My biggest gaming disappointment of 2012: Or how Starbreeze Studios broke my little black heart

Originally this piece was going to be about the top five gaming-related disappointments in 2012, and then I realized that this year wasn’t really that disappointing outside of delays like Bioshock: Infinite.  So I broke it down into the only two items that bothered me, and it wasn’t that hard to figure out which one hurt more. It was, after all, just a decision between light shame and true disappointment.

I bought Diablo 3. Full price. Why? Not because I’ve ever loved that series but instead because I noticed that everyone including my non-gamer pals were getting it. I thought it would be interesting to play with a couple of them, and it was pretty cool to help somebody who hadn’t played a game in five years get used to the UI. But good grief, Diablo 3 is about as mediocre as they come, and the game is so unabashed about how mediocre it is as well. By the time I reached the last two acts,  I got the distinct impression that the writers just stopped caring at that point about the absurd, cliché-filled prophecy of doom storyline they had created and were counting on me not to care either. Guess what? They were right.  But that smugness, that attitude that the story doesn’t have to matter one iota because this is an RPG/loot hunt and your company’s name is Blizzard and people will buy your product regardless is just annoying.  Torchlight IIdoesn’t have the greatest plot in the universe, but at least the writers created a universe interesting enough for me to remember the basic story arc.

Ultimately that experience didn’t burn me too badly. Blizzard is now renowned for making average quality games with interesting cartoonish visuals and shoehorned multiplayer, so I should have known better. But at least I’m not alone in this particular shame. Live and learn. So on, so forth.

No, the real crushing disappointment this past year goes by the name of Starbreeze Studios. To folks who don’t already know where I’m going with this: Starbeeze developed both The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and the original The Darkness. These are games that if you haven’t played by now you should run to your nearest used game seller and pick them up for ten bucks.  Both are unsung classics that came along when the first person shooter genre was yet again in desperate need of an adrenaline injection. They were dark and had some of the most immersive environments ever presented in gaming. Want to know what it’s like to escape a hellish space prison with only your wits and a shiv? Play Riddick.  Or maybe you want to tear a couple of mafia fools to pieces with a combination of demonic tentacles and glocks. The Darkness is for you. Both games were just cool. They oozed attitude, and each of them had a compelling story—The Darkness in particular with its incredible supernatural noir cocktail.

 

Let's be real here. Who honestly thought this game was going to be worthwhile, much less fantastic?

On Feburary 21st 2012, Starbreeze’s latest effort, Syndicate, an FPS remake of a tactical game from the early 90s, was released.  There had already been a great deal of pre-release controversy from the original game’s fans over the genre switch. But that didn’t concern me. The original one was released in my pre-gaming days, and besides, I had faith in Starbreeze. They’d already conquered space, demons, and the mob. God knows what wonders they would work with promising concepts like corporate warfare and augmented human beings.  Screw the early yellow Metacritic rating, I declared proudly on the 20^th.

I bought the game the first day it was out.

I was five hours in before I switched the console off and returned the game to Gamestop for trade credit. Syndicate is a steaming pile of crap and one of the most crushing disappointments I’ve ever had as gamer. From the generic run of the mill first person gameplay to the illogically placed difficulty spikes to the vapid, convoluted story to the corridor after corridor after corridor of uninspired baddies—even the rooftop sections felt like they had corridors!—to the worst bloom effect ever utilized in a video game, and that dreadful dubstep soundtrack, there is not a single redeemable quality about Syndicate.

 Arggh! Dat Bloom.

I was actually  a little depressed for a bit over the whole debacle. So saddened, in fact, that I wrote what I believed was a fair and honest (if somewhat snarky) open letter expressing my criticism of the game to Starbreeze. I posted it on the studios’ Facebook wall, not out of spite, but because I wanted them to know how I felt about the game; criticism is the foundation of improvement after all. The link was removed an hour later.

That removal is what really pissed me off and still angers me quite a bit. I wasn’t some asshole kid who had pirated the game and then wrote up a blog post taking cheap shots at it. No, I had actually paid full price for a game, suffered through it, and then voiced my opinion on the developer’s page about it. It’s not like anyone would have noticed anyway, after all, since whoever maintains the page was busy sticking up link after link from reviewers who were softballing the game. Still, the simple act of deleting someone’s criticism speaks volumes about Starbreeze itself.  As a game developer or a manufacturer of any product really, you don’t have to agree with someone’s criticism or even acknowledge it, but to hide it? That’s pretty low for a developer that used to create such fine games. 

There needs to be a certain level of respect between a developer and a consumer, and to disregard that respect is harmful to both the gamer and the quality of the game.  And of course I don’t mean that bowing to your consumer base’s every demand is the equivalent of respecting them. Even during something like MEGate, Bioware had an open channel for fans to send their criticisms, whether they were fair or unfair, and the community manager did her best to let the fans know that their complaints were being heard.

I know for a lot of gamers that wasn’t enough, that they wanted an acknowledgment that Mass Effect 3’s ending was horrible or that Bioware was working on a solution. But it’s more than I got with Starbreeze. At least Bioware had enough respect for their fans to leave that channel open.

Ah well, more money in my pocket to waste on something else.