The Critical Corner

More than a week ago, the gaming industry was shaken by the massive news of Microsoft entering an agreement to acquire beleaguered publisher Activision/Blizzard ( who for those who've been in the know, has been embroiled in a massive lawsuit over sexual harrassment and other horrid things happening within the company and at a top level ) in an all cash transaction of $68.7 billion dollars. Considering Activision Blizzard owns some of gaming IP's most lucrative franchises (mainly above all else, the "Call of Duty" franchise whose two most recent entries "Black Ops Cold War" and "Vanguard" where the top 2 best selling games of 2021), Microsoft buying this kind of publisher is the kind of thing that absolutely, definitively changes the gaming landscape forever. It absolutely removes a big third party vertical from the equation (in an even bigger way than when Microsoft acquired Zenimax and took with them Bethesda and all the studios they owned). When ...

  Now that I have moved on celebrating what were the finest gaming experiences I had in 2021 , it's time to look forward to the future and talk about what are the games I'm most anticipating coming into 2022.  Due to the nature of many of the "would be" high profile 2021 releases slipping into 2022, there is a highly likely chance that 2022 is going to be one of those high caliber, early console generation defining years akin to what we got back in 2007 and to a lesser extent 2015. This should be the year where the new consoles start to more fully justify their existence. However, we also have to keep in mind that we're still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as much as many would love to pretend we're close to getting out of these turbulent times, the reality says otherwise. Most developers still are not working back in their office, and while many have now adapted to "work from home" environments, the truth is development will still remai...

Another year has come and gone, and with it comes one of my favorite times of the year: Game of the Year.  2021 for games was certainly an interesting one. As the first full year after the launch of the new generation of consoles with the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S, no one can make the argument 2021 is gonna be fondly remembered as this high watermark for the generation we are about to see unfold (from recent memory, you can look at 2014 and 2019 as similar kind of transitional years). However, even with the lack of that defining game or games that stand as the thing that defined the year overall, I found 2021 to be a haven of variety. As someone that has decried in recent times (particularly in The X Button Podcast) about my recent disenchantment with the AAA scene being so dominated by the open world genre, I feel 2021 was a year where different kinds of experiences were allowed to stand out more thanks to the lack of that one game everyone froths at the mouth about (t...