2020: A Year in Gaming

 

Welcome to my blog. Here at Coffee at Leblanc I will discuss various topics on geek entertainment and culture such as video games, anime, comics, geek music, and geek fashion. I will also talk about discrimination, representation, and racism in geekdom as well. If that turns you off then bye. I don't cater to those who are uncomfortable to blights of marginalized groups. If that's your fancy well then let's get into it!

 

2020 was a crazy ass year! One of the very few good things about it that we got a crazy good number of games throughout the year. Actually, gaming did better than all of the other forms of entertainment last year. As reported by Business Insider, the video game industry projected to make $179.7 billion in 2020 which is more than the film and sports industry combined. This is no surprise as with the pandemic more people were stuck indoors and needed more to entertain themselves. Actually according to Nielsen Company's SuperData research more than half of the American population were playing video games last year.

 The film and sports industries on the other hand relied on a lot of in-person events for revenue in addition to the production of films requiring lots of people to gather together and all film studios were closed for months. Video game companies simply moved from the office to working from home and for smaller studios like indie creators, they have been used to working for home for years. In talks of revenue, Steam reported it's top selling games of 2020 with Among Us, Counterstrike: GO, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Destiny 2, Doom Eternal, DOTA 2, Fall Guys, Monster Hunter World, PUBG, and Grand Theft Auto V ranking out the top eleven of the year.

 The convention floor in Oxon Hill, MD at Magfest 2020

 

Pulling back before the pandemic hit we got Dragon Ball Z Kakarot in Janauary which received mix reviews. On the 16th of the month CD Projekt Red announced the first delay for Cyberpunk 2077 moving it to September 17th. Also in January was one of the last gaming conventions to been held, Magfest. Magfest also known as the music and games festival went on from January 2nd, to January 5th. Last year had a Donkey Kong theme and even Donkey Kong Country series composer David Wise performed at the convention. I, myself attended the con and took part in the cosplay festivities along with the arcade gaming floor, video game and computer museum, and the slamming parties by djs Okatkus with Attitude and DJ Taylor Senpai. I wasn't able to enjoy the celebration for long however as I came down with a nasty flu on Saturday night. I was near the dj booth sitting on an air vent to warm me up when a couple EMTs came up to me to ask if I was all right. I said I just had a cold and they asked if I needed any help to which I declined and then they left me on my own. I was about to head home myself when the dj started playing "Knuck if You Buck", but I went home right after. Little did I know that would be the last gaming event I would attend in 2020.

Another gaming convention I planned to attend last year was E3. As you may recall even before the pandemic hit E3 2020 wasn't looking good. Host, Geoff Keighly announced he would not be attending. The first time ever since he started attending back in 1995. Sony for the second year in a row, chose not to attend and then there was the floor director dropping out back in February. Ultimately, the conference was canceled for the first time in it's twenty-five year history when the pandemics and lockdowns went in full effect last March. E3 and gaming companies announced that they will make online announcements of titles. Many people believed this was the end of E3, but there's nothing to suggest that E3 will not come back around once this whole pandemic situation is over.

This was going to be my first year attending so it hit me deeply when the announcement was made. This was also the case with EVO. The famed world fighting game tournament was aimed to go on in July of 2020, but due to the pandemic it shifted an online tournament, much to people's dismay. That didn't even happen however as during the spring a bunch of troublesome news came up. EVO's founder and host Mr. Wizard came up with a number of sexual assault allegations leading to the cancellation of the tournament and Mr. Wizard leaving the company. In addition, over eighty players in the Super Smash Bros. were also met with the same allegations. With these sexual assault and pedophilia allegations the competitive fighting game scene did not look good.

Slideout 3019 a game made in Dreams

 

To something more positive February gave players a couple of noteworthy titles; Dreams and Street Fighter V: Champion Edition. Dreams is Media Molecule's newest title. Like the Little Big Planet series there's an emphasis on player creation, but in this case it's basically the entire premise. Dreams is better advertised as a game engine than a video game as it has a very short campaign which seems to be just a sample to show creators what Dreams is capable of. I feel like I can only recommend Dreams to the most die hard of video game fans or those who want to get into video game design as it relies heavily on user-created content and incentivizes the player to create content.

Kotaku recently published an article highlighting how the player base in Dreams dropped dramatically and what the issues could be. Given the type of game Dreams is I think it wasn't ever going to make money on a mainstream scale or even semi. It is for the most dedicated of gamers. Myself I've enjoyed my time with it, I also find it frustrating. This likely more of a problem with myself than with the engine, but I find it cumbersome and a chore to make games in. Dreams is still the easiest platform I ever used to make games with like Unreal Engine, Renpy, Game Maker, and RPG Maker, but I still find it difficult and kind of boring unlike Little Big Planet which I used to spend all day and night making creations and even winning second place in a Final Fantasy themed creation contest.

There are lot of good games to play on Dreams. Every time I decide to look into other player's creations I always find something that impresses me. 

In February the definitive edition of Street Fighter V, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition released. This included all of the DLC characters and costumes. I was hoping to get back into the competitive scene this year so I picked it up. It's fun and that's really all I have to say about it because I didn't spend a lot of time with the game.

March is when things started to get juicy. We got Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Nioh 2 the next day, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal on the same day, Half-Life: Alyx, and Persona 5 Royal at the end of the month. March was a stacked month. April gave us the mixed Resident Evil 3 remake, the highly acclaimed Final Fantasy VII Remake, and the return of Streets of Rage with Streets of Rage 4.

Biden Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

 

Arby's promotion for the launch of Persona 5 Royal

To touch back on Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing New Horizons was a major success at launch. I remember the week that it came out it seemed like every nerdy girl on my Instagram feed went out to buy this game. New Horizons went on to sell 13 million copies within March. It was so popular in fact that it became a cultural phenomenon. It gained the attention of businesses and even politicians. There was a time that there was an island dedicated to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It would eventually be removed as Nintendo requested that they didn't want politics in the game. Animal Crossing along with Persona 5 Royal came out at a good time. Both of these games gave people a sense of normalcy amongst the lockdown. Hanging out with friends, keeping a schedule, going to the movie theater, the beach, and much more. There was a time where it seemed like everyone was talking about New Horizons. 

Nothing notable would release until the summer when The Last of Us Part II dropped to mixed reception, Fall Guys which would blow up with popularity, and Paper Mario: The Origami King which also received mixed reviews. Cyberpunk 2077 also got delayed to November 19th. and that delay came with the announcement of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions. Steve from Minecraft got announced for Smash while in the Tekken players got Fahkumram and Kunimitsu. Mortal Kombat 11 received Rambo and Rain added to the roster. Speaking of MK it got its definitive edition with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate this year.

The surprising thing here is Among Us gaining popularity around fall last year when it's a game from 2018. This was due to popular Twitch streamers like SR_Kaif, AdmiralBulldog, and xQc giving the game a lot of exposure and as such spread around by word of mouth or more accurately social media sharing since this is the internet. Among Us became so popular that Congressmen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were streaming it on Twitch.

While I did buy Street Fighter V in 2020 I primarily played Tekken 7 last year. Oh man. Fahkumram was overpowered. Talk about a character that was too strong. Fahkumram had very quick moves and even his slower moves that were meant for starting launches were safe. It seemed like he had no weaknesses. So many people played him when he first dropped. After the months passed and he was nerfed in the next patch people stopped playing him and now I almost never see the character. 2020 marked my first time going back into the fighting game scene heavily. I played in the tournament scene here and there from 2009-2012 and even got third place at my first real Tekken tournament. Playing Tekken 7 this year felt like coming back home although due to the pandemic I was unable to go to any actual tournaments, but it was still great to play Tekken again with other people online. I see that really nothing has changed with online play either. People still rage quit and get made and send you salty messages when they lose. Still, I had fun.

 

Continuing with the discussion about the fall, the highly praised indie title Hades, would release on September 17th for Nintendo Switch and PC. In October, Cyberpunk would get its third and final delay moving to December 10th, but it's PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series version were to be postponed to 2021. Watch Dogs: Legion also released on the 29th. I was also feeling the Halloween spirit more than ever this year and without being able to celebrate it like I wanted to I turned to play some thematically appropriate video games. I went ahead and bought Resident Evil 3 from PSN since it was at a discount. Resident Evil 3 turned out to be as disappointing as the critics and fans said. It is short and feels short and a lot of content was removed from the original. I would rather play the original actually. I also turned on Kingdom Hearts II and Persona 5 for a little bit to run around Halloween Town and Mementos. I still can't beat the secret boss.

November was approaching. Players were getting ready for the heavy hitters since the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were releasing. We finally got the price points for these consoles back in the summer and given history we knew the shortages were going to come along with software and hardware issues. These consoles sold, but they sold sold. According to Sony the PlayStation 5 sold even more than the PS4 at launch. Scalpers were back at it again buying up everything in sight with bots. Sony was also quick to shut down companies making custom faceplates. Nintendo also tried to shut down some custom designs as a fan by the name of Alex Blake was making and selling Etikons, custom designed Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons for charity to the JED foundation; an organization dedicated to mental health and the prevention of suicide.

For those that don't know Etika was a popular video game streamer on YouTube and Twitch. He was particularly a Nintendo fan and one of his phrases was Joy-Con Boyz which is printed on the Etikons. Etika commited suicide in the summer of 2019. Nintendo in particular had an issue with the word Joy-Con printed on it and demanded that it be removed. Many fans did not like Nintendo's decision. While they do have the legal rights to do it, many believed that Nintendo was in bad taste to try and stop the production of an item being sold for charity.

Nintendo also released a well received game in November with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. As both a sequel to Hyrule Warriors and a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild you played as an array of characters during the events leading up to The Breath of the Wild. Nintendo's old competitor Sega also dropped a game in November. Yakuza dropped its seventh game in the series, Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Like a Dragon took a radically different approach with a new protagonist and ditching the action combat for traditional turn-based JRPG combat system much like the Dragon Quest reference in it's name. I have yet to play a Yakuza, but given that it's a RPG now I might finally get around to it and start with Like a Dragon. Other notable titles in November include the Demon's Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the pre-installed PS5 game Astrobot's Playroom, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
 

Into December people were still trying to get a PS5 or one of the Xbox consoles and waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to launch. December 10th arrived and Cyberpunk 2077 was a mess. This is perhaps the worst launch and PR I've seen with a video game ever, even The New York Times was talking about it. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game were nigh unplayable. The models and environment had a weird blur on them that made the game look like a PS3 game. There were a ton of bugs and glitches and the game's performance was terrible. I took a while for character models to load and frame rates would dip to abysmal levels. It was better on PC and the next gen or I guess now current gen consoles, but not a whole lot. PC, along with the PS5 and Xbox Series still were subjected to a myriad of glitches and all platforms dealt with random crashes.

PC players for a while couldn't even play the game as intended because if your save file reached beyond 8MB it could cause your save to corrupt. It is super easy to get your save above 8MB too. CD Projekt Red said that crafting and keeping a lot of items in your inventory increases your file size which is really easy to do given this is an RPG. It was eventually patched out however, but it took a while.

Leading up to the launch reviewers were only given PC codes for the game and no console versions were sent out which raised many red flags. Reviewers talked about the bugs and crashes and believed that all these issues would be fixed when the day 1 patch would drop. They were not. Leading up to the launch a CD Projekt Red staff member said that the game runs "surprisingly well" on consoles. A statement that turned out to be completely false. Soon after it was stated from employees that they were under intense crunch and new about the state of the game, but the highers up demanded it be released on time. Later, we would hear news about CD Projekt Red potentially facing a law suit from investors for lying about the state of the game which would eventually be confirmed.

Despite all of the controversy Cyberpunk 2077 sold a total of 13 million copies within ten days of launch. CD Projekt Red even stated that it made a profit before the game even came out just from pre-orders. It's not for certain how much of that they retained however since the game launched in such a terrible state that refunds were be given out at large numbers. Retailers that usually wouldn't offer refunds for opened games like Best Buy and GameStop were giving out refunds. Even Sony was offering refunds directly from PSN and eventually they took it down from the PlayStation store. CD Projekt Red eventually put a form to get refunds from them personally. It is yet to be seen if anyone has received refunds from them yet. I submitted mine, but haven't heard anything as of yet.

CD Projekt Red also stated that they would release two patches that should take care of most of the technical issues in January and February of 2021. As of this writing, no new patches have been released. This launch was without a doubt a headache. The game itself is very good when it's working properly. The level design and system mechanics are engaging as well as the story and voice acting. There is a lot of good hidden underneath the glitches and performance issues. It's just unfortunate that it will take a few months before Cyberpunk 2077 is in a state that was intended by the developers.

December wasn't all bad. Nintendo showed off their complete Super Nintendo World through a direct and Final Fantasy VII villain Sephiroth got announced for Smash Bros. Ultimate. While I'm ecstatic that another Final Fantasy character made it into Smash. I'm disappointed that it's another character from VII. VII receives the most attention in the series and so much to a point that I was getting sick of it which is why I wasn't as excited for the prospect of a Final Fantasy VII Remake as most people. Still, Final Fantasy is/was my most favorite video game franchise at one point so I'm glad it got two additions when normally that wouldn't be the case for a third party franchise.

The Game Awards was also during this month. Not much to say. Final Fantasy VII Remake took RPG of the year, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate took Fighting Game of the Year, and The Last of Us Part II took Game of the Year. The winners didn't surprise me at all as The Game Awards has a very specific target audience. None of the game reveals were that interesting to me either except for the announcement of Horizon: Forbidden West and a new Perfect Dark.

The last bit of notable news of 2020 in gaming was the confirmation that the KFConsole that was teased back in June was real. KFC put out an entire presentation video up for the fried chicken warming gaming console along with a web page. This still feels like an out-of-date April Fools joke, but for now I guess the KFConsole is real.

We're only a week into 2021. Who knows what will come.