Game: Fallout Shelter,
Release Date: February 7, 2017
Price: Free
Platform: Xbox One, Windows 10
Fallout Shelter by Bethesda Softworks is a free game for Xbox One and Windows 10. There are micro-transactions to boost in-game productivity, but they are optional.
Fallout Shelter starts with your creating a new “Vault”. A random number is selected, but you may choose your own. I quite liked the number selected for me. So off I went to create “Vault 306”.
Inside the well-designed package (I love the packaging on high-end tech devices) is:
What does it mean to be a toxic community? In multiplayer online video games you are bound to play against some trash-talkers. There is trash talk in physical sports, e-sports, regular life. Some people just talk trash, but they might still respect their opponent and their team. Judging a community’s toxicity is not a science, it’s more of a “feel”. When I play Titanfall 2 online, most people aren’t using voice chat, but when they are, it’s largely not “hate speech” and vitriol. So if I were to judge the Titanfall 2 community, at least on Xbox One, I would say that is not toxic, but also not especially helpful. That’s just how it “feels” to me, and your mileage may vary.
A “toxic” game on the other hand has an apparently plentiful stock of players who have zero respect for others, and they blissfully display this disregard in voice chat, text chat, and private messages. (Thanks for letting me know how “trash” I am through an Xbox Live message. The win wasn’t enough, you have to kick a guy when he’s down?) Continue reading
Today I received an email from Xbox. I get a lot of marketing emails from them, so I wasn’t surprised, but this one was different than usual. It’s the end of the year 2016 and Xbox was doing their best to make me feel proud to be a member of Team Xbox. So they sent me a “personalized” coat of arms to, I don’t know, make me feel cool?
The landscape of console gaming is changing. Those of us who have been “in the game” for a long time are experiencing a bit of a shock with the reveal of the mid-generation refresh. Sony, with the PlayStation 4 Pro; and Microsoft, with the announced Scorpio; represent the first of their kind; more power and performance part-way through a console’s lifecycle.
These beefier-than-launch consoles are new territory, for both console makers and players. And with this more powerful hardware comes some challenging design decisions.