The MMNTech GOTY Awards 2018: Biggest Disappointments

We don’t bother with bad games here at MMNTech Game of the Year Awards HQ. There are just way too many to chose from. Instead of bad, we go with the sad. The ones that left us feeling let down and empty inside. Like that Alanis Morissette song, playing at your grandma’s funeral, while Rian Johnson tells you his plans for the next Star Wars trilogy. Isn’t it ironic.

While there’s been some really great games this year, there’s been a lot of disappointments too. So many that we’ve actually had to add a new slot for 2018. Come on games industry, get it together. 

The “Got gifted fruit cake by my Secret Santa” award goes too…

The PlayStation Classic (Sony)

Sony’s foray into the micro console craze seemed like a dream come true for PlayStation fans. A tiny PSX with 20 of its best games. What could possib-lie go wrong?

Well, quite a bit actually. It seems that Sony spared no expense on duct tape and chewing gum when putting the PS Classic together. First the game selection was a little questionable to say the least. Big hits like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid are there of course, but there are some notable titles that have gone AWOL. Despite Gran Turismo being the PS1’s top selling game of all time, Sony didn’t think to add it to the list. Same with Tomb Raider. 

Even more mind boggling, about half the games included were the European PAL versions, for all regions. These run at a lower frame rate than the American NTSC versions. Not in the same sense as they do today, though. Back in the day American and Japanese devs just slowed the entire game down to hit the target Euro rate. So some titles, fighting games especially, can feel like they’re being played on the moon. Digital Foundry also discovered bad juddering when attempting to play these PAL games on American TVs through the Classic. 

Furthermore, reviewers noted emulation issues that cause certain games to actually run worse than they did on original PlayStation hardware. It’s unclear if this is due to the Classic’s generic hardware or the open source emulator. Either way, it’s something that could end up doing more harm than good for the PS1 brand. 

Seems Sony took the lazy route to try and rush this thing out for the holidays. At least the system can be easily hacked to run your own ROMs. 

The “my brother told me Santa isn’t real” award goes to…

Diablo Immortal (Activision/Blizzard)

There’s cynical mobile games, and then there’s cynical mobile games that ruin otherwise prestigious and much loved franchises. We’ve had a few of these this year, which is really a testament to the sorry state of the “Triple A” industry. Though if I had to pick one that really represents the worst of the worst, it’s Diablo: Immortal.

It was widely expected that Diablo 4 would be announced at BlizzCon 2018. However, what fans got instead was a heaping helping of snark from the publisher.  

When asked about a potential PC release, one cheeky rep quipped “don’t you guys have phones?” If the venue had been selling rotten fruit, I’m sure it would have been flying towards the stage at this point. Though one particularly ballsy fan did ask if the whole thing was a poorly timed April Fools joke. Photos following the disastrous event showed the demo booths for Immortal to be near empty. 

The Immortal unveiling shows us why you shouldn’t let non-PR people host PR events. They didn’t read the room, didn’t give any updates on what the fans really wanted, and got the backlash they deserved. Though this being 2018, things of course didn’t end there. Industry shills quickly weighed in on the controversy. The terms “entitled gamers” and “misogynistic man-baby” got tossed around by the usual suspects. That last one is quite perplexing since I don’t recall any women hosting the event. Maybe that was the problem. 

For Blizzard, they seem more than happy throwing their fans under the bus for that sweet, sweet micro-transaction money. Money which likely won’t ever come. After all, why would Chinese gamers play a reskin of a Chinese mobile game, when they can just play the original Chinese mobile game instead?  

The “didn’t get my Christmas bonus” award goes too…

Switch Online (Nintendo)

This year Nintendo has gifted us with a lesson in how not to do paid online multiplayer.

The Switch’s paid online service was originally announced back at launch, with a targeted release of Fall 2017. That eventually got pushed back to Fall 2018. When it did finally come out this past September, the results were underwhelming, to put it mildly.

Nintendo was now asking players to pay $20 a year, which admittedly isn’t much. However, rather than moving games to dedicated servers, most ended up using the same clunky peer-to-peer networking from the “free” iteration, including several new releases. Which really brought into question what exactly users were paying for. Many features present in competing products like Steam, Xbox Live, and PSN were non-existent. Even many basics such as trophies and integrated voice chat. The latter still requiring that kludgey smartphone app. 

They also used the opportunity to scrap the Virtual Console. In its place, Nintendo decided trickle out a couple tired NES games a month as a reward for being a member. Meanwhile, competing services have taken to giving away recent indie games and older (but still made in the last decade) “Triple A” titles, representing a much better value for the end user. 

The icing on the cake though (probably a fruit cake since it’s Christmas and everyone hates those) was the cloud saves. You would have to pay to back up your saves. There would be no way to do so offline, unlike every other platform including Nintendo’s own Wii U. On top of that, some games like Splatoon 2, Pokemon, and Dark Souls didn’t even support the feature due to Nintendo’s ludicrous concerns over “cheating”.

The whole thing ending up being one big fluster cluck. Which shows that even 12 years on, Nintendo still doesn’t get this newfangled internet thing.

And the “winner” of the most disappointing game of 2018 goes to…

Fallout 76 (Bethesda)

Oh boy, this is the big one. You didn’t even need to purchase Fallout 76 to enjoy the non-stop entertainment this game has provided over the last month and a bit. It seems like every day a brand new controversy comes out. It’s left Fallout fans feeling the atom bomb blues.

First of all, the game itself is rubbish. It’s a mostly empty world with no NPCs to interact with. Just your cliched audio tapes and generic quests, coupled with disjointed gameplay and broken VATS targeting. They say its better with friends though, if you can actually stay connected long enough to play with them.  

Fallout 76 is buggy even by Bethesda standards. Its prone to random crashes. Players often find themselves being suddenly booted from servers. In-world objects glitch out. Dead enemies suddenly re-spawn. Quests don’t work. The servers themselves have several major security vulnerabilities that make the game prone to cheating. The whole thing is an abject mess, and never should have been released to retail in this state. Judging by the amount of copies still sitting on store shelves, even with a half price discount just a week after launch, it seems many Fallout fans agree.

Of course we can’t talk about Fallout 76 without talking about Bag-Gate. Bethesda made a $200 collectors’ edition which was supposed to contain a replica power armour helmet and a high quality canvas bag. Bethesda instead replaced the bag with a cheaper nylon version, citing high manufacturing costs for cloth ones. However, it seems reviewers were sent the actual canvas bags. Oops, how did that happen?

To their credit, Bethesda offered to replace the bags, but Bethesda being Bethesda, of course there were issues. In the game’s Reddit sub, one Fallout fan said they had started receiving support tickets on their account, from other players. Tickets which included names, addresses, credit cards. The claim was later confirmed by the sub’s mods.

Seems there’s no heaven to be found in West Virginia this year. Just one atomic sized bomb. They say war never changes, but neither does Bethesda apparently.