Not only that, it cancelled Fable Legends, an online multiplayer-focused Fable spin-off that had been in development for years. First up, Microsoft announced its intention to close down Lionhead, the legendary Guildford developer behind the Fable series. March kicked off 2016 video game drama time. Street Fighter 5 may have failed to set tills alight, but it certainly got the hardcore going.
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Still, I've had a huge amount of fun with it, and I've been glued to the Capcom Pro Tour all year, watching the likes of Daigo "The Beast" Umehara get to grips with its mechanics, and put them into practice in tournaments streamed on Twitch. It was the first of a number of 2016 video game launches that would go less than smoothly. Capcom only had itself to blame, of course, and it's still battling to get Street Fighter 5 to where it needs to be to be considered a success (the developers took 10 months to put in a proper anti-rage quit system). Street Fighter 5, a game that frustrated the hell out of me because the brilliance of its gameplay was lost in the din caused by its catastrophic launch, came out in February. In many ways, it was downhill from there. Jonathan Blow's brilliant puzzle game got 2016 off to a wonderful start. Eurogamer editor Oli Welsh loved The Witness, declaring it "big, beautiful and rewarding".
And then Bungie announced that Pete Parsons had replaced Harold Ryan as the company's president - a suggestion, perhaps, that the gargantuan developer of Destiny had suffered a difficult 2015 and change was afoot.Īmid the high-profile departures, a high-profile arrival years in the making. The high-profile exits continued: David Gaider, lead writer of Dragon Age, left BioWare after 17 years.
Will the parties settle? I kind of hope not.
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He later sued Take-Two for $150m in a move that's already aired a basket full of dirty laundry. Then we learnt Leslie Benzies, long-time leader of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar North, had left the company after a 16-month sabbatical. The move was seen as further evidence, not that it's needed at this point, that Half-Life 3 is just not happening. Marc Laidlaw, lead writer of the Half-Life series, retired from Valve. January, typically a quiet month for video games, saw a number of high-profile developers move on.
Video games continue to be very good, even though 2016, at its close, feels a little less groundbreaking than I'd liked it to have been. But in the pursuit of some kind of meaning, some kind of trend, I was left frustrated. Lots and lots and lots of video games came out, mostly on Valve's ever-bulging Steam. In researching 2016, I was surprised to find it jam-packed with video game stuff. And I'm not just talking about Street Fighter, either (don't me). But let's not forget earlier this year, when a handful of superb blockbusters definitely did excite people. Recent memory is dominated by a handful of high quality blockbusters that failed to excite people.