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On Friday I talked about the games that I enjoyed the most in 2020 and yesterday I talked about the biggest disappointments. Keeping with this same theme of reflecting upon the previous year and the year to come, I thought I would gaze forward. As 2020 has taught us, nothing is certain however here are some of the games that I am looking forward to that likely will release in 2021. Some of these are less certain than others given that we don’t have release dates, but a few I am including out of sheer wishful thinking.

Monster Hunter Rise

This one is just about as certain of a release as this list is going to get. We have a firm March 26th release date and a demo dropped on the Nintendo eShop this week. What makes me excited for this game is that it seems like we are getting something that splits the difference between Monster Hunter World and the more traditional games like Generations. I am fully on board with this and I love that we get doggos as well as Palicos. I’ve not had a chance to play the demo but I am hoping to do so today.

Outriders

This is another title that has fairly firm release dates associated with it. It was supposed to come out last year but was ultimately pushed to April first, with a demo landing 2/25. I want to be hopeful but I have to say the last few games that have released in this “looter” genre have disappointed me. Godfall and Avengers were largely unenjoyable experiences for me, so I am definitely going to wait to see about the demo before I pass further judgement if this is going to get much of my attention. What I have seen footage wise looks promising, but again a game like this requires great moment to moment gameplay and if it doesn’t stick that landing then I will hard pass. Still throwing it on the list because I am interested to see how this turns out.

Deathloop

This is one that I have been watching for awhile. It has a release date of May 21st for PC and PlayStation 5 making it a console exclusive for an unknown period of time. I love Arkane Studios games and I am super interested in the art design of this world and that it sounds like maybe just maybe they might nail the difficult to handle time loop concept. It has this whole feel of a blend of games like No One Lives Forever with BioShock and We Happy Few. I have no clue if mechanically it will be a game that I enjoy, but I am definitely interested in trying it out.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

All I want out of this is a Mass Effect 1 experience that doesn’t feel kludgy. That is legitimately all I require. I am sure we are going to get prettier textures and maybe some model tweaks, but really I just want the first Mass Effect game with a better user interface. I have a feeling like I won’t be getting this… but I can hope right? Definitely taking a wait and see stance on this one because it could either excite me immensely or break my freaking heart. I own all of the games already, and I am sure this will be a repurchase type situation unlike the Skyrim Enhanced edition from several years back. If this gives me a better experience for the first game however, then I am absolutely replaying this entire experience from start to finish because it is one of the best space operas ever created.

New World

I am so ready for this game to be released. There is a lot of content about it already on this blog, but this was originally supposed to launch last year. Amazon Game Studios however got real gun-shy given their two offerings so far have not been received well. The game needed some work, but it would have been the sort of thing I was willing to play through because the core game itself was fun as hell. My hope is that they do some balancing on combat and tweak it to maybe feel a bit more fluid. The other thing it definitely needs is better character models because they are awful. Like last generation Dark Souls and Bloodbourne awful. I am going to be there on day one whenever this actually releases however.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

This is really one of the console generation sellers for me and a big part of why I was day one with the PlayStation 5 (or attempted to be). I don’t expect this to ship until around holiday 2021, because this is going to likely be a console selling game. That said I am super on board and going to be playing it day one because I love the Ratchet and Clank series. I might even replay the last outing to get me in the mood for it. I am not even certain what else I can say. You are either into Ratchet and Clank or you are not. The series is basically… what if you took a really great 3D platformer and exploration game and then added 3rd person shooter mechanics with super interesting weapons.

Horizon Forbidden West

The other game that more or less made me want a PlayStation 5. That said if this is available day one on PC I am absolutely going to play it there because the Mouse and Keyboard experience was so enjoyable. I am thinking this game might be an early 2021 title given that it is cross generational and targeting the PlayStation 4 as well as the PlayStation 5. I am sure there is a weird juggling act going on to decide when best to launch a game, but I feel like waiting for Holiday 2021 means that the PS4 copies won’t move anywhere near as well. The fervor surrounding the PlayStation 5 means that once units come into stock again… I think you are going to see some folks making impulse buys because they have access rather than evaluating if they really need it or not. If you have played Horizon Zero Dawn you know why I am excited, and if not… go play it already.

God of War: Ragnarok

I really think on this list, this is one of the longer shot games because right now all we really have is the above image to go by. The modern reboot of the God of War series was excellent and pending they keep that model and not return to the hack and slash roots… then I am extremely amped about this game. I could see however it getting pushed back to Holiday 2022 seeing as we have so little information about it. If it does come out this year it will be a late Holiday ship, probably post Thanksgiving.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

The original Stalker is one of those games that I wish I had played back before I had hard coded my default preferences for shooter mechanics. This dates back to 2007, and was a time before we had essentially standardized the mechanical feel of a first person shooter. I’ve attempted to go back and play it, but I gotta admit much like the original Witcher game I was unable to get past the feel of it. With a new Stalker game coming out, I am hoping to get some of the experience of playing the first in the second with modern shooter dynamics.

VtM: Bloodlines 2

Yes I realize that I just had this on my disappointments list yesterday, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still want to play it. I have no clue when this is actually going to release, but I am throwing it on the list because whenever it does I am likely going to play it. Similar to Stalker, I never experienced the first game because I struggled with the age of it. I am hoping that this game ends up pulling a Witcher on me and makes me want to go back and play the earlier game. I do feel like I am missing a really important chunk of experiences by not having played the first game. Maybe just maybe at some point this year since I am on a single player kick I will try and do this thing.

Kena Bridge of Spirits

This is another game from the PlayStation 5 reveal that I was super interested in. We don’t know a ton about it but it was adorable, gave me Avatar vibes and you go around cleansing spirits and collecting adorable little spirit buddies. This is likely going to be a “when I get around to it” sort of experience, but I am definitely interested and hope it ships smoothly.

Diablo 4

BlizzConline is in February and is the replacement for the 2020 BlizzCon that did not happen. I fully expect that Diablo 4 is going to play a heavy role in that show and I am also expecting that we are going to get some sort of messaging surrounding a launch window. I am throwing this on the 2021 list because I legitimately think that at some point… probably around October… this game is going to launch. I still have no clue if I am going to like it or not to be honest. In the Diablo community you have two camps. The first thought Diablo 3 was an improvement on the formula and extremely enjoyable. The second thought Diablo 3 was an abomination and that they would have rather had more Diablo 2. That second community has proven that they are super willing to support a game because essentially that is why Path of Exile exists. My ultimate fear is that Blizzard is chasing the PoE player (and their pocketbooks) and will fuck over the Diablo 3 player, but only time will tell.

Starfield

This is another game that might be a long shot, but given it has been five years since the release of Fallout 4, and that Fallout 76 was really just a side project and not a main game project… I am thinking that maybe just maybe we will see a release of Starfield this year. Leaked footage came out last year and it looked legitimate, so I am thinking the game is fairly far along at this point. However with everything Bethesda you never quite know when something is going to come out even though with all certainty you know they are working on it. We are getting more information about Elder Scrolls 6, so I think that means they are in the process of wrapping up Starfield. All of this is hopeful speculation, and I am not even certain if I want Elder Scrolls in space. I am thoroughly intrigued however so it went on the list.

Blue Protocol

Blue Protocol is a free to play ARPG/MMO that appears to be something along the lines of Genshin Impact. As much as I loved that game and still do, I am very interested to try this one out as well. Originally it had a December 2020 release date listed, but that appeared to just be a placeholder. I am guessing this is going to hit sometime in the first quarter of 2021. Rumored to have cross platform play, so I will be interested to see what the final version ends up looking like. Looks freaking gorgeous.

Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis

We talked about this in the games of the year show over the weekend, but PSO2 is a great game… but it also very much feels like you are playing a ten year old game. New Genesis excites me greatly because what I really want is a PSO2 that feels fresh and new. I have to admit this existing on the horizon has done an awful lot to kill my interest in the older game. That said there is going to be some cross over and as a result it might be worth dusting off PSO2 and getting some interesting cosmetics now. Supposedly this is landing in Japan for PC beta testing this month, so here is hoping we get a round of North American testing as well.

Lost Ark

I have to be honest, this is a game I have been looking forward to for years. Originally released in South Korea, this is one of those games that had been touted as the Diablo killer. Right now the only way to play the game is to purchase a legally created account from someone in South Korea because the sign up process requires a national id number to register. Recently there was a deal inked between Amazon and Smilegate that supposedly is going to finally bring this title to North American Audiences. The exact wording we are pinning our hopes on is translated to “the company’s flagship game, Lost Ark, will be officially released to users in North America and Europe by 2021”. I am absolutely going to play this whenever it finally does land, but given how hard I have bounced from other Korean ARPGs… I am not sure if it will actually be something I am into in the long run.

Your Outlook

So those are some of the games that I am tracking that I think have a reasonable chance of launching this year. What games are you keeping your eye on and what did I miss? Drop me a line below and let me know. The post 2021 Looking Forward appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Continuing the cadence of new year posts, I though this morning I would talk about some of the gaming related things that disappointed me the most last year. Some of these I am sure will be remedied in the near future, given that a handful of them are just games that have seemingly dropped off the radar. Others were just games that released and weren’t nearly as enjoyable as I would have hoped. Even other things on the list are just situations that were frustrating to deal with. Regardless here is my list of the things I was the most disappointed with during 2020.

Console Launches

I remember some frustrating launch years for many products, but I feel like this year is going to go down in history as maybe one of the worst? First off you had the scarcity of the Nintendo Switch due to the high demand of Animal Crossing combined with stay at home orders that put everyone in the mood to play some sort of video game. Then there were the delays caused by the absence of e3 in getting the word out of exactly when and for what price both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X would be launching at. Finally you have a situation that was brought on by the artificial scarcity of the Sneaker drops industry… leading bot builders to decide there could be a significant profit in grabbing these new consoles and trying to flip them aftermarket. The end result is that very few people ended up getting that shiny new console under their Christmas tree. Among the AggroChat crew I think we all wanted one… but only two of us so far managed to snag one.

Graphics Card Launches

Possibly even worse than the Console Launches is the roll out of new graphics cards by Nvidia and AMD. This situation is made worse by the fact that the 2000 series was not exactly a stellar leap ahead of the 1000 series, and folks like me have been holding onto our aging hardware in the hopes of upgrading during the 3000 series which is is sizable step forward. On the AMD side you have the fact that they have not had a single graphics card that could compete at the high end for the last several generations, making those team Red loyalists extremely hungry for product. The same bots that impacted the console sales also snagged all of the available video card stock… which is only made worse by the fact that crypto currency had been booming again. Hopefully the two day plunge over the weekend will shake those folks out of the market, and as we get into 2021 enough stock will be released so that maybe just maybe I can snag a 3070 or 3080.

Metroid Prime 4

Far as I am aware we received zero information about this game during the entire 2020 calendar year. It was announced in 2017 with this static image, and then since January 2019 we have heard nothing. We know the game ran into development issues, but I had hoped to hear something… ANYTHING… during 2020. Truth be told… what I want probably more than anything is a re-release of Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Nintendo Switch, which I figured would happen in the run up to the fourth game releasing. I just want Nintendo to remember the Metroid exists and is a really cool franchise. The life of a Metroid fan however is filled with constant sorrow.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines II

This is a game that was supposed to release back in March and then was delayed with an undetermined 2020 release date… and now has seemingly disappeared completely with a new undetermined 2021 release date. I am sure this game is another side effect of the pandemic along with unrealistic schedules that did not take into account just how much was left to do in order to bring the game to market. I am still looking forward to it, just disappointed that we didn’t get to play it last year and at the current rate is is uncertain if we will be playing it this year either. Hopefully we get some updates about the game soon.

Dying Light 2

The first game was great and I was super looking forward to the sequel. This was originally slotted to be a spring of 2020 release date, but similar to Bloodlines seems to have completely disappeared. Tweets from the Dying Light twitter account would indicate that it is going to release in 2021, but the steam page still just says “Coming Soon”. The lack of any tangible information about the game in quite a long while makes me wonder if this is just stuck in development hell. As always the case I hope it takes as long as is needed to make it the best game possible, but I am more disappointed in the lack of information coming out than anything else.

Warcraft 3 Reforged

So confession time. I have never finished Warcraft III in any form. It released at a time when I just did not care about RTS after burning out on Dune 2, Command and Conquer and Warcraft II. However there is a lot of lore that takes place in this game that ultimately shaped World of Warcraft, and I have long thought I should probably play through the campaigns to see it for myself. When a trailer of gameplay was released during 2018 BlizzCon I was super stoked that maybe just maybe I would get to experience it in a prettier format. It had really cool cinematics which made me super excited to play it… but the final version that released didn’t seem to include any of that stuff. This video does a good job of showing the difference between the demo that was shown and the final version. Maybe someday I will sit down and actually play through it, but it was a bit of a punch in the gut when it finally released in January.

Marvel’s Avengers

I had so much hope going into this game. I like the Destiny style of engagement, where you run missions, gear up and then do harder content. I have long felt the absence of Marvel Heroes, which was the diablo-like game that ultimately lost the Marvel license and shuttered. I had hoped that maybe just maybe I was going to get a 3D beat-em-up game that felt similar to that. The end product however… just felt like a confused mess. You had a bunch of problems, the biggest being that combat really wasn’t terribly interesting. Everything was fairly tanky and took a long time to kill, but the process of taking them out also wasn’t that terribly interesting either. Gearing was a bit of a confusing mess as well, because you collect items that don’t really have an impact on your characters appearance in any way and were mostly just “Stat Sticks”. Lastly there was the significant problem of only having around six unique maps in the entire game and everything was just a randomized sequence of objectives. I leveled two characters to the cap… geared one of them to the max… and then it was when I was leveling my third character that I realized I was not enjoying myself at all and logged out never to return.

Godfall

In a similar category, I though this game looked gorgeous and I was super interested in it given that it appeared to be a more melee focused version of Destiny. When I got my hands on it however there was just something lacking. Like it ticked a bunch of boxes but the resulting gameplay and world felt empty and soulless. This is the exact same feeling I had when I attempted to play Battleborn back in the day. Mechanically the game was fine, I just didn’t care about it. I am just realizing as I type this that both of these games are from Gearbox, but I have no clue if it was the same team or if there is any overlap. Both games however felt like they were lacking something to ground me in the gameplay other than just being pretty or in the case of Battleborn having a ridiculous number of interesting looking characters that I was not engaged with.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

I debated putting this on the list or not, but ultimately decided to. I am not saying that Shadowlands is a bad expansions, but I am saying that it has not inspired the level of engagement that I had hoped it would. This might entirely be a me thing. I went into Shadowlands with so much hope, I was changing mains and super focused on trying to get in a group friendly mindset. I had this whole plan to launch a discord community for getting friendly groups, that never really came to fruition because the resulting gameplay left me a little uninspired. I pushed forward nonetheless and when life threw me the curveball that was the lack of available healers to run with as a tank… I just started focusing more on Retribution and spent two weeks grinding my face against dungeons to get to a reasonable gear level. Then on December 10th I logged out and have yet to log back in. Sure I was distracted by Cyberpunk, but were I really enjoying the gameplay I would have found a way to keep playing the MMORPG or would have returned to it when I finished the storyline several weeks ago. Shadowlands is a series of systems that I don’t really feel like I want to engage with. So much is focused around Torghast and The Maw, and to be honest there isn’t really anything rewarding in either to keep me logging in each day and suffering through it. Sure there are legendary gear that can be forged… but the process of crafting them is so painful and costly that you can’t just really afford to keep crafting spare ones. I didn’t necessarily enjoy the leveling process enough to run up a number of alts either. As a result I have bounced and I really wish I had not. So I am left wondering… is it the expansion or have I just outgrown MMORPGs since I have a similarly hard time attaching to the day to day grind of Final Fantasy XIV.

Other Disappointments

I am sure there were other things that I found disappointing, but given how odd the year was they maybe just fell through the cracks. What were some of your bigger disappointments this year? Drop me a line in the comments because I am curious if anyone felt the same way about some of the ones I listed. The post Disappointments of 2020 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

I had a bit of a revelation over the weekend, and now I understand a little better some of my motivations. I hate daily quests, and I understand WHY I hate them, but first I guess we should probably talk a bit about the daily quest construct as a whole. If you are one of my readers that has not played a ton of MMORPGs, then maybe you have escaped the sirens call of them. Essentially they started their life as an optional method of creating repeatable quest turn-ins and have become widely signified as having a blue exclamation icon to signify that status. The very first repeatable quests I ever experienced were in Everquest, as I turned copious amounts of bone chips to the dude in the Kaladim Paladin guild. World of Warcraft however had a more formal questing infrastructure and as a result they had to make a specific version of questing in order to support the repeatable nature. I am honestly not exactly certain when I first encountered them, but I know for certain that by the time we reached Silithis they were the backbone of the quests leading up to the opening of Ahn’Qiraj. At that point they served a very distinct purpose and were pretty straight forward in nature allowing you to gain favor with a faction for repeatedly turning in the same items over and over. They were more construct than feature at that point and served as a means to an end.

With Burning Crusade a number of optional faction grinds were put in place, and with them a series of limited daily quests were introduced. Each faction would give you a number of quests each day with additional options opening up as you increased your standing. The first of these that I participated in was Ogri’la, which required a flying mount so absolutely nothing you even saw prior to dinging the level cap in that expansion. These were time wasters more than anything, and if you decide to completely skip a week it didn’t feel terribly bad because it didn’t feel like you were really missing anything other than some incremental progress.

The problem is that as we have moved further from that original mission of simply facilitating multiple turn-ins they have spread more and more from something that felt like optional content, to something that is absolutely a requirement in order to function within the game. Now exists a tapestry of daily quests, world quests and weekly objectives that all feel like they need to be observed for fear of your character falling terribly behind the curve. In Shadowlands for example there are a number of things that can only be obtained while a certain World Quest is up, which only serves to add a fear of missing out on potential rewards by not logging in every single day.

This unfortunately isn’t a World of Warcraft problem, but a larger MMORPG problem. Every game has some version of this infrastructure of giving you limited rewards for logging in each day and doing some things… all in an attempt to make you appear to be “active”. This becomes important because in the free to play economy… no one reports subscription numbers at investor calls anymore. They instead report on MAU or Monthly Active Users, and if they can keep you logging in it gives the appearance of the game having a healthy ecosystem. However none of this is really compelling content and I’ve reached a point where I find it harder and harder to swallow as such.

In general I do pretty well with completing dailies for maybe a week at a time, but eventually I find I lack the desire to log in. I’ve reached this point with so many games now that I started to wonder why exactly I reject this construct so much. Now comes the realization part. I play games as an escape from the rigors of my day to day existence, and my life is basically a series of repeated rituals at this point. I am the primary caretaker in my household and when I get up I start running through a list of little daily activates that are required to make sure the household is running smoothly. Everything in my life has been ritualized in order to make sure it happens and to also try and make it as efficient as humanly possible so I can move on to more enjoyable things. So for example this morning my list of rituals looked a little something like this:

• get up and turn off the alarm clock
• check email for any critical alerts overnight
• turn on the morning news so wife can wake up slowly while listening to it
• hop in the shower
• get dressed
• make sure wife is actually waking up
• prepare Kenzie’s insulin shot and coax her into letting me give it to her
• give the cats wet food and a little dry food
• gather and take out the trash
• feed the outdoor cats
• sit down and consume caffeine while writing a blog post

There is a similar evening sequence of events that plays out in order pretty much every night, and if anything gets out of order there is a high chance of forgetting to do something. My life is so ritualized that daily quests don’t feel like an escape. They feel like converting what is supposed to be enjoyable relaxation and exploration time… into doing more “Wizard Chores” as my friend Grace calls them. I said before that I can seem to do them for about a week, and that seems to be the point at which I begin to realize exactly what I am doing. Then I start to wonder… why exactly am I logging in? I mean I don’t find the daily quest construct enjoyable in the least, and it is only out of that fear of missing out on something that I start doing them in the first place. Eventually I realize that I am probably better off finding something I actually do enjoy instead.

The problem however is that as more titles have shifted to the “Games as a Service” model, with it comes a “dailyquestification” of content. I mean I get it from the development standpoint. If you can create content that is largely just a ticking of boxes, make it repeatable and it has a positive hit on the MAU… then it absolutely makes sense. As a player however I look out upon a sea of task lists that are really no more enjoyable than doing the laundry. My daily rituals in the real world I have to do in order to maintain a quality of life that I have come to expect. In the game world… I can just log the hell out and go find something else to play instead. Unfortunately my buffer of willingness to deal with these systems has been full for quite some time.

That said I am still just as susceptible to them as anyone. For a period of time I can forget what exactly I am doing as I chase making gear numbers go up. However I always end up back where I started in realizing that I am just doing busy work, and that busy work isn’t fun. I hit Shadowlands hard and heavy for a few weeks until I realized that I wasn’t actually enjoying myself, and now have not logged in since before Christmas. I feel bad that I have not been logging in, but I am actually enjoying myself playing other games so I am mostly ignoring that guilt. I am not sure what the answer is to make repeating content more enjoyable. It isn’t like games have the budgets or hours to create fresh content every week for us to consume like the locusts that we are. I am wondering if I am just outgrowing MMORPGs in general. Diablo 3 is a grind I do over and over, but it is a self paced grind that allows me to commit as much time as I want to it when I want to… and then bugger the fuck off and forget it exists when I don’t. I crave more experiences like that, but those seem to be fewer and further between. Being artificially gated when I am having one of my periods where I want to binge a game… also feels horrible and will similarly inspire me to bounce. I think maybe the real answer is to break down the lie that is Monthly Active Users… because if you are just logging in to clear your mailbox are you really active? That is a discussion for another day, but I think I now better understand why I hate daily quests. The post Dailyquestification of Games appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.