13: It's Style Over Substance - Kingdom Hearts III

Why It Might Suck: Despite being one of the most closely-guarded AAA releases of 2019, Kingdom Hearts III was extensively previewed to the press at an invite-only event last summer, and the general consensus coming away was pretty mixed.

Though there was praise for the visuals and how the game has incorporated various Disney IP - especially Toy Story - some critics also noted a feeling that it was an exercise in style over substance.

The age-old complaints about the series' pesky controls and camera issues have been raised once again, and this is especially problematic as combat can be so chaotic, making it tougher to keep up with the enemy onslaught than it surely should be.

Why It Might Not: While 6 months probably isn't enough time to completely overhaul KH3's issues, it certainly gives Square Enix time to somewhat refine the floaty controls and dodgy camera.

Plus, it's easy to imagine fans and critics alike being so bowled over by the game's overall heft and sweep that these complaints end up more of a footnote than a defining characteristic.

And after all, Final Fantasy XV received overwhelming praise despite its glaring launch problems, so wait and see.

As the last 12 months have proven once again, the wild world of video game development is an insanely unpredictable one.

Could anyone have expected Fallout 76 to end up one of the worst-reviewed AAA games of the last few years, or one of the year's most acclaimed games to be Celeste, an indie platformer developed by just a small handful of people?

As 2019 looms and the cycle begins all over again, it's fair to say that some of next year's most anticipated AAA titles have been raising some red flags as of late.

While it's entirely possible that every single one of these games ends up a pleasant surprise if not a stonking success, the numbers game says that at least some of them will fail to meet expectations.

As ever, it'd be wonderful to be wrong, but you'd be smart to cancel those standing pre-orders and wait for reviews in each case...
http://whatculture.com/gaming/13-reasons-2019s-biggest-video-games-might-suck?page=13
Lalasticlala

after a long break

#1: Sarah's Death - The Last Of Us

Charting Naughty Dog's history from making isometric RPGs to orange marsupials is pretty crazy - but to think that they now deliver some of gaming's most mature and contemplative scenes is truly impressive.

The Last of Us deserves every last one of its awards and commentaries on how to fully immerse the player in a given atmosphere and character-driven plight, but the opening scene with Joel and his daughter Sarah is also an exemplary piece of acting from Troy Baker and Hana Hayes.

Coming after the latter caught a stray bullet during a tense standoff, Baker has to act out a formerly tough, fairly together individual cradling his daughter as she slowly dies in his arms.

With Neil Druckmann's direction and Troy Baker showing Joel's hard exterior cracking to varying degrees as it happens, it's no doubt a moment all involved are immensely proud of pulling off.

Lalasticlala Seun cao

#2: Fighting Ornstein & Smough - Dark Souls

You can't say "boss battles" without Ornstein & Smough. The pair are responsible for more broken controllers and housebound damage than a thousand bouts of Call of Duty.

There's just something about the lopsided way Dark Souls designs its enemy encounters i.e. everybody other than you tends to move faster or have a greater degree of athleticism, meaning that tackling two hulking bosses leaping about the place is challenging just to keep them on screen.

Focus on one too much and the other will instant-kill you from behind. Mistime an attack or heal at the wrong time and you're toast - do pretty much anything other than memorise every attack pattern and have luck on your side, and you're done.

Oh, and whichever one you beat first will be absorbed into the survivor, putting you up against even more attacks and wider damage arcs.

How lovely.

#3: Being In The Final Two - PUBG & Fortnite

Whether Fortnite, PUBG or any number of upcoming battle royale games that'll surely rip off all the genre's base staples, there's something about going from 100 players down to just a couple, that really ratchets up the tension.

Simply because you've had to survive for a good half hour or so at this point, gathering up weapons and resources, perhaps engaging in a firefight or two, this really is now or never.

It's that heart-palpitating rush you get when fighting a particularly tough boss battle, or in any multiplayer game when for whatever reason, it's just vs one other player.

The ultimate test of your skills and with everything riding on whether you get the shot off first or not, there's nothing quite like the final seconds of a battle royale.

#4: Master Miller Is Liquid Snake - Metal Gear Solid

Centred on former friend Master Miller actually being revealed as antagonist Liquid Snake, this twist comes as Snake is locked in a room slowly filling with poisonous gas. First we hear Colonel Campbell losing his mind on the comm as it appears Miller's body was found dead in his home, and had been there for a few days.

Campbell cuts into your feed and frantically states, "The person you've been talking to is..."

"Me, dear brother", as Liquid Snake removes some items that were helping him disguise as your former friend.

The subsequent escape sequence is great too - but finding out Liquid had been keeping tabs on you all along?

It really made you want to take the fight to him as soon as possible.

#5: Being Asked To Kill A Child - The Walking Dead (Season 1)

Alright, back to the horrifying stuff.

Narrative gaming at its finest, season 1 of The Walking Dead remains a career-best for Telltale, as which other game stories could actually set up the sad state of a zombie-infected child, and ask you to decide on their fate?

Options include backing out and forcing the parents to do it, or picking up the pistol yourself. In a really affecting detail, the longer you wait in this scene the more Duck's breathing will slow, as the zombification process truly takes hold.

It's a stark reminder that zombie fiction doesn't have to go the way of action and spectacle, the genuine horror of losing someone to a soulless husk of their former self is far more emotional. Not to mention, the endless conversations surrounding the sea of grey that is "doing what's right".

#6: The Moon Reveal - The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Like seeing Pyramid Head for the first time or coming face to half-torn face with a Necromorph, Majora's Mask excels when it comes to disturbing imagery that sticks in your mind forever.

It's still this weird outlier in the Zelda canon, reusing Ocarina of Time's engine and character models before rearranging them into a twisted, nightmarish one-off where you need to manipulate time to figure out a huge number of puzzles and quests, the reality of what you're up against doesn't hit you right away.

Rather, although you're told it's the end of the world, the reality of that doesn't land until you're humbly looking out across the planes with your telescope - only for antagonist Skull Kid to point upwards and BAM, there's a huge demonic, grinning moon glaring down.

Only Nintendo could twin Zelda's fairytale whims with a moon that looks like a demonic high school teacher after an afternoon of incessant noise, and it looks BRILLIANT.

#7: Obliterating Megaton - Fallout 3


Every great RPG or open world needs a "Will they let me do... this?!" moment.

Fallout 3's comes right at the beginning, almost exemplifying with an exclamation mark what an RPG where the player can do whatever they want would be like. Triggered by deviating away from the moral imperative of disarming a latent nuke at the centre of Megaton, you can actually rig it to blow by talking to one "Mister Burke."


Doing so will give you a pulse charge that when placed, allows you to go back and hit a button to watch the explosion from a "safe" distance.

It's not until you actually do this though (even out of morbid curiosity), that the reality of dooming an entire township to death will hit you. The image of a nuclear cloud is striking and sobering enough, but Fallout goes one further by deafening you with the delayed noise of the explosion itself.

The real question after this was: Did you reload your save out of guilt, or live with the consequences?

Sephiroth Discovering His Origin And Destroying Nibheilm

Still one of the best villains in gaming history, the multi-faceted half-God Sephiroth starts out with a heart of gold - or at least, the heart of a damn fine soldier looking to do good.

Come a few hours into the game however, and Sephiroth not only realises that the name he was given to identify his mother, Jenova, is actually something of an alien lab experiment, but that he too, was created rather than born.

To understand this he pours over all the evil corporation Shinra's notes on the Jenova project; their research into what Jenova is or can create, and ultimately decides to embark on a quest for destruction.

He burns the friendly neighbourhood town Nibelheim to the ground, despite being welcomed there only hours before, as one of gaming's most iconic shots shows Sephiroth standing amongst the flames, happy to channel anything that connotes his impending apocalypse.

No Russian: Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Speaking of out-of-nowhere scenes, Infinity Ward thought the best way to show you first-hand what the impact of terrorism on everyday life looks like, was to give you a gun and let you open fire in an airport.

Narratively it was set up as a way for character Joseph Allen to maintain his cover amongst a Russian gang; the titular "No Russian" referring to the lack of anyone speaking the language, because your fellow miscreants are also pinning this on America instead.

Controversial as all hell because you can join in the slaughter, the sheer visual impact of watching scores of innocent bystanders run for cover is horrifying in itself. Not to mention the personal realisation of your own voyeuristic limits, should you decide to pull the trigger.

As a medium where the audience is always an active participant in whatever's happening on screen, games have the power to deliver impactful, intense and all-round engaging moments in a far more direct fashion than any other.


Yes, we remember plot twists and certain revelations in cinema and yes, reading through some detailed passage as to 'who the killer was all along' will hit home, but when it's literally YOU who's been played? That's something else entirely.


Many confident developers know exactly how you'll explore a level, connect with a character, establish motivations and see them through - only to invert everything and use that sensation to drive a different message all along. Many indie devs are pioneering ideas just like this, and it's mighty impressive to see .


Whether it be particular moments or entire games that revel in establishing tones we then spend hours interacting with, gaming can combine intense acting performances, tightly shot scenes, jaw-dropping script beats and attention-grabbing cinematography, all in one.


When all this happens with you at the controls... it's pretty damn special.
http://whatculture.com/gaming/20-most-intense-video-game-moments-ever

I'm confident that you'll have been able to happily indulge in the misfortune of this loathsome lot of cheaters, in fact maybe this even spurred a few of your own memories of playing with troublemakers. if it has we'd love to hear them and more to the point how they were handed their comeuppance share your stories in the comments below and don't forget to keep it clean and play fair when you're online.
Lalasticlala

#1: H1Z1
H1Z1 is an open world zombie survival game, with elements of crafting survival and cooperation. Yeah another one, but like the rest it has quite a following and a chunk of those are unscrupulous hackers, they make themselves invincible, shoot through walls and generally are quite the nuisance.


30,000 of these nuisances were scalped from the game and the demand made by John Smedley for re-entry into H1Z1 is the ultimate humiliation, a video apology of the tens of thousands of bans. Only three people's videos were deemed sincere enough to allow reentry the rest while they either festered or their failed submissions were uploaded by the deads themselves in a mockery video even I think that's way too brutal but still pretty damn funny.

#2: SlenderMan
Bugging through a wall is a time-honored method that players abused to wriggle their way outside of game's boundaries and in fairness when the freaking sweat man is chasing you, it's pretty fair to want to get out of there at all cost.


Sadly you should know that's not going to fly with the Slenderman, while glitchers who managed to hop out of bounds will be greeted with not only no floor but the horrifying message, the Slenderman saying loud and clear "Not even a bug in this game will save you from me"...... Duly noted, it won't happen again

#3: The Witcher 3
The Witcher 3 earned itself a lot of praise, a lot of awards and a lot of brilliant ratings. I remember every step of our journey for many players, a few thousand of those steps were spent camped in the same cow field, exploiting an unintentional get-rich-quick method as they skim the same cows over and over and over again ad nauseam to line their pocket.


Project Reds response to this summons up an enormous monster to rampage across the Cow field massacring any would-be cow tippers, a little harsh, but a lot effective.

#4: GTA 5 Online
GTA5 online is no-holds-barred mayhem, you'd be forgiven for thinking that in this explosive world of organized crime and drug induced hallucinations anything goes.


Well actually you wouldn't be forgiven by Rockstar


For players too destructive even for this chaotic environment they were gifted a dunce cap, the equivalent of a big glowing neon arrow pointing down on you that says "this guy's a douche".


So remember next time you want a little retribution on that guy who obliterated your sports car with an 18-wheeler, be sneaky about it, plant some c4 instead

#5: Max Payne 3
Some bans are sometimes called for, they're quite absolute. Developers may want to afford players a second chance to redeem their mistakes, specifically, the developers of Max Payne 3 who in lieu of a total banishment simply sent offenders to their own little server populated by other cheaters then have the opportunity to forge their own destiny.


Well they either work their way back into the ranks of normalcy to play with everyone once again or continue their sinful ways with the rest of the rejects, probably most hacker would choose neither they probably just slit out the disk and put something else in and then cheat it in that too

#6: Banjo Koozie
Banjo Kazooie was a fairly forgiving, yet very stern game. It had a host of cheat codes we could use to ease the experience or inject some wacky fun but should we stray from those officially supported cheats, the retribution would be brutal.


Entering an unofficial cheat code once prompt a warning that "should we continue, our progress would be wiped". The second time a friendly mole pops up to calmly reaffirm the threat on the third it all came true and any pushy gamers met their makers their game pack and our progress with it was erased. I don't think there are any cheat codes to get around that.

#7: Guild Wars 2
It seems that the Devs behind Guild Wars have a sadistic streak that carried all the way into the sequel, cue our unwitting victim a cheater Darkside .


Darkside had the bright idea of dodging the skill effort in practice other players put into the game's excellent combat system opting for the dishonorable route of hacking his way to crazy damage instead.


Chris clearly head of Guild War to security took that quite personal, he assumed control of Darkside's characters, disrobed him publicly, shamed him and had him jumped to his death, then deleted his account.


That's what i call a gank

#8: Guild Wars Dhuum
Sometimes a loud example must be made a shady ban and a sternly worded email just may not be enough. Sometimes you need the personification of death to surface to decimate the offender's soul .


Guild Wars took that kind of approach for any user found breaking the rules. The massive doom Guild Wars answer for the Grim Reaper, would arise from the ground to slice the offender into giving all those around him a very clear message if you cheat you too will be murdered. I think that's pretty effective if nothing else.

#9: Link's Awakening
Link's Awakening wasn't important outing for the series. Established as one of Nintendo's heavy hitters, it needed to score a home run on the Game Boy handheld to cement its position.


Nintendo wanted to go to whatever lengths necessary to assure we enjoyed the game fully including branding us a thief and killing us in cold blood if we stole from the humble shopkeeper he'd label us a thief. A title everyone would use in place of our actual names


What's worse than that disgrace, should we walk back into his store perhaps to offer an apology he'd wipe us off the face of Hyrule with a laser gun next time we'll pay in cash.

#10: Animal Crossing
Despite its warm friendly exterior, the game will not take your crap and should you attempt to cheat the system by resetting away your mistakes, it will make you pay with an angry little mole popping up from the dirt and launching into an angry rant at you the aptly named reset II the mole will eat up those precious minutes of your time you were trying to save, by working the safe system lecturing you on what you've done wrong and in the process calling you a "thumb sucking twerp"


If a verbal beatdown from a subterranean tunnel dweller won't make you stop I don't know what will

For those of us who play fair, seeing a cheater rocking up the rankings with cheap tricks and hacks is infuriating. However, seeing these conniving players receive some much-needed discipline, that's raw gratifications.


I've decided to compile a countdown of some of the most creative and awesome ways, video games have gone about dishing out some sweet sweet punishment to players.

dauntless15:
Sorry i can't access my mail, can you find a dead thread and drop your contact? When i like it just take it down, mention me when you do.

Drop yours let me add you up

dauntless15:
Hi, there's something i want to discuss with you, whatsapp?

Sent you an email

The only game that's worth an honourable mention in the list is World Of Warcraft but...... Let's leave it at that for now

omoalayo:
Where is Red Dead Redemption ?? Op .....ehhh...

Red dead is still a very new game, most users haven't gotten the chance to buy/play, and it was released very late which is a big let back

it still has a long way to go before being considered the best game of 2018 (if possible)

vasaratti:
Hello guys, straight to the point, we are counting down the top 10 most popular video games in 2018.


Now let's get into the top 10, this list is gonna be ranking the most popular games based off of concurrent and monthly active users concurrent users of the number of players a game has at any given time, the number of players logged in at once, monthly active players and the number of users that log in and play at least one game every month.


It's important to note that not every game releases both statistics so at certain points here, I'm looking at one games monthly active users and another, games daily concurrent users and it makes it a little difficult to compare but I did my best so enjoy

EMEKA1MILLION:


Im still wondering how he came up with that list...

Check the bolded in my intro

#1: Fortnite

Finally the number one most popular video game in the world in 2018 is Epic games brand new game fortnight released late in 2017.

Fortnite recently broke records peaking at almost 4 million concurrent players, Fortnite is another Battle Royale game where you are put in a playing field but only one survives Fortnite has also been challenging League of Legends as the most popular streamed game on Twitch and YouTube.

Its cartoony take on Battle Royale makes it extremely accessible to a massive audience but because it's the newest game on this list it's gonna be interesting to see whether it can stand the test of time there you have it guys the 10 most popular games in 2018

#2: League Of Legends
The second most popular game in the world right now is Riot Games, League of Legends. It still maintains some of the highest concurrent player base worldwide with 81 million active monthly users and is still consistently the most viewed game on Twitch TV.


League of Legends also has arguably the most healthy and popular competitive gaming scene with its World Championship games often surpassing the viewership of even Basketball and Baseball games