Backlog: The Embiggening – December, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/25/18 at 02:16 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The clock is ticking down for developers to finish their code (more likely, get it ‘good enough’ that it doesn’t crash instantly on every piece of hardware) and shove it out the door before the end of the year. Ironically, most corporations’ Fiscal Years actually end in March…
Breathe it in everyone! *SNIIIIIIIIIIFFFFFFF* Ahhhhhhh! A month without blatant shovelware! There are a few borderline titles in the PlayStation exclusives lineup, but I was feeling the Yule spirit, so I decided not to castigate them here. Don’t count on seeing many more shovelware-free months before you die.
We may not have shovelware, but we’ve still got plenty of ports, remasters, compilations, and other ways of selling old, finished, paid-for work at full price. The Switch and PortStation are in a dead heat this month for the first time in a while. For all of recent memory, the Switch has been absolutely plagued with ports thanks to its …
Ubisoft’s “Kingdom Battle: Gold Edition” is Pure Pyrite
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/18/18 at 02:50 PM CT
The Paleo-Switch experiment is still ongoing! I have owned my Switch for just short of a year, and have yet to connect it to the Internet for any reason. Granted, my library of Switch games is currently horrifically tiny, so it’s possible things will still fall apart as the experiment continues.
One company that it seems is desperately trying to deep-six the Internet-free Paleo-Switch is Ubisoft. Those French bastards decided to release a DLC expansion for their amazing TRPG collaboration with Nintendo, “Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle,” which I reviewed favorably early this year. The DLC, entitled “Donkey Kong Adventure,” is a side story for the game, starring everyone’s favorite tie-wearing gorilla, Reggie Fils-Aime DK. I was upset about missing out on this download-only content, but figured there was nothing I could do about it.
Then I read that the regulation-loving EU was receiving a special physical edition of “Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle” that would …
Xbox Begins Hoarding RPG Developers
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/11/18 at 03:24 PM CT
During E3 2018, Microsoft made a bit of a fuss about how they were actively buying game development studios in order to bolster their miserable first-party/exclusive lineup for Xbox. None of the studios they had purchased at the time meant anything to me, leaving me wondering just why Microsoft was so proud of their “accomplishment.”
This past week, however, Microsoft was in Mexico, hosting some kind of fan rally called X018, where they announced yet more studio acquisitions… and it suddenly got real. Both Obsidian Entertainment and inXile Entertainment – two semi-Indie, Single-A, Kickstarter-funded RPG developers formed from the castoff remains of InterPlay – are now part of Xbox.
I’m very conflicted about this. Obsidian and inXile have both done great things during the 8th Generation. Shortly after “Neverwinter Nights 2” launched, Western developers largely stopped making RPGs (and, a few years later, so did Eastern developers, with Capcom and Konami dropping …
Backlog: The Embiggening – November, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/03/18 at 03:31 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Now that the month of fright and horror is in the rear view mirror, it’s time to crank-up the Holiday Season for 2018, with evergreen trees, fat men in pagan elf costumes, and a variety of cheerful music with obscurely dark lyrics – all to get American consumers in the mood to spend their money. And why not spend some of that money on videogame gifts for the kiddies?! Christmas is only 50-some days away, you know!
After the terrifying deluge of shovel-ready crap last month, this month seems positively sedate. There are only 5 shovelware titles, and nearly all of them are Sports garbage. Of course, the mind-numbing minigames of the ‘Carnival Games’ franchise are back for another crack at the current-gen leader (PS4) and next-gen leader (Switch), but everyone should already know to avoid it by now (though I can imagine clueless grandfolks buying it in droves for the kiddies). Then we’ve got a new ‘PGA Golf’ game, a new …
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