Similar to point and click adventure games, there was a period of time in PC history when almost everyone owned a construction game. Whether it was one of the popular Tycoon games or the influential SimCity series, there was nothing we enjoyed more than looking down upon an isometric world like a benevolent god, building things, knocking them down and sending our little AI population into disarray.
The latest SimCity title was released to a barrage of criticism thanks to its restrictive employment of DRM, essentially crippling the game for months after its release. Then a rebirth of the Tycoon franchise emerged in the form of the Xbox One exclusive Zoo Tycoon, which took away most of what was fun about the original series (most notably letting animals loose on unwitting visitors) and instead turning it into a Kinect-focused bore, with its creation tools being simplified to the point of being almost non-existent and the key focus of the game being to simply look at virtual animals.
This is not what we wanted out of a Zoo Tycoon reboot.
Rollercoaster Tycoon World is set to release in the near future, though it is being developed by Atari which, given the company’s recent history of poor releases, does not bring us much hope that it will be anything other than another sub-par attempt at reviving the Tycoon sub-genre. This is a crying shame, because there’s still undoubtedly a market for these games. Unfortunately, the only thing that PC developers focus upon now when it comes to building games is aping the crafting mechanics of Minecraft, scaling back world creation in favor of house-building and foraging in grass-coated landscapes.
This is all well and good, but we want to play God again. Give us back our great SimCity, Zoo Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon games, and let us return to decimating our populace with lightning storms, letting ravenous lions tear apart our customers and creating rollercoasters that lead to a black pit of doom.
Construction Game You Can Play Right Now: Banished. This underrated PC indie game mixed traditional city-building gameplay with a strong element of survival, tasking you and your populace with braving the elements whilst maintaining crops, developing your land and expanding your reach across its world. Once you get to grips with its steep learning curve, there’s hours upon hours to be wasted here.
Remember when FPS games used to be more about tactics rather than kill/death ratios? Yes, that was actually the case once upon a time, in a magical era when everyone would be forced to stick to objectives if they wished to succeed, and teamwork was an absolute necessity. The closest the genre gets to this kind of gameplay with mainstream releases is in the Battlefield series, but even that has been watered down in order to court Call of Duty fans.
When we say tactical shooters, we mean games such as Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Operation Flashpoint and the unbeatable SWAT 4. Games that required as much thought as they did a twitchy trigger finger, and that provided a sense of urgency that is almost entirely absent from current-day FPS’, with their infinite respawns and gung-ho action.
The Division could be a return to form for the tactical shooter genre.
Every so often a tactical shooter will release into the wild and largely slip under the radar, such as the unforgiving yet addictive PC indie title Insurgency, a successor to the popular Source mod of the same name, which saw players take joy in the fact that running out into the open all guns blazing would typically lead to them lying on the floor in a puddle of their own blood – the way a shooting game should be.
Of course there’s still room for the Call of Duty‘s and the Battlefield‘s of the world, but much like we long for an arcade FPS revival, we want to see tactical shooters thrust back into the spotlight. Hopefully the upcoming Tom Clancy’s The Division and Rainbow Six Siege can kickstart this much-needed revolution.
Tactical Shooter You Can Play Right Now: Insurgency. Supremely difficult and often frustrating, Insurgency is not for the faint of heart. For those who would deem Counter-Strike too arcade-y and who would balk at the mere mention of Call of Duty, this is the game you could be playing right now.
Back in 2007 Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock solidified the series as Activision’s hottest property, shifting thousands upon thousands of plastic guitar peripherals and forcing parents worldwide to ponder why on Earth their children wouldn’t pick up real instruments. Then along came Rock Band, which took the concept of Guitar Hero and improved upon it by introducing a full set of plastic equipment into the mix, throwing in drums, bass guitars and microphones, allowing bedroom rockstars to live their dream.
Given the immense popularity both series enjoyed, their success was short-lived as Guitar Hero‘s sequels each performed worse than the mighty Guitar Hero III, with Activision and Rock Band publisher EA both having to come to the realization that the world simply wasn’t interested anymore.
Back when rhythm-action games were quirky and silly.
Prior to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, rhythm-action games mostly consisted of quirky titles such as Parappa the Rapper and Donkey Konga, which garnered cult followings but never threatened to break the mainstream. Unfortunately, when the genre eventually did become a pop culture phenomenon, even warranting its own episode on South Park, it simply didn’t have the legs to keep on running.
While we were all burned out by the plethora of plastic peripherals by 2009, the rhythm-action genre has been so stagnant that we now desperately want to see these games make a big comeback. There’s been plenty of speculation that both series are planning to return, and we hope that it’s sooner rather than later.
Back when the original PlayStation still ruled the roost, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 was the game to play, regardless of whether you knew your kickflips from your ollies. Allowing players to easily pull off impressive moves and armed with a wide selection of modes and fantastic maps to skate through, it was the pinnacle of a genre that has long since faded away into obscurity.
It’s odd to think that extreme sports games once frequently rested at the top of end-of-year lists, with titles such as SSX Tricky providing the fast-paced thrills that ordinary sports games could only hope to achieve. Unfortunately, the Tony Hawk’s series slowly began to unravel with a selection of mediocre releases in the form of the American Wasteland series, concluding with the awful Tony Hawk: Ride. SSX attempted a comeback in 2012, but an unforgiving difficulty level made it a lot less adaptable than previous entries in the series.
The 2012 SSX failed to replicate the arcade thrills of its predecessors.
The Skate series provided a great deal of fun for its first two releases, but Skate 3 somewhat tarnished the growing reputation of the series thanks to an array of bugs and glitches, which coincidentally saw EA recently put the game back into print after YouTuber PewDiePie highlighted just how ridiculous the game was in a video series, which saw a whole new generation clamoring to play it – though for all the wrong reasons.
We can imagine that there’s a great skateboarding/snowboarding/BMX game out there just waiting to be made, but unfortunately it seems like the reputations of the genre’s main franchises are too tarnished to warrant that game being released.
Extreme Sports Game You Can Play Right Now: OlliOlli. Whittling the extreme sports genre down to its very basics (the constant pursuit to top leaderboards and achieve a high score), OlliOlli saw skateboarding go 2D in a simple, tremendously addictive game that you’ll struggle to pull yourself away from.
Remember when it was practically a requirement for every console manufacturer to have its own “mascot”? First there was Mario flying the flag for Nintendo, following by Sonic for Sega, and the slightly less beloved Crash Bandicoot for Sony. However, as years went by these mascots transformed from kid-friendly critters into space marines and men holding big guns, with only Nintendo continuing to fight the good fight.
With 3D platformers steadily becoming a thing of the past, we’re at a point now where only the infrequent releases of 3D Mario games and the occasional underwhelming Sonic title are all that the genre has to offer, with Ratchet & Clank nowhere to be seen, Sly Raccoon making a brief return in the form of a HD remastered collection and Jak & Daxter going into early retirement. That’s without even mentioning all the oft-forgotten, admittedly sub-par mascots that the ’90s produced such as Croc, Gex and the like.
It was predicted that Crash would appear at PlayStation Experience. He didn’t show up.
Prior to Sony’s recent PlayStation Experience event it was claimed that a Crash Bandicoot game was practically a dead cert to appear during the company’s presentation, though the Naughty Dog platformer was completely absent from the proceedings. Considering how prolific 3D platformers once were, it’s a little baffling when you consider just how far the genre has fallen into irrelevancy over the past decade or so.
Yes, Mario games are still as good as ever, but we’d like Nintendo to have more competition in this department. 2D platformers such as the excellent Rayman Legends are still alive and kicking, so why is there no love for 3D platformers anymore?
3D Platformer You Can Play Right Now: Super Mario 3D World. When this was first announced people were a little disappointed that Nintendo weren’t looking to reinvent the wheel as they did with the Super Mario Galaxy series, but when the game finally released it was clear that for what it lacked in originality, it more than made up for in pure anarchic fun. Playing a 3D Mario game with four players was, and still is, heaven.
