The Winners and Losers of December 1st, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a brisk week for those in 4Player’s New England office, but a few days off from work and classes with a pit stop (or two) for altogether too much food has made it all a nice experience.

Video game news trudges on, however, and now that we all know what we’re thankful for, have punched out a few housewives over half-off tube socks at Target, and are looking to the December ahead, let’s gather to judge this week in gaming.

Deadly Premonition fans

In reality, this should be labeled as a win for “everyone, everywhere, who has ever been.” The lovably goofy, spectacularly weird, triumphantly dumb Deadly Premonition is going to have a sequel, as confirmed by creator Hidetaka Suehiro/Swery65.

Sony

The European launch was, by all reports, absolutely huge, to the point of the BBC reporting that the UK as a whole was starting to sell out due to “unprecedented” demand. It’s difficult to find hard numbers as of right now, but it’s fair to say we will probably be looking at a very, very large one. Quite a coup for the system.

On top of that, December continues to be a great month for Playstation Plus users, with Borderlands 2 and GRID 2 coming down the pipe for PS3 users subscribed to the service.

Persona fans

We have waited far too long for news of Persona 5, and though there isn’t much beyond teased information, this announcement is incredibly exciting. The fear in the pit of my gut that US gamers won’t see a release until 2015 is disheartening, but I’ll try to remain excited- or I’ll try to keep an eye out for an import come winter 2014.

That its announcement was matched up with a handful of other Persona announcements was a thrill, and naturally, the dance game overshadowed it all. Obviously.

Killzone: Shadow Fall

I reviewed you and was nice. Or was I? Go watch it, apparently my voice is great.

Nintendo

Critical hits! Amidst the biggest month of the year for gaming, the Wii U’s library got a major step up with Super Mario 3D World, inarguably the best-reviewed game of the month. They then took hold of the second-best reviewed spot thanks to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Mario and Zelda games being media darlings is no surprise, but it is nice to see the house that Miyamoto built is still rolling out great games.

Nintendo

Super Mario 3D World had its worst sales amidst all 3D Mario games. This is why we can’t have nice things, people. 

Sony

The failure of the PSN during the Playstation 4’s US launch was already embarrassing and frustrating- they were bragging well ahead of release how massive their pre-order numbers were and had more than advance warning about the strain they would face at launch. Pulling the PSN down in the face of another big launch is even more frustrating- you’ve done this before! Come on!

Gamers with credit cards

You know how big your next bill is gonna be. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are killers and you should be ashamed of yourself for not having enough self-restraint. 

(I should be ashamed of myself too, but that’s not the point.)

Fighter Within

The launch window Kinect-driven fighting game set to show that things would be different for the Kinect this time around is a miserable failure of a game which (worryingly) faces the exact same issues Kinect-heavy games dealt with last generation: laggy, imprecise controls, simplistic gameplay made broken, and a game without depth or quality to be declared a success for the device. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come, as it is a return to form, and had Ryse remained a Kinect-heavy game as it was originally designed to be, these would be forming a trend…

Forza Motorsport 5

Forza 5 is an excellent racing game saddled with the presence of heinous microtransactions. $70 to buy a car? In a $60 game? Though the game’s creative director defended the system, the developers as a whole have revised the in-game economy to be more player-friendly. That doesn’t make up for the disturbing presence of microtransactions in the game at all, and it’ll take a huge amount of price-slashing before this is acceptable.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

Congrats, Square: You may have killed Final Fantasy. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII’s Japanese sales are shockingly low in comparison to the debut sales of the original Final Fantasy XIII and are half of the already disappointing launch sales of XIII-2. Thank goodness this is the last installment, because sales dipping any lower would only smear this dying franchise further. 

Need for Speed: Rivals

Controversy over a frame rate locked at 30 frames per second on the PC version became only worse when users found out what happens when the frame rate is unlocked (for some reason, the entire game accelerates along with it and the physics engine breaks)  but a game-breaking camera bug is insult to injury. Between this and Battlefield 4’s troublesome release, EA games are not having a ton of good press right now.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition

Have you heard a single person say “I can’t wait to purchase Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition for the Playstation 4?” Me neither. An already average fighter has only been buried underneath the madness of “grander” next-gen releases.

The Examiner

So much was stated in Eurogamer’s exploration of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a potentially brilliant game with much to explore and investigate, and you wrote an article about a few comments on the game’s sex scenes? Base linkbaiting is unbecoming.