Shmee.Me

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

GDC 2015 Highlights!

Usually there isn’t a lot of news that comes out of the GDC (Game Developers Conference) since it is primarily a show for developers not the public, but this year was a little different, so I thought I would give you some highlights.

Everyone is in to VR now:

Oculus Rift showed that VR could be done well and cheaply, and since then everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. This year Sony showed off more of its Project Morpheus which will work with its PS4 due in 2016, but Valve and HTC’s Vive stole the show. Apparently it is the best VR headset ever demonstrated, so we will see how that turns out.

More Set-Top Boxes:

Valve is not content to stay on your computer it wants a piece of your TV as well. It announced that Steam Box, a PC based console, will finally launch this year, and it is also launching the Steam Link. A little box that Streams your PC games to your TV, so that if you already have a gaming rig you can play your games anywhere in your house. It is an interesting concept, and for a certain subset of gamers I can see it being very attractive. nVidia announced a new Android TV based console that is part of their Shield line. It can stream games from the internet as well as play games locally. We will see how that works when it launches for $200 later this year.

nVidia wants AMD out of the game:

nVidia has been busy launching new video cards in its great GeForce GTX 900 line, while AMD can’t seem to get their Radeon R9 300 series out the door, so nVidia went for the knockout blow by announcing the Titan X. It has 12 GB of RAM and 8 Billion transistors. I am sure this card will cost a mint, but there is nothing faster than it on the planet.

Game development is now free to try:

You can now download and try to make your own games using the Unreal Engine 4 or Unity Engine 5. Tools like these used to cost upwards of $10,000 a license, but now they are available to anyone. These are not the stripped down versions either. You are getting the full set of tools. Once you are start to make money you will have to pay for them, but if you just want to try it out you are free to do so.

Microsoft’s one OS world comes in to focus:

Microsoft is getting serious about only having one OS. At the GDC it explained more about its universal app store, updates on the new DirectX 12 API, Xbox to Windows 10 cross play and cross buying, Xbox One to PC streaming, and lastly a bunch of new games coming out to its platforms using the ID@Xbox program. Most notably Elite: Dangerous. I think it is clear that Microsoft sees itself as an underdog at this point, and is working really hard to try and be a dominant player again. We will see how their plans work, but at least it is good to see them truly trying again.

It has been a great GDC, and still has a couple of days left, but all the major players have had their say. If anything else noteworthy happens I will update this post. I can only hope next year’s GDC is as interesting.

February 16, 2015February 16, 2015

Don’t Hate On Developers For Dreaming!

Recently famed developer Peter Molyneux came under fire for his new game Godus. People were saying that he lied to them to get them to fund Godus on Kickstarter, and now he is abandoning the game and moving on to other things even though Godus isn’t finished. I don’t think he lied, I think his problem is that he likes to dream big, and then share those dreams with anyone that will listen to him.

This is not a new problem with Molyneux, he has always loved to talk about his crazy ideas for games. His original idea for Fable was a real world simulation that would allow you to plant trees and gardens and then come back years later and see the forests you planted, or see tiny villages grow in to massive cities. Obviously that is not what we got. Fable ended up being a fun, but light action RPG with a good control scheme, a unique conversation system, and it let you be good or evil. Still good, but not what was originally talked about. There have been two sequels, and in each one time has passed and things have grown up, and that has been cool to see, but there were no forests that I have planted.

Now had Molyneux promised a fun light RPG people would have been happy, but no the internet rage was great. It still flows today. It is like a hot stream of magma. It never cools. With Godus again his dreams got away with him. He wanted to create the greatest god game off all time, but with a budget of just under a million dollars, he was never going to. Instread he created an interesting little time waster that translated well to tablets, so he focused on the iPad version. If this was normal development, this would have been fine, but since this was Kickstarter, the backers are wondering were their amazing game is.

I like that Molyneux dreams big, and I like that he shares those dreams with us. Every other developer is so tight lipped that you never know what they are thinking until they show us a very polished trailer done by a highly paid marketing department. I understand that it is frustrating to not see the games he was talking about, but at least he wants to create them. His problem is that the reality of what he has to work with gets in his way, be it money or processing power.

I will say that his treatment of the winner of Curiosity, their odd digging game, could have been better. They should have worked hard to make him a PR plus not a nightmare. I am hoping they will do right by him in the end, and he will get to be the mega god or whatever in the final version of Godus.

I love to hear people talk about their dreams, so it is refreshing to hear developers share what they are working towards. Still maybe they should save those dreams for Ted talks or interviews, and not post them to Kickstarter. I think we could use a few more dreamers like Peter Molyneux in the game business, and maybe, just maybe we as gamers can try and keep our hate to a minimum. Maybe it would also be wise not to preorder his games.

February 11, 2015

Shmee Lights A Candle For Shadow Realms!

EA/BioWare has decided to pull the plug on the four on one dungeon crawler Shadow Realms. The Paladin and I both quite enjoyed our short time with this game, but it looks like they could never get it working they way they wanted. It was always an odd game. It was going to be released episodically with the story parts single player, but the fighting multiplayer. You got to choose whether you were one of the good guys or played as the Shadow Lord. It was fun to see a developer trying something new, but the folks over at EA probably got cold feat when it looked like the public at large wasn’t getting the concept. I hope the devs making the game manage to keep their jobs and just move to a different project. We will see.

Part of me is wondering if the lawyers at Tops and Microsoft were wondering where their royalty check was since the story and setting concepts were so close to Shadowrun, so EA just decided not to deal with it. Whatever the cause, we are down one more RPG. I will light a candle.

February 6, 2015February 6, 2015

Shmee Joins The Inquisition Of The Dragon Age!

I have been playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for quite some time, but I kept telling myself I needed to get in to it more before I gave my review. Well, I have a ton left to play, but I am going to give you my thoughts anyway, why? Because by the time I am done with this game it will be 2016. This a huge game, and one worth spending some time in.

The game is technically the third game in a series, but you can tell the developers wanted this game to stand on its own. Almost a reboot if you will. The first game Dragon Age: Origins tried to be an old school RPG, but then also be friendly to console gamers, and ended up somewhere in between. Making neither crowd very happy. The second game Dragon Age 2 went straight up action RPG, and in the process lost what fans the first game had. With Inquisition Bioware took a step back and looked at the games of theirs people did like, namely Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, and then made a fantasy RPG that followed in that style. There result has been great. If you don’t want to jump in to this world without knowing what has happened you can go to Dragonkeep.com and customize all the actions that you would have taken in the other games while learning the backstory.

If you have ever played a Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic game you will understand how this game works very quickly. You get three party members with you at all times, and you can just control your character and let them act on their own, or you can pause the action and assign their actions. What is new this time around is that you can kind of program their automatic actions in the menu, and if you wish you can just flat out control them as if they were your character, so if you are sick of playing your mage for awhile you can play as one of your brawlers. It is quite fun. Thankfully you can select the armor and weapons for all your sidekicks, not just a couple of things like the later Mass Effect games.

Like Bioware’s other games, Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn’t take place in one spot like say Skyrim, you unlock different zones and areas as you play, or gain “Power” as they say in the game. Much like the planet maps of their Sci-Fi games, you have a world map in this game. Now the zones are plenty large, so there is still stuff to do for you explorer types. Well, there is plenty to do regardless of your play style. There are so many quests and areas that you will have something to do for a long time.

There are a couple of downsides to this game. One, it takes a long time to truly start. Not until you get your castle “Skyhold” do you really gain access to all this game has to offer, and even if you press through to your castle, it will take you at least twelve hours or so to get there. That is the length of some games right there, and in this game you are maybe 15% done. Crazy. The other problem is that some of the quests are kind of boring (namely the Hinterlands). Like they were thrown in for filler, but with so much to do they should have just been left out.

I am enjoying my time with Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I can’t wait to play more. I am nowhere near done with this game, but I have already got my money’s worth. This game seems like it is always on sale now, and it is well worth a purchase at even full price, so it is a steal now. If nothing else this game will give you something to do during those long gameless summer months, or at least until The Witcher 3 comes out in May.

January 1, 2015

Shmee’s Most Anticipated Games For 2015!

Well this is kind of fun, two of my games for 2015 are on my most anticipated games for 2014 as well. That is the way the video games business works though, and I would rather see them delayed and be good then be like the rushed messes of this year. So here are my most anticipated games for 2015!

5: Tom Clancy’s The Division

This was my number one game for 2014, but the fact that Ubisoft has been dropping the ball lately made me move this game down the list a bit for this year. Still it is an open world current day RPG, and that sounds amazing!

4: Quantum Break

The guys behind Max Payne and Alan Wake are making a game where you can control time not just slow it down. This seems like a natural progression, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. They don’t have a firm release date for this game, so it may turn up on my top games for 2016 list next year, but I am still excited none the less.

3: The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3 moved two spots up the list this year, and the reason is that not only is it open world now, but it also has multiple playable characters! It is about time, and I think this is the year The Witcher is going to become one of the premier PRG franchises.

2: Batman Arkham Knight

The Batman games are some of my favorite of all time, and this is Rocksteady’s last time working with the Dark Knight. In this game you will have all Batman’s tools to work with including the Batmobile, so this should be one to remember!

1: Halo 5

The Chief is back, and he is bring back the multiplayer that everyone enjoyed. With a few tweaks of course! This should be the Halo game we have been waiting for, and for 343 Industry’s sake I hope so! Halo 5 might be the biggest game of 2015!

There is my list, and it should be another good year for gaming! There are also a number of indie titles coming out that just didn’t quite make the list, but still even more reason to be excited. What are you wanting to play next year?