{"id":45166,"date":"2019-01-03T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45166"},"modified":"2019-01-03T10:15:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T15:15:49","slug":"denouement-2018-the-no-show-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45166","title":{"rendered":"D\u00e9nouement 2018: The No-Show List"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog is not a tentpole site with a suite of writers working in different genres. I can only cover games I play. I’m just one guyAlthough it really was nice having Bob Case around this year to do his long-form analysis of Witcher 3<\/a>.<\/span> and I tend to seek out games that can keep me going for weeks rather than promiscuously hopping from one game to the next like big-name reviewers do. Which means that I tend to miss a lot of games.<\/p>\n

I didn’t play a lot of bad games this year, so my “worst of 2018” list wound up being pretty short. I suppose that’s yet another thing that makes this the year of good news<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But before I begin hurling rotten tomatoes at the games that had the audacity to disappoint me, let me talk about a few games I missed…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hitman 2<\/h3>\n

Do WHAT with the world now? Are you talking like, a melee weapon, or what? How is that supposed to work?<\/div>
Do WHAT with the world now? Are you talking like, a melee weapon, or what? How is that supposed to work?<\/div><\/p>\n

I loved the new Hitman. It got the #2 spot on my best-of-2016 list<\/a>. I thought the episodic release was goofy and annoying, but the environments and gameplay were better than ever. I really wanted to play the sequel this year, but I just didn’t have time. It came out in November, and at that point I was already juggling Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/i>, Marvel’s Spider-Man<\/a>, and Prey: Mooncrash<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n

If this game had arrived in any of the preceding months, I would have been able to purchase and review it close to launch. I guess this is what happens when everyone fights over the end-of-year spot. It creates a winner-take-all situation<\/a>. Since the entire point of having these monolithic publishing houses is to distribute risk, this pile-up in the Christmas shopping season seems… counterproductive. <\/p>\n

Ah well. I did manage to grab it at the end of the year during a sale, but I haven’t spent enough time with it to give it a proper review. <\/p>\n

I don’t know why publishers do this to themselves, but I guess it hurts them a lot more than it hurts me. So… whatever.<\/p>\n

Red Dead Redemption 2<\/h3>\n

The feel-good game of the year that has families laughing and cheering together!<\/div>
The feel-good game of the year that has families laughing and cheering together!<\/div><\/p>\n

Wow. This game was a sensation. It was all anyone talked about for most of November. On one hand, I could see it was like Grand Theft Auto V<\/i>: It’s a marvel of technology and decadent production values. RDR2 is a culture-wide event and offers a tremendous amount of incredibly polished content. On the other hand, it was also like Grand Theft Auto V <\/i>in the sense that it’s a dark, mean-spirited<\/a> tale of murder, violence, and cruelty. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when the game came out I’d just finished with my retrospective on the Grand Theft Auto series<\/a>. I’d had my fill of misanthropy and nihilism. <\/p>\n

I’m sure I’ll play it one of these days, but I didn’t have room for it in 2018.<\/p>\n

Detroit: Become Human<\/h3>\n

I feel like David Cage is really missing an opportunity here. He only needs to make his stories a LITTLE dumber and they could ascend into the realm of Axe Cop level absurdity.<\/div>
I feel like David Cage is really missing an opportunity here. He only needs to make his stories a LITTLE dumber and they could ascend into the realm of Axe Cop level absurdity.<\/div><\/p>\n

If you’ve spent any time on this site then you’ve probably figured out a few things about me. I’m irritated by quicktime events<\/a>, I’m hard on cutscene-heavy games trying to imitate cinema<\/a>, and I loathe pretentious writing<\/a>. So you can imagine just how much I dislike the work of David Cage<\/a>. <\/p>\n

On top of all that, I’m very picky about stories of AI gone wrong<\/a>. That’s half the reason I wrote my recent novel<\/a>. I mean, just the technology teaser for Become Human<\/i> rubbed me the wrong way:<\/p>\n