“Defiance” Destroyed Due to Detrimental DLC?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/25/14 at 03:58 PM CT
After going through a rough patch last May, Trion Worlds, the developers and publishers behind an array of MMO-style games has decided to radically change the core gameplay elements of their struggling Third-Person Shooter MMO (and SyFy Channel tie-in) “Defiance” with the latest DLC pack, dubbed “Arktech Revolution.”
While I never got the chance to play pre-Arktech “Defiance,” I (and the rest of the MJ crew) was kind of excited about it. From reviews (which were never particularly glowing) and people talking about the game in forums, it sounded like “Defiance” was essentially an MMO version of the ‘Borderlands’ series, but without the ballooning numbers attached to equipment that cause favorite weapons to become obsolete after only a handful of level-ups. “Defiance” was supposed to have a relatively ‘flat’ level progression (called EGO Rating in-game), providing increased access to a larger number of perks, but allowing players to hang onto (and …
Violence for Violence’s Sake
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/20/14 at 03:50 PM CT
Last week, I discussed the recently revealed source of rage that spurs gamers to violence, and shared one of my personal experiences with frustrating gameplay leading to outside-of-game fury. This week, I’d like to take the opportunity to follow-up on last week’s topic and share some of my ruminations on the interactivity between media (of any kind) and the instigation of violence among its consumers.
Because I’m an “insider,” so to speak, nobody on the “outside” will take my comments as unbiased, and will consider them to be some kind of apologetics, so I feel no need to keep the kid gloves on. I’ve been an insider since I first ignored the cries of “Videogames rot your brain!” and “Dungeons & Dragons is the work of the Devil!” back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The saddest thing about these cries for the censorship and restriction of media is that they come most strongly from a group that desperately clings to its own source of media – a source …
Videogame Violence: The True Source Revealed!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/13/14 at 04:29 PM CT
What gamer hasn’t been looked at askance by their elders, perceived to be some kind of ticking timebomb of violent rage just waiting to erupt and destroy the idyllic 1950s lifestyle America has come to worship in perpetuity?
The bad news is, among those who hold this view of gamers, little is likely to change, as “change” itself is a dirty word to these people.
The good news is that researchers in the UK have finally discovered the one true source of all videogame related violence.
“What is this source?” you might ask. Is it blood and gore? Is it first-person immersive violence that places the player directly in the role of perpetrator? Is it unbridled gunplay?
No, as it turns out the source of videogame-related violence is incompetence and failure. The study that discovered the source took two different games, the decidedly violent and gory FPS “Half-Life” and the decidedly peaceful and meditative puzzler “Tetris,” and applied different hacks/mods to …
Backlog: The Embiggening - April, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/06/14 at 04:10 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. As April Fools spring up all around us, I'd like to take a few moments to think back to the few games that recently managed to fool me into thinking they looked worthy of a purchase. The old saying states that a picture is worth 1,000 words, but pictures and video can also be quite deceptive. Recently, I added both “The Witch and the Hundred Knights” and “Tower of Guns” to my Wish List based solely upon watching gameplay videos and looking at screenshots that showed what looked like fun gameplay. However, upon reading the developers’ and gamers' descriptions of these titles, I recoiled in revulsion. Beneath the appealing looking surface revealed via video, “The Witch and the Hundred Knights” turns out to be just another super-grindy, unbalanced NIS-style RPG, while “Tower of Guns” is a procedurally generated FPS inspired by roguelikes and “The Binding of Isaac” which can be completed in 1 hour… if the random number …
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