For our sole ignoble Game of the Year award, we take a look at this year’s most resounding disappointment in the gaming sphere.
Winner: Kerbal Space Program 2
The original Kerbal Space Program is a very well regarded realistic space simulation game where as the name implies you manage the space program for the Kerbals, a race of small green aliens. Originally developed by Squad and released in 2015, the game and IP were acquired by Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of Grand Theft Auto, in 2017. It was always a strange acquisition for the decidedly mainstream publisher, and one which Take-Two quickly proved they had little idea what to do with.
Kerbal Space Program 2 was announced at Gamescom in 2019, but languished in development hell for several years. It was first announced as being developed by Star Theory Games (former Uber Entertainment), but that studio was shut down in March 2020 after the contract was withdrawn by the game’s new publisher, Private Division. Some members of the old team switched over to join the new studio, Intercept Games, which was set up within Private Division to develop it. The release date was pushed back several times but the game finally launched into Early Access on Steam in February 2023.
The critical reception for the Early Access launch was mixed, primarily because the game was still replete with various bugs and a lot of the features present in the original game were still absent. Nonetheless, it was hoped that continued development and support through the Early Access period would allow the game to evolve and develop with the input of the community. I myself reviewed the state of the game for Entertainium in February 2024, about a year later, and I found that the game was so far making slow but steady progress.
Unfortunately, only a few months later, Private Division abruptly announced mass layoffs at Intercept Games and although Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick denied that the studio had been shuttered, it was later confirmed in November that it had been. This left Kerbal Space Program 2 in complete limbo, with no studio actively supporting it, still nominally in Early Access but still with a lot of functionality missing and many bugs unaddressed. That is the state of the game as of today, with it still for sale on Steam, although as it has been comprehensively review-bombed, it’s unlikely anyone will buy it by mistake.
Private Division itself has now also been sold to an unknown buyer by Take-Two, who presumably inherits the Kerbal IP alongside it. Whether this will result in development restarting on Kerbal Space Program 2, only time will tell. The entire saga has been replete with some of the worst examples of how the cutthroat capitalist model of the modern games industry cares for nothing except making the biggest profit, at the expense of both ordinary developers and game players.
– Gareth Brading
Runner up:
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Final Fantasy VII Remake ended on the premise that anything was possible. It was a statement of intent, that this wasn’t going to be a simple straightforward remake but something new. It took what was presumed to be a boring and safe idea (taking the existing game and making it “modern”) and made it something, at the very least, interesting. This was not going to be a simple remake, but a sequel; a metacommentary on its place as a cultural object, the tension between sticking to the original script and trying something new. It was taking a big swing and it paid off. If the direction it was going in didn’t ultimately stick the landing, the trilogy would have at least been worthwhile for the attempt.
But then Final Fantasy VII Rebirth arrived and declared no, actually: nothing will meaningfully change. This is going to be the safe remake everyone originally expected.
It’s an incredible show of cowardice. Rebirth occasionally teases potential new directions it could go in only to immediately shut them down or have no actual bearing on anything that happens. Rebirth spends its entire runtime spinning its wheels, somehow stretching the remaining events of the original game’s first disc across almost a hundred hours and ending on a hollow note, somehow managing to rob what was an important moment of Final Fantasy VII of its emotional core in favor of creating “mysteries” for the final part of the remake trilogy to maybe answer.
It’s frustrating because there are parts that are good. The combat is still spectacular, some of the best Square Enix has created. There’s a lot of strong moments with the cast, making the most of its ensemble. This team can still make something good! They’ve still got the chops. Which only makes it more disappointing that this is what we ended up with: a bloated, empty shell of a game, a spectacular failure of a sequel.
–Callum Rakestraw
