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The Most Shocking Gaming Blunders of 2015

The Most Shocking Gaming Blunders of 2015

5. Lazy game development ends Tony Hawk’s gaming legacy.

To be fair, THPS5 isn’t exactly the most shocking blunder of 2015. That is, until you compare it to its three-generation-old counterparts and realize everything missing. Commonplaces found even in the original PS1 and N64 titles are completely missing – including: character creation, flatland manual tricks, a soundtrack consisting of multiple genres, open-world level design, missions with narrative cohesion – the list of absences for the next-gen title goes on and on.

Uh.. yeah.. meant to do that.

 

Thanks to the developers’ general misunderstanding of a game series that gamers are still adamant about, Tony Hawk himself got the brunt of this blunder with his name removed from the last-gen Pro Skater 5 ports. This can only lead us to believe the once gaming icon has finally ended his relationship with Activision and the game industry once and for all, bailing his 18-year game career into a great big fiery collapse.

Tony Hawk

Sorry Tony.

 

 

4. 2015’s most shocking gaming uproar was completely undeserved. 

Gaming’s biggest controversy of 2015 was Hatred, a game that didn’t choose to explore the dark realities of our culture, but rather emulate them – tasking players to kill every breathing asset in its black-and-white world in order to drive its mass-murdering protagonist to his premeditated suicide.

It was a seemingly powerful statement that gave the gaming community the expectancy of a powerful follow-up explanation, perhaps in defense of gaming as an art form or as an examination of the problems of our society, as pioneers of challenging entertainment in the past have tended to do so.

An extraordinarily appropriate protagonist for 2015.

 

However, when developer Jaroslaw Zielinski was interviewed for the purpose of the title, his sole explanation reduced down to “It’s just a game and we don’t do anything wrong by developing it. So if that’s the case then why not do it?”

Zielinski’s just because nihilism was reflective of Hatred’s pointlessness: a mundane, no-substance mediocrity riding only on shock-value to distract from shallow, unnerving game design. Hatred’s exceptionally stale execution of a painfully old industry trend nearly reversed all of last year’s progressive breakthroughs in the videogame medium, proving our focus on the trivial can be as superficial as ever.

3. Sony’s answer to PS4 “Backwards Compatibility” was a smack in the face.

Microsoft surprised gamers this year by instating backwards compatibility onto the Xbox One for Xbox 360 games, allowing gamers to enjoy hundreds of titles from their previously, already-owned gaming libraries.

Sony’s shocking answer to backwards compatibility? Offer up a handful of selected PS2 titles for download that we bought 15 years ago and charge 15$ for each one. In other words, Sony’s answer to replaying the classics that we already have on our shelves is to have us pay for them again – for three times the value – in scarcely-updated download format. Come on, now.

To be clear, that’s Cloud doing a facepalm.

 

2. “Imminent” patches continue to be an excuse for broken gaming.

Just Cause 3, Batman Arkman Knight, Mortal Kombat X, THPS5, and so on. How many games will continue to be released in non-working states, only to be validated they will be fixed at some point down the line with a later patch currently in development.

This commonplace behavior unfortunately hurt a level of quality assurance consumers rightfully expected of 2015 AAA titles. And while I’m not against the concept of titles evolving and progressing over time through the use of downloadable updates – at this point in time – the practice simply does not work.

And this just when the game starts up.

 

All of the aforementioned games above have issued numerous patches after initial release and have done near nothing to reverse the titles’ technical and game-breaking issues. It’s time to retire the excuse of forth(never)coming patches that will solve all our gaming problems, as its starting to emerge that if the issues can’t fixed before release, they can’t be fixed at all. In which case game developers should focus on fixing the problems from their source, rather than proceeding and claiming to fix them after the damage has already been done.

1. Where is P.T.?

Although Konami’s falling out with Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) is a 2015 blunder in itself, Konami’s attempts to remove all traces of the man’s work led to the most shocking blunder of 2015: Konami removing the universally-acclaimed P.T. from the face of the planet.

And from personal experience, I can tell you why this is exceptionally BS. To start, P.T. was a mysterious free download on the PSN store that delivered a one of a kind experience where players would walk down a looping, hyper-realistic hallway in suburban home as immensely terrifying and disturbing occurrences continued to emerge within the environment. The title was ultimately revealed to be a teaser for the Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro directed Silent Hill reboot, and I couldn’t be any more excited to get my hands on it.

P.T.

Admit it… you want to know what’s at the end of the hallway… well now, you can’t.

 

However, the very month I purchased my PS4 was the very month P.T. was removed from PSN store and needless to say I was destroyed. I had just missed the mark and there was absolutely no way to retrieve the title ever again. Konami didn’t want anything to do with P.T. after the exiting of Kojima from the company; and because they had to loose a great, everyone else had to as well – thus nobody gets to enjoy what many considered to be one of the best interactive experiments of recent memory.

To this day I still haven’t managed to play the title. Although a recent workaround has been uncovered, I find I don’t have the necessary requirements to execute the hassle, and nobody I know had the chance to download it for themselves when the title was available. In fact, most people don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about when I mention P.T. leaving me to feel as though P.T. has vanished from everyone’s collective minds and that I’ve gone completely insane. Konami, why would you put this burden on me? Why I ask of you? WHY?!?!

Randall Rigdon Jr.

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