Video games are fast becoming an unaffordable luxury. If Ed Miliband ever needs a new angle on the “cost-of-living crisis”, he could lead a fair-pricing campaign. He’d be on to an election winner, given that over half of the nation now plays games regularly.
New instalments of franchises dominated the store shelves this year, among them Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Day Zero Edition, set in the “plausible future” of a world dominated by private military corporations and full of hi-tech weapons. Throw in the price of the game and season pass add-ons and you won’t get much change from £80. Is this value for money? Millions of gamers still think so. I know people who book time off work to play through the whole Call of Duty story in one go.
The big disappointment of the year was Watch Dogs. I believed the hype – this would be like the Grand Theft Auto series with simulated computer-hacking. How foolish I was to jump straight in without reading the reviews! That’s the trouble with buying from a console’s online store. If the game is pap, you can’t take it back to the shop and sell it second-hand to recoup your losses.
Watch Dogs has so many complex side missions and obligatory tasks that it becomes dull; it’s humourlessly derivative of the open world of Grand Theft Auto V. There’s a reason why more than 33 million copies have been sold so far – it’s funny and exciting. Rockstar Games has recently released an updated version for the PS4 and Xbox One that is worth every penny. The attention to detail is impressive, with significantly improved landscapes and new weapons and vehicles. The developers have even added 100 new tracks for the in-car radios.
Titanfall, which was expected to surpass the global leader Call of Duty, was a disappointment. As it was developed by the team behind the original Call of Duty, it had instant loyalty sales. The mechanics allow you to “double-jump” around the landscape and are lovely but the game is devoid of a decent plot. The combat challenges are dull and repetitive. People paid for it, played it for two weeks, then left it completely.
There are, however, some beautiful games in the £20-£40 price range. My choice of the year is Infamous Second Son. It was the first game to show off the souped-up processing power of the new PS4 console. The hero, Delsin, chases his opponents around Seattle and can blow things up with pixel-perfect precision. This game was exclusive to the PS4 and justified my choice to upgrade from the Xbox 360.
The big surprise of the year was Wolfenstein: the New Order. It’s part of the ultimate franchise – the 1992 game was the earliest major first-person shooter. You play William “B J” Blazkowicz, who emerges from a vegetative state in the 1960s to find that the Nazis won the war. The format is so old it doesn’t even have online game play – an impediment in the broadband age. Yet stunning graphics and smooth game mechanics, combined with a gory, humorous plot, produce a memorable game that fully warrants an 18 classification. Keith Vaz missed a trick this year by forgetting to condemn it in the pages of the Daily Mail. If the makers, Bethesda Softworks, can modernise this old classic, we should be in for a treat when they publish a new version of Doom in 2015.
Despite mixed reviews, one game has taken over my life. While Destiny offers little you would consider groundbreaking for a product that reportedly cost £300m to make, it combines a series of game genres into a hugely compelling experience. Bungie, which created Halo, has plundered the best bits of other successful franchises to create an awesome game. Destiny has online play as good as Call of Duty, weaponry as satisfying as Wolfenstein and a touch of the “massively multi-player” feel of World of Warcraft. It’s so good that I broke a golden rule and purchased headphones to assist in online team play. Playing in a team to defeat a larger foe should be completely normal for a socialist MP, yet the sense of inadequacy when you’ve let the side down is huge. Being bettered by younger and more able colleagues is what I play video games to escape from. Plus ça change.
During the recent supposed coup against Ed Miliband, I was planning the downfall of Atheon, the final boss in the “Vault of Glass” raid in Destiny, with a trade union official from Manchester and an English language student from Rome. It’s this experience that has led me to form the view that crime is dropping thanks to video games. If Ed wants an easier life in 2015, maybe he should buy John Mann and Simon Danczuk a PS4 this Christmas.
Tom Watson is the MP for West Bromwich East (Labour)
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