Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/26/18 at 08:01 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! All of the adorable little school shooters are back in their hunting grounds, so naturally, the Games Industry traditionally choses the month when that happens to end the Summer Game Drought and start releasing things again. Of course, as we should remember from the past few months, the Summer Game Drought of 2018 was cleverly concealed by the release of dozens of ports. I can’t help but compare the Summer’s game releases to an Orwellian conspiracy, where the Industry titans acted like Big Brother, deluging us with artificially-created dehydrated raindrops in order to convince us that there was no drought, while those of us with our eyes open realize that if you dehydrate rain, you actually have nothing. With 45 releases dropping in September, I wonder how many will actually be “real.”
Ready your shovels, folks, as there’s a LOT of licensed garbage to cast aside in September. Sports seem to be the biggest offender here, …
Upcoming SteamOS Feature Could Finally Revolutionize Linux Gaming. Or Not.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/19/18 at 02:50 PM CT
Earlier this year, Valve quietly removed the Steam Machines section from the Steam Storefront. Many industry watchers and gamers took this to mean that both the concept of Steam Machines – console-sized PCs that are built specifically for couch gaming – and the Linux-based SteamOS that powered them were dead, despite official word from Valve PR stating otherwise.
Recently, some clever delvers into the behind-the-curtains goings-on at Valve noticed that a new feature will be coming to SteamOS soon, and it’s the one I said Valve needed to put as much effort into as possible. Steam Play has been around since 2012, when it was introduced as a “Buy Once, Play Anywhere” marketing strategy that allowed Steam customers to buy a license for a specific game, rather than a specific game version for a specific OS, thus gamers could buy “Half-Life 2,” for example, and play it on Windows, MacOSX, or Linux, without having to pay a separate fee for each OS, as things had been done …
Nintendo Wins One Battle in Its Perpetual Uphill War
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/12/18 at 02:42 PM CT
This past week, EmuParadise – which is not a porn site for those who wish to have sexual relations with large flightless birds – pulled all ROM and ISO files from public availability, citing recent legal pressure from Nintendo on other emulation websites, which caved and shut themselves down. The site operators sensibly wished to protect themselves rather than risk utter and complete legal ruin at the hands of corporate lawyers, but have left the door open for the possibility of a fresh start in the future.
EmuParadise has been around since 2000, making it one of the oldest and most Google-friendly emulation sites on the Internet. It was EmuParadise where I first turned when I decided to finally experience “Dragon Quest 5” and “Dragon Quest 6” all those years ago, and it was EmuParadise that ultimately disappointed and frustrated me even then.
It’s easy to see the precedent set by EmuParadise caving to Nintendo’s legal threats as a disastrous one for both game …
‘Item Permanency’ is the Cure for what Ails Random Loot in Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/04/18 at 04:36 PM CT
Recently, I re-reviewed Trendy Entertainment’s “Dungeon Defenders II” Live Service due to a large overhaul update that redid some of the game’s fundamental systems and caused the whole thing to take a turn for the better. One of the key features Trendy added to their random-loot-centric hybrid of the Tower Defense and Hack ‘n Slash RPG genres was the concept of ‘Item Permanency,’ by which players are no longer forced to throw away their favorite pieces of serendipitously-discovered equipment when they find a new piece with slightly bigger numbers, but can instead craft and refine their extant favorite item(s) into newer and better forms, sometimes by combining pieces of new items with it, sometimes just bumping up its base power level to be on par with the new stuff that randomly drops during matches.
The concept of Item Permanency isn’t new, however. It’s just that Trendy took a bold step in assigning it a name and applying it to a genre which typically relies …
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