Category: Computer

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Stuff From The E3 2018 Kickoff Weekend!

2018 E3’s Pre-shows started this weekend, and for the most part they were pretty good, with the exception of EA who pretty much just said they were sorry for being greedy jerks, Battlefield would also have Battle Royal, and Respawn was making a Star Wars game with Jedi in it.  This left the weekend to Microsoft and Bethesda.  They did not disappoint.

Microsoft kicked off the show with Halo: Infinity:

Then ended with Cyberpunk 2077!

What was between those two massive trailers was non-stop game announcements.  Most of them were not exclusive, but the message was clearly, “We have plenty of games to play!”  Other big things were that yes they are indeed working on a new Xbox despite rumors, as well as a streaming service, and that they bought four studios (Ninja Theory!!) and are creating a new one.  Also Forza Horizons 4 looks amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmQNo8xtcAg

After all of that hotness it was up to Bethesda, and while they had less games to show, they were all pretty amazing.

New standalone expansions for Prey and Wolfenstein, Doom 2 Eternal (AKA Hell on Earth), more Rage 2 with excellent digs at Walmart Canada, more info about the biggest Fallout ever 76 (AKA Fallout: The Division), and they ended it with a one two punch of STARFEILD!

And THE ELDER SCROLLS 6!!!

Of course they said Starfield is a next generation experience, and that The Elder Scrolls 6 doesn’t come out until after that, so who knows when they are coming out, but with Microsoft hinting about the Xbox Two being around the corner, we could see Starfield late next year and TES:6 in 2020.  However, it may be a safe bet to add an extra year to each of those games, so 2020 and then 2021 respectively.

I will be watching what goes down today, but Sunday was a good day for games, and I am expecting the usual fireworks from Sony, so today should be just as good if not better.

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Steam Tears Down The Wall And Replaces It With A Papier-Mâché Fence!

Valve for years has pushed back on content that it deemed too offensive for its digital storefront Steam.  However, as time has passed the line for what gets let in and what gets banned has turned in to more of a sine curve that developers have had to try and calculate in order to sell their wares on gaming’s biggest digital store.  Then after doing all that “math” some developers got notices that their games were going to be dropped from the store anyway.  Which is a problem if Steam accounts for 80% of your sales.  After a few weeks of silence Valve brushed it all off as a misunderstanding.  The devs, as you can imagine, were not pleased, so to make everyone “happy” Steam’s forthcoming policy is that everything is permitted, and it is up to the users to build their own walls for what they see with tools that are forthcoming.

Here is the thing, those tools have got to be really effective and easy to use otherwise people are going to start seeing a lot of crap they don’t want to.  It is like going to a video store in the 90’s and just pretending there was nothing behind the beaded curtain.  Of course in that case at least the store put the curtain up.  It wasn’t up to the perspective renters to hang the rod and decide the bead density.  Valve should have just said they were creating an “opt-in” policy, and then let people check the boxes for what they want to see.  That way everything stays beyond the wall until you say to open the gates.  If someone searches for something beyond that wall, it could let them know that it exists, but that they would need to update their settings.  Now however, it is going to be a free-for-all until you get your barrier setup correctly.

Then on top of that Steam has the audacity to say that even though they are letting every kind of game in that doesn’t mean they agree with the game in question’s content.  Oh, well I am glad you don’t agree with what you are going to try and make a bundle of money off of.  It is a like a nun working the front desk at a brothel, “It is a sin to step inside my child, but I will need $50 up front to enter the bar.”  What?!  Even more insane is that Valve will still ban games that are illegal and that are “outright trolling”.  Illegal I get, but trolling?  According to who?  Why get rid of an arbitrary line to just add a worse arbitrary line?

I am glad that developers will now be able to make the kinds of games they want to make and host them on Steam, but Valve should still have a major hand in trying protect its users from the terrible stuff those devs are going to make.  The wall should still exist, just make a gate and post some guards warning of what lies beyond, “There be adult content, gruesome violence and nudity past this point fair traveler!”  Let it be a user decision, not a platform decision, and “trolling”?  That should be more detailed, like no games replicating racist acts or school shootings, you know, an actual policy.  Steam will soon be the Wild West, and I am not sure its users will apricate the change.

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Why PUBG, Why?

Yesterday PUBG Corp did something very dumb, they sued Epic Games for copyright infringement.  While I get why they are angry, PUBG pays Epic to license their engine, and then Epic turns around uses that money to create a Battle Royal variant for their game Fortnite.  Which at first played very similar to PUBG.  It must be hard watching a bunch of players leave to a similar game made by the people you pay to help you with your game, but this is just a bad look.

PUBG should have responded to Fortnite: Battle Royal by doubling down on making their game better.  To be fair it has gotten better on both Xbox and PC, but it is still poorly optimized, and it doesn’t have the best aesthetic.  Not to mention its loot system is pretty lame.  Though despite all that I like PUBG more.  The moment to moment tension in PUBG is better than the arcade-y thrill of Fortnite.

Which is another problem for PUBG’s lawsuit, while Fortnite started out very similar to PUBG, they are vastly different games now.  I am not sure how copyright works in Korea, but they would have a hard time making people think they are the same game here in the states.  Especially since the game industry is full of clones of one another, and a lot of them are far more egregious than Fortnite.

Look, it was bad form for Epic to literally say, “we like PUBG so much we are going to make our own Battle Royal game”, but suing people for bad form is not good business practice, and it makes all the gamers out there dislike PUBG for its epic case of sour grapes.  If PUBG wants to get its gamers back it needs to buckle down and make its game better, not sue Epic for bogus copyright infringement.  That will do the opposite.

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Battlefield V Tries To Become Left 4 Dead III!

Well this was unexpected.  We were expecting a Battle Royal mode, which since they increased Battlefield V’s player count to 64, I am sure it is coming, but what we got was a new co-op mode with randomly generated objectives.  You and three other friends will do your best take on different scenarios from early parts of World War II.  As the game gets older, it will get later on in the war.  Also, there are no crates in Battlefield V.  You of course can buy cosmetics for your soldier, but you don’t need to.  They are hoping, that much like Fortnite, you will really need that scorpion bomber jacket, so you won’t mind throwing down your hard earned cash, or grinding your way to get it.

If fan reaction is anything to go by, people are really excited to head back to WWII with Battlefield.  All I know is that they had better remake Wake Island!  You can’t have a Battlefield in  WWII without it.  So if Battlefield’s tried and true gameplay with a little bit of Left 4 Dead excites you, Battlefield V launches this October.  I know I will probably be getting it, and yes, I will probably have a lady avatar!

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With Black Ops 4, Call Of Duty Is Now Just Following the Leader

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (aka CoD: BlOps 4) was announced yesterday, and for the first time in a long time Call of Duty is changing things up.  Instead of the usual frantic multiplayer we have been playing for a really (really) long time, it is now 5×5 and adopting roles and unlockable soldiers, so if you were thinking Rainbow 6: Siege by way of Black Ops, you would be right.  Meanwhile instead of a five hour over the top campaign to give the game a focus and a theme, they have instead added a mode called Blackout.  You and dozens of players are dropped in to one map, and the last person/crew surviving wins, AKA PUBG/Fortnite.  The only thing that looks the same is the Zombies mode.

It is clear the well ran dry with the creative team over at Treyarch, so they just looked around and copied what was popular, and what is insane is that it might be working.  I mean this is the first CoD: BlOps I have been interested in, in years.  Battle Royal with helicopters and verticality?  That sounds amazing.  A faster more streamlined Siege?  Yes please!  And co-op zombie killing has always been fun.  I mean it is pretty much just their horde mode anyway.

While it is a shame Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is ditching a lot of what long time fans have come to expect, at least they are copying all the right games.  If they can deliver everything in one well balanced and polished title, it will be hard to say no to.  Being able to switch from Siege to PUBG, and then take on a zombie horde all on the fly with the same group of friends sounds like a lot of fun.  So I will be following CoD: BlOps 4 with great interest.  It may be the one that finally brings me back in to the fold, but only because it stole from all the right people.