Here we are again...Another great game drought. My game playing friends and I have been through these so many times. Battlefield 4 has lost it's shine - remarkably quickly compared to how long we played Battlefield 2 or even Bad Company 2 - and nobody seems to be coming up with novel squad based first person shooters. Developers seem to be paralysed - creatively - and relying too much on tried and tested formats.
Luckily, while we were occupied with BF4 our old favourite, World of Tanks, got some much needed tuning and improvements. We had a few games over the past week and absence certainly does seem to make the heart grow fonder as we were impressed with some of the new graphical additions.
It's not all good news, WoT is still basically the same game with the same maps (there are a few new ones but not many) and also while we were away it seems the game developers decided to nerf some of my favourite higher tier tank destroyers (camo seems to be less effective).
Still, World of Tanks is an easy to live with game in the same sort of way that Counter Strike is. People find it's accessibility and simplicity comfortable and everyone seems to have a favourite map that they don't mind playing over and over again. Furthermore, as a teammate of mine pointed out, it's the sort of game you can play while having a few drinks!
I actually agree with this, it's a nice social game that isn't so demanding on your concentration as some of the 'twitcher' games - like BF4 or CoD - but, there again, maybe that's why my WoT track record is so patchy! Anyway, the BIG lads are back playing World of Tanks. It's hard to see at the moment what the alternative might be.
[I do have games I am looking forward to but they are all in the development phase. Sony's multiplayer zombie survival game 'H1Z1' looks promising as does the similar crowd funded 'Survive the Nights'. My military squad tactical FPS hopes are on 'Ground Branch', but the development of this game seem to be mired and I cannot see it emerging in a playable format until late 2015 or possibly even 2016!]