Shmee.Me

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014

Shmee’s Top Five Video Games Of 2014!

Thanks to the Xbox One coming out, and a lot of the indies I have backed on Kickstarter finally getting finished, I got to play a lot of games this year. That means my list is a little more complete than last year, and that is a good thing. Here they are my top five video games in reverse order!

5: Child of Light

There were a lot of titles bucking for the number five slot, but I went with Child of Light. It was beautiful to look at, and charming to play. I loved just kicking back and letting the whimsy wash over me. For all the bad press Ubisoft got this year, and deservedly so, it was nice to see that they are still making smaller thoughtful games too.

4: Broken Age: Part 1

Generally if the people at Double Fine release a game, I will play it. Broken Age: Part 1 makes me glad that I do. I was very happy that Kickstarter brought back point and click adventure games, and the master of point and click Tim Schaefer at that. The only reason this game is at number four and not higher is that it is only half a game.

3: Shadow of Mordor

I have barely started to play this game and it lands on my list at number three. Why? Because it mixes the wonderful Batman games with Assassin’s Creed, and then moves the action to Middle Earth. That is like crack-cocaine for me. Warner Brothers has shown licensed games don’t have to be terrible! I will do a full review of this game later, so it may come off this list, but I doubt it.

2: Titianfall

Titianfall made me fall in love with first person shooters again. It reminded the gaming world we didn’t need to make realistic military bore-fests. Thanks to Titianfall every game now has double jump and more freedom of movement. Oh yeah it had giant robots too! Even if some people complained that there wasn’t enough content, this game has changed the FPS genre for the better, and it may just be the most influential game of 2014.

1: Sunset Overdrive

This game is number one because it had one goal: be fun! And it succeeds in spades. I am sure that some games that came out this year were technically better, or they had better story lines, but Sunset Overdrive was crazy fun, and anything called a “game” should strive to be. It also said, “Hey why not use color?!”. Which is nice since most games these days like to shade themselves in brown and gray or other serious colors. Meanwhile Sunset Overdrive takes nothing seriously, well except for the aforementioned fun.

There were a lot of good games that didn’t make my list this year, which means that despite what the critics say it was a great year for gaming. I would love to hear your take on the games of the year!

November 6, 2014November 6, 2014

Fallout 4: If Not Boston Then Where?

So Forbes ran a story about the name ‘Fallout: Shadow of Boston’ being registered in Germany, and people got really excited. Rightfully so. A new Fallout game on the new consoles and updated computer hardware would be amazing! The thing people weren’t excited about was the location. Boston is pretty close to Washington D.C. in setting, so it wouldn’t have been that big of a change for the series, but it ended up not mattering because the registration was a hoax.

Still if Boston is not a good location then where should the next Fallout game be located? A lot of people gave suggestions like Miami, San Francisco, or Seattle. I was even thinking Denver might be fun since it would be the first game to take place in the mountains, but the more I thought about it the more I thought this would be a great time to make a big change in the series.

According to Vault-Tec (the evil corporation behind the Fallout vaults) lore, all their vaults are in the good old US of A, so why not choose a new company that is like Vault-Tec’s European rival. Then you could have a game that takes place in England. London would be an amazing place to explore after the apocalypse, and since it would be a different company they could introduce new technology, and a different take on what happened to the world. It would still have the fun future of the 50’s vibe, but just a different spin on it. Plus you might be able to find out even more about Vault-Tec by uncovering what their rival was working on to counter them.

England is also a great place for the game because since it is an island it has natural boundaries. Boundaries you can break in the plethora of DLC content that will no doubt come out for this game. Small purchasable trips to Ireland and France would be so much fun, or just great locations for Fallout 5 and 6.

I was disappointed to hear that Bethesda was not ready to announce their new game yet, but I am excited that there is still a chance that there could be some big and fun changes coming to the Fallout universe. The thought of Fallout: London makes me salivate. I am going to have to find one of Lil’ Shmee’s burp-cloths and wipe my chin.

October 3, 2014October 3, 2014

Checking Out Wasteland 2!

Wasteland 2 is a game by inXile Entertainment, and is the sequel the 1988 video game Wasteland. If you have never heard of Wasteland it was the precursor to the massively popular Fallout series. Wasteland 2 was also one of the biggest Kickstarter games to date pulling in just under $3 Million. I like it a lot, but its old school charms can be frustrating.

The story starts off with your group as bunch of new recruits out trying to solve the murder of Ace, and track down a mysterious signal that is being sent out over the Wasteland. Can you save the Wasteland from the lawlessness that has taken hold, or will you let everyone fend for themselves?

Everything about this game is old school. To start it is a top down isometric turn based RPG. Your characters are controlled by giant stat sheets, and you are always worried that you picked the wrong stats (you probably did). You have to wander around the Wastes on a map and then cross your fingers that you will not hit any “random” encounters, but if you are like me and you grew up with games like this, you will love it all.

What you will not love are all the bugs this game has. Again this feels like a throw back. I haven’t had a game crash on me this much for a long time. Oh and every now and then it likes to eat a save game, so save in multiple spots and often, but judging by the 1.5 GB patch I can tell they are working on it.

Unlike Fallout this game has a more gritty and grounded feel. Sure it is still darkly funny, but it doesn’t have that future of the 50’s vibe. This is more like what would happen if the world ended in 1995. It is actually a nice change, and I am glad that they didn’t just copy Fallout’s aesthetic.

The story is large and branching, so you will not run out of things to do. The side stuff feels a little shallow, but with such a large main quest it is a minor complaint. This game will probably take you at least forty hours to complete the main quest, and that is not counting any time you are just wondering around.

This game has some major flaws due to the amount of bugs that it has, but don’t let that put you off, at least for long anyway. It is fun, and I am glad that I backed it because until Kickstarter came around they just didn’t make games like this anymore, but I hope Wasteland 2’s success with spur on other developers to look to gaming’s past for ideas for the future.

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014

Windows 10 Impressions!

Well I have been using the “Technical Preview” of Windows 10 for about a day, and I thought I would let you know what I think. It is pretty much Windows 8 with a Start Menu, or if you prefer Windows 7 with an App Store. Now Microsoft has said this preview has only 10% of the changes that are going in to Windows 10, so I am sure more is on the way, but at this point it is not a huge change.

The Start Menu works very similarly to the one from Windows 7, with the added benefit that you can put Live Tiles in it. They are almost like Widgets from Windows 7 except now they live on your Start Menu. If you are on a tablet and you want the Windows 8 Start Screen back all you have to do is right click on the Start Menu and uncheck a box then log off and then back in again, and boom you are back in “Tablet Mode”. Microsoft showed a thing called Continuum that was supposed to make that transition seamless, but it is not in this build, so for now it takes a few extra steps.

There are also multiple desktops now. They are pretty much just a new way to handle multiple open windows and screens. You can have all your email and work stuff in one desktop, and all your webpages and apps in another, and then you can fast switch between the two. If you are a person that uses a lot of running programs this will be a big deal, if not than you will probably never use it.

Apps from the App store now run in Windows instead of full screen, so you can move them around and arrange them the way you want them. The”Charms” bar is now a menu, so kind of like the app version of the “File” menu in other programs. It works, and is nice to move them around freely. If you want the large frameless look of Windows 8 you can use the “Charms” menu to put them in full screen mode, and you are good to go.

The other changes are mostly cosmetic. New Icons for things that look kind of like a throw back to Windows 2000, and the frames around programs are mostly gone, but now they have drop shadows to give kind of a 3D look when they are stacked. Nothing ground breaking, but it does look nice.

I was disappointed that they are not showing off a lot with this build, but I guess that gives us something to look forward to in the “Consumer Preview” that will be out sometime in the first of next year. If you have any questions let me know and I would be happy to try and answer them.

October 1, 2014October 1, 2014

Windows 10?!

Well Microsoft threw us all for a loop yesterday by announcing Windows 10. It wasn’t surprising that they announced a new Windows OS, but that they skipped 9. Some are speculating that since it means “Suffering” in Japanese, “No” in German, and bad luck in China that 10 is a nicer number to market. They did the same thing when they skipped build 13 for Office, not that anybody paid attention to that. It also catches them up with OSX on Mac.

Other than that everything else went as planned. The start menu is coming back. Windows RT and Windows Phone are merging, so there will be only one version of the ARM OS, and from the pictures it also looks like Xbox One will be joining the party in some way. So other than the name it is exactly what people predicted.

If you want to try out Windows 10 they are releasing a Technical Preview today around noon Pacific Time. You can get it by clicking here. It goes without saying that this is an early beta, and you should only install it if you are willing to deal with numerous issues. I will probably be giving it a shot, and I of course will let you know what I think!