jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012
  Admin

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2759 Posts

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Version Announced!
Neverwinter Nights is a classic PC RPG that came out in 2002 and still has a very active community. One reason for the large community so long after the games release is because BioWare built up an incredible set of game building tools allowing anyone the ability to build campaigns, persistent worlds and basically anything you could think of. Lots of community content still exists and persistent worlds are still played now.

Recently Beamdog announced that they are going to release Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition with some new features such as:

* Improved Display: Your portrait, combat bar, inventory, and other UI elements adjust in size based on your chosen resolution including 1080p and 4k.
* Advanced Graphics Options: Pixel shaders and post-processing effects make for crisper, cleaner visuals. Enable contrast, vibrance, and depth of field options as preferred.
* Community Endorsed: Original developers have teamed with key members of the Neverwinter Nights community to curate important fan-requested improvements to support players, storytellers, and modders.
* Backwards Compatibility: Works with save games, modules, and mods from the original Neverwinter Nights. A galaxy of community created content awaits.

Looks like the the game will be optimized for larger monitors and some enhancements recommended by the community. Curious to see if more comes but right now it seems like a pretty nice set of light enhancements to a classic game.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/11/20/beamdog-announces-neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition-for-pc.aspx

Get Plants VS Zombies GoTY Free On Origin!
Plants VS Zombies is one of the best games to come out of 2009. For me it really kicked the tower defense genre back into gear and solidified PopCap as a solid studio that made incredible games. That is until EA bought them and then things changed... but for a time PopCap made some of the best casual computer games well before the mobile craze hit.

If you wanted to experience Plants VS Zombies for the first time or maybe come back at it again you can get the Game of the Year Edition free on EA Origin. When PvZ originally hit I played the demo and immediately went out to buy it from the store, you know back when people did that but now it's even easier and it's totally free.

https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/free-games/on-the-house

But Does This Review Run Crysis?
In LGR's latest review he takes a look at the PC benchmark that some consider a game Crysis at it's 10 year anniversary. Crysis doesn't feel 10 years old but apparently Wikipedia seems to think it is so it's a good time to take a look back at how good of a game it was and if it holds up. I never could actually play Crysis as I never had the kind of PC back then that could run it. It seems like a pretty cool game and I didn't know that it was the spiritual successor to the first Far Cry. If you want to play Crysis now LGR notes that you should pick it up on GOG DRM free as the Steam version STILL uses SecureROM and locks you out after 5 installs. That seems really crazy to lock someone out of playing a game after 5 installs but apparently it's still a thing and still attached to the Steam version and it's getting some negative reviews because of it.

Load Up On Some Great Games In The Humble Care Package Bundle!
For the next 4 days the Humble Care Package Bundle is running a special 100% charity bundle where the proceeds go to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, GlobalGiving, Direct Relief and Save the Children. For a fixed $30 amount that goes to those charities you get... need to flex my fingers a bit because there are quite a few games here in Starbound, Darkest Dungeon, Minecraft: Story Mode, Stardew Valley, Move or Die, Duck Game, Her Story, She Remembered Caterpillars, Stronghold Legends: Steam Edition, DreadOut, Pony Island, Mighty No. 9, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Arma: Gold Edition, Grey Goo, Sorcerer King: Rivals, Shadowrun Returns, Kholat, Primal Carnage: Extinction, Lakeview Cabin Collection, The Park, Magicka, Machinarium Collector's Edition, Jump Stars, Fearless Fantasy, No Time To Explain Remastered & Psychonauts.

Darkest Dungeon & Move or Die seem to have limited Steam Key availability so head over to get it soon if you want to pick up those games in this bundle and let me know if you plan on picking this up.

https://www.humblebundle.com/care-package

"Hurricanes in the Caribbean and in Texas. Wildfires in California. Earthquakes in Mexico. In the wake of multiple large-scale natural disasters and the increasing effects of climate change, we humbly recognize our responsibility to the global community. Alongside developers and creators, we are bundling a care package of much-needed funds for emergency relief.

This special one-week bundle features over $385 in amazing games for just $30. 100% of your payments will be split equally between Direct Relief, the American Red Cross, GlobalGiving, Save the Children, and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Humble Bundle will proudly match the first $300,000 raised."

Continuing On With New Super Mario Bros Wii!
After completing New Super Mario Bros. on the DS I've been wanting to try the next installment on the Wii aptly titled New Super Mario Bros. Wii. At this years Portland Retro Gamine Expo I picked New Super Mario Bros. Wii for $13 along with a raft of other old games and just recently put it in my Wii and have been playing it for the last week. Like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is an improvement over it's former DS predecessor. It contains the same basic gameplay and the Wii version stacks on the DS version with better graphics, extra mechanics and the inclusion of 4 player split-screen co-op. One thing I noticed right away is that New Super Mario Bros. Wii is more difficult than the DS version, which is a welcome improvement in that's it doesn't feel too punishing.

To add more replayability to the levels occasionally Bowsers minions will capture a Mushroom Kingdom Toad and you can head back to a level you completed to save it. If you do this you can get a shot at a Toad House giving you a crack and collecting items that you can use in the overworld to help you start out better in certain levels. This overworld item mechanic first showed up in Super Mario Brothers 3 and it feels really great to have it come back here. This really makes New Super Mario Bros. Wii feel like a proper sequel to the old NES Mario games and it seems like that's what this series is trying to do. Mario Galaxy and now Mario Odyssey seem like sequels to Mario 64 while the New Super Mario Bros. franchise is keeping the old 2D Mario platforming alive. I hope New Super Mario Bros. continues on to the Switch as it has had a few installments on each system including the Wii U and 3DS that I heard were really good that I plan on picking up at some point.

So far i've completed World 1 and if you've played a World 1 in a Mario game it's pretty similar to that. In fact New Super Mario Bros. Wii sticks to a very similar level format to the DS version in that the first and second worlds are themed similarly. From there the themes verge but if you are expecting a radical departure from past games like Mario 3 or NSMB DS you will be disappointed. There is plenty of level creativity on display here and many times in World 1 I was in awe at what Nintendo was able to accomplish with it's level design. But the bread and butter of a good Mario game is gameplay and enough challenge to be interesting and New Super Mario Bros. Wii has that in spades.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii so far, is a great platformer and if you have a Wii kicking around and want to play a good Mario game you can get this used at any game store or Amazon.

GameShell Is A Cool New Moddable Retro Linux Gaming Handheld!

Back this on Kickstarter!
The Retro Pie community is huge and a big part of that is the fact that you can use the hardware for nearly anything you can think up. Lots of new open and moddable systems have been popping up and many Retro Pie builds feature making your own handheld but nothing makes it easy. Intro the new GameShell Kickstarter that aims to ship a modular portable hackable Linux handheld. It's seriously focused on gaming but it's not limited to that and since it runs Linux you can hack it to do whatever you want.

Many Kickstarter projects don't do well and hardware projects doubly so. I hope this takes off but there is an inherent amount of risk here but I wish GameShell well because if it can ship this system I think it would be pretty special.

"GameShell is the world's first modular, portable game console with a GNU/LINUX embedded operating system. It allows you to play thousands of classic games from Atari, GB, GBA, NES, SNES and many of history’s greatest consoles.

GameShell uses the powerful LINUX operating system and every game published on it will be free, open-source and modifiable. We have included two classic games - Cave Story and DOOM1 in GameShell and there will be more free games included in future."

This New Video Game Company Is Making Kids Brain Dead!
I just watched this news report by John Stossel that was a real eye opener. Apparently this 100 year old Japanese company is using American made computer chips to create a new toy that kids are obsessing over. It's distracting them from homework and creating such a product demand that some adults travel thousands of miles to get the latest toy games! I hope you take this video to heart so you can make sure your kids don't fall prey to this new evil!

Digital Foundry Analyzes Doom on The Switch!
I've been wondering how the new Doom Switch port stacks up to the PC & PS4 versions and Digital Foundry has a great break down video. Doom on the Switch runs a bit under 720p and runs at an uneven 30 fps. All that said, the port looks good and if you want to run Doom on the go I can't imagine a better way to play it.

So I Heard You Like Bubsy - Cygnus Destroyer Reviews New Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back!
Continuing the Bubsy thread from before with this Cygnus Destroyer video reviewing the all new Bubsy game. Looks like it's not too long at clocking in at a handful of hours but looks to be the best Bubsy yet according to Cygnus. That said, the Steam reviews are butchering the game for the $30 price tag and very short playthrough. I can understand why development on the game may have been under budgeted and the end result seemed to suffer. Once this hits Steam sales I wonder how that will do to it's rating?

Cygnus Destroyer Reviews The Infamous Bubsy Games
Cygnus opens this video saying that Bubsy is one of the most hated mascots in all of video games. I'm not sure about all that but Bubsy 3D is considered one of the worst games of all time and rightly so. When Bubsy came out on the Super Nintendo I rented it and found it to be a really visually fun game but nothing really hooked me so I didn't buy it. It was obvious to me that Accolade was trying to make it's own Mario or Sonic but way more 90's X-TREME and TOTALLY IN YOUR FACE so it felt a bit forced but my biggest critique is that it's fairly derivative. I look back on Bubsy now as a fun historical point in gaming and something that they are trying to bring back now with the recent Bubsy Steam release in Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back.

If you want to know more about Bubsy or want to find out more about the dreaded Bubsy 3D check out the Cygnus video linked above. Cygnus is reviewing the latest Bubsy game and i'll post that after I check it out as a follow up.