Seeking some games for the end of the world
This year may be a testing one, and it’s tempting to stew over everything we don’t want to see come to pass, but let’s be positive and focus instead on what we’d like to see emerge throughout videogames in 2017.
First, there’s the small matter of an entirely new platform from Nintendo. With Sony so dominant in today’s landscape, it makes sense that Switch has been designed as a console that doesn’t attempt to battle PS4 head on, preferring to fish in the handheld waters where Nintendo has been so successful since the introduction of the unassuming Game Boy nearly 30 years ago. We want to see the portable aspect work harmoniously with the hardware’s function under the TV, we want a mind-bending new Mario title, and we want The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild to rekindle the spirit of Ocarina Of Time. We want, in other words, more reasons to sit down in front of Nintendo games the way we used to.
We want to see more developers tackling challenging themes, following the likes of Battlefield 1, Firewatch and Mafia III last year. We want more risk-taking in VR game design, but at the same time PSVR, Rift and Vive games whose appeal isn’t exhausted within a handful of playthroughs. We want more games in the vein of Titanfall 2, Dishonored 2 and The Last Guardian, bold enough to play with concepts and mechanics that they aren’t afraid of discarding later in order to make way for more.
We want Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard to live up to their demos, and for The Lost Legacy to complement Uncharted 4 the way Left Behind did The Last Of Us. We want Days Gone to see Sony’s Bend Studio reach its potential, for Crackdown 3 to convince us about cloud-based processing for Xbox One games, and for Scalebound to back up all of Hideki Kamiya’s unapologetic posturing.
For sequels, we want Destiny 2, the announcement of another VR Rez, and a Bloodborne follow-up. Finally, we want more indie titles made with the kind of passion being poured into our cover game, Little Nightmares.