As 2011 comes to an end, it’s easy to get retrospective. Looking back at the past year in games is an annual pastime of gamers, but it’s also a good time for industry observers like us to play Captain Hindsight, Monday morning quarterback-ing the events of the year and pointing out the errors of developers and publishers.
Replaying Skyrim after 13 years is a reminder of the progress made in western RPGs over the last decade, but also what's been lost.
RPGs are often huge, sprawling endeavours. With limited playtime, we have to choose wisely, so here's the best western RPGs available today.
"I started playing games yesterday" the List... Meh!
How about a few RPGs that deserve some love instead?
1 - Alpha Protocol - Now on GOG
2 - else Heart.Break()
3 - Shadowrun Trilogy
4 - Wasteland 2
5 - UnderRail
6 - Tyranny
7 - Torment: Tides of Numenera
And for a bonus game that flew under the radar:
8 - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Not only glorious jank, but the idea that the story can completely change depending on what you do, or say, or side with, makes it one of the most forward thinking games ever. The amount of story permutation is the equivalent of a Hitman level but in Story Form. And it wasn't just that the story changed, no, it was that you met completely new characters, or missed them, depending on your choices. Made Mass Effect feel static in comparison.
Alpha Protocol was absolutely glorious, indeed. And it was, and still is, more Next Gen than most anything out there these days. In this regard at least.
Pity.
A new Partner Spotlight Sale is now live on the Switch eShop, including Skyrim, lowest price ever for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and more.
I pretty sure Skyrim has huge success release when it did.
And so did Battlefield I releasing before MW3
And LotR:WitN and Goldeneye weren't going to get any better.
Battlefield released when it did to steal sales from COD, and it did just that. Same thing will happen next year. It would have sold well early in the year like Bad Company 2 did, but those sales to steal thunder from COD.
Same thing will happen next year with Medal of Honor. They will steal sales and fill the media with Medal of Honor taking away COD thunder.
Personally though, I think Resistance 3 should have been delayed. Maybe Disgaea 4 too.
"The day-one sales for Call of Duty MW3 amounted to an estimated 6.5 million units sold in "24 hours" in the UK and US.
EA only provided "one-week" sales numbers for Battlefield 3. Those numbers amounted to 5 million copies sold in a week...worldwide.
BF3’s one-week worldwide sales were record-breaking for EA, but they weren’t even enough to match MW3’s day-one totals in two countries."
Source: http://gamingtarget.com/art...
I am not seeing this stealing you are referring to. EA must have got away with Grand Theft Tonka Truck compared to what MW3 did to them.
IW didn't even start really advertising the game until Aug/Sep 2011. I remember ads for BF3 in Jan/Feb.
It is sad that EA went dirty with their ads this year and lost the respect of a lot of gamers. I was willing to give BF3 a chance, but once they started throwing around the mud it was over for me.
I can agree to the bf3 one. My friend bought it day 1 played it till mw3 was released, and hasn't played bf3 once since then.
Bf3 should have been delayed, there was no point trying to compete head on vs. CoD, the PS3 version is suffering. It would have been nice if they delayed it and then they could have gotten all the kinks out.
Skyrim.... ehhh even if they delayed it, there would still be game breaking bugs. My beef with the game its the lack of immersion and how the NPCs don't care who you are, the lack of impact on the world and things like that.