Isometrics Awards 2015: A Panoply of Light, Fantasy and Interactivity

Welcome one and all to the Isometrics Awards, the sidelong sneer at the best and worst of the literary world of computer and video games. The year has shot by so quickly hasn't it? I remember last year when I promised a regular schedule with lots of posts and gave my best games of 2014, and now I aim to promise it again, with a bit of a look back at the year as well as explaining the criteria I personally use to judge the best and worst games of the year of our game Two Thousand and Fifteen.

2015: A Panoply of Light, Fantasy and Interactivity

Two Thousand and Fifteen will probably go down as one of the best years for gaming of all time, in pretty much every regard that matters. From cultural shifts, to fantastic triple A titles, to complete out of nowhere smashes and some of the most wonderful explorations of a fantastically deep medium, it felt like the ethos of Literary Gaming was alive and well, and everything that is valued in an art form going through a veritable renaissance is visible here. My best of list has changed so extremely that my prospective list basically looks nothing like the list I will have settled on by the time the best of list comes out.

It was a year full of a ridiculous amount of games being made available, with Steam in particular swelling and buckling under the weight of releases at times. That is only a problem for a player who needs to play every major release though, and just means you are spoiled for choice for great games this year. It also means quite wonderfully that nearly everyone's GOTY list will be completely and utterly different.

The seemed to show a medium unafraid of itself and its fractured audience, which came to a head last year in tragic and ugly fashion. While elements of that still existed as they unfortunately always will, the general feeling about video games was far more focused on the creative, the positive and when critical, things that can be done to make games more for everyone (This is something we will definitely do an Isometrics on). The power balance between consumer and publisher seemed to shift in a far more positive way, albeit reluctantly, and following some of the most anti-consumer decisions and actions taken thus yet in the history of video games.

Pictured: Konami's Relationship with Hideo Kojima

In terms of major events outside of game launches, there were a few that spring to mind. The introduction of Steam Refunds was a great olive branch, finally holding developers to account for making PC ports that did not do the original game justice, and I have already seen cases of games where an appalling launch was rectified soon afterwards (and indeed some examples of that not happening where that is the direct reason they made my worst of list). There was the rather embarrassing fall of Atari into somewhat poor low-budget takes on some of their best franchises, as well as the half-hilarious, half-harrowing fall of (Fuc)Konami as a serious developer, the fallout of which still seems to be landing after all this time.

We also had the true power of crowd funding being released this year, though not always for the best. Along with the releases of some fantastic games we saw successful pitches from top tier talent for example for a new Banjo-Kazooie (Yooka-Laylee), a new Castlevania Symphony of the Night (Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night), Shenmue 3, Psychonauts 2 and I'm certain many others, along with other games from slightly smaller studios really stepping up, like the heart-stopping IndieGoGo for Indivisible. Along with this we did get some horror stories, like the cancelled Yogsadventures, some of the issues with the otherwise excellent Double Fine game Broken Age and the neverending launch window for Mighty No 9, a game that seems to go from problem to problem.

 

Add to this the huge issues some major releases had, from the onslaught of microtransactional elements in full price releases, the trend of paid betas that triple A games seem to be doing a lot of, and the less said of that utterly bollocks “Augment Your Preorder” stuff for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided that was mercifully scrapped. There did seem to be some pushback though that actually did some good.

Kickstarter's influence led to an influx of amazing games.

For me personally it was a banner year, where I finally felt far more confident about my writing and recording, was in a job I like with the perfect blend of stability and an end date, so I had less anxiety about the madness swirling around me, and actually had enough money to buy major releases at or soon after launch. There's a lot of oddities, and indeed a lot of games I still need to catch up on, but I feel more in the loop than I ever have, and may this continue into 2016.

On the whole 2015 was far more good than bad, which does give me a bit of unease as how long this can roll on for. With the disparity between big budget games and the rest getting to ludicrous heights, it paints an uncertain future for this truly diversely brilliant time in gaming.

2016 looks like it'll be pretty good so far though.

The Isometrics Awards

Once again, it is time for the Isometrics Awards, which will take the form of The Isometrics Worst Game of 2015, and The Isometrics Game of the Year 2015. They'll be top ten lists, with some room for a shortlist of course, and if I have time I'll try and actually have a list of awards to go with it.

I use slightly odd criteria because I feel it's slightly fairer, so I'll try and explain it a little bit more succinctly this year.

For a game to qualify for the Isometrics Awards it must:

• Have been released to stores in (Including online retailers, Steam and Bricks and Mortar shops) in Europe between 1^st December 2014 and 31^st December 2015. I give the extra month because I generally finalise my list in the middle of December so games released in December often get left out, which is a shame. Note: A game can only qualify for one year, so if I mentioned it last year it can't qualify this.
• Be a completed game. Early Access, beta releases and the like do not qualify until they are done. Even if it's near complete or feature complete, it needs to “go gold” or it's out.
• Be a full game. This is a grey area, but basically it means an expansion to a game that relies on the original does not qualify. Standalone expansions do however, if they are good enough to merit it.
• Be a new game. No ports of very old games or remakes without substantial updates. Generally The Binding of Isaac Rebirth is the standard for what qualifies, so a new engine and new content. Exception: a port from a console to Steam can still qualify if it is within 12 months, just for timed exclusives or games which have a release cycle between systems.
• Generally mobile and free to play games do not qualify, although there is no specific rule against them.
  In terms of judging criteria, ultimately it comes down to some subjective aspects, however I will do my best explain my justification. General rules of thumb is that a game that is bad that many people played is worse than a bad game no-one played, and that an actively hostile bad game is worse than a merely incompetently made game. The reverse is also true, a game that actively demonstrates imagination, daring and a literary sensibility will win out over a game that merely demonstrates technical competence, and also a great game for most is better than a game that is as good for less people.

Hope this all makes sense, it will in practise, and expect another update with the Isometrics Worst Games of 2015!

The Isometrics Worst Games of the Year: The Top Eight Worst Games of The Year

So after a long contentious year, there stands a stack of terrible games, some giftedly bad, others a sheer affront to the gaming Zeitgeist. However they got onto this list, they are games that really made a dent in arguments that video games are artistic statements.

Right, I covered the rules in a post last week, but just to clarify everything. I'll do a quick summery:

It has to be a full game released between 1^st December 2013 and 31^st December 2014, that is not a beta or in early access. Episodic games count from the release of the first episode, so long as the intent was to be episodic and not to sell a beta release. Freemium games are exempt except in particularly egregious circumstances. Remakes, ports and expanded rereleases can count either if they are the first version of a game released in English or are expanded to a sufficient degree that they could be considered a sequel.

In the end these are all subjective rankings, and I will show my working as much as possible in the process of writing the list.

Now, with that out of the way here is the bottom eight games of the year!

8: Watch Dogs (Ubisoft: PC/X360/XONE/PS3/PS4)

Speaking of subjectivity, this is a game I suspect might ruffle a few feathers, because on the face of it it's not a terrible game, with mostly functional mechanics and a few occasionally interesting twists on the Ubisoft Open World formula. This is on the list for three relatively minor things that in combination ruin the experience. The first is the simplification of basically every aspect, with the hacking on the go mechanic that is meant to differentiate it from other open world games almost never coming into play except in the most situational of circumstances. This spreads to the graphics, gorgeous in trailers but fairly mediocre and choppy in game. Speaking of mediocre and choppy, the PC port is particularly awful, with low framerates, poor textures and stuttering abounding and serving to ruin the experience further.

It is the most classic, and frustrating case of a game with a great idea that falls flat on the fundementals and simply ends up as a lifeless, dull and largely unlikable game. A crying shame.

7: Duck Dynasty The Game (Activision: PC/ X360/PS3)

Probably on a lot of people's top spot for worst game this year, Activision's take on the beardiest family in america caused a lot of eyebrows to roll. How would a game based on a reality (using the word under advisement of course) TV series pan out? The answer is generically. Outside of the baffling and occasionally unintentionally hilarious storyline (Any cutscene before a stealth section really speaks for itself), the game is a set of rather shallow minigames in a rather shallow open world. It's pretty low on this list in part because it at least works completely, though the fact that it is above a game that was almost completely broken on it's PC release speaks volumes about the quality within. Whatever you think about the Robertsons and the Duck Commander, this game commands you to throw it in the bin.

6: Takedown: Red Sabre (505 Games: PC)

This at first seemed like an excellent idea for a game. Bring back classic tactical shooting in the vein of the sublime Rainbow Six 3, even calling on a former developer of the title for support. Sadly the game was astoundingly bugged and even when it wasn't constantly crashing to desktop or sucking wind on fairly powerful PCs the actual content of the game was ferociously limited, with multiplayer being as unplayable a mess as possible. It is a crying shame that this game failed to live up to expectations and served, along with several other Kickstarter disappointments to really dent confidence in the crowdfund as a medium for distributing games, which is the primary reason why it makes it on this list.

5: Rambo: The Video Game (Teyon: PC/X360/PS3)

Oh dear. This is the first of many games on this list that are both utterly dreadful and utterly deceptive. The Steam page of the game suggests that your hard earned thirty pounds will garner you a crazy yet rather alright looking FPS based on the most manly man in the history of 80s manliness, John Rambo. However upon purchase the game turns out to be an on-rails light gun game. You may have noticed that there aren't any common light guns available for PC. The graphics, while passable in screenshots are terrible in motion, not helped by the fact that each of the stages has exactly one enemy type. Other mechanics such as perks and the rage bar seem tacked on and other than making the obligatory quick time sequences even less necessary don't serve to make the game suck any less. On top of all this, the dialogue is literally ripped from a blu-ray of Rambo, right down to sound artefacts in the background. Lovely.

4: Guise of the Wolf (FUN Creations: PC)

Oh dear. This isn't a game that people likely remember, but the sheer abject terror that is Guise of the Wolf can't be understated. Featuring appalling character design, questionable cel shading effects, an appalling mix of the most boring generic time consuming puzzles and awful combat, and a profound sense of obtuseness surrounding pretty much every other aspect. It is no combination of fun, challenging or rewarding, but an experience to be suffered through incredibly slowly.

3: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Just as we thought Sonic had managed to escape the throes of terrible gaming, sadly Big Red Button productions drags the blue blur back into the fold. The television show and indeed the 3DS game are at least debatable in quality, however the Wii U release Rise of Lyric has a budget game rip-off feel last seen with the reprehensible Ride to Hell: Retribution. Sonic's trademark speed is limited to brief on-rails segments, the beat-em-up mechanics are tedious, as indeed is the different platforming sections for your four playable characters, every single one of which seemingly having a fetish for Boost Rings that moves into concerning by the end of the game. Add to that a co-op mode that slows the game to a crawl, random slowdown anyway and a pause glitch that allows you to jump infinitely off the edge of the world, and you have a recipe for a disaster worthy of comparison to the execrable Sonic 2006.

2: The Slaughtering Grounds (Digital Homicide Studios LLC: PC)

2014 was a year in which Steam opened the floodgates, allowing pretty much anything willing to pay their cut to release a game on Steam. This lead to some abominable atrocities, zillions of straight up ports and rereleases and a flurry of awful unfinished games so huge that Steam altered its curation system to mitigate the damage. Then came the Slaughtering Grounds, a game that brought back the dark old days of shareware, with hideous graphics, a useless interface, controls designed for someone with at least three thumbs and some of the worst FPS gameplay seen on Steam. As far as attempts to co-opt the success of Killing Floor go, this is possibly the most atrocious example, and there is very little fun to be had.

Of course the creators of the game seemed to disagree and created a series of potentially libellous videos mocking critic Jim Sterling, who voiced what can only be described as the truth. Bashing the critics for skewing your work has never ever succeeded in doing anything but making you look bitter, insecure and unable to admit your product has serious flaws.

1: Air Control (Killjoy Games: No Longer Available: PC)

The other major trend of 2014 was the idea of Youtube Fodder: deliberately bad games that would be made fun of by major content creators in a bid to artificially create buzz and sales. Games like Goat Simulator really towed this line, splitting the critics as much as it split sides, while other games like Surgeon Simulator AE and I Am Bread managed to succeed far more as games. At best this allowed silly concepts to be released and generate a lot of interest, but at worst it was an excuse to sell utterly broken unplayable games. Guess which one Air Control is?

Air Control, by the rather appropriately named Killjoy games is just atrociously bad in every important respect. It's difficult to decide where to begin, be it with the assets stolen from other games and other game engine assets, the repeated ripoffs of Flappy Bird, the controls that don't work and even have “Lock Mouse” buttons to further cripple them, the fact that the game has a two part casual mode which means nothing and crashes the game if you try to switch between the modes, the litany of other game bugs, most of which are game breaking, the questionable censorship of criticism by Killjoy themselves, the accusations that critics simply have computer that cannot run the game despite it looking like an 11 year old's first attempt with Pie in the Sky, deleting criticism of the game as well as requests for refunds and the sheer audacity of trying to charge money for a game like this.

Some have argued that this is all a satire of Youtube fodder and Steam's curation policy or lack thereof but none of that stops it from being the worst, most absolutely rancid and toxic game of the year, and better yet because the game is no longer available for sale I'm not enabling this kind of irresponsible behaviour among game developers.

After that lark, come back to the Clinkening tomorrow for a far more positive look on the year, and look out for the Isometrics Awards and New Years Resolution post later this week.

Thanks for Reading!

Isometrics: On New Beginnings and the Isometrics Awards

Welcome to Isometrics, the Belated Bellevue of the literary world of computer and video games. It has been an amazingly long time since the last Isometrics, for various reasons I won't go into here, but suffice to say many of those concerns are no longer a factor in my life and thus Isometrics lives again. I figure the best time to come back would be December because it means I can discuss the gaming year and will have more than one post a week.

There's a little bit of caretaking and cobweb dusting to do first before we leap back into the fray, so I apologise in advance for a bit of a cluttered article. Currently all my old Isometrics posts are on Geek Pride (Link to a little library of them here), but as far as I know in the immediate future they will be on The Clinkening, which is my old blog of sorts (there's plenty of my old stuff here but don't look, it's terrible!). That will be the home of Isometrics until I either create a new site or someone decides that they'd like to see these articles on their website and I somehow pitch it successfully.

In any case, the time has come for the Isometrics Awards, which is a set of five articles that will be released over the Christmas period. This didn't happen last year because they would have been my first Isometrics articles and it didn't seem right to discuss a year I'd not written about in some way.

The first will be a review of the year “On Gaming in the Year 2014”, where I discuss how gaming changed, progressed and changed in the year 2014, and my oh my is there a lot to talk about. That will be up either this week or next, depending on how everything falls into place in terms of my life. That should be up on Friday all going well

Next week there is the crowning of the Worst and Best games of 2014. I've wanted to do a list like this for so long, where I chronicle the crowning achievements and the deepest lows of video games in 2014, from the most evocative epics to the most repulsive ideas. There are ground rules I hold, which I'm not sure are the same for every games media person doing a list like this, but mine are as follows:

To qualify, the game must have received a full release in one of the three major territories (Japan, USA and Europe) between 1^st December 2013 and 31^st December 2014. A release in this definition is a retail release of a full game, or in the case of freeware games that may make the list, the release of a 1.0 and a sourced report that the game is no longer a beta. The reason for the date overlap is that while this list is based on a full year, it will by definition be released before the start of the next, so to ensure that games that may have been ignored in the lull after cyber monday are not ignored, they are eligible for next year's list as well.

Games released in a paid beta programme or Steam's Early Access are not eligible until they receive a full release, to encourage the speedy development and release of said games. Episodic games are eligible, providing their first episode was released within the window of release, so long as the game's intention was to be episodic, as opposed to an attempt to buy more development time (This is known as the Broken Age Rule).

Freemium games (aka “Free to Play”, “Free to Start” and “Confidence Tricks”) are not eligible due to the inherent issues with the format. Exceptions will be made for particularly egregiously terrible examples that defy the standard issues that plague Free to Play games. Note that I have not mentioned any ways Freemium games could enter the Best Games list. A particularly excellent example may well qualify, but it is difficult to explain the conditions that would lead to it, and will likely be decided on a case by case basis.

There is a thorny issue of remakes, ports and expanded rereleases. Generally as a rule straight ports of a game are not allowed as a means to get around the release date limit. This would for example, disqualify Valkyria Chronicles from the 2014 lists (For the record, it would have been very high up the Best of list, had it been allowed.). HD Rereleases, expanded ports and remakes are disallowed unless they have enough content and gameplay alterations to differentiate themselves from the original game, which may well be up to me to justify. An example of this in action is that Resident Evil would qualify for 1996 for being an original game. Resident Evil for Gamecube (the REmake) would also qualify for 2002 for being significantly different from the original game (new enemies, new enemy types, story differentiation, new modes), while the 2015 HD rerelease of that would not qualify because it is not different enough. It is a rule that makes more sense in practise.

Regarding games with inferior ports, generally I will go with whatever version I've played (Almost entirely the PC this year), as opposed to treating different ports as different games. It just gets confusing that way especially with games like GTA V, which would in theory be eligible for three years in a row.

Finally, while all my reasons and justifications will be explained in my review, they are in the end subjective, at least based on what I have and have not played. I will only be including games I have played myself this year, which may discount a lot of AAA games. My judging criteria is based on active joy and active malice, so the game that gave me the most amount of joy and did the most amount of amazing things with the medium will win Game of the Year, and the opposite is true for the Worst Game of the Year. In the end these are all basically opinions I explain and elaborate, so don't take it to heart if a game you really like is not in my list.

I've been looking forward to this all year, and my list has changed in so many ways since my predictions at the start of the year.

Then there is the Isometrics Awards, the big list of miscellaneous awards based around the world of literary gaming, from the ridiculously serious to the seriously ridiculous. Basically as much of the craziness, joy, splendour and stupidity of video games and game culture will be brought to the fore.

After all that, there is the Isometric New Year's Resolutions, which will be five predictions/hopes/pleas to the gaming zeitgeist for things to change in 2015. I had a blast writing the resolutions last year and so I'll definitely have a ton to say this year.

With everything else I want to say to everyone who read Isometrics (or pretty much anything else I posted), thank you ever so much. It meant a lot that people read my works. I had some great discussions with friends about the things I had written and the feedback I received was nice. I'm also really sorry that other articles and work commitments got in the way of new articles, but with a new beginning for 2015, there will be a greater endeavour to continue writing what I love rather than what I need to.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and all the rest!