14 DAY TRIAL // I have written quite a few reviews this year, a Weekend Reading for every week and news every day and looking back on the whole year I cannot escape the feeling that this was, despite some very good games coming out, somewhat of a lost year for me and for the industry in general.
Most publishers overhyped their games and invested more and more in advertising rather than in delivering quality and the fact that the biggest launches of the year, from Call of Duty to Battlefield to Uncharted to Saints Row to Skyrim, had version numbers of at least three is a little bit depressing in its own right.
This is also a year when rumors about exciting new hardware platforms have failed to materialize, when the 3DS performed worse than expected and the reveal of the new Wii U from Nintendo failed to ignite the imagination of most players.
A look at the numbers paints a similarly bleak picture, with the industry in general showing a decrease over 2010 even if Call of Duty: Black Ops has managed to once again break all records and become the biggest entertainment launch of the year.
Sure, as a gamer I had quite a few bright spots, like Dragon Age 2, The Elder Scrolls V, Total War: Shogun 2, Football Manager 2012 and FIFA 12, but they were mostly linked to my biases and my obsessions rather than to incredible innovation coming from a developer or another.
I might have played more hours this year than at any other point in my life but somehow the hours spent with the titles seemed a little emptier than at any other point.
Let’s hope that 2012, with a new home console launches and another two set to be announced, and with a slate of new games and a bigger move towards social and experimentation will be a better year for gaming than 2011, which we are now preparing to leave behind.