Review Of The Year 2015: January

Looking back on the year that was 2015, January started with free gifts. It’s always a good way to start the year, even if they were an apology from Sony for the PSN being down over the Christmas period.  The PSN continued to be unreliable for most of the month as millions of brand new PS4s were connected to the network with Sony claiming over 18.4 million units had been sold by mid January. To be fair, Microsoft had their fair share of network problems including a bunch of issues near the end of the month.

The rumour mill was in full swing with suggestions of Limbo landing on PS4 (correct), the launch date for Destiny: The House of Wolves (correct) and that a future Far Cry may include dinosaurs (almost correct).

It was a bad time to be in the games industry as a whole, as AOL closed most of it’s video game websites, most notably merging Joystiq in to Endgadget, whilst Sega culled 300 jobs as it moved away from AAA games. Ex-Infinity Ward member Robert Bowling shut down his studio, Robotoki, alongside development of their game Human Element.

Nintendo also courted controversy by announcing a revenue sharing scheme in which the Japanese giant would get a slice of any profit generated by YouTuber’s who feature the games from the company.

January is always a quiet time of year of the games industry and this year we took the brave move of not posting any news at all and then explained why. It was also pretty quiet in terms of games, the biggest releases being Grim Fandango Remastered, Resident Evil HD, and Saint’s Row: Gat out of Hell, the latter of which fared rather badly and only managed to score 5/10.

Hopes were lifted by the Evolve beta but were then crushed as it was buggy as hell and barely anyone could get connected. Sony also confirmed a partnership with Spotify, which would bring the music service in to replace Music Unlimited.

Fortunately Dying Light was released in the last few days of the month – but only as a digital game to start off with, thanks to distribution hiccups – and brought some much needed fun and carnage. “Dying Light just falls short of greatness,” noted Jim in our review, and I’m inclined to agree. 

Looking back the news from January there are a number of games that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Monster Boy & The Wizard Of Booze has slipped until next year and has a new title, Gunsport was revealed but has been silent ever since, whilst APB: Reloaded was meant to be out on consoles in June and is now MIA.

As is custom in these year reviews, I am obliged to tell you about the weather, so here goes: it sucked.

Outside the world of gaming, the world was shocked as the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were stormed by gunmen, killing twelve people and injuring ten. A 193 vehicle pileup occurred on the snowy Interstate 94 highway in the USA and The Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes forward, the closest it has been to midnight since 1984. The move was due to climate change (2014 was the hottest year on record) and the many conflicts occurring around the globe.

In summary, January is utter rubbish and should be avoided at all costs. This time round, I suggest we stock up on canned goods, nachos, and Haribo Tangfastics, and hibernate during January 2016. Just hide under the duvet and watch endless TV series on Netflix until the month has passed. Who’s with me?