Backlog: The Embiggening - June, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/24/15 at 02:53 PM CT
With the coming of June, all of the little schoolchildren will, once again, have free reign to wash across the world in a wave of terror. Hopefully there will be plenty of new game releases to keep them busy. In their rooms. Away from the adults.
Unfortunately for us, June will be bringing a resurgence of licensed shovelware, which has been mercifully absent for months now. There will be a new LEGO-ification of upcoming unnecessary sequel, “Jurassic World,” another ‘Batman Arkham’ game (Aren’t people getting tired of these by now?), and a Sony exclusive Fighting mashup featuring the most popular characters from the most popular shonen manga in “Shonen Jump Magazine.” Also, while it’s not licensed, and therefore tangentially related to shovelware at best, the ‘F1’ series has become so prolific that the dev is now naming titles based on the year they are released, so I’m going to consider that series officially milked.
Ports and remasters? Of course! This is …
Konami’s Fall: The <i>Seppuku</i> of the Last Gaming Samurai
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/17/15 at 02:42 PM CT
During the Golden Age of gaming, the entire foundation of the industry was made from Japanese stonework. Nintendo, Sega, and Sony built the machines to run the games, while Nintendo, Sega, Squaresoft, Enix, Capcom, and Konami built the games that not only salvaged the industry from Atari’s (delenda est) chronic mismanagement, but built it up into something wonderful in its own right.
Over the course of the last two generations, things in Japan have started to go horribly awry. I have been lamenting the shift in Japan’s pop culture for years already. However, instead of doing anything to correct the course these former titans of the industry have found themselves on, they seem content to fall off the face of the Earth.
Sega was the first victim. When they decided to drop out of the hardware arena to focus solely on games after the Dreamcast failed, at first it seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, it proved to be a disastrous move, with the company now hanging onto parent …
Amiibos: The Physical DLC Gimmick
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/10/15 at 04:12 PM CT
At this point in the 8th Generation, it has become quite obvious that Nintendo, once a paragon of the old console traditions and the last holdout in the face of updates and DLC, has given up and joined the rest of the console makers in adopting less-than-beloved modern business practices. With “Mario Kart 8,” “Super Smash Bros. U,” “Hyrule Warriors,” and the brand new “Splatoon” all featuring significant amounts of cut content later surfacing as an additional purchase, Nintendo looks right at home among the other DLC adopters, and will likely soon start with the microtransactions, once their partnership with DeNA bears fruit.
However, Nintendo as a company never seems satisfied to do something in exactly the same way as every other company. Thus instead of keeping DLC strictly in the digital realm, Nintendo has found a way to make it physical. Unfortunately this method of creating physical DLC has nothing to do with pressing updated game discs that include the DLC …
Backlog: The Embiggening - May, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/03/15 at 06:08 PM CT
April Showers bring May Flowers, as the old children’s song goes. But what happens when the only precipitation in April took the form of ports and remasters? More of the same!
May will be bringing “Final Fantasy 4: The After Years” (the 7th Gen’s only good ‘Final Fantasy’ game) to Steam… but not the same version that graced WiiWare or the PlayStation Portable. Instead, it will be a new 3D-ified version that looks and plays like the unnecessary DS port of “Final Fantasy 4.” In other ‘Final Fantasy’ news, the PS4 is getting a remaster (unsurprising) compilation of “Final Fantasy 10” and “Final Fantasy 10-2.” The PS4 is also getting a port of “Arcania” (a.k.a., “Gothic 4”). Finally, as if as part of a concerted effort to prove that modern non-Nintendo consoles are just really lame gaming PCs, “Farming Simulator 15” is making the leap from PC exclusivity to PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and XBONE.
In multi-platform releases, the PS4, XBONE, and PC …
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