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 …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/28/18 at 03:02 PM CT
Happy birthday to me, once again, as August rolls in. Usually July and August are the worst months of the year for new game releases, colloquially known as the Summer Game Drought. Like last month, publishers are flooding release channels with ports to fool us into thinking the drought isn’t as bad as it has been in past years, but they aren’t fooling me.
Shovelware starts us off with a friggin’ ‘Naruto’ game. Does anyone still watch that crap anime? Anyway, there are plenty of annual Sports releases, including motorsport “F1 2018” (when 2018 is already half over) and two different kinds of Ball played with Feet: “Pro Evolution Soccer 2019” and “Madden NFL 19” (the latter of which is returning to PC for the first time in years).
Once again the Nintendo Switch is leading the way with more ports and remasters than you can shake a stick at: “Victor Vran,” “Monster Hunter Generations,” “Tennis World Tour,” and detestable Roguelike “Dead Cells” …
Freemium Economies Mirror Real Ones in Odd Ways
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/22/18 at 03:20 PM CT
As much as we may try to avoid them like the plague, the MJ Crew has become entrapped by a handful of Freemium entertainment software – that is to say, games and apps that are ostensibly “free,” but in actuality have a cost tied to them, be it paid in time or macrotransactions. Some of us are more invested in these than others.
One of the more interesting meta-game things that has revealed itself to me in the mobile app “Star Trek: Timelines” is the way its variety of Freemium currencies mirror the real world.
For those who are mercifully ignorant, Freemium currencies are the eternal plague of Freemium games. An array of these made-up monies are present in every Freemium game with the end goal of confusing the player/user/customer into no longer understanding the value proposition of any of the available macrotransactions.
In “Star Trek: Timelines,” the basic unit of currency is the Federation Credit, which, like all basic Freemium currencies, is absolutely …
A Handy Flow Chart for Pokemon GO
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/15/18 at 03:11 PM CT
The additions of Friends and Trading to 2-year-old mobile app, "Pokemon GO" are long overdue features, and their sudden appearance has sparked at least one of my acquaintances to fire-up the app again and try, in vain, to Catch 'Em All. This same acquaintance also has a hard time digesting large amounts of information all at once, including which Pokemon to keep and which to throw into the candy grinder. This flow chart was made just for you, and should probably be set as your iPhone wallpaper for easy access.
Microsoft Could Shake Things Up With New Xbox Peripheral
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/08/18 at 03:14 PM CT
Ever since they started producing Surface tablets, bundling Kinect peripherals with their Xbox consoles, and partnering with third-parties to create their Hololens Mixed Reality headsets, Microsoft, the non-gaming software developer that owns PC gaming thanks to Windows but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, has been on, or at least near, the bleeding edge of hardware design. And it looks like the House that Gates Built is making waves yet again with a device they’re calling the “Adaptive Controller.”
Ostensibly designed to facilitate videogame playing for people with physical disabilities, the basic core of the Adaptive Controller looks like a large plank pretending to be an Xinput controller, with a large d-pad, two huge buttons, and a few other function buttons. This device isn’t, however, limited to the buttons and pads built into it, but accepts a huge array of USB add-ons ranging from the familiar – like a USB Wii Nunchuck adapter – to facilitators truly …
Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/30/18 at 02:32 PM CT
The annual Summer Game Drought is upon us as July closes in. As has become a trend in recent years, publishers have taken the opportunity to shower us with shovelware and ports in an attempt to fool us into thinking the drought is less severe that it is. Instead of a downpour of watery diarrhea, however, we’re getting a light sprinkle, as the numbers are drastically lower than they have been recently.
Shovelware is back in full-force after largely disappearing for a good long while. New games based on the latest ‘Jurassic Park’ movie, the latest ‘Hotel Transylvania’ movie, and the thankfully-canceled/ended ‘Adventure Time’ cable cartoon are going to land like so many steaming cat turds in a sandpile.
After the cat got done with our Summer Sandbox, a pack of wild dogs moved in and had their way with the place, spraying, ports, remasters, and reboots over every available surface. Once again, the Switch is proving itself to be the new king of rehashed crap, with a …
Steam is Patient Zero: The Flood of Crap is Contagious
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/24/18 at 03:31 PM CT
Just a short time ago, I proposed the idea that Steam’s uncurated storefront as of the 8th Generation was a Darwinian approach to game sales, while the curated stores on PlayStation Network, Nintendo Network, and Xbox Live (notwithstanding Microsoft’s temporary experiment with Xbox Indies) were more mythological, where an all-powerful overseer separates the ‘good’ from the ‘bad.’ It seems that the age of faith may be coming to an end sooner rather than later when it comes to digital videogame storefronts, as just a single season later, these console storefronts don’t feel nearly as curated as they did last year.
Between March 1, 2018 and May 31, 2018 – one ‘season,’ the way we here at MeltedJoystick calculate things – Steam added countless crap titles to its ever-growing pile. However, it wasn’t alone. The Nintendo Network eShop gained nearly 300 titles, while PSN’s PS Store raked-in roughly 200, and Xbox Live acquired around 150 new titles. And that’s …
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