2019 has been an absolutely great year in the video game industry and it shows with some of the releases of Death Stranding, Mortal Kombat 11, Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Apex Legends, and even the Goose Game. While those releases were great, the negative news that sprung through the industry has also been made to light and it has overshadowed the good gaming news. Just like last year,I will give my opinions on the worst of the video game industry in 2019.
WWE 2K20
Four years ago, I reviewed WWE 2K15 and that game was a disaster for the lack of content and modes and I thought at the time that this game was one of the worst WWE video games I have played. But 2K20 exceeded my expectations on how ridicilously bad it is. The game has been shipped with all of the glitch glory that was not properly patched no matter how many times they released patches. Also, the career mode has some of the worst dialouge you will ever see, but knowing WWE, I can bet that whoever wrote the game’s career mode also writes bad dialouge for the WWE Superstars on a weekly basis. There was a reason to why little information about the game was revealed up until the release date and the biggest reason why is the split between Yukes and 2K that happened midway through the development of the game. Also to note, many Superstars and Legends were removed including the 1998 version of Kane. This has gotten so bad that the hashtag #fixwwe2k20 was trending worldwide which is not a good look at all for 2K. With the current generation of consoles coming to an end within the next year, this game from the WWE 2K series will be remembered for all of the bad press it has gotten.
Everything With Anthem
This game was supposed to be BioWare’s attempt to erase everything about Mass Effect Andromeda, but that did not happen and after the release of the game, the problems came to light such as extremely loading times that can go for over five minutes, crashing on the PS$ version so bad that it bricked the consoles of many players. What is also noted is that BioWare announced that it was abandoning the post-launch content to address its issues due to the negative feedback of the game. With the sales being a disaster and the player count for multiplayer going downhill ever since the launch, it would safe to say that this game has been the biggest flop of 2019, but I am saving that for the best for last.
Mario Kart Tour
Playing Mario Kart on your mobile phone or tablet has been a dream for many people and Nintendo turned that into a harsh reality with this game. When it launched, you could not play with your friends and the CPU that you were racing against were made to make it seem like you are playing an online match. But that is not as worse as the paid microtransactions as the game is full of them from the start as you cannot enjoy the full game unless you take out your debit card and buy the microtransactions. Those include the parts, the cars, and leveling up characters and unlocking tracks. I think everyone should stick with Mario Kart 8 as you can experience everything without spending real world money.
NBA 2K20’s MyTEAM Advertisements
Only 2K can take something good and turn it bad and this advertisement of the MyTEAM mode explains it all. They did not learn from last year’s game with using real world money for lootboxes last year and they will continue to not learn at all. Not only did they showcase the monetization schemes right in our faces like thye slot machines, they showed “reactors” reacting to getting great results after they paid money to use that feature. What they were trying to tell us is that “if that person could win big, so could you! take a chance and you can be just like that guy” all throuought the ad and the dislike/like ratio should be a message that we are not falling for it. But we are not done with paid microtransactions just yet.
Gotta Catch em’ All (With Restrictions Applied)
For years, I (and millions of fans and players worldwide) wanted a full scale Pokemon video game on a console and this year when the announcements of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield happened, I was very excited. That was until more information of the game came to light. The number of Pokemon has been reduced compared to the earlier games and there were so many restrictions added in Shield/Sword that I can list that would take up the entire article. The developers at GameFreak stated that the reason for this is due to them redoing the animations from scratch, but players found out that the animations from Sword/Shield were ported over from the 3DS Pokemon games. The fire of the negative feedback has not been put out yet and it will be a long time before it does.
No Sony at E3 2019
For the first time in E3 history, Sony decided that there will not be a presentation this year at the show. This has gained a mixed reception amogst the community as everyone had no clear idea on what their vision of the rest of the year into the new year would be. Of course, now Sony has their State of Play presentations similar to Nintendo Direct, but with the lack of news and due to the fact that XBOX Series X was announced at The Game Awards, Sony has to catch up next year and skipping another year of E3 is not an option.
Activision Blizzard Laying off 800 Employees
So what does Activision Blizzard do after they announced their quarter-earnings earlier this year? They lay off about 800 employees of their staff. How can this possibly happen days after they announced that they set a record net revenue of nearly $8 billion? That wass a terrible week and the conversaion of game unionization and executive pay followed this too. What made matters worse is that a few weeks later, they had a number of positions open for new potential employees which raised the question, why did this all happen in the first place?T
A Subscription Service for Fallout 76
The more bad news about Fallout 76 comes to light, the more my eyes will roll. After a disasterous launch just last year, Bethesda decided to launch a subscription service for Fallout 76 titled “Fallout 1st.” It will cost you either $12.99 a month, or $99.99 per year. After a bad launch, Bethesda wanted to monetize everyone for it and all that it features is allowing you to play Private Worlds with your friends, unlimited storage for crafting, recieving over 1500 atoms per month, and a survival tent. This all costs more than a streaming service and it is not even worth it.
EA Neglets Gambling Laws
I saved the absolute best for last and that is EA. Earlier this year, an investigation was launched in the UK and at the House of Commons committe hearing, Kerry Hopkins compared Lootboxes to things like chocolate as Kerry believed that “people liked surprises” in his statement. She also went aqnd said “We do think the way we’ve implemented these kinds of mechanics is quite ethical and quite fun. They aren’t gambling and we disagree that there’s evidence that shows they lead to gambling.” But the most notable thing that she also said is that they do not want lootboxes to be defined that way as she referred it to “suprise mechanics.” This was very laughable and it shows how tone-deaf EA is towards paid microtransactions as gamers do not want them regardless that it is optional. How can anyone go infront of a comittee to say this? Many countries have banned lootboxes and paid microtransactions and I hope that this comes to the United States very soon. YouTube personality YongYea broke this down in further detail in the video below.
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