H
14
ave you ever wanted to be
bread? Now
you can be
bread, in I
am Bread.
You’d never
guess the concept from the title, but you play
a slice of bread,
rolling
around
a kitchen trying
to become covered in
tasty things, in a game
that borrows more than
a little from Katamari
Damacy. It was a little
frustrating, but undeniably endearing.
Less well received
was Mortal Kombat X,
which launched with
more bugs than an ant
farm in a hospital and
which has been endless
ly patched ever since. It
seems almost unfair that
developers are allowed
to go back and mark
their own homework. It certainly makes
reviewing
games a lot
harder.
Remember
OnLive?
They tried
streaming games
over the internet long
before
infrastructure
was at the point where it
was really viable? Well
they closed down this
CRYPT'S NOT
YOUR USUAL
DUNGEON
CRAWLER.
APRIL MAY
April, after being acquired by Sony. Charitably, one could
say they were trying to acquire their
knowledge and infrastructure for the
PlayStation Now
service. Uncharitably, one could
say they were
buying their rivals a one way plane
ticket to the Himalayas.
The good ship Konami suffered the first
of several engine failures, as they cancelled
the long-awaited Silent
Hills and delisted themselves from the New
York Stock Exchange.
The meltdown would
continue later in the
year, in one of the great
pieces of corporate
tragedy (from an admittedly small selection).
It was a good month
for odd and unusual
gameplay
styles
- Crypt of the
Necrodancer
combined 2D
Roguelikes with
rhythm action to
create dancepadcontrolled
dungeons
full of devious creatures.
Then Kerbal Space Program came along to
teach aerospace engineering of the duct-tape
and string school.
M
ay saw little in
the way of industry news as everyone
geared up for their annual bowl of gruel at E3
in June. But we did get
the birth of one of gaming’s greatest memes, as
the NewsCube Podcast
stumbled upon new release Hyperdimension
Neptunia
Re;Birth2:
Sisters Generation, pos-
JUNE
I
t’s difficult to discuss
June in great depth
without mentioning E3,
so we’ve give it its own
special
recap
box for you
to feast your
eyes on all
the amazing
announce ments which
will inevitably
disappoint.
But E3 wasn’t the entire month. Hatred, a
game pretty much tailormade to incite controversy, came out and, as
JULY
I
t was morning in Britain
when we jumped out of
bed to report on the sad
passing of Satoru Iwata,
a man who did more
than most of us ever will
to shape the trajectory of
gaming in the 21st Century.
His tenure as President
of Nintendo deserves a
discussion of its own, so
it’s discussed elsewhere
- but the fact that public
memorials were opened
for a Japanese CEO,
and his funeral was at-
sibly the greatest name
for a fairly mediocre
RPG ever conjured up
by the human brain.
The release schedule
was largely filled with
indie titles and smaller
games, although Nintendo had their surprise
smash hit of the year
when
Squid-based,
paint-splattered shooter
Splatoon hit Wii U at the
end of the month. The
game, which focuses
on territory control and
covering maps with
paint, has been one
of the few genuinely
popular Wii U exclusives since the console’s
launch, and as a result
been mooted as a possible rallying point for
the ailing system.
expected from anything
made more for its cultural impact than its own
artistic merit or commercial prospects,
flopped.
The
whole point
of cathartic
rampages in
video games
was that the
game punished,
or at least admonished, you for doing
them. It didn’t even have
the unexpected nature
of the No Russian scene
from Modern Warfare
2, or the white phosphorus in Spec Ops: The
Line. By its own intention to shock, it became
abominably dull.
Her Story came out
towards the tail end of
the month, and got a
decent reception thanks
in part to its unique
gameplay style - using
an archive of live-action
video clips in order to
solve a missing persons
case. It was never going
to light the world on fire,
but it did make it moderately more interesting.
tended by over 4,000
people, should testify as
to the impact of the man,
and the strength of his
achievements.
The Ouya, which
briefly lit the world on
fire with massive Kickstarter investment of
$8.5 million in 2012,
breathed its last as its assets were picked up by
Razer, manufacturers of
headsets, mice and other gaming equipment.
The system failed to shift
units after the initial burst
of hype, and was criticised for its small library
and unspectacular build
quality. If you’ve got
one, hold onto it - it may
be worth quite a bit
some time soon.
July
saw
the release
of
possibly the
very last
in the Five
Nights
at F r e d dy’s series, with Five
Nights at Freddy’s 4. Set
in a child’s bedroom, the