Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/27/18 at 03:07 PM CT
“Feb-yoo-wary, Feb-yoo-wary,
Shortest month of all the year!
Feb-yoo-wary, Feb-yoo-wary,
Feb-yoo-wary’s here!”
Or so went the refrain of the banal children’s song I was taught in first or second grade when learning about the months of the year. Yep, February is the shortest month, but that just means that the “AAA” Corporate Games Industry has less time to cram more crap down our throats. And ports. Oh, god… the ports…
Once again, we get the privilege of sampling all three varieties of shovelware this month. In the licensed IP category, we’ve got a Beat ‘em Up based on the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ anime and manga, as well as a new ‘Sword Art Online’ title based on the light novel series. In the so-casual-it-hurts category, Sony is gracing us with the ‘Wii______’-grade “3D Mini Golf” and “3D Billiards.” And in the shameless commercial tie-in to ‘professional’ sporting events, we’ve got the delightfully-titled “Monster Energy …
The Console Wars are Over: Bring on the Network Wars
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/21/18 at 02:37 PM CT
Recently, I discussed my platform agnostic wanderings as the console generations have passed. While the fervor and insanity of the various fanboys have made it difficult for me to feel at home in any hardware ecosystem, they’re only half the problem. The other half is the corporations behind the hardware that actually seem to drive this insane zeal in their users. In the last two Generations, during which online ecosystems have become an increasingly large part of the console ‘experience,’ to the point of requiring subscription fees just to participate, the hardware makers have shown their hand. The mid-Gen revisions that are the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X only further solidify the situation: The console wars are over. It’s time to start the network wars.
Hardware makers understand that platform lock-in is key. It’s why exclusive games exist in the first place. An exclusive system seller gets people in the door for a platform, and while they’re there, they may as …
Portable Port Portage
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/14/18 at 03:11 PM CT
Nintendo finally published a new Direct marketing video on Youtube – this time a “Mini”-sized variant that still manages to clock-in at nearly 15 minutes – that the company’s rabid fanbase has been clamoring for since the calendar clicked over to 2018. This Direct Mini discusses a significant amount of content that will be appearing on the Switch dockable in 2018… but I find that even in hybridizing their handhelds into dockables as they are endeavoring to do with the Switch, Nintendo is running into a problem they’ve faced since the Game Boy Advance hit the scene in 2001: An overwhelming preponderance of ports… and DLC… but today I’m going to talk about ports.
I loved the Game Boy Advance, make no mistake. The thing was basically a Second Coming for the SNES, and it integrated well with the Gamecube, providing an easy way to play handheld games on a TV with the Game Boy Player and novel screen-in-controller gameplay opportunities that would later prove… …
I Don’t Connect with the Sony Fanbase Anymore.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/07/18 at 04:28 PM CT
It seems like it was just yesterday: Sega was wallowing in incompetence, Nintendo was taking its first bold steps into irrelevance, and Sony – the new kid on the block – was going to save us from the incumbents’ terminal stupidity. Yes, the 1995 release of the original PlayStation, known to all at the time as the PSX, was the first major shake-up in console gaming since the Crash and resurrection of the early ‘80s, and it allowed the gaming community to look inward at itself and see who was a pragmatic lover of gaming and who was a corporate-stooge fanboy.
At the time, it felt great to throw off the shackles of Nintendo and scoff disdainfully at the company’s sudden dearth of third-party (read: Squaresoft) games, crude 3D conversions of its flagship franchises, and sudden/inexplicable fixation on PvP multi-player. While the PSX, like every PlayStation console to follow it, got off to a glacially slow start, by the time all of the teams were ready to compete head-to-head, …
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