Recently, while playing games with a group of friends, we were talking about this year’s E3 and all the trailers, demos and previews shown. Many developers this year presented “in-game” trailers but the amount of scripting involved was rather obvious and in our eyes, hurt the overall show. Of course it’s no doubt companies script their demos because the game is still running on an early build and when something is planned ahead of time, much less can go wrong. It also allows them to demonstrate new mechanics or visuals and other things that could get people excited about their game.
That’s when one of my friends asked “What was the last game you got hyped for?” My answer was Mass Effect 3 and one of my friend’s answered Dragon Age 2. We joked about the commonality these two answers shared but it made me think of another question, hence today’s article.
What was the last game that truly lived up to your hype? Honestly, it’s a question that I have to think about. There have been so many games that promise the sky and fall short that my instinct when seeing a game trailer now, even if it looks good, is to doubt it. In fact, I’m not the only one as an overall negative attitude towards pre-release advertising is becoming more and more pervasive in gaming culture.
After thinking through the last five years, I had an answer. The last game I got hyped for and still holds up for me to this day has to be Battlefield: Bad Company 2. That’s a game where I actually paid money just to try out the beta and loved every minute of it. I spent hours playing Port Valdez over and over again in the demo and lost even more of my life to the full game. Sure the campaign wasn’t anything special but that’s not what I got excited for. Bad Company 2 built itself up as an incredible multiplayer shooter and it more than accomplished that goal.
But that’s a game from four years ago; has there really been nothing since then that got me excited and didn’t disappoint? What about Portal 2? It was my favorite game of that year! But it wasn’t so much hype as it was expectation. Birds fly, fish swim, Valve makes great games.
What about one of my favorites from the year after that, Far Cry 3? I admit, I was looking forward to it but I wasn’t jumping out of my chair for it. Plus, while I thought Vaas made a great first impression in the trailer, it was playing the game twice at PAX that impressed me more, something most people didn’t get to experience.
Okay then, what about Mass Effect 3? After all, I said I got hyped for that game and I wasn’t kidding. I pre-ordered the digital collector’s edition, played it at PAX, watched every single trailer the day they came out, pre-loaded the game, watched it download and booted up the game on 9PM Monday the second it became available to play on Origin. Because I had so much free time then, I did nothing for the next three days except play and play and play. My first run-through of the game had no complaints; I loved every single minute on the screen. Then, after the “ending”, suddenly the game wasn’t a 10/10 experience anymore. Mass Effect 3 is a game that I do still enjoy and have sunk many hours into but it doesn’t hold up because every time I play it, a new problem surfaces and the game becomes slightly worse.
In the year after that, I had the opposite experience with Bioshock: Infinite. At the time, I didn’t care much for the original and hadn’t seen a single promo about Ken Levine’s latest game since the announcement trailer. To be fair there was certainly a lot of hype about this game pre-release but I didn’t partake in any of it myself. I didn’t plan to buy the game at all, until I saw it on Steam, along with the temptation of getting a free copy of XCOM if I pre-purchased it. With no other games to play at the time, I gave them the money and booted up the game. Two play-sessions later, I finished it and unlike Mass Effect 3, there was no letdown. Instead, I was jaw-dropped, watching the credits scroll by as I thought to myself “…Wow!”
What I learned is that it’s better to be surprised than disappointed and that’s the attitude I’ve taken since then. That doesn’t mean I go into all games expecting to hate them. If they come from a prestigious developer, I just expect them to be good. Not great, just good, and that’s not too much to ask for right?
Occasionally though, I can’t resist jumping on the hype train, much like everyone else I’m sure. The Master Chief Collection had me anxiously waiting in anticipation; but even then, it’s because I knew it was going to be great. Halo 2 classic is my all time favorite multiplayer game and I played Anniversary’s multiplayer twice at PAX this year.
What upsets me is how much video game companies seem to rely more on hype these days with Watch_Dogs and Destiny being the most recent examples. Are either of them bad games? No. Are either of them great games? No.
Hype and big marketing only exist in the moment; rarely do advertising campaigns get looked back on fondly, or even looked back on at all. People ten years from now, won’t care that Destiny or Watch Dogs were hyped to the moon with billboards, TV ads, pre-order bonuses and internet ads. They will only be paying attention to the game itself.