It's surprising that the concept of downloadable content (DLC) has been around for 10 years now. Starting with the launch titles for the Xbox 360, DLC has become a major part of the industry as it gives the player more things to do in the game and keeps them from trading it in for something else. This need to keep gamers from trading in their old games has forced every major AAA title nowadays to have a plan for DLC or risk fading away into obscurity. With the industry's dependence on DLC, packaging all the DLC together in one purchase called a season pass has become a standard practice for every game big and small. What first started as a great deal has more commonly become a money gouging strategy by publishers.
The two most recent season pass offenders are Star Wars: Battlefront and Rainbow Six: Siege.
It has become common knowledge that Battlefront has great gameplay, but DICE clearly skimped out when it came to the content. Looking to make up for the short-sight, or what I like to call, "We need to get this game out now, better add this stuff later," DICE has provided 20 weapons, 16 maps, four playable heroes and villains, four new game modes, and an exclusive emote that players can buy in a season pass. The content seems reasonable until you look at its 70 dollar price tag. Seriously, 70 dollars! What does EA think they will achieve? They're scaring people away, rather than enticing them to pay for extra content. EA may be arrogant enough to believe severely overpricing their season passes is an acceptable practice, but it will come back to haunt them when gamers skip on the initial release of their games to wait for the inevitable Game of the Year version.
If you though Battlefront's season pass is bad, well the season pass for Rainbow Six: Siege is on a new level of exploitation. Spending 30 dollars on this season pass nets you seven day early access and instant unlock of eight new operators (which you can unlock free of charge by playing the game), weapon skins, 600 credits for additional in-game purchases, five per cent Renown boost, and two more challenges a day. I can't think of a worse way to spend 30 dollars. Outside of the minor boosts and cosmetic additions, everything contained in this season pass can be unlocked through regular play, meaning this pass only exists to gouge money out of Rainbow Six fans. Is Siege a AAA title or a freemium game, Ubisoft? Because how you treating it with this abomination of a season pass and the addition of unnecessary microtransactions are telling me otherwise.
Not all season passes are bad. Witcher III's expansion pass and the Mario Kart 8 DLC bundle price are two examples of great season passes. Just most of the recent offerings have been giving this option to buying DLC in bulk a bad name. Making new content for a game, no matter its size, can be costly especially with the ever-rising price of video game development, but that doesn't give publishers justification to gouge money out of the consumer that already pays close to 100 dollars for one title. Instead of enticing more people to buy more content for their games, these underhanded practices are good ways to keep people from buying DLC altogether.
Sometimes, you can't think of anything interesting to write as a lead for an article. This is one of those times.
I've been trying to put together this edition of Bit by Bit for a couple weeks now, but I blank every time I sit down to write an introduction. A lot happened during October; sadly I can't seem to find a way to put it into a cohesive thought. Maybe that's how the working life goes: everything just blurs together.
Well, enough of my introspective look at introductions. Let's get to what you read Bit by Bit for: the video games!
Game of the Month
If a game's quality was solely based on its graphics, Yoshi's Woolly World would easily be one of the best titles of 2015. Good thing it plays just as well as it looks. Yoshi's Woolly World is the closest Mario's dinosaur companion has come to reaching the quality of its first solo outing in Super Mario World 2.
Although Yoshi games have never been known for their challenging gameplay, Woolly World challenges the player in different way. Each level has tons of collectibles for you to find and the process of tracking down everything in one run can be very difficult. The great thing about the collectibles are the rewards. Collecting all the wonder wool in a level gives you a brand new Yoshi to play with. Also collecting all the flowers in a world opens up a secret level, which are easily the most difficult levels in the game.
Speaking of Woolly World's levels, the level design in the game is superb. From directing a Monty Mole through a maze of traps to transforming into various vehicles, each level in Woolly World has a different hook to keep you engaged. It also helps that the controls feel spot-on. They are easy enough to learn for beginners, but offer enough depth and nuance that seasoned players can pull off some great feats of platforming.
In all honesty, Yoshi's Woolly World is one of the best platformers of the year and yet another great title for the Wii U. Don't let the cute exterior fool you, Woolly World isn't a game just for children. It offers entertainment and challenge for all ages.
Most Anticipated Movie of the Month
I may be the only person on the planet that isn't excited for any of the huge AAA titles coming out this holiday season. I will admit that Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront look phenomenal, but I don't need to pick them up for myself right away. That's what siblings are for, right?
But when it comes to movies, I am stuck on the Star Wars Episode VII hype train with no way of getting off. Everything Disney and Lucasfilm has shown for The Force Awakens looks absolutely incredible without giving away too many plot details. I haven't been this excited for a movie in a long time.
Just watch the final trailer! It was worth enduring a few painful minutes of Monday Night Football to see live.
Video of the Month
Kids born in the '90s may remember the slew of cartoon shows based on your favourite video game characters. Mario, Sonic, Earthworm Jim and Mega Man are just a few of the video game cartoons that people may have watched during the '90s. One cartoon I remember was Donkey Kong Country, a CG-animated show based off of Nintendo's tie-wearing gorilla, which aired on Teletoon here in Canada. All I can remember about the show is its catchy theme song, but a show with a catchy theme must be good. Right? Right?!
No, Donkey Kong Country is, for lack of a better term, bat-shit crazy and not in a good way. While I may not be able to remember the finer details of the show's insanity, ProJared's newest video does a great job of capturing Donkey Kong Country in all its glory. Watch the video to see DK at his worst.
In a few short weeks, we enter the craziest time of the year—the avalanche known as the fall game releases. The sheer amount of games releasing in the period of one month is unbelievable. Most of them of huge AAA titles, like Halo 5, Black Ops III, Fallout 4, and Star Wars Battlefront, that will easily make a big dent in your wallet. With all these great games permeating store shelves the world over, the temptation of buying them all is definitely there. Unless you have a whole lot of disposable money, you sadly can't afford buying every game outright. For those money conscientious people out there, I'm here with some tips and tricks to help you through this trying time.
Pick and Choose
With new games selling for 70 to 80 dollars a piece, it's just too expensive to be buying every major release nowadays. Add in the nearly 20 hour plus campaigns and/or extensive multiplayer suites of modern titles, there is no way one person can beat each game in time for the next big release. There is too much coming out and not enough time or money to play them all right now. With all that in mind, best to stick with one or two new titles this holiday season and get the most out of them rather than trying to cram them all in.
Use Alternative Funding
Money can be an issue, especially for students and those dealing with debt. While it is important to budget your money in order to afford the necessities of life, the urge to get the latest and greatest game can be hard to overcome. If you need to pick up a game at launch with limited funds, it might be best to look at your backlog and see if there are any games you are willing to part with. Since most retailers nowadays accept games and other pieces of media for trade-in credit, trading in older titles is a viable solution for funding new game purchases.
Forewarning: don't go in expecting to get more than five dollars a game. Video game prices are in constant flux, so a title's trade-in value can change weekly based on factors such as rarity, popularity, or age. Unless a game's rarity or popularity trumps its age, the older the title is, the lower its resell value will be. Also the resell price of yearly releases, especially sports games, plummets once the newest entry hits store shelves. So it's best to trade those titles in before the new game comes out. Plus, keep an eye out for trade promotions because they will get you more money for the games you're looking to trade.
Play the Waiting Game
Good things come for those who wait. This adage is especially true when it comes to video game shopping during the holiday season. If you don't feel like buying a game within the first week of release, it's better to just wait. Sales happen regularly over the course of the last two months of the year. You might just find the game you're thinking of buying for 10 to 20 dollars off (sometimes more on Black Friday or Boxing Day) or somebody may give it to you for Christmas. Holding off your money spending urges might lead to the best rewards during this expensive season.
It's sad to say, but summer is coming to an end. As hard as it may be to get excited to go back to school, fall brings with it an avalanche of new game releases. With the current generation finally running on all cylinders, there will be enough games to keep every gamer satisfied for the next four months. Just counting all the Nintendo games I'm going to pick up on Wii U and 3DS in the next four months is a little shocking. Good thing I have brothers that plan on picking up the multiplatform titles I'm holding out on, such as Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront, so I can play them without dropping nearly 100 dollars on each one. You know, I need to save that money to buy amiibos.
Before we get started with this edition of Bit by Bit, I would like to announce that I'm going to Fan Expo again this year. I will be there Friday with a few friends from school to hang out, buy stuff, play games, and explore the show floor. Just like I did last year, there will be a full rundown of everything yours truly did at the show along with the return of the Fan Expo Gauntlet. So stay tuned for all your Fan Expo goodness from Silver Bit in the coming weeks.
Game of the Month
In recent years, I have grown fond of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and its challenging yet engrossing take on the JRPG genre. Funny enough, the Shin Megami spin-off series Persona that's responsible for the series popularity in the West is one I barely touched. While I own both Persona 3 and 4 on PS3, I never took on the task of playing one until I got Persona 4 Golden for Vita. Now I can't stop!
RPGs are perfect for portable play. You can pick them up to finish some sidequests or grind a few levels in small bursts, or dive into the story and dungeons as a way to spend an afternoon. It may take some time to wrap your head around all of Persona 4's mechanics and everything they entail. Once you get past the learning curve, managing social links, jobs, boosting stats, and preparing for the dungeons is a blast. I have already lost many hours just delving into all the activities you can do outside of the main dungeons.
The combat is no slouch either. It has a similar turn-based structure as most JRPGs, but adds a few new systems to make the combat more engaging. Determining which elements shadows are strong/weak against is the key to success. Couple that with powerful pile-on attacks and shuffle time bonuses, and you have the ingredients for an incredible battle system that will keep you on your toes.
I am only brushing the surface of what Persona 4 Golden has to offer. I strongly urge everybody to pick up a Vita or PlayStation TV to play this phenomenal RPG, or at the very least download the PS2 original off of PSN. I may only be 25 hours into the game, but I fully understand why it's considered one of the best RPGs of the last decade. Persona 4 Golden is that damn good, period!
Most Anticipated Toy of the Month
Rumours about a Shovel Knight amiibo were floating around the interwebs for a couple weeks now, but nothing was ever confirmed. That was until a UK retailer announced its existence ahead of Nintendo and Yacht Club Games' official unveiling at Nintendo's Nindies @ Night event in Seattle.
The Shovel Knight amiibo is being produced entirely by Yacht Club Games, and it unlocks exclusive modes and features for the Wii U and 3DS versions of Shovel Knight. The amiibo's biggest addition to the game is the Wii U exclusive co-op, which allows you to play the entire game with a friend. It will also add special challenge stages, new relics and character stat customization to both versions of Shovel Knight.
As happy as I am to see Shovel Knight get the amiibo treatment, I am even more ecstatic to see what comes from the introduction of official third-party figures into the amiibo line. This partnership truly marks an exciting new direction for the amiibo brand as a whole. Expanding the brand to outside properties may be the olive branch Nintendo needs to attract third-parties back to their systems. Plus, it offers a wonderful platform for indie developers like Yacht Club Games to get exposure on a scale they could of only dreamed of.
I have my fingers crossed for Bit.Trip, Shantae and Mighty No. 9 amiibos.
Video of the Month
It won't be too much longer before Super Mario Maker will be released to the general public. For those people like myself that cannot wait any longer, IGN has put together a series of videos called the IGN Super Mario Maker Editors Challenge to show off all the wonderful levels you can make in the game. These five to ten minute videos release every Monday, Wednesday and Friday leading up to Super Mario Maker's release and they offer great inspiration for those looking forward to creating their own Mario deathtraps. Plus, it's hilarious to watch the Mario insanity people think of and the priceless reactions from those playing.
I've included the first video in the series below, but I highly recommend watching them all. I hope to see many great levels online when Super Mario Maker launches on 11th of September.
Aside from recent releases like Dragon Age: Inquisition and Battlefield: Hardline, EA hasn't had the best few years. Buggy launches, poor customer support and selling certain titles without being feature complete are a few examples of EA's sins over the past few years. Last year's EA press conference didn't make things any better as they put on possibly the worst press conference I ever had the dishonour of watching. There is no way that EA could put on two bad performances in a row, right?
Let us start with the good news, EA's press conference was better than last year's showing. The bad news is that isn't saying much. In all honesty, EA has a great lineup of games under their umbrella; they just can't seem to translate that quality to the stage. When a conference with Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge and Star Wars almost puts you to sleep, there is something wrong.
The reason that EA had problems in translating quality to their stage performance was that they spent too much time telling instead of showing. The actual game demos showed at the conference combined for a run time of maybe 20 minutes. For a 90 minute press conference, that's unacceptable. Also whoever thought splitting EA Sports into four excruciatingly boring and unnecessarily long segments to fill time should be fired along with the person who thought having an interview with soccer legend Pele was a good use of time.
Out of all the bad, there were a couple of diamonds in the rough. Star Wars Battlefront had a phenomenal demo that expertly replicated the scale and grandeur of the Battle for Hoth from Empire Strikes Back. In five minutes, DICE showed first and third-person perspectives, vehicle combat (which includes controlling AT-ATs) and playable hero characters all to a great amount of fanfare. Other than Battlefront, the only other game to truly impress was Unravel, a puzzle platformer with unique mechanics revolving around yarn. While I have a feeling Unravel will be a smaller title in EA's lineup, it has the potential of stacking up their with other great mascot platformers like LittleBigPlanet and Mario.
If it wasn't for Star Wars Battlefront and Unravel, EA's 2015 press conference would have served as a good time for a nap or a bathroom break. EA seems to bark to the heavens that they understand their fans, but they are so out of touch that it's hilarious. Gamers don't watch your E3 press conference to hear about your onslaught of yearly sports games, we want the Battlefronts, Mass Effects, Mirror's Edges and Unravels to be the focus of your show. Until EA understands that fact, they will suffer the same negative reaction year-in and year-out.
2013 was not a year Electronic Arts wants to remember. Everything under the sun seemed to go wrong for the gaming giant in 2013 starting with the mess that was SimCity and concluding with the severe online problems of Battlefield 4. Hoping to turn their fortunes around, EA should bring out all the stops with their conference this year. In a few short moments, you will hear if EA can turn around their fortunes from their unlucky 2013 or continue their downward spiral.
Well EA's misfortunes continue with easily their worst performance at E3 to date. Words cannot describe how mindbogglingly bad EA's conference was. Things seemed to be going in the right direction with Andrew Wilson's description of the structure for the conference which would see first looks at projects early in development along with demos for soon to be released games. Sadly, none of the initial promise led to anything worthwhile. EA showed footage and images so far in advance for games such as the next Mass Effect, BioWare's new IP, Star Wars Battlefront and Criterion's extreme racing game that it did nothing to build hype or excitement. Everything just fell flat and EA could never build any sort of excitement or momentum. The most boring moments of EA's conference came from the onslaught of EA Sports titles. It may be nice for some to see hyper realistic graphics that they will never see in the actual game but that is misleading advertising not quality marketing. EA use to be able to move through the sports presentation at a smooth clip, but it just went on forever this year. The only sports game that appeared to be remotely fun was the new EA Sports PGA Tour that looks to mix traditional golf courses with crazy fantasy courses however that one trailer could do nothing to save this show. If the monotonous sports game presentation was not enough, the Battlefield Hardline main event just emphasized how mind numbing this press conference was. Nothing in the full multiplayer reveal of Hardline stood out. It was exactly the same as every other Battlefield multiplayer demo EA has done at previous E3s just with instant grappling hooks and zip lines. Nevertheless like everything else on this show, Battlefield Hardline was nothing impressive as it felt very derivative in its design and execution.
E3 has seen no shortage of bad press conferences. EA's offerings this year rank among the worst to ever grace this stage. Bringing the audience into the developer's studios and seeing upcoming projects in progress was a neat idea, but the execution did nothing to elicit any sense of joy or excitement. Barely anytime was spent on the games that people wanted to see like Star Wars Battlefront, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mirror's Edge. All-in-all, EA's E3 2014 Press Conference was a complete waste of sixty minutes and never worth revisiting again.
One of the few constants at E3 has been Electronic Arts. There conferences have been consistently watchable as they have provided a lot of good information on the great amounts of projects they publish. As we head face first into the next generation of consoles, will EA soar to brand new heights or continue to falter?
To answer that question right off the bat, EA will continue their abysmal year after such a weak conference. There was a good number of quality games on display just EA only spent fifteen to twenty minutes of their conference covering them. Right at the beginning, EA blew off the door with an incredible trailer for Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare that parodied EA's own Battlefield trailers. Following the trailer, EA gave us an incredible demo for Garden Warfare that easily convinced me of PopCap's newest venture with the Plants vs. Zombies series. There was the announcement of Peggle 2, but nobody seemed to care because what follow was easily the surprise of EA's conference. That surprise was... wait for it... Star Wars Battlefront! Eight years following the release of Battlefront 2, we are finally getting a sequel to one of the best Star Wars games out there. Also the multiplayer shooter specialists at DICE are handling the next Battlefront so it should be good. Disappointing enough after the Battlefront reveal, EA's conference took a turn for the worse. There were still some good stuff in this conference such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Battlefield 4 multiplayer and another reveal that we will get to in a bit, but not enough to keep the absolutely horrible from sucking the life from this conference. The horrible started when EA moved onto Need For Speed. The new Need For Speed Rivals looked interesting, but felt too derivative of the past Criterion Need For Speed games. Then EA decided to make a venture into the realm of movies by showing us a trailer for the Need For Speed movie (we all know how this movie will turn out). EA's time in Hollywood was not the lowest point of the conference that honour goes to EA Sports, which drove this conference straight into the ground and kept on digging deeper. From random rapping to nonsensical celebrity appearances to Dana White repeating the same sentence over and over again, EA made a complete and utter joke of their entire sports division. None of the gameplay shown for these sports games looked anything close to the target video that EA put on a pedestal at the Xbox One reveal. Even with all the crap EA put us through, there was a light shining at the end of the dark tunnel. That light was the long awaited reveal of Mirror's Edge 2. The short trailer was enough to send gamers home happy. Just not enough to save a conference that was already six feet under.
EA's press conference started out great, but it was all downhill after the Battlefront reveal. EA tried to bring the conference back to life multiple times but no avail. There were a few good moments, nothing that could make me personally recommend watching past the first 15 minutes of the conference.
