The Endless Dread of Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite is coming! December 8th! And things are… not looking good.

I’ve always found the existence of 343 Industries disconcerting. I love(d) Halo. When I was a kid, it was my Star Wars. I first played Halo: Combat Evolved on an Xbox, a system I’d never even played before, at a cousin’s house over spring break in probably 2002. I played every game, theorized about the lore and consumed every book. 

343 didn’t carve out their own place in this world to make something. They were created with the sole purpose to perpetuate the existence of Microsoft’s most well-known IP because Microsoft basically has none without the Master Chief. 343 is a shell to be stuffed with employees to churn out boxes that say Halo on them. And that’s really the crux of the issue. The box says Halo, the title screen says Halo, the announcer says “double kill!” like it’s Halo but it’s not Halo. The games are far removed from the soul and purity of the original Bungie titles.

But that’s okay. Unfortunately, series evolve over time, for better or for worse, and one can’t reasonably expect to be fans of every installation of every franchise. (If you think you can, you haven’t been Mass Effect-ed yet). I don’t like the new Pokemon games but the old ones are still lit. 

The problem is that 343, a spectre haunting the memory of Bungie, is bad at making Halo games. They haven’t released a complete (much less Great) title since their inception. 

Top 10 Games of 2020

I think I avoided it mostly this time but minor plot spoilers for some games (primarily spoilers for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker) ahead, yada yada you know. 

2020 sucked ass. I guess it wasn’t all bad though. The space in which other hobbies once existed, like swing dancing, was instead filled with video games. Between unemployment and quarantine, I likely played more games last year than I have since I started doing these top 10 retrospectives.

I had so much time, along with wonderful quarantine company, that I played through the entire Metal Gear Solid saga, from Metal Gear Solid to The Phantom Pain, all the way through. Because I could. And it was awesome. Except for Metal Gear Solid 4. I’ve now learned I dislike that one more each time I play it. A story for another time.

Even with around a hundred hours dropped into Kojima’s work, I was still able to play a lot of other wonderful games. 

I’ve been putting off writing this for a lot of reasons but I guess the biggest ones were a mix of laziness and apathy. It’s not that I didn’t want to as much as I couldn’t bring myself to for a long time. 2020 was the motivation killer. Doing even the smallest things seems impossible sometimes since March of last year.

Another part of it was uncertainty in how to write about the top two games on this list. In fact, I originally put it off for a couple months into 2020 to finish one of the games above. Anyway. You’ll see.

Let’s get to it.

Pardon Our Dust

CONSTRUCTION AHEAD. EXPECT DELAYS.

Top 10 Games of 2019

I played way more games this year than I did in 2018. Several of my favorites for this year weren’t exactly new though. 2019 was a year of blessed re-releases. For the first time since 2010, I got to (legitimately) return to vanilla World of Warcraft and explore the original Azeroth that I fell in love with all those years ago. In March, Halo: The Master Chief Collection was announced for PC and Halo: Reach dropped at the start of December. These are not new games; these are games I played years ago.

I thought for a while about how to handle them in my normal rules for these Top 10 of the Year pieces and I think it’s best to exclude them. I enjoy all of Bungie’s Halo games and while Reach is basically a stopgap until Halo 2 and Halo 3 drop, getting back into that sweet, sweet Halo has dominated my gaming time since it released. The original World of Warcraft is one of my favorite games of all time and placing it on this list would only knock out deserving games that I enjoyed for the first time this year. I write about WoW enough already anyway.

In short: while those re-releases have their issues (Reach lacking Theater and Forge, for example), the games are awesome. Both are as fun as I remember. Play them, have a blast. 

Here are my guidelines for this list:

1. In the case of a non-multiplayer-only game, I must have played its single player experience to completion. This does not require a 100% of all that the game has to offer. Instead, a completion of its main quest, story or campaign will suffice.
2. I must have accomplished the above rules in 2019. The games on this list are not all 2019 releases. It is a list of what I played this year.

I think the only games this disqualifies that I started this year are God of War (PS4) and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Switch). 

Let’s go. 

Complicated and Messy: Kingdom Hearts 3

SPOILER ALERT: Includes (slight) spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3/the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is a game that’s 13 years late.

It’s not outdated. The AAA sheen permeates throughout the game, in every aspect of its aesthetic. Those 13 years built the game up too much. Kingdom Hearts 3 was probably never going to be the game it could have been, because it’s a game that tries to be too many things.

Like its kin The Last Guardian, Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3, Kingdom Hearts 3 was put off, in development and delayed for a long time. Presuming the E3 2013 announcement trailer wasn’t too long after development started, it was in development for at least 6 years. That 2013 announcement trailer was arguably several years late too.

The Kingdom Hearts franchise hasn’t exactly been handled gracefully. The first game released in 2002 and its numeric sequel followed at a reasonable pace in 2005. Even that’s not the whole truth though, as a plot-important spinoff subtitled Chain of Memories released on the GameBoy Advance in 2004. Unfortunately, this started a trend for the series where subsequent games, despite being important to the plot, were flung out across the gaming industry’s current console generation.

In a way, this foreshadows some of the issues that Kingdom Hearts 3 (actually the 10th game in the series ignoring re-releases) come to struggle with. The franchise itself can’t decide what it wants to be about. Picking a random game out of the franchise wouldn’t guarantee you the gameplay of the numeric titles. The plot across these titles are handled like the opening moves on a Go board: the stones are placed wide across the board with the hope that they will all connect with the final, uniting move.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is supposed to be that uniting move. It’s an incomplete victory.

Top 5 Games of 2018

I didn’t actually play a lot of games this year. Oops. Believe me, that’s not what I wanted to realize when I sat down to compile the list of games I completed this year in preparation for this piece. I have started more games than I played, I just haven’t finished them. I’ll probably finish most. Some I won’t.

I played seven games to completion this year. Two were multiplayer games and one was a replay of an old favorite with self-imposed challenge rules. So there will be some adjustment to the article this year. For one, we’re only going to talk about five games instead of the usual ten. It’s more like four though. You’ll see what I mean below.

Here are the rules, as always:

1. In the case of a non-multiplayer-only game, I must have played its single player experience to completion. This does not require a 100% of all that the game has to offer. Instead, a completion of its main quest, story or campaign will suffice.
2. In the case of a multiplayer game, I must describe how I played it. Whether cooperative or competitive multiplayer, I will detail whether I played with friends, matchmaking, or online or local multiplayer.
3. I must have accomplished the above rules in 2018. The games on this list are not all 2018 releases. It is a list of what I played that year.

Let’s get started.

Now! Show yourself! Deltarune!

WARNING: THE POST BELOW CONTAINS LIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE GAME DELTARUNE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: CHARACTER NAMES AND APPEARANCES AND GAMEPLAY SPOILERS.

Toby Fox made my Halloween at work torture when he released Deltarune early that morning.

More accurately, he released chapter 1 of Deltarune. The game isn’t complete yet. Where Undertale was proof that one person could make a game alone, Deltarune is impossible to make solo. It dreams too big. Compared to Undertale, that’s saying something. The game isn’t here yet. It will be here when it’s done. As a fan, that’s both refreshing and torturous. I want the game now and I want it to be good. The logic in me says, “Take as long as you need.” The rest of me says “Give it to me now.”

That’s an unfair desire and one that fans should be careful to check before they turn to Twitter vitriol. I want the game now precisely because it is so good. It took the most famous aspects of Undertale and ran with them: the music, the clever battle system, the lovable characters. When the boots of Deltarune hit the ground, it felt so obvious. Of course these were the next steps. How did no one think of them sooner?

Lonely Rolling Star – Katamari Damacy

The King of All Cosmos went on a wicked bender and destroyed all the stars in the sky. It’s up to you, the Prince of All Cosmos, to set things right.

That’s the plot of Katamari Damacy. You, the centimeter-sized prince to your father’s planet-shadowing height, are gifted the titular katamari: an ever sticky ball to roll around and correct the overwhelming junk of planet Earth. There’s more than enough stuff on Earth to turn into stars. Thumbtacks and erasers, people and cars, skyscrapers and continent. Katamari Damacy is a game of scale — everything can and will be consumed by the katamari.

After all, the Prince has a deadline. The katamari must be a certain size before the time runs out. And even if it’s not big enough, well. We can turn it into some nice stardust.

Evolution vs. Iteration in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a different game now than it was in 2004. As a persistent online universe, it’s imperative that it provides a constant flow of content to keep players entertained. Failures, like the year long content droughts that accompanied the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria sees players evacuate in millions.

The way that World of Warcraft provides that content is different now too. A divide exists between two eras of WoW. Cataclysm acts as a rough marker between the two, but it’s not perfectly defined. Some aspects didn’t exist, or became aggravated in later expansions, while some seeds were sowed in earlier expansions.

Mainly, content in WoW today is based around wiping the slate clean between expansions. Game systems, particularly player progression, are isolated within individual expansion packs instead of supporting the entire game. The pre-Cataclysm paradigm allowed players to progress continually from expansion to expansion. It’s Vanilla Era design vs. Revamp Design.

Top 10 Games of 2017

2017 was a strange year in gaming for me. It was one of the industry’s strongest years, up there with the likes of 1998, 2004 and 2007. Nintendo dominated both halves of the year with the stellar success of the Switch and powerhouse releases in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. While I haven’t played them myself, the amount of buzz surrounding Nier: Automata, Horizon Zero Dawn and indie darlings like Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch demonstrate that 2017 is one of the most prestigious, well-rounded years in gaming, with both AAA and indie studios releasing amazing titles.

I spent a lot of this year continuing different challenge runs of different games. FOXHOUND/no tranquilizer runs continues to be the best way to play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I recently restarted Breath of the Wild with a few self-imposed rules like no food and no fast travel. These runs breathe fresh air into old games and reveal truths about their design. I’m still amazed there are as many missions in MGSV that can be accomplished under No Traces.

Swing dancing, which I started in March, consumed most of my year. Writing poetry and reading has also crept back into my free time. Both are welcome, but it did impact my gaming. That said, I somehow managed to play 11 games for the first time this year. It gives me just enough to do my yearly list. Here are the rules.

1. In the case of a non-multiplayer-only game, I must have played its single player experience to completion. This does not require a 100% of all that the game has to offer. Instead, a completion of its main quest, story or campaign will suffice.
2. In the case of a multiplayer game, I must describe how I played it. Whether cooperative or competitive multiplayer, I will detail whether I played with friends, matchmaking, or online or local multiplayer.
3. I must have accomplished the above rules in 2017. The games on this list are not all 2017 releases. It is a list of what I played this year.

Rule 1 disqualifies some games I began this year like Stardew Valley. As always, spoiler warning for below. I don’t know if there will be spoilers. But tread carefully.