Category Archives: Long Read
Columns and long-form posts
et geekera’s Most Anticipated Games of 2018
Last week saw our look back at 2017. Now, it’s time to look ahead to the rest of 2018. With the release of the Nintendo Switch, the red brand brought out some heavy-hitters that helped to make last year rank as another of the all-time great years in gaming. So far, 2018’s success could depend entirely on what doesn’t get delayed to 2019. It could beat out 2017 or it could be a sparse year while we wait for the big games to drop in 2019.
But if all goes according to plan, what great games can we expect in 2018? Here are our top eight most anticipated games of 2018.
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et geekera’s Ten Favourite Games of 2017
It’s kind of amazing to hear talk along the lines that 2017 could be one of the greatest years in gaming history. Nintendo has to take a lot of credit for that. Many weren’t sold on the Switch concept, especially after the initial sizzle reel but it’s turned out to be a big hit for Nintendo, both critically and commercially. According to GOTY Picks aggregation, 188 of 276 game of the year awards went to Nintendo exclusives which is amazing dominance of the industry. I’d say the Switch thing has worked out pretty well for them.
But as we wont to do around here, it’s time for us to go through et geekera’s favourite games of 2017.
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et geekera’s Ten Favourite Games of 2016
We’ve reached the end of another year and I forgot to do last year’s list because I didn’t set aside enough time for it. I’ve been busy in real life and crafting a small niche on YouTube as a retrogaming let’s player. I’m trying to craft myself more time to write but winter is a bad time for that since I have to add snow shoveling to all the other day-to-day that I do.
Picking the top game for the etg top ten list was surprisingly difficult for last year year. 2016 was a top-heavy year for games. Even to this day, I think it’s a toss-up between Uncharted 4 and Overwatch for Game Of The Year but if you tried to make an argument for Doom or Ratchet & Clank or Stardew Valley or Dark Souls 3, I could completely understand it. I’m not sure that there’s the same depth in games as you get beyond the top ten so I’m not going to call. Look at 2015’s top fifteen, for example. Top to bottom, it’s an astonishingly good list of games. I don’t think that I could put together a list of fifteen or sixteen games this year that I think is as good as 2015’s.
So better late than never, here is our list of our ten favourite games of 2016. They may not be the best games of 2016 but they are the ones that I loved the most.
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Clash Royale, Pay-to-Win Mechanics and Your Wallet
I’m not sure a day goes by that I don’t see justified complaints about Clash Royale over on Reddit. The game doesn’t attempt to match make on skill but is often determined by who has the better cards. Emotes should be mutable. The tournament system has died without Supercell propping it up.
There’s a perfectly good reason why Supercell isn’t addressing any of this: Money. Addressing these issues would likely take money out of Supercell’s pocket not just through the costs of making the changes but the loss of revenue from making them.
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Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut: An End, Once And For All?
The immediate aftermath of the release of Mass Effect 3 was an absolute PR disaster for BioWare and EA. The original ending to Mass Effect 3 caused a massive sh*tstorm of unprecedented proportions among gamers. Many gamers put hundreds of hours into one Commander Shepard and some had thousands of hours and well over $200 invested in the series overall and were given an inconclusive ending that left gamers confused rather than feeling anything else. In order to save face, BioWare spent the next three months scrambling together an alternate ending, called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut, to fix the problems people had with the final twenty minutes of ME3.
Today, I examine the new scenes that BioWare has added to Mass Effect 3 in the Extended Cut to determine if they have solved the problems most had with the original ending. Read the rest of this entry
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E3 2016: Has The Industry Killed E3?
I don’t know about you but it seems like this year’s edition of E3 was generally underwhelming. It felt like we knew what was coming from the triple-A publishers before most of it ever appeared on stage at a press briefing. Sure, the videos were new content but the actual titles announced and demonstrated on-stage were almost all public knowledge before they were supposed to be public knowledge. The industry has been shifting to a continuous hype train for upcoming games and it’s made E3 needless as a result.
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et geekera’s Most Anticipated Games of 2016
Since we did our look back at 2015 earlier this week, it only makes sense to look forward this week. It’s only logical to follow-up on our list of our favourite games of 2015 with a look at the games that we’re most excited about in 2016 with the Most Anticipated Games of 2016.
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et geekera’s Fifteen Favourite Games of 2015
How about one last blog post before we close down for the Christmas break? At this time of year (okay, often sooner for everyone else), everyone does their year-end lists. As is tradition for etg, we close the year with our favourite games of the year. I think this year will be the last time we do the 15 for 15 thing because it was very hard getting to 15 games. Next year will probably be a top ten or something.
For now, here is our list of our fifteen favourite games of 2015. They may not be the best games of 2015 but they are the ones that I loved the most.
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PSX is the Perfect Example of a Games Industry Showcase
It was around this time two years ago that I suggested that the games industry needed a second showcase event apart from E3 every June. Following another edition of The Game Awards that was more interested in the new trailers and game reveals than it was in celebrating the best in gaming during the unspecified nomination period. I was planning on leaving this alone because I don’t see The Game Awards ever being an awards show but rather being a product of hype.
Last month, I changed my mind. While it wasn’t the first time they did this, I realized that Sony might have inadvertently stumbled upon exactly what I was looking for with their second PlayStation Experience convention and industry show.
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Kotaku, The Blacklist and What’s Left of Games Journalism
It’s not an uncommon occurrence for a gaming news outlet to be blacklisted by a publisher. You can hear Jim Sterling talk about blacklisted regularly on The Jimquisition. Destructoid was blacklisted by Konami. At one time or another, EGM was reportedly blacklisted by numerous companies including Sony, Midway and Ubisoft. Jeff Gerstmann infamously lost his job at GameSpot over a poor review of Kane & Lynch that resulted in Eidos Interactive threatening to pull ads from the site.
The latest publication to take their blacklisting public is Kotaku. Editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo took to the site to reveal that the company had been cut off by the PR branches of both Ubisoft and Bethesda. While some in games media are standing up for Kotaku, those content consumers that Kotaku are supposed to be producing content for aren’t on their side. When you’re as divisive as Kotaku, there isn’t much sympathy for the devil.
et geekera 