Hello readers and welcome to the Eleventh Day of Blogmas as we join in with this fabulous Christmas sing-a-long, all brought to you by the fantastic mind of Athena from AmbiGaming.
So! What are we singing about today? Well…
On the 11th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: List two games you’d improve
Lets sing!
On the 1st day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are 12 favorite gaming memories?
On the 2nd day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us 11 games you love!
On the 3rd day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are 10 reasons you’d play a game
On the 4th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Give us 9 games on your to-play list
On the 5th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: 8 characters you love!
On the 6th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Share seven of your favorite posts
On the 7th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us your six gaming/blogging resolutions
On the 8th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are five games you’ve played more than once?
On the 9th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: Share four dramatic/memorable game moments
On the 10th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: What are three things you want gamers to know about games for the new year?
On the 11th day of Christmas, the gamers said to me: List two games you’d improve
Oof! OK. I’m going to go weird with this one and pick one game I’ve never played and one game that is, like, one of my favourite games in a series I love but has one crucial thing missing.
We Happy Few (Compulsion Games, 2018)
I’ve never played We Happy Few. I doubt I ever will. It came out in August 2018, however my relationship with this game stretches back as far as 2015 when I first read about it in a games magazine and watched the first stunning trailer.
This game was going to be a huge deal. From the trailer I was blown away by the style. It is actually a pretty terrifying thing to watch. The core theme of the game also had me intrigued – it is set in a society where the population are given drugs, I guess by the authorities, which keep them passive and smiling, but your character has seen through this and refuses to take them. This leads to a situation where you have to pretend to be on the drugs, because if they figure out you aren’t taking them they will at best force you to take them or at worst kill you.
I wasn’t entirely clear what the game-play was going to be like, but I was impressed by the creativity behind what I had seen and I was convinced it was going to be amazing. The developers encouraged feedback on the game by making it available for early access in 2016, and presumably continued development on it until its eventual release in 2018. However, the game that has been released has received terrible reviews. Whilst many of them praise the style and design, it seems that very few critics were able to get past the game-play, about which I’ve seen the words ‘repetitive’, ‘broken’ & ‘joyless’.
I have no idea what went on behind the scenes, but it is a tragedy that such an awesome idea could have been lost to development hell. I almost wish they had never actually released it, as at least then I could chalk it up as another one that just wasn’t meant to be, rather than an expensive failure. I feel genuine sadness when I think about it, and wish I could improve it to make it into something worthy of it’s amazing, creepy-as-hell potential.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (Bandai Namco, 2012)
I’ve been a big fan of the Tekken series for a long time, and Tag Tournament 2 is one of my favourite games from the series. However, it has one fatal flaw… my main isn’t in it.
When you’re a fan of fighting games you become accustomed to being able to pick up any entry in the series and play as your main, but for some reason Bandai Namco decided to not include Julia Chang in Tekken Tag 2 (or subsequently in the base Tekken 7 game). I know, I know, there’s ‘Jaycee’ (JC, Julia Chang, get it?), and she actually is Julia in disguise, but she has a different move set, with Jaycee leaning much more towards a Luchador style, meaning my previous Julia skills don’t really translate. Characters generally don’t play exactly the same throughout the series anyway, but this was too much of a change for me and I just didn’t enjoy playing as Jaycee.
I get the impression that Julia perhaps isn’t the most popular character and so this seems like a bit of a cheap attempt by Bandai Namco to freshen her up, but for people who have always mained as her like me it kind of sucks. Therefore to improve Tekken Tag Tournament 2 I would add Julia to the roster!
So what do you think? Have you played either of these games and feel I’m being unfair? Maybe you have some other games you’d like to improve. Either way let me know below and make sure you head on over to AmbiGaming to find out which games the other participants have picked!
Thanks for reading,
Pix1001 x
Shoot the Rookie 
Ooooh, mains missing from fighting games is a huge bone of contention with me. It’s become more egregious recently too, with Tekken 7, Soul Calibur 6, and the (frankly insulting) launch version of Street Fighter V. Stop taking out major characters to then hide them behind your pay walls! Smash Bros has a better option, with only genuinely new characters being sold after the fact, but even then, I don’t like an unbalanced playing field in fighters.
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The trailer for We Happy Few was so good, and I remember my expectations just dropping to zero when I found out it would be a generic survival title. I love the game I made it out to be in my head, not the game it became.
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Yeah totally! The Street Fighter V thing was kind of laughable.
Tekken is the only fighting game I really follow properly, but I haven’t bought Tekken 7 because of the way they held back some of the main characters. I can’t believe that Anna and Julia weren’t in it from the start, but the biggest shock to me was not having Lei in at the start, he is such a unique character and I imagine lots of people must’ve been fuming about that!
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Yeah, it was really sad the way it turned out. I bet they wish they could go back a few years and make the game we all had in our heads!
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It’s the way things are going sadly. Hold back as much content for resale as you can get away with. At least the whole on-disc DLC practice died out.
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On-disc DLC?!
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Ah! It was a short lived practice with Street Fighter X Tekken being the biggest name offender. The DLC you could buy was already on the game disc, and you were paying for a key to unlock it. You literally already had the content but you weren’t allowed to touch it! It made a mockery of the concept of a game being supported post launch when the content was already available.
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Wow…that sucks! Yes I’m very glad that isn’t a thing anymore.
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