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This was the year. This was the year that I finally ran out of patience. Perhaps it has something to do with 2019 being the last full year for the current gen, but I suspect, my utter ambivalence to the vast majority of video games in 2019 (beyond many of them being rather average), is that they all feel so utterly, soul destroyingly familiar. I just can\u2019t do it anymore. I can\u2019t commit, what is often 30+ hours of my life to video games that I have ostensibly already experienced. Sure, the furniture might have been moved around and the walls have had a fresh lick of paint applied, but far too often this year, I\u2019ve found myself suffering from some rather severe, and often rather depressing, cases of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n
Judged on their own merits, or experienced in some kind of gaming vacuum, titles such as The Division 2, Gears 5 and Borderlands 3 are well made, carefully crafted, feature-filled experiences of the highest order. They are all mechanically fantastic, visually impressive and largely enjoyable. If I had never played their predecessors, I\u2019m sure I would have loved them all. Problem is, I have, and I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
These are just 3 of the games that I have tried and failed to get through in the last 12 months (there are many more), games that, I was fully expecting to enjoy but, due largely to their relentless familiarity, I gave up on within a few hours of starting. None of these games are bad (far from it), they\u2019re just, well, the same.<\/p>\n
The Division 2<\/a> improves on its predecessor in many ways, but when I started playing it earlier this year, it felt like I had only just finished the original, a game that, while flawed, at least felt somewhat unique upon its initial release. The Division 2 though, it just played like an impressively robust expansion, one that, for all its minor technical improvements, felt like the same game in a much more boring location (sorry, Washington DC).<\/p>\n Gears V<\/a>, well, that was a great game too. A return to form after the relative disappointment of Gears 4, but yeah, more Gears. For all the efforts to improve storytelling and to deliver a more varied colour pallet and collection of locales, at its core, it was just Gears of War again \u2013 a prettier version of a game that I have played, what, 5 times before? It played fine. In fact, it played better than fine, but at its core, it was the same thing I\u2019ve done so many times before.<\/p>\n Borderlands 3<\/a> and, let\u2019s be honest, pretty much every Ubisoft game released for the past few years (and yes, that includes the brilliant but again, far too familiar Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyssey), these are all sequels to games that I have loved, games that I have put so many hours of my life into, but a series that, for now at least, I simply need to walk away from. The next generation is on its way, and most of these games will surely be getting further sequels (and remakes\/upgrades) in the next few years, but honestly, a new coat of 8K paint won\u2019t be enough. These series need to make fundamental changes to their mechanics and structure as, man, they\u2019re all getting so stale.<\/p>\n Just to be clear though \u2013 my issue isn\u2019t with sequels \u2013 it\u2019s with series that stay mechanically stagnant. 2018\u2019s God of War is a perfect example \u2013 it might be the, oh, I don\u2019t know, 73rd<\/sup> God of War video game, but despite maintaining the characters, tone and essence of the series, it essentially reinvents itself to become something utterly new while preserving enough familiarity to keep longstanding fans of the series happy. This is something that really needs to happen for so many of these long standing gaming franchises and, well, just about every game that Ubisoft have in development. Perhaps the relative failures of the new Ghost Recon<\/a> and, to a lesser extent, The Division 2 will be enough to see a that much needed shift,\u00a0but who knows. They\u2019re taking another year off for Assassin\u2019s Creed too, so yeah, perhaps change is actually coming.<\/p>\n I appreciate that they are easy prey in this argument, but the homogeneity of their game design really is a perfect example of gamers being asked to essentially play the same game over and over again \u2013 often across different franchises. Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyssey<\/a> is so similar to Assassin\u2019s Creed Origins<\/a>, which is itself, very similar to Watch Dogs, a series that will feel oddly familiar to those that have experienced the most recent Ghost Recon games, which themselves will often remind you of Assassin\u2019s Cre\u2026..oh God, the argument is eating itself.<\/p>\n