Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/12/16 at 02:57 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Every August, I’m another year older and another year more jaded and disappointed by the games industry. As this relatively mild Summer Game Drought draws to an end, let’s take a look at what we’re getting before the Holiday Rush starts… in September.
Ugh. Shovelware. Sony is getting an exclusive new ‘Hatsune Miku’ title, PS4 and XBONE are getting a licensed “Attack on Titan” game based on the manga/anime of the same name, and the 3DS is getting a… thing… called “Style Savvy: Fashion Forward” that can’t be ANYTHING but shovelware. We’re also starting to see the obligatory annual entries dripping out for certain sports and racing franchises. Currently it’s just a new ‘Madden’ and a new ‘F1,’ but more will follow, as they do every year.
Ugh. Ports and remasters. “Resident Evil 4” and “Assetto Corsa” are coming to the XBONE and PS4, while the PS4 is getting “Among the Sleep” and an …
Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2016 (Super Late Edition)
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/12/16 at 01:50 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! I made a bit of a boo-boo last month and completely forgot to look at upcoming releases. Make-up time!
July is traditionally smack in the middle of the Summer Game Drought. While the drought may seem milder than usual, it’s really only because of the amount of bad behavior on the part of publishers making it look like there’s more new stuff than there is.
One new licensed shovelware released in July: A tie-in for the new SJW-branded “Ghostbusters” movie. Aside from that, two old pieces of Marvel shovelware got bundled together and released on PSN and Live as the “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Bundle.” Since half the bundle was already on Steam, instead of getting the whole thing, PC just got a port of “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.”
There was a lot of disgusting porting around in July. “Fairy Fencer F” got remastered on the PS4 (unsurprising), “MX vs. ATV: Supercross” finally got remastered on XBONE, …
5 Tweaks to Take D&D 5E from Great to Perfect
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/07/16 at 03:08 PM CT
The 5th and most recent edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s oldest (and greatest) tabletop RPG launched a couple years ago, and perusal of the relevant corners of the Internet reveal it to be a rousing success for Wizards of the Coast. Outside of a few old, crufty, neckbearded grognards, who can’t stand the fact that THAC0 is gone and never returning, everyone loves 5E.
I love 5E too, but like most things, it isn’t quite perfect. Every edition of D&D has a handful of small, annoying things at minimum that players have traditionally beaten into submission and shaped to the will of their specific group via the use of House Rules. After playing 5E for a year, the following list of five tweaks, mostly drawn from the four older editions of D&D, feel much better than 5E’s defaults.
1. Draw Magic Items from the Complete “Encyclopedia Magica” Four-Volume Set
The magic items detailed in the 5E “Dungeon Master’s Guide” manage to capture much of the flavor of …
Slack Given, Slack Taken
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/31/16 at 03:12 PM CT
Japan is no longer a force in the videogame industry. We simply have to accept this fact. As I covered last year, all of Japan’s biggest, oldest, and most beloved videogame studios are committing ritual suicide one after another, mostly sacrificing themselves upon the altar of mobile gaming. Things have changed little in a year, with Capcom now facing down dismal sales and profits. Why is everything going so wrong in the nation that revived an industry on the brink of collapse in the 1980s? Well, in Capcom’s case – as well as many others – it simply comes down to a lack of productivity. If Japanese companies don’t produce killer games that sell consoles and build their reputations as providers of great entertainment, they will wither and die on the vine as new generations of incoming gamers wonder who these companies are, having never heard of them, while old, jaded gamers fume with resentment about how far these companies have fallen from their best.
The loss of …
The 9th Gen Draws Near! Command?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/24/16 at 02:34 PM CT
With all three of the big hardware manufacturers – Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – announcing a new set of higher-spec hardware, the majority of gamers and the gaming media have declared that the 8th Generation will be the first to receive a ‘mid-gen’ upgrade. I, however, am not afraid to announce that the majority of gamers and the gaming media (as per usual) are flat-out wrong. The Nintendo NX, PlayStation Neo, and Xbox Scorpio aren’t mid-gen ‘refreshes’ of old hardware; they are the harbingers of the 9th Generation, bringing with them a focus on backward AND forward compatibility.
The primary reason so many people errantly think that these three new consoles are ‘mid-gen’ refreshes is because these people are basing their conception of hardware generations on an unstable foundation. Because Sony spouted-off about the PlayStation 3 being designed for a 10-year lifespan, the assumption is being made that console hardware generations are roughly 10 years long. …
Pokemon G(tF)O
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/17/16 at 02:44 PM CT
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are one of those extra ‘special’ isolationists who live in Montana specifically because the state has no infrastructure, you’ve no doubt heard about “Pokemon GO,” the mobile team-up between Nintendo’s Pokemon Company and Google’s Niantic. This new mobile game microtransaction engine completely blew-up during its first week of general availability in the United States, rocketing to the top of every metric chart that matters (and even ones that don’t matter) as people have flooded into public places in search of Pokemon to catch and Poke-Stops to refresh their supplies of pokeballs.
“Pokemon GO” has been such a wildly viral success that it has even been picked-up as a topic by both world and local TV news broadcasts, which never normally happens until months after the fact for stories involving electronic entertainment. The question still remains, though, is “Pokemon GO” anything to actually get excited about?
If …
Farewell, Imagisphere: ‘LittleBigPlanet’ on Sony’s Chopping Block
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/10/16 at 01:52 PM CT
It was recently announced that all online services for Sony’s incredible, imaginative, and distinctly not Dudebro franchise, ‘LittleBigPlanet,’ are all going to be shuttered at the end of July 2016… in Japan. Naturally, the rest of the world began to worry that Sony was also going to decapitate poor, little Sackboys everywhere else. Sony responded in typical corporate fashion, stating that only “LittleBigPlanet” for the dead PlayStation Portable and “LittleBigPlanet Karting” (which was a fairly terrible karting game all around) will be getting the axe in the wider world, and that there are currently “no plans” to unplug the rest of the series in the West.
Of course, those of us who are familiar with the way Big Evil Corporations in the games industry talk will realize that “no plans” doesn’t actually mean anything, and fans of the flagship “Play. Create. Share.” franchise should be worried regardless of the nation they call home.
This decision to …
What Do ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Star Trek’ Have in Common?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/02/16 at 02:08 PM CT
With the impending release of the latest ‘Nu Trek’ movie, “Star Trek: Beyond,” and as the inexorable doom that is “Final Fantasy 15” closes in upon us, I have found myself reminiscing about these two much-beloved franchises. Specifically, I couldn’t help but notice how their best days both seem to be very far in the past. Further consideration reveals a number of bleak similarities regarding the ways that Square Enix and CBS Paramount have mishandled their biggest individual IPs.
Each Kept Getting Better and Better… Until 20 Years Ago
It’s fairly easy to draw this analogy. While “Star Trek: The Original Series” and “Final Fantasy” were both fairly rough around the edges, largely due to being products of their times, it was clear that both IPs clearly had ‘something’ and brought a unique flavor of nerd bait to the table. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Final Fantasy 4” sanded off all the rough edges and put on a new coat of paint, …
“Dark Souls” = The Job Market
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/25/16 at 04:44 PM CT
The 7th Generation saw the rise of many unfortunate trends in gaming – as well as the fall of nearly as many. One of the most enduring catastrophes of the 7th Generation was the sudden and unexpected surge in popularity among masochistic, H.A.R.D. games, with the movement led primarily by dogmatic fanatics from the Cult of From. These cultists, henceforth known as Souls Trolls, see to the inflation of their favorite series’ Metacritic scores through nefarious infiltration of nearly every gaming media outlet. With Souls Trolls as the only people who like their favorite series AND as the only people generally willing to review it, they promote a self-fulfilling prophecy of praise where absolutely none is deserved.
Unfortunately, Souls Trolls have infiltrated the media beyond the walls of light-weight gaming news sites like Polygon, Kotaku, and NeoGAF. Recently, it was revealed that one of their number had managed to creep his way into the respected halls of the Wall Street …
E3 Impressions 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/16 at 03:06 PM CT
After a surprise-filled E3 last year, our expectations were boosted a bit. 2015’s E3 was a welcome relief from the rut-worn boredom that was the hallmark of the conference for several years prior. Unfortunately, last year’s surprises wore a new set of ruts, and we’re still driving in them this year. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the 8th Gen consoles hardly look different from the 7th Gen, now 8th Gen E3 conferences are all starting to look alike!
Microsoft:
Want: Play Anywhere
Not Sure if Want: “Sea of Thieves” (still!)
Do Not Want: Scorpio, dead-horse-beating first-party sequels
Microsoft didn’t really do anything impressive this year. They added an official name, “Play Anywhere,” to the XBONE/Windows10 crossplay program they announced last year. They also talked a lot about upcoming sequels in their first-party franchises… which are all starting to feel exactly the same. ‘Gears,’ ‘Halo,’ ‘Forza’ – whooptee freakin’doo. “Sea of …
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