The MMNTech GOTY Awards 2020: Biggest Disappointments
It’s a bit of an understatement when I say nothing good has happened in the last 12 months. Thanks to the CCPVirus and good ol’ government incompetence, we were trapped inside, jobs were lost, there were riots in the streets, and the price of Oreos went up. You can say this year has been nothing but one big disappointment. Fortunately the games industry made sure there was still plenty of rubbish to sprinkle on that turd sundae that was 2020.
The “I’m not too big, the games are just too small” Award goes to…
The GameGear Micro (Sega)
Sega had a pretty good year on our Best of the Best list in 2019. The Genesis Mini was the micro-console fans had been wanting for years. A high quality device packed with a great library of perfectly emulated games. That success had the Sega faithful wondering whether other classic systems the same treatment. Perhaps the GameGear, or maybe even the legendary Dreamcast.
Well, we actually did get GameGear micro-console to celebrate Sega’s 60th anniversary. There was just one problem. It’s really, really micro. The entire system is just a hair over 3” wide, with a screen literally the size of a postage stamp.
The GG Micro is comically dwarfed by the original. In fact, it’s so small, it can almost fit snugly inside one of the GameGear’s battery compartments. So small that it’s practually unusable thanks to its tiny buttons and mushy d-pad.
Sega released four versions of the console, each with four different games on them. And the game selections are actually quite good. Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Gunstar Heroes, Puyo Puyo, Shining Force, Outrun. Reviews of the system say the emulation is top notch. It’s just, why would you ever want to play games on this?
You really do have to ask who this is for. These collectable gatcha sized devices are often seen dangling off the phones or backpacks of young women in Japan. It’s quite obvious Sega designed it with this in mind. Yet I can’t imagine that crowd would be too interested in a 30 year old handheld. At least outside a handful of lady Otaku. It just seems strange that they decided to go this route, rather than something more in line with Nintendo’s new Game & Watch. At least Sega had the decency to make it a Japan only item.
If you are looking for something a little more akin to the original, UK modding firm RetroSix is releasing reproduction GameGears for a cool $365 USD. Of course you’ll probably need to spend another $100 for an EverDrive on top of that assuming you don’t have original carts. Bit too rich for my blood.
The “Don’t Cross the Streams” Award goes to…
Stadia (Google)
Was this really a disappointment? I mean, nobody in all of time and space expected Stadia to succeed. Most people figured it would last a year before Google got bored with it, and unceremoniously tossed it in the dumpster with the rest of their failed projects.
It’s painfully obvious that Stadia was being treated as as side project from the get go. The business model was terrible. You pay Google to stream your games, but you actually have to buy those games at full retail price on top of it. Meaning that should you cancel your subscription, lose internet access, or if the service gets shuttered, you’d loose your entire library.
Google also promised a “better than console” experience, touting true 4K/60fps support and 10.7 TFLOPs of graphics processing power. However, image quality was… muddy to put it politely. Even on high settings with a good connection. Lag was also laughably bad. A lot of games stuttered so bad, many users found them unplayable. Google had touted this “negative lag” technology to mitigate this. Which is little more than marketing fluff baring some super smart AI that can predict player actions. Seeing how badly YouTube AI functions, I think they need to go back to the drawing board.
Furthermore, Stadia was mostly limited to Google’s own Pixel phones and select Chromecast devices. Yep, for some baffling reason, the service doesn’t even work with all Google products. That sort of neuters its primary sales pitch of being able to game anywhere, on anything.
As for the games, well, they did get some big studios to sign on. Some big games too like Doom Eternal and Cyberpunk 2077. However releases came out at a trickle. Stadia fans (which are apparently a thing) complained the company had failed to communicate updates for months after launch. At the time of writing, only 50 titles were available for purchase, with an additional 120 still being promised.
There’s conflicting reports over just how many users Stadia actually has. Latest data pegs it at about 1 million. However we don’t know if they’re active or just signed up for a free trial.
As competing streaming platforms like xCloud roll out, which offer all-you-can-eat buffets and lower prices, it’s likely Stadia won’t be long for this world. Too bad for all three people who actually purchased games on the service. We’re also still wondering where the “free” tier is.
The “I got Lee Carvelo’s Putting Challenge instead of Bonestorm” award goes too…
The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog/Sony)
Anybody up for a good round of golf? Well, not in my post apocalyptic zombie game you’re not. Unless it’s Dead Rising.
The Last of Us was a great game. Probably one of the greatest video games of all time. Largely thanks to it’s intriguing apocalyptic setting, tear jerking father-daughter drama, and the excelled third person gameplay. However, when Naughty Dog saw how badly Star Wars torpedoed their franchises through agendas and poor planning, they figured they might as well give it a go too. With most of the company’s original (and talented) writing staff gone, producer Neil Druckman decided to really stick it to those evil Orange Man supporters by making the game political.
Well, turns out fans didn’t appreciate watching a favourite character get savagely beaten to death with a golf club. Let alone one wielded by an absolute unit of a “woman” who makes Divine look dainty. Nor did they appreciate then having to play as that brute for half the game. There were also very few zombies, which is a bit odd for something in the zombie horror genre. I guess they were taking inspiration from the latter seasons of the Walking Dead. They also made Ellie a lesbian, because current year. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The story is supposed to be about the futility of revenge, or something along those lines. Fortunately the gameplay did hold up for the most part. Those narrative choices certainly didn’t resonate with fans though, or the general public.
TLOU2 had already dropped to the bottom of the sales charts just a couple months after launch. Photos posted to social media showed stacks of unsold copies littering store shelves, next to empty displays of sold-out Nintendo products. It wasn’t exactly a bomb, but it was a huge fall from grace for the short lived franchise. Proving that not everything needs a sequel. Sometimes its best to leave good art alone.
Making matters worse, when cinematics and story elements got leaked online by a disgruntled employee, Sony took to slapping commentators with highly questionable DMCA claims. Even against those who simply talked about the leaks, but didn’t show any. Well, the old Streisand Effect kicked in, and bullying YouTubers only got fans more upset. Looks like they should have gone with “feather touch” instead of “power drive”.
And the “winner” of the most disappointing (gaming) thing of 2020 goes too…
The 9th gen console launch debacle
Oh boy. I’ve been around for a lot of console launches in the 25+ years that I’ve been gaming. This one is, by far, the worst I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
It all began back in the summer when rumours began to swirl about limited supply. Bloomberg put out an article claiming that Sony had been slashing production quotas by 4 million units due to alleged problems with the PS5’s SoC. This sparked a great deal of concern among gamers, who began worrying that not enough consoles would be available for the holiday season.
Next was Sony’s dog and pony show over pre-orders. The company had promised to limit purchases to existing PSN members through a special VIP reservation system. They also promised they would notify users ahead of time when orders would start. Then at their big console unveiling, they just dropped all that and announced on Twitter that orders were commencing immediately, online only. Black market scalpers used bots to rush the stores, causing the console to sell out in mere seconds.
Of course Microsoft didn’t learn anything from Sony’s screwups. Sure, fans were at least notified ahead of time. However, bots once again swooped in. Inventory was gone before any legit customers could purchase one. Fan of both systems were were fuming mad at the whole things.
Guess what? The exact same thing happened to Nvidia and AMD’s new PC components. Gone in Sixty Seconds. Not even the godly PCMR could scoff at the console peasants this time. They too had the rug pulled from under them.
Now, this would still be an absolute diarrhea typhoon had we just stopped there. Though in fairness, these sort of runs usually happen whenever a console gets launched. However, this is 2020. Things can always be expected to get just that little bit worse.
Those who were successfully able to get their orders in waited eagerly for launch day. However, a few reports popped up claiming customers hadn’t received their consoles. Then a few more. Then a flood on social media. The packages were marked as shipped. Some were even marked as delivered. But they never actually showed up at the customer’s address.
Some folks got packages alright; George Foreman grills, a Nerf gun, cat food. It was alleged that delivery drivers were actually swapping out consoles for lower value items in order to flip them. So many deliveries were starting to go missing that it couldn’t have possibly been a warehouse error. With so many couriers and online retailers hiring low wage temp labour to handle the huge volume of shipments, there was certainly plenty of means and motive. In the immortal words of Bubbles…
A lucky few actually did receive their consoles on time and intact. And, well… a lot of them started to develop technical problems. PlayStation 5s in particular had a penchant for hard crashing randomly during games, throwing the system into database repair mode. Gamers Nexus also noted the console’s memory gets worryingly hot during games. Meanwhile on the green team, isolated reports began to pop up where peoples’ Series Xs were bricking upon restarts.
This will probably go down as the worst new hardware launch in gaming history. If only someone had warned Sony and Microsoft to delay their products until next year, maybe things would have gone better. But what’s done is done, and with no end in sight to supply shortages, it looks like the disappointment will continue well into 2021.
