Gaming's Beautiful Nightmare
Overview
This is an essay by CleanPrinceGaming, aka Tyler J. I've recently started following him on YouTube, and I find that he's one of the best essayists around, not only in the gaming community, but in general. Essay is an art form, and Tyler is an artist who clearly perfected his craft before taking it to YouTube earlier this year.
In this essay, he addresses the state of video gaming over the entire year of 2017, from the roll in of January through the video's posting earlier today. He covers both the good and the bad, from individual games, genres, and entire companies. While there are some divergent feelings from what's presented, for the more part, Tyler sums up the totality of 2017's roller coaster ride pretty dead on (I think my biggest difference is that I didn't like Nier: Automata, largely due to the constant shifts in camera styles w/o having any control over them, something that was key to the game itself, though I can't argue that it saved Platinum Games).
My 2017 Gaming Nightmare
Perhaps the biggest nightmare of 2017, for me, is what the end result for Star Wars: Battlefront II was. Testing the game was fine. The single player story is absolutely amazing, and the gameplay that was generated around that single player story, and to an extent the gameplay that became the multiplayer, was fantastic. However, it all broke down when the Star Card system was corrupted into a monetisation scheme by the hamfisted C-levels that are EA; instantly, it turned from a progression reward system to a pay to win nightmare that essentially ruined Star Wars gaming.
My 2017 Gaming Dream
On a more positive note, the best part of 2017 in gaming was the Switch console. Having a lot of chronic medical issues, any sort of gaming device that's as versatile as the Switch is an absolute boon for gaming. Not being limited to any one type of gaming means - TV/console and sitting, TV/console and couch, TV/console and bed, handheld and sitting, handheld and walking, handheld and laying down - and instead being able to move between them all and have essentially any gaming set up I want at any moment I want is fantastic for being disabled. I'm actually a bit surprised that Nintendo hasn't pushed this a bit more heavily, though I suppose it would be a bit difficult to do so without coming across as uncaring. However, for myself, I've been exceptionally happy that I can go from sitting at my desk with my LCD monitor/TV to standing with the handheld, to walking around, to laying down in bed with the Switch set with the kickstand propping it up as I use the JoyCons as I'm resting.
Conclusion
So those are a negative and a positive from me, along with the video essay itself. I didn't really jump into the discussion just yet on YouTube, because YT comments tend to be a pretty rough place for conversation; I'm still waiting to see where this particular conversation is going to go before adding to it, since it is covering the entire year and it could become a real negative place really quick. I think a discussion here will be a lot less toxic either way.