch Dogs titles. But we also had Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and even God of War added some open world RPG elements. But I think the most noteworthy title in the genre is The Witcher 3. Not only does it have a large map, lots of missions and objective points, and RPG elements, but it also has a ton of story content of the highest quality. It expresses not just what was best about this genre but also what was best about this generation. There were some games that just went above and beyond expectations while keeping the prices manageable for consumers. None delivered more so than The Witcher 3.
Honorable Mention: For a streamlined version of the well written, open world RPG experience, I highly recommend Ghost of Tsushima.
Bloodborne
While many would think Bloodborne would be a given, I struggled a lot with this decision. It’s certainly a keystone title of the PS4. But this is not a PS4 collection. It’s a general gaming collection, though some exclusives have been included. I chose Bloodborne because it expresses the fact that the Soulslike genre was started by From Software but also addresses the fact that Dark Souls is over. We’ve moved past Dark Souls and branched off into new franchises that make use of the Dark Souls gameplay model. Nioh, The Surge, Code Vein, Mortal Shell, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order are all takes on the genre that have nothing to do with Dark Souls or even From Software. I’m glad the genre was able to branch out away from the one limited art style, gameplay mechanics, and weapons types. And really Bloodborne is not my favorite non-Dark Souls Soulslike game. I picked it more because it’s still a From Software title and ushered in this move away from the Dark Souls franchise.
Honorable Mention: For a Soulslike with an actual plot and less somber aesthetic, I highly recommend Nioh. Also, it’s not by From Software which I think better expresses the point of this entry.
Uncharted 4
I didn’t choose Uncharted 4 because it was the best story focused third person action game from the last gen, though it was a top tier one. I chose it because it was made by Naughty Dog and is the fourth installment in a franchise that didn’t by all rights need to continue. A big part of the last generation of gaming was sequels we didn’t really need but that still managed to knock it out of the park. There were many games I could have put here such as God of War, which I do consider a superior game. I could have even put Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. The point is that many studios decided that rather than creating new franchises they just wanted to lean back into tried and true IPs that were guaranteed sellers. Many of the games were astoundingly good, but at the same time it became very apparent that sequels were now all the rage for studios because marketing a new IP is just too much trouble. Ubisoft even went on record saying that they were no longer developing single release titles and that everything they plan on making moving forward will be meant to be a longstanding franchise with several installments.
Honorable Mention: God of War is simply one of the best games made in the last 10 years even though it was a sequel we absolutely didn’t ask for and certainly didn’t know we needed.
Detroit: Become Human
One thing that was really great about this gen was the fact that many alternative gameplay styles were able to accomplish amazing things. Both indie and AAA projects that did not do the same old thing gameplay wise were able to proliferate and succeed in ways we haven’t seen in a long time. I don’t think any non-action game impressed me this gen as much as Detroit: Become Human. I was always a lukewarm fan of Quantic Dream and absolutely hated Beyond Two Souls, but this latest installment from them was a top tier experience with powerful writing, exceptional acting, great visuals, and compelling QTE based gameplay.
Honorable Mention: Until Dawn, which I’d argue doesn’t control quite as well, is a similar experience with a horror element and more well-known actors.
DOOM
One of the things about the last gen that became a big topic of both debate and support was accessibility. But I think the definition of accessibility extends past being playable by people with physical disabilities or slower reaction times. Accessibility is about making games playable for more people, regardless of what the barrier is. I don’t think any game expresses that as much as DOOM (2016). DOOM was the first modern FPS game I ever played that was built for walk on players without having to play it on easy. I hate FPS games and I don’t particularly like gory demon themed aesthetics but I had such a blast playing DOOM. It was made for people who aren’t experienced or enthusiastic about FPS gameplay. Everything from the writing to the gameplay loop was constructed to make the player feel confident about what they were doing and thereby made the franchise more accessible to more people who wouldn’t traditionally play that sort of game. The fact that there’s an Animal Crossing DOOM meme expresses this point better than words ever could.
Honorable Mention: The Last of Us Part II was legitimately built with a focus on traditional accessibility options and has a number of features that make the game playable for people with a wide range of disabilities and limitations.
The Division 2
Love it or hate it, the games as service model is here to stay. Live games with continuously evolving content, no defined ending point, an always online requirement, and continuous updates and microtransactions are just too profitable for larger publishers to ignore and no company seems to do them as much as Ubisoft. Multiple franchises pushed out multiple live service games in the last gen. Ubisoft came strong with The Division, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six Siege. Even sports games have elements of live service in them now. I think The Division 2 is one of the best examples of this type of game but admittedly, it’s hard to get the authentic experience when you don’t start on day one.
Honorable Mention: Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a great example of a softcore live service game that updates on a literal daily basis from player to player. Content is still rolling out seasonally and while the gameplay is simple the constant compulsion to keep logging in has never been stronger. Also, there’s no microstransactions.
Beat Saber
VR remains a gimmick. There are some impressive VR experiences but the price and spec barrier for entry remains too high while the quality of software, for the most part, remains fairly low. PlayStation, which could have led the charge on accessible VR options, went as far as saying that the PS5 won’t even support upgraded versions of PS4 VR games. No company has invested enough into the technology yet to make it go widespread the way it should have by now compared to other gaming technologies over the years. And Facebook just keeps making the whole thing worse. Beat Saber is probably the best example of VR in the last gen in that it’s well known, fun to play, and gimmicky as hell. Definitely worth trying out but not enough to invest in your own VR headset.
Honorable Mention: Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a PSVR exclusive that was supposedly going to revolutionize VR. It was highly regarded by pretty much everyone who played it and was a fun take on classic 3D platformers.
Cuphead
Few indie games have been able to accomplish the demand, acclaim, and exposure of Cuphead. It’s a game that started out as an XBO exclusive and then eventually made its way to both the PC and Switch due to sheer demand. While the art style is what attracted people, it was the promise of extreme difficulty that hooked them in. So much hype was established around how challenging the game was. People went out of their way to play it in order to prove they were legit enough. Eventually the developers released an easy mode because so many people complained that they couldn’t move forward but wanted to see the ending. I eventually played and beat it on PC without using the easy mode.
Honorable Mention: Ori and the Blind Forest is another indie that was widely praised and also started as an XBO exclusive before making its way to PC and Switch. The general opinion is that it’s not nearly as hard as Cuphead.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
I did not support the FFVII Remake. I have major issues with many aspects of the game including breaking it up into multiple parts, drastically altering the story, and destroying the original gameplay. That being said, the new gameplay is quite good. Or was for the short duration I tried it during my experiences playing the beta build and the demo. The reason I included this game in this collection is that it best expresses this gen’s obsession with remakes and remasters. So many games were ported, remastered, or remade for the PS4 and XBO. It’s like people stopped wanting to play new games. Resident Evil, The Last of Us, and countless other games, many of which weren’t even old enough to need remastering, were ported and slightly upscaled for easy profits. Even Nintendo got in on the action with a huge number of Wii U to Switch ports.
Honorable Mention: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake is an excellent remake that is absolutely worth playing. Since I didn’t get to finish the game as a kid, it has been quite a joy getting to play it on my Nintendo Switch with amazing graphics and smooth gameplay.
Monster Hunter: World
This game can actually have fallen into multiple categories on this list. It’s a live service game, a long RPG, a sequel, and the most accessible entry in the Monster Hunter franchise, gameplay wise, to date. Monster Hunter: World is impressive in the fact that it was able to take a fairly niche franchise and make it a mainstream craze. I put in over 100 hours before I finally stopped and I hadn’t really even scratched the surface of what was available to do even though I finished the main campaign. The game is fun, addictive, and works well as both a single and multiplayer experience. Everything about it just screams eighth generation of gaming. The funniest thing is that it doesn’t necessarily do anything better than other things from this gen. The graphics are great, but by no means the best. The gameplay is solid, but by no means the best. The writing is average at best. Everything about the game was done better by a different game. And yet it is still such a superior and addictive experience compared to many other games that did specific things better. It’s just a game that’s worth sinking time into.
Honorable Mention: Pokemon Sword/Shield is another example of a franchise that spent many years being popular while also niche that released a much more casual and accessible experience in its latest installment. Changes to the formula and the addition of online multiplayer content coupled with an amazing open world map and 3D visuals improved the franchise considerably for casual and new players, making it just as much a time sink as Monster Hunter: World but way easier to play.
That wraps up my Games of the Generation collection. I want to reiterate that this is not meant to be a collection of the best games released in the eighth generation of gaming. It’s a collection of experiences that together summarize what the eighth gen was about in its totality. There are better games than many of the titles in this list and each of the honorable mentions is worth a play as well. This was an excellent gen for gamers, albeit not necessarily the most innovative one, and many of these games will be remembered and (re)played for years to come.
What games do you think best define the eighth generation?
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As next week will officially start a new generation of console gaming, I thought it was important to go into this supposedly new era of gaming by discussing what next gen actually means in 2020 and more specifically what it should mean. A new $500 box being sold with a higher number on it doesn’t make it next gen. The way we play games on it determines that. And yes the games are the important part. So let’s ask some tough questions of both Microsoft and SONY.
Before getting down to brass tacks, I want to take the time to say a few things about the transition between this gen and next gen. At the start of every generation, we debate the cutoffs; and rightly so. How do we really determine what is and isn’t next gen during the transitional period? Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a PS5 launch title and yet I can play it on my PS4. Cyberpunk 2077 will release a week after both PS5 and XSX launch and yet it’s been in development for the better part of a decade and will release on both current and next gen consoles. It’s difficult to really differentiate between gens when games release on both gens at the same time and began development years before a new gen had even been announced. Are these games really next gen or should they be categorized as current gen?
While there are many different arguments about differentiating gens, I think it’s important to discuss what our expectations should be for generational transitions as a whole. For context, I think the transition from the SNES to the N64 was the most noteworthy generational transition we’ve ever had and I think the transition from the PS3 to the PS4 was the least noteworthy generational transition we’ve ever had. My reasons for this are that for me generational transitions should fundamentally change the way we experience games or gaming as a whole. Nintendo has always been very good about this. Pretty much every generational change going back to the NES has delivered noteworthy shifts in the way people play games on their platforms. Even the failing generations such as the Wii U were huge departures in gameplay from the preceding console. That is what generational shifts used to be. That’s what they’re supposed to be. Today new generations, for PlayStation and XBOX but not Nintendo, usually just mean better graphics and somewhat faster load times. For me, that’s not a worthy generational transition.
If the gameplay experience is not changing in some fundamental way, then it’s just a spec upgrade akin to buying a new graphics card or CPU for your PC. I don’t care if the graphics are slightly crisper. It’s nice, and I’ll take it for a good price, but it’s not really next gen. I don’t care if loading times are slightly faster. Again, I’ll take it for a good price. But in no way will that fundamentally change the way I experience games. Say what you want about Nintendo’s crazy controllers but every console since the NES made you redefine what it meant to play Nintendo games at an almost foundational level. That’s a generational shift.
I like to focus on actual gaming when talking about next gen upgrades, but I will admit that in certain ways external features that aren’t actually gaming can count as part of the discussion of next gen upgrades as well. For example, the PS3 didn’t really change much about how we played games from the PS2, other than again much better graphics and loading times, as well as the size of games. But it did solidify the online component of gaming for PlayStation users. The PS3/XBOX 360 introduced us to an online console store, accounts based gaming, trophies/achievements, cloud saves, subscription services that include “free games”, and the beginnings of online e-sports as a serious mode of competition at a professional level. None of these things reference actually playing games but they all had and continue to have huge effects on the way we participate in gaming today. And that is why I consider the transition from the PS2 to the PS3 a much more noteworthy generational shift than the PS3 to the PS4. The PS4 and XBOX One did very little to revolutionize gaming. They essentially offered better graphics and faster loading times with more convenient content creation features and media streaming capabilities that have absolutely nothing to do with gaming. That’s really it. You’re playing the same types of games in the exact same ways but now it’s easier to stream, capture pictures and video, and share to social media directly from your console. Didn’t affect actual gaming much at all. So the question is will the PS5 and XSX constitute actual next gen console upgrades?
We haven’t actually used the consoles yet, but from what I’ve seen the main upgrade between the current gen and next gen consoles is the SSD. The graphics will get slightly better, but not enough to really change much. Control schemes don’t seem to be changing much at all, though I am excited to see if developers will actually take advantage of the DualSense’s haptic and pressure sensitive features. That actually could be a true generational shift if taken seriously by studios. But really the main upgrade appears to be the SSD. An SSD will make games much faster than the traditional HDD consoles we’ve grown accustomed to. But, like with the controller features, it will only matter if made to matter by developers. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a PS5 launch title that is being touted for its lightning fast loading times, and they are impressive. But that’s not a change or improvement to my actual gaming experience. It’s an improvement to my overall experience by wasting less of my time and keeping me more active longer. But the way I actually interact with the game will be no different than with Marvel’s Spider-Man. I don’t care if the subway loading screen no longer exists when I fast travel. It’s nice but it doesn’t change the way I play the game.
The SSD actually does have the potential to revolutionize gaming, but so far the only game I’ve seen actually trying to do that is Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which I cannot wait to play. Insomniac Games is actually trying to use that SSD to affect gameplay and storytelling with this game. The ultra-fast loading means you can hot swap worlds in real time with no lag. That’s a potential game changer for how games are made and played as well as the type of games that even get made. Think of what’s actually possible with no loading times at a gameplay level. When I played Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, one of the things I was truly impressed by was this barely used mechanic where when you walked through certain archways the world would change in real time. The changes were small but completely changed the game. Things such as ladders appearing or paths opening would happen by walking through a specific archway. I said while playing the game that you could build an entire game around that mechanic, and with an SSD you actually can. This appears to be the premise of The Medium: A next gen game where you play within a dual reality and can constantly change between two dimensions of the same world. We’ve seen games like that before but hopefully not to this level of detail and transition. But even that is still level one use of the SSD. What if you could hot swap between four different alternate realities like in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions but in real time as part of the gameplay and not just the storytelling? Now that sounds next gen.
Another facet of the SSD, like with the PS3/XBOX 360’s online additions to gaming, does have a lot of non-gaming potential as a next generation transition as well. Whether or not it sticks is a different matter. One of the things that really impressed me from the PS5 UI presentation was the ability to take advantage of the console’s speed for quality of life features. Features such as the ability to look up hints in real time on console and show them as picture in picture videos. The ability to watch others play games and chat with them as picture in picture videos. The ability to hot swap between games and return to your first game almost instantly with a couple button presses. Currently I don’t usually play multiple games in a single session of gaming on the same platform. Sometimes I’ll do stuff like play a mobile game or Switch game concurrently with a PS4 game, but rarely do I play a PS4 game and then switch to another PS4 game in the same session. I just play one game until I’m tired of playing and then turn the console off altogether. My first thought tells me that this is more a function of habit than preference, but when thinking about it further it’s probably more due to time. Specifically loading times.
I rarely play more than one game on the same platform at the same time. There are exceptions, but in general I try to focus on one game per platform at a time. And really I prefer one game at a time in general but live games and streaming have made that impossible. Currently I’m playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (PS4), Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)(will be finished by the time this is published), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS) regularly. That means almost every day. I’m playing Animal Crossing because it’s a live game that constantly adds updates and I’m compelled to continue playing it for now but I’m admittedly ready to be done. I’m streaming Ghost of Tsushima, which matters because when I stream a game I only play it during streams, with a few exceptions for collecting and grinding where necessary. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is my current narrative game that I’m just playing for me. I’m also causally playing Link’s Awakening Remake, which I’m nearly done with, Super Mario 35, and I need to jump back into Pokemon: Sword since the new The Crown Tundra DLC recently dropped and I haven’t even fully finished the Isle of Armor DLC yet. Note from this list that I’m currently only playing two games on the PS4, but I play these two almost every day. I’m also nearly finished with both. Yet I’ve never played them in the same gaming session. The fact that I’m streaming one of them definitely plays a factor, but even if I wasn’t I still probably would never play them both in the same session. This is because swapping between them takes forever.
If I wanted to go directly from standing in the map in Ghost of Tsushima to standing in the map in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, on my normal PS4, it would take approximately 4 minutes and 20 seconds. The full process includes saving and returning to the title screen in Ghost of Tsushima, going to the dashboard, selecting Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, closing Ghost of Tsushima, and finally loading through Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey’s not one, not two, but three start up loading sequences. It’s important to note that open world Ubisoft games always take a long time to load up. It doesn’t matter what platform you’re on. They always take a long time to start. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint takes a while to load on PC as well. It is admittedly considerably faster to transition from Odyssey to Ghost of Tsushima than vice versa. But the point is that in either case it’s minutes of wasted time. The motivation to switch games is simply not present. I’d rather just end that entire session when I get bored with one game than waste that much time switching. Supposedly this issue will not exist on the PS5. You can instantly switch between games and then switch back to the exact spot you were in without loading. That speed of transition may get me to play more than one game in the same session.
I can see myself playing something like Dark Souls and getting stuck on a boss and then deciding to change to something completely different for like 30 minutes to cool off and then going back to fight the boss again. I can see myself playing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, having a friend login to play Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and deciding to jump in and play with him for a few rounds, and then jumping back into Valhalla. It the transitions are seamless then I have no reason not to. But if I have to go through the massive transitional times between games that we have right now then it’s not worth it. I’m gonna ask my friend questions like how long does he intend to play and ask myself how long do I feel like playing that for. Because if the answer to either question is not long enough then taking the time to switch games just isn’t worth it. The Nintendo Switch is surprisingly fast to load up the games so I actually do switch between games on there often enough. But on my PS4 or PC, it’s a super rare occurrence. So while I can’t say for sure, I could see the PS5/XSX being a true generation transition externally from actual gameplay as well if it’s really as fast as being touted and these special features are actually as easy to use as they say. The ability to look up hints for collectibles on console instantly is a game changer in and of itself.
At the end of the day, what I want to see is a real generational shift. I want to see these new consoles fundamentally change the way we play games. And not just in how we pay for them or access them via streaming services. I want the games to actually be different in noticeable ways. I want the ways games are made and tied to narratives to be different. Not just different, but better. I don’t want the next big new IP to just be another God of War, The Last of Us, or Assassin’s Creed clone. I want something I haven’t played before. When I look back at the last gen of games, many stand out to me as being really good. Few stand out to me as being really good and different. Many indies are different. Sadly few are actually depth defying in how good they are while being different. That is of course a limitation of budgets more than anything, but that doesn’t change the fact that it matters. I want to see AAA games made differently. But more importantly I want to see those games made possible only because of the technological advancements provided by the PS5/XSX. If I can play it on my PS4 and the only difference will be slower loading times and nominally worse graphics, then it’s not really next gen.
I remember the last game I bought for PS3. It was Dragon Age: Inquisition. An excellent game that was almost unplayable on PS3 because it required too much of the last gen console. I had so many glitches and enough lag time to go to the store and buy a PS4. It played terribly on PS3 and that let me know that the console was done. But even then I won’t say that the limitation was in actual gameplay differences. It was just that the game was too large and detailed for the older hardware. That don’t impress me much. The last game I played on PS2 was The Force Unleashed, and you know what, it played fine. It looked terrible but it ran smoothly. I only shelved my PS2 after that because I already had an XBOX 360 that had been gifted to me so I saw no reason to keep buying games for the older console when they would look better for basically the same price on the next gen console. But if I hadn’t already owned a next gen console at that point I would have kept buying PS2 games until they wouldn’t run smoothly anymore. Graphics and load times aren’t next gen. They’re just a given for next gen. I want the PS5 to wow me in new ways.
I will not be buying a PS5 day one. I actually can get one fairly easily, since I live in Taiwan and people aren’t insane here. But I have opted not to rush. This is because while the PS5 has already shown exclusive games that I want to play, and eventually will, it has not shown me anything that I absolutely must play right now. Not to mention that some of the games announced that I really want to play, like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, will be available on PS4 as well. If I just can’t wait, I’ll buy it on that platform. Add that to the fact that I’m still very happy with my PS4’s performance, and that I have a huge backlog of PS4 games actually worth playing, and there’s simply no reason for me to upgrade at this time. I’m happy to hold out for a PS5 PRO, given the current information and games available. It’s up to SONY, and developers, to change my mind. I don’t owe SONY or Microsoft anything. I don’t have to upgrade. They need to convince me to upgrade by providing content that I can’t get anywhere else and can’t pass up on. They haven’t done that yet. But I hope one of them, almost assuredly SONY at this point, eventually does. Are these new consoles actually next gen? Or just more of the same with a speed boost? Only time will tell.
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
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