What will 2018 bring us this Year?

[rainmaster]

Hey guys.

It?s my first time posting here and I am thrilled to be part of a community. I can?t wait to see what 2018 brings, especially for gaming. One of my main thoughts has been where the gaming scene will be heading this time around. Will Virtual reality finally rise in popularity or will we stick to our classic couch potato gaming? Personally, I like the gaming scene just the way it is. Just the right amount of virtual engagement. What do you guys think?

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Welcome! I think gaming is at a point where this generation has solidified it's standards and expectations, hardware and performance-wise. Controls are pretty tight, games are either pretty or artistic. However the AAA scene has been horribly marred by greedy publishers decisions to shoehorn in microtransactions in some shape or form. The crowd that kept buying them was too strong, and defending them for the sake of "they don't affect the gameplay", but the inevitable happened, and pretty soon they will. The memes and jokes about paying to reload your weapon in a full-priced CoD game may not be that far off after all.

Sorry to be so grim, haha. But I've had to skip a lot of my favorite titles last year because of it, so with the whole debacle that came of Battlefront II, let's hope it shakes things up enough.

In terms of VR, I don't think it took off quite as well as many had hoped. Personally, my only interest in it would be in driving sims, and I'm still not willing to shell out that much for something that *might* make me sick if I play too long. But we'll see.

People really enjoy the couch potato, especially the majority of more casual type gamers who just want to unwind. Despite all the master race and other BS, it's also a reason why people like consoles so much. There have been a few popular games with VR that took off pretty well (thanks to RE7, Elite Dangerous, Project Cars, and a few other smaller titles such as on-rails shooters and dungeon crawlers), but not enough to break into real mainstream gaming I believe. I still think it would have to be more accessible to consoles in terms of cost and space required, but we're off to a better start with VR this year than any previous attempts have been.

 

[Yoshi178]

In terms of VR, I don't think it took off quite as well as many had hoped.

my predictions are coming true. what a shocker! lol

 

[CriticalGaming]

I just think that 2018 will be nowhere near as good as 2017 was. But 2017 was a fucking insane year. While there is a lot of potential for 2018, I don't think that there is enough confirmed in the release line up to have any real hope of being as good as last year in gaming. Of course we will have some stand out titles, we always do, but I doubt that they'll hit the same bar that last years games did.

Things like Spider-Man and Crackdown 3, are probably going to be absolute dogshit. Both those titles have been in development and have been delayed too long for them to really be anything remarkable, unless you consider good looking dogshit remarkable.

The Last of Us 2, and God of War will probably be Sony's standouts for the year.

Microsoft will have nothing as usual.

Nintendo who the fuck knows? There is nothing on the confirmed 2018 release list that stands out as a giant hit. Though Dark Souls remaster will be a nice portable frustration.

Virtual reality will continue to go nowhere. The problem with VR is that the tech is beyond what 90% of people can even process, let alone set up and use properly. That's the biggest failure of VR, not the games, not the price, but the fact that most people don't even understand what you need or how to set the equipment up for use. If VR is ever going to take off as a serious format contender, it needs to overcome the "ease of use" hurdle. They need to come up with a way that even a moron can set up and start playing VR without the need of a specific computer threshold or big bulky headset. Playstation VR is probably the closest thing, and if they can come up with a better way than having you use special controllers and a eye-toy in addition to the headset, then I think they'd be in good shape.

Sadly I think the public's interest in VR will die before any of that tech becomes possible.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I hate gaming as it stands today. The AAA industry is marred by greedy corporate bullshit. Microtrasactions, lootboxes, all that crap. There were some games from the AAA sector that looked promising released last year, but I can't afford AAA games even without the bullshit. There is promise in the indie sector, but it has it's own problems.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It'll bring us goddamn Monster Hunter World, that's what it'll bring.

Now if only the PC port would arrive this side of the solstice.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I predict Capcom is going to announce a Resident Evil 4 remake, a.k.a. reskin in the same vein as Crash Bandicoot and the upcoming Shadow of the Colossus remake. Capcom is always eager to whore out that game at every possible oppertunity, and this seems like the kind of 'new shiny gloss for little effort' type deal that's right up Capcom's alley. As a matter of fact, I predict a lot of these types of remakes to emerge in 2018.

 

[sXeth]

VR'll take off if someone manages to get it to a sub-500 dollars threshold, they solve that whole "You can't really move" problem that affects most of the audience, and someone makes a new VR game thats received well and utilizes the medium, rather then simply porting an existing first-person game to it.

 

[Fijiman]

First off I'm wonder why in the hell people are still making new accounts here in hopes of having actual discussions, but whatever.

Anyway, VR will forever be stuck as a niche thing in gaming until it becomes much cheaper and easier for your average gamer to buy and use and has more than a couple of games even worth playing without the promise of more to come.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Nintendo shot it's muck last year with Zelda and Mario so they probably wont do much this year.
Red Dead Redemption will be out this year (if it doesn't get pushed back again) and it will divide opinion instantly, no matter how good or bad it is.
Other than that you can expect the usual dirge of Far Cry: Rinse and repeat, Assassins Creed: Re-skin 12 and Call of Duty: 'Please Euthanise me' edition.
Somewhere along the line 1-3 decent games will come out and nobody will give a shit because of the hundreds of remakes of classic games that weren't really that good in the first place but nostalgia sells better than innovation these days so fuck it.

Yes, i'm cynical but thats what happens when you get older and stop caring about hype and advertising and judge games based on gameplay and difficulty instead.

EDIT: Oh, and there will be more and more industry shennanigans. EA will buy out your favourite developer and turn them into shit and people will continue to moan but keep buying the same old crap because the graphics are fractionally better. A new graphics card will come out that gives games an extra frame/second and the pc elitists will moan about how 60 f/s is unplayable and only 61 f/s is acceptable in the modern era ;P

 

[Trunkage]

Nintendo shot it's muck last year with Zelda and Mario so they probably wont do much this year.
Red Dead Redemption will be out this year (if it doesn't get pushed back again) and it will divide opinion instantly, no matter how good or bad it is.
Other than that you can expect the usual dirge of Far Cry: Rinse and repeat, Assassins Creed: Re-skin 12 and Call of Duty: 'Please Euthanise me' edition.
Somewhere along the line 1-3 decent games will come out and nobody will give a shit because of the hundreds of remakes of classic games that weren't really that good in the first place but nostalgia sells better than innovation these days so fuck it.

Yes, i'm cynical but thats what happens when you get older and stop caring about hype and advertising and judge games based on gameplay and difficulty instead.

EDIT: Oh, and there will be more and more industry shennanigans. EA will buy out your favourite developer and turn them into shit and people will continue to moan but keep buying the same old crap because the graphics are fractionally better. A new graphics card will come out that gives games an extra frame/second and the pc elitists will moan about how 60 f/s is unplayable and only 61 f/s is acceptable in the modern era ;P

oh, come on EA is not that good. It takes a couple of year to run a developer into the ground... So I don't know who they going to buy out for future destruction but Bioware might get its final nail in the coffin, I can't think of anyone else I now care about bought by EA. They already destroyed Visceral.

Nintendo is going to need a lot more third party games to continue their success. I don't know if they have it in them, but I hope. Odyssey was a let down and I'm now worried about their ability to keep making good games.

 

[rainmaster]

I'm hoping God of War is in the near future. From the sounds of it, possibly as soon as a couple months out.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

What will 2018 bring us this Year?

What did 2018 bring us last year?

Spoiler

 

[Avnger]

Firefighters: The Simulation on the Nintendo Switch because the Big N seal of approval seems to have lost all of its meaning.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/firefighters-the-simulation
https://nintendosoup.com/firefighters-simulation-confirmed-switch/

Couple of gameplay videos from Jim Sterling for the PC and PS4 versions respectively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L2EQnGo5gs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFduGjmw9ew

 

[Kyrian007]

VR is 3D TV level dead in 2018. In 2019 it will only be a regret over wasting money on a go-nowhere technology. It will be a "go to a specialized place to experience" arcade novelty at best. There's a reason why screen + controller or mouse and keyboard are STILL the go-to IO after nearly 40 years... There isn't a better option. Cost, ease of setup, and its just very effective. Even touchscreens are relegated to backseat gimmicks vs screen and controller. I don't think until there is hologram and holodeck technology that there will be a better setup than screen + controller or mouse and keyboard.

So 2018... new games. Mostly sequels, prequels, and remakes. An indie darling or 2. 1 or 2 big kickstarter failures or disappointments. Some new hardware. No major consoles, but some rumors about the next ones. And whatever the next big "well we can't sell lootboxes anymore, so how do we satisfy our craving for all the money" dishonest corporate scheme from the publishers will be.

Basically, the same as 2017.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

365 days none of us will ever get back, death, despair, destitution, boundless human cruelty, denial, deception, ignored suffering, economic uncertainty(degradation), and maybe, just maybe, the odd environmental disaster through an increasingly unpredictable climate. Throw in the extinction of an animal species or two while we're at it

...

if you ever needed something to lighten up the family party [small]this napalm here will do the trick[/small]

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Im just mostly hype for Metro Exodus and System Shock. these 2 will make the year 2018. rest are wait and see.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I dunno, is Prime 4 set for this year?

Also, really jazzed for Octopath Traveler (with several very specific worries), the DBZ fighting game was a laugh and a half, and my favorite Souls progenitor is making a console release in Monster Hunter World. If only Capcom would localize Double Cross...

So, my early 2018 is golden at least.

 

[Ravenbom]

VR'll take off if...
...someone makes a new VR game thats received well and utilizes the medium, rather then simply porting an existing first-person game to it.

Yeah, totally. The ports are kind of killing the VR potential.
VR really is a new medium and really needs to develop a new GENRE instead of doing a cut and paste with old genres.

I also think that the genre would be helped if they make headsets that can be flipped up like military NV goggles. Like pull down the goggles to activate detective mode/eagle vision/hunter vision/focus/third eye/etc... and flip up to play or watch cutscenes.

If anything, I think the Switch proved that people like to switch the ways they play games and locking a person in VR at all times is just not what we thought it would be.
A comfy headset like the PSVR with flip up and motion tracking like the Vive and controllers like the Oculus for when you need them.

ALSO - If you're a PC gamer, come on, you're gonna have to try out VR prons and you need a quickflip visor and wireless for clean up. Obviously.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

They already destroyed Visceral.

You are aware Visceral was never independent from EA, but rather a conversion of a previous in-house studio called EA Redwood Shores, right? So they didn't buy them out and run them into the ground, rather it was just an already existing subset of the company that aside from the Dead Space series, didn't make a single game worth talking about. Nor were any of the devs who worked on the only successful IP produced by that studio present for years by the time of its demise.
All in all the loss of Visceral wasn't a major blow to the industry in any conceivable way, it just was an underperforming wing of EA that managed one success among many other titles that ranged from mediocre to crap, and also the Tiger Woods golf series which don't matter for shit.

So while EA has bought, used up, and closed other studios, Visceral isn't one that can really be counted among that list, nor should its closure really be thought of as a mark against the company taking into account its overall history. Its not a defense of EA, mind you, just that I'm of the mind if you're gonna knock the company, do it with arguments that have merit.