Dangerous Golf’s Missed Potential
Few things are as fun as Burnout’s crash mode, so it was thrilling that some of the original team members were making a game that would build upon it. Sadly, that idea is a lot cooler in theory than execution, as Dangerous Golf was a bit of a mess. It doesn’t help that the game was filled with extremely long load times at launch, which have now been fixed thankfully, and the game did a poor job of explaining its gameplay systems. Dangerous Golf could’ve been something amazing, but now it’s just an example of missed potential.
Virtual Reality
If anything was set to have a breakout year in 2016, it was virtual reality. This year saw the release of three major headsets, and yet none of them have proven to be a must have for gamers. There are plenty of good games, but none of them have proven to be system sellers yet as they tend to be on the short side. It doesn’t help that heavily anticipated titles, such as Batman: Arkham VR, ended up being busts as they were more of a tech demo than a fleshed-out experience.
Nintendo in General
2016 was clearly a transitional year for Nintendo as the Wii U went out with a whimper, and the company geared up for the Switch’s 2017 release. While 2016 was relatively quiet for the hardware maker, their holiday season was filled with disappointments as the Nintendo 3DS version of Super Mario Maker lacked online functionality, and they were unable to fulfill demand of the NES Classic despite it’s ridiculously short controller cords. Throw in a mixed response to their first major iOS offering of Super Mario Run, and Nintendo had a forgettable 2016.
