Dis-Kinect-ed
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/18/14 at 02:00 PM CT
Half a year after its launch, and the Xbox One will be losing a limb. Specifically, Microsoft has decided to release a version of their latest unnecessary console without its only differentiating gimmick: the Kinect 2.0. On June 9th, those wanting to get XBONE’d will be able to purchase the console for $100 less and with 100% less paranoia about being watched and wiretapped by the Kinect’s always-on camera and microphone.
But what is Microsoft really accomplishing with such a move? In the 7th Generation, the original Kinect was the Xbox 360’s only truly novel feature, and it never really had a chance to show what it was capable of in the hands of a development team interested in creating a better experience than a “WiiSports” knock-off or an endless stream of inane dance games. The Kinect had the potential to open up a whole new type of interface – “Minority Report” style – to enhance the capabilities of an existing controller instead of supplanting the …
5 Wii Games to Play with your Mom on Mothers’ Day
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/11/14 at 03:39 PM CT
When Nintendo targeted the “Blue Ocean” demographic of non-gamers with the Wii, not only did they enforce the stigma of Nintendo consoles not being for “real gamers” (who only play “Call of Duty” and “Halo” all day while shotgunning 40s and even lifting) that they’ve been dealing with since the N64, but they also became associated with old ladies and fad followers. Be that as it may, the Wii actually DID succeed at engaging non-gamers in a way no hardware had before, and Nintendo produced plenty of games (of wildly varying quality) to target their new audience.
I don’t know about most of the younger crowd coming up nowadays, but when I was a kid, my Mom knew NOTHING about games. Perhaps younger women who grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit games are a bit more literate about the subject? Regardless, it seems that gender doesn’t really matter when it comes to being baffled by the stupid things kids like, and my Mom didn’t understand why I enjoyed videogames so …
Backlog: The Embiggening - May, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/04/14 at 01:03 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. May is bringing the tumultuous post-holiday period to a fitting end by returning game releases to something resembling a status quo. While, miraculously, there are ZERO shovelware releases to report this month, there is one overwhelming multi-platform game that will dominate headlines and capture the rapt attention of every mainstream “AAA” whore, along with a handful of M-rated dreck… Let’s get right to it.
So, what is this overwhelming May release everyone is destined to be talking about for a month before its luster fades and it drops into obscurity? None other than “Watch Dogs,” a new sandbox title that looks to be an attempt at combining gaming’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ franchise with TV’s “Person of Interest.” Meh. Among the other mainstream multi-platform games, we have a FPS sequel to ‘Wolfenstein’ (which I’m sure will be as amazing a sequel as the latest ‘Duke Nukem’ game), some sort of fake RPG by …
“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 …
OUYA Becomes Desperate, Resorts to Bribery
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/30/14 at 01:19 PM CT
While at one point everything seemed to be coming up roses for the OUYA company and its Indie console, all that fell apart once the hardware actually hit store shelves. After my unfavorable impressions of the OUYA hardware and the proprietary OUYA shop’s library of games, I hadn’t touched the thing for months.
Yet OUYA managed to drag me back to the Indie console just yesterday, as I received the following email from them Friday afternoon:
Being the thrifty soul that I am, how was I to turn down free money? If OUYA wants to resort to bribery to coax users into dusting off the Little Gray Box that Couldn’t, so be it. So after waiting two hours for the OUYA to download a system update, I input my promo code and snagged my $5.
I’ll bet you’re wondering what I spent it on, aren’t you? Get ready for a surprise… NOTHING!
In all the months my OUYA sat untouched, all of my ‘favorite’ games either went multi-platform, received zero updates, or became …
The 8th Generation Gets Its Gimmick: Reality
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/23/14 at 01:37 PM CT
At GDC this past week, the big players in the world of videogame hardware unveiled their not-so-original vision of the future – and it seems that the 8th Generation will contain a lot of reality-centric features, be they the traditionally-imagined ideas of Virtual Reality or the new-age ideas of Augmented Reality. Not only did a new version of what I have been touting as the PC’s trump card over the consoles, the Oculus Rift, appear at GDC, but Sony also revealed their own VR headset, code-named Project Morpheus, for the PlayStation 4. Unfortunately, based on a straight-up comparison between the 7th Generation tech used in the PC’s Razer Hydra and the PS3’s PlayStation Move, I’m thinking that Sony’s obsession with camera-and-light-based tracking will leave Morpheus underwhelming.
Not to be left out, Microsoft is reportedly working on some kind of vaguely-defined “Kinect Glasses” for use with their XBONE console. Unlike the Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus, …
Steam Controller Revision 2 Hitting GDC 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/16/14 at 01:00 PM CT
While things have been fairly quiet since Valve first announced their somewhat weird-looking Steam controller, that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening with the project. This past week, Valve revealed to members of the Steam Universe group that they have been hard at work hand-crafting a small number of revised Steam controller prototypes to show off at the Game Developers Conference next week.
Based on the contents of this PowerPoint presentation (starting on slide 34), it looks like Valve has taken to heart much of the criticism leveled at the original Steam controller prototype by armchair critics such as myself and their beta testing participants. The awkward-looking central touchscreen has been removed, having been made redundant and useless by the versatility of the controller’s two dynamic trackpads. The four face buttons have also been relocated from an unorthodox (and no doubt uncomfortable) split layout around the now-absent centerpiece into a more standard …
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