How to get me to buy a Steambox...

 

This past week, Valve finally unveiled their long-awaited Steam Box. Of course we don't have a picture of the "box" itself because there are different ones from different manufacturers. Now I know everybody's hyped on Steam and their constant fire sales and Windows sucks, but who is this for? People would probably either rather play on the PC they already have or just stick with consoles. Also Linux is hardly a big operating system, with most AAA games not working on it, so that would take some effort developers like EA might not bother with.

But as someone who is a gamer, wants to get into PC gaming but would like to play it on my TV with minimal hassle, I think there is potential here. It sounds like at first the use would be as a simple sling box for your computer to your TV. While  I could certainly do that and play a ton of indie pc titles on my TV, what would make it really attractive to me is a competitively priced stand alone box that got me access to those great steam sales, the indie titles and the AAA titles. That is something that would really peak my interest and if the next gen exclusive titles for PS4 & Xbox One aren't all that appealing, I would be more likely to pick up than a next gen console. My guess is something like that might run significantly higher and may not even be a possibility for awhile due to the Linux-based OS. But one can hope.

So I'm a little more than halfway through Scribblenauts Unmasked and while it's a fun title, there are some nagging issues. Being that supervillains constantly pop out and attack you, it's a lot more combat heavy than the previous title and the combat works poorly. You can of course summon other superheroes for help, but if you hit them, which is very easy they will turn on you. Also occasionally I'll summon a hero (usually one of the more obscure ones) and they will just sit there and do nothing and the villains won't attack them either so they won't get involved. Otherwise I still highly recommend the game for anyone who is a comic book fan. I'll often just dig through the library to call up some hero I've never heard of before. And granted, I'm far from an expert but having seen most of the animated shows and movies I've got a decent working knowledge and there's still a ton of cool characters I've never heard of.

That's it for today, but there's a Nintendo direct tomorrow and I'll probably watch something for gamer cinema so expect something tomorrow.