Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/27/22 at 05:43 PM CT
Well, Summer’s officially over. Naturally, the Games Industry, which seems incapable of learning anything from its mistakes, is continuing the tradition of christening the start of the new school year – during which most of their customers suddenly go from having TONS of free time to play new videogames, to have NO time – with an absolutely gigantic release schedule packed so full of titles that the tabs for them scroll waaaaay off the edge of my browser window. With this many games packed into one month, there’s GOT to be something that’ll catch my eye, as it glimmers within the steaming cesspool of… everything else.
We’ve got a wide variety of shovelware coming in September, and some of it might actually sell! In licensed swill, we’ve got a new LEGO game – a casual brawler this time, because, apparently, WB’s release of (and success with) “Multiversus” finally woke everyone else up to the fact that ripping off ‘Smash Bros.’ is easy money… provided …
Vaguely Related Review: DragonLance Destinies Vol. 1 “Dragons of Deceit”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/21/22 at 04:26 PM CT
As a fan of the DragonLance series of Dungeons & Dragons novels dating way back to my middle-school days in the early ‘90s, I thought the series was finished. There hasn’t been a new DragonLance novel published since a last buckshot-load of them was fired-off in 2009, with the final volume of “Tracy Hickman Presents: The Anvil of Time” quartet capping things off. I have been quite terrible about keeping up with DragonLance, as far too many of the “recent” (and I’m using the term both loosely and relatively) books not directly penned by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman themselves have been wholly forgettable at best, mind-numbingly terrible at worst.
In the gaming space, things haven’t been much better, with Margaret Weis and her Sovereign Press self-publishing all of the D&D 3rd Edition sourcebooks and adventure modules, and the series remaining completely dormant through the turbulent tenure of D&D 4th Edition. However, with the advent of D&D 5th Edition in 2014, …
Vaguely Related: Has No One Painted Their <i>Bunkers & Badasses</i> Miniatures?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/14/22 at 04:44 PM CT
To celebrate my birthday this year, I asked Chris to crack open the lovely Bunkers & Badasses Deluxe Boxed Set I gave him for Yuletide two years ago (but which arrived last year thanks to the supply chain cock-up) and run a game for the MJ Crew. His body language suggested that instead of asking him to run a new tabletop game based on an IP he absolutely loves, I’d just dumped a bucket of dead hagfish over his head, but he said he’d “get around to it.” So, while I waited for Chris to come up with a less-than-creative excuse to get out of some B&B mayhem, I decided to crack open my own Deluxe Boxed Set and paint the included Vault Hunter miniatures.
I’ve been painting tabletop gaming models for many decades, and frequently enter them in my county fair, where I typically take home blue ribbons, and one year even won Best of Division for my “Troll Scoutmaster.” Unfortunately, with the COVID pandemic in effect, I haven’t participated in the fair, and haven’t painted …
PlayStation VR2 Coming This Year, Still Lacks Killer Software
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/07/22 at 03:43 PM CT
We’ve known for a while now that Sony hasn’t given up on virtual reality within the PlayStation ecosystem. Recently, we got a look at some of the new features coming in their revised PSVR2 headset, most of which aren’t particularly compelling outside of niche edge-cases. Indeed, the most compelling new features in PSVR2 seem to be the single cable that connects to the console and the fact that the new headset comes with revised, dedicated VR motion controllers, instead of requiring users to track down hard-to-find, discontinued, and generally poorly-implemented PlayStation Move controllers to play the role of ‘hands.’
Ultimately, though, Sony isn’t doing enough to really push VR experiences forward. Honestly, neither is Valve. Each company has one big VR project – “Half-Life: Alyx” for Valve and “Horizon: Call of the Mountain” for Sony (revealed during this year’s Summer Games Fest) – which doesn’t really feel all that impressive from the perspective of …
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