2016: A Retrospective – More Major Franchises

Today let’s have a look at some more of 2016’s major franchise installments. While we've already mentioned several of the top series in our previous post on the games of 2016, we're going to try to fit the rest of them in today. Lots of these are action games or RPGs, and truth be told, the lines between the two genres have been prety unclear for years now. This year did see its chare of serious highlights, not to mention a handful of must-have remasters, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition, a re-release of Bethesda’s 2011 smash hit, BioShock: The Collection, which collects all three games in the series and remasters the first two, and finally, if you have a Wii U, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD is a tenth-anniversary remake of the 2006 GameCube title.



Perhaps one of the most highly acclaimed games of the year was the PS4-exclusive Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, the conclusion of developer Naughty Dog’s series that began back in 2007. The game has been cited as one of the most fully realized games in the genre, with vast amounts of content, a compelling plot, top-notch voice acting and writing, gorgeous visuals that take full advantage of 8th-gen hardware, and improved gameplay mechanics, as well as a willingness to play with and even break free from well-worn action game conventions. I guess the only bad thing we could say about the game is that it’s only available on the PlayStation 4.



Far Cry Primal was one of Ubisoft’s top titles in 2016, and one of the most unique games released all year. For a series that is so well known for its arsenal of modern weapons and vehicles, the choice to go all the way back to prehistory is a bold one. Far Cry Primal does feature a wide range of weapons like spears, slings, and arrows, but players have to craft them themselves. The game also features a whole menagerie of Stone Age animals, which can be hunted and killed, or in some cases, captured and tamed, even ridden. For better or for worse, the game is a lot more open-ended than previous titles in the series, and its graphics are some of the best – the game was particularly praised for how the developers animated facial expressions and body language. Unfortunately, many players either felt like there was not enough to do within the hunter-gatherer setting, or that they didn’t fully realize the potential of this unique scenario. In any event, the game was more successful than Ubisoft expected, and it’s certainly worth checking out.



Going over to Japan, Final Fantasy XV had been hyped by Square Enix for over a year, and lucky for them, the game does seem to have lived up to much of it. Final Fantasy is a series that has long seemed to have its glory days behind it, but Final Fantasy XV actually takes the series in some interesting new directions. The story take place in a large open world, and the combat system takes its cues from Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Type-0: action-based, taking place in real time and within the current environment (as opposed to a battle screen). Players have full control of the main character Noctis, as well as the ability to give contextual commands to his AI-controlled companions. Sales were good, but not spectacular for the series, but one particular critic – Hironobu Sakaguchi, the guy who actually created Final Fantasy back in the 80s – called it his favorite game of 2016.




Another Japanese titan of the gaming industry is Bandai Namco, and 2016 saw the release of the third and final installment in their highly acclaimed Dark Souls series, developed by FromSoftware. Dark Souls III follows 2014’s Dark Souls II very closely in terms of gameplay and other design elements, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One thing the latest game does (re)introduce however is a magic system borrowed from Demon’s Souls, the 2009 spiritual forebear of the Dark Souls series. Dark Souls III also places a greater emphasis on RPG elements like character customization and specialized use of various weapons. The combat system is also a bit more fast-paced than in previous installments. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Dark Souls III was a critical success as well as a fan success (check the Steam reviews – nary a red thumbs down to be found, it seems), and sold really well.



In 2014, the original Watch_Dogs was one of those games that saw so much publicity – even on mainstream TV – that you could just feel it in your bones that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. And it didn’t – though it did manage to sell a lot of copies, enough for Ubisoft to make a sequel. Watch_Dogs 2 has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, in large part due to the fact that it compares so favorably against the first game, while retaining the elements that actually did work there. Featuring a much more likable cast of characters and a deeper and more developed game world (San Francisco this time, too), Watch_Dogs 2 also manages to do away with some of the more unpopular elements present in the first game, such as the necessity of climbing up towers to advance the story. All in all, fan opinion seems to indicate that this game represents a much more mature and enjoyable version of what the first game could (or should) have been.



For today’s last title, I’d like to go in an entirely different direction and discuss a pair of the highest selling games of the whole year – Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon for the Nintendo 3DS, coinciding with the series’ 20th anniversary. Since there are some people who buy Nintendo handheld systems exclusively for Pokémon games, they’d better be good. And these games – the first pair in the “seventh generation” of Pokémon games – apparently do live up to the hype. The new games take place in a Polynesian-esque world known as Alola, and introduce 81 new Pokémon (bringing the total to 801). Other new elements include new forms of previously introduced Pokémon, special powerful “Z-moves”, new creatures called “Ultra Beasts”, and more, along with some nice new graphics. The games are also going to be compatible with the Pokémon Bank introduced in Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, allowing players to transfer their Pokémon from previous entries in the series.