Foresight

The continental split in gaming.

Matthew Roys Foresight, Opinions, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

2017 was an interesting year in gaming. We had a strong first half that tapered off into a weaker second half. Mostly though, it highlighted a growing rift in the industry that I’ve been observing for a few years now: The commercial vs the creative.

As AAA game have dived further down the path of maximum monetization we are seeing a pushback. These games are, without a doubt, still massive sellers that dominate the charts, but gamer frustration at the poor business practices, lack of consumer empathy and drought of originality is beginning to show.

Look at any top games of the year for 2017 and you will see that the ‘top dogs’ are starkly lacking. Titanic games like Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Shadow of War and Star Wars Battlefront 2 had the budgets and talent to succeed but only achieved anger from the public, Battlefront 2 potentially having inadvertently drawing the battle-lines in the microtransaction war for the year to come as governments are now stepping in. Continue reading →

Elder Scrolls in the new age of RPGs

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Bethesda is the king of RPG games. The Elder Scrolls series was seen by many as the peak of the genre, with Skyrim becoming massively popular and rising to become the 11th highest selling game of all time. Anybody who has been to this site before knows my opinions on the game. It is enjoyable enough but lacks the depth that many RPG players look for in their games. Despite this, the figures speak for themselves.

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It has been over six years now since Skyrim’s release without any word on the next entry in the series. We know that it will be made, just not when. Can Bethesda retain their crown though when Elder Scrolls VI is released?
Continue reading →

The Nintendo Switch Needs to Switch up Nintendo.

Matthew Roys Foresight, Opinions, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

When Nintendo first announced the Switch I was excited. This kind of surprised me though since I have never really owned a Nintendo console. Sure, I’ve owned several handhelds from the Gameboy to the 2DS but they have literally just been dedicated Pokemon machines. We also had a household Wii that saw action with Wii Sports Resort and Link’s Crossbow Training but little else.

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The Switch was an interesting concept. A console/handheld hybrid sounded cool and the initial trailer was pleasantly devoid of any gimmicks beyond this portability. They were showing off Skyrim which suggested stronger links with third party developers and most of the actors were young adults instead of children. It looked like they were trying to market the Switch as a more matured console, still fun but aimed at the people closer to my own age who had grown up with Nintendo and still made up a massive portion of sales despite Nintendo’s drive to be a child-oriented company. Their move with the Wii U to add Bayonetta 2 to their exclusive list and include her in Smash Brothers was a step in the right direction so maybe they were learning. Continue reading →

Gwent – Closed Beta First Impressions

Matthew Roys Foresight, Review, Uncategorized , , , , ,

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was by far the best game that I have played in several years. I have put around 200 hours into the game by this point and a good number of those were lost to the addictive mini-game known as Gwent. As somebody that loves collecting things, the whole finding cards to collect them all was something that really drew me in and the card game itself was engaging and fun. When the great CD Projekt Red announced that they were releasing Gwent as its own game I was thrilled. As such, the second that I could I put my name down for the stand alone Gwent game’s closed beta.

So is this new Gwent just more of the same? The game as it was in The Witcher 3 (we’ll refer to this as W3G) was fairly basic and was stacked heavily in the player’s favour once they had collected a few cards. The standalone Gwent shares the same spirit and basic layout as W3G but has been reworked to better suit PvP play and extended deck building.  Continue reading →

How my Most Anticipated Game of 2016 is a Dynasty Warriors Spinoff.

Matthew Roys Foresight , , ,

E3 came and went with an okay showing. There was nothing groundbreaking for me but a few smaller things caught my eye. The thing that drew most of my attention though was something that I never imagined that I would want. The announcement of a Musou style game set in the Berserk universe came out of the left field with enough force to stand out among the titans of Zelda, The Last Guardian and Horizon Zero Dawn among others. Continue reading →

Foresight – Horizon Zero Dawn

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Foresight is a series where I look at an unreleased game and assess what we know so far about it. Today we will be looking at the winner of the prestigious ‘Awkwardly Named Game of the Year Award’, Horizon Zero Dawn.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a PS4 exclusive RPG slated for release sometime in 2016. It is probably safe to assume that this will be in the Autumn period. To sum it up, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where Native American style tribes hunt giant robot dinosaurs.  Continue reading →