Last week in gaming saw the release of new user-added tagging to games on Steam. The idea was to allow players to apply tags to games to further refine categories and maybe allow people to find games similar to ones they might already own and be enjoying, a way to give the players more control on how they sorted games available and allow them to choose what tags they followed. What followed was some of what was intended but as is the way of humanity, the new tagging system quickly became a free-for-all. The exploiting of the system ranged from people using the tags to spoil endings of story-driven games, to people using the tags to insult the game or developers to even offensive and abusive tagging on games such as Gone Home from players who opposed themes presented within the game.

Now in a bid to attempt to combat abuse of the new system and prevent strict moderation internally Valve has added a way for other users to flag tags they don’t find helpful, bringing them to the attention of Valve who will remove the tag if it meets one of four criteria: spoilery, offensive/abusive, not appropriate for the game or simply unhelpful. Tags will also now need to be applied by a greater number of people before they will show up as popular tags to the wider Steam audience.

The Steam Dev team says that they are working to improve the feature and to keep feedback coming as to how the new safeguards are working, but also Valve has shown no interest in removing tags that might keep someone from purchasing a game if enough players find it a bad game; which can only be a good thing.

What do you think? Will this new set of safeguards be enough to make Steam user-tags useful and reliable at last?

Smashdate! #3 a little guy with a powerful punch is warming up in the Blue corner, the next contender is sporting some interesting new mechanics as well as snazzy green shorts. We’ll also be looking into a few of the other stages that we can piece together.

[*ALARM*]

A Challenger Approaches

Little Mac

It’s time to touch gloves and come out fighting! Little mac has been upgraded from a mere assist trophy and is ready to go toe to toe with all the other superstars. His short stature and incredible speed will make mac a hard target to hit, although from the release trailer his jump/recovery height seems to be very unimpressive but what else can we expect from a professional boxer. Mac seems to be geared towards keeping his feet on the ground and dishing out the smash attacks. An interesting feature of Mac’s fighting style is the addition of his KO meter. This meter act’s in a similar way to DK’s star punch allowing Mac to charge his haymaker and deal an instant smash, unlike DK, Mac can’t store his charge so will deal his damage as soon as you release the button. This means allot less freedom and a more strategic attack, but one that deals all manner of damage and insta-kills.

One quick bit to mention about Macs announcement video is that he transforms into Mega Mac he has a rainbow aura similar to the Smash Moves of brawl. So it seems very likely that the special Smash Moves will be making a comeback.

The Stage is Set:

Wii Sports Studio

Everybody’s favourite characters home turf looks just as interesting as she does. With little to no features bar a couple of floating platforms this glorified yoga studio looks to be a good stage for a balanced fight. although the lack of a drop off may frustrate more seasoned players.

Green Hill Zone

The Blue Blur’s opening stage is back for another battle, not a lot of info can be obtained from these screen shots other than the stage being set in Sonic Lost Worlds. But if the brawl stage is anything to go by a dynamic shifting stage may be what we get.

Spirit Train

Our first 3DS stage here on Smashdate! Straight out of Toon Link’s series this mystical rail way spans the length and breadth of Hyrule. With bright popping colours and a cute little conductor this stage definitely has the Toon Link charm. As for the stage mechanics it looks like a scrolling base that’ll give players a chance to recover if they’re fast enough. Will we see varying speeds like ice mountain in brawl we will have to wait and see.

Round 3 of Smashdate! Had a couple of TKO’s with some interesting additions to mechanics, stages and characters. And I don’t know about you guys but I’m super excited to see these new mechanics come into play.

After the final bell has rung and the bout is over for now I’m still sat here clutching my moustache wax, hoping, praying that my trusty main will be reviled ready for the championship bout.

Another detail revealed during last night’s Nintendo Direct is the upcoming launch of another spin-off Pokémon game for the 3DS.

Pokémon Link: Battle!, known in America as Pokémon Battle Trozei, is the 3DS sequel to the DS game Pokémon Link/Trozei, which featured match-three style puzzles using Pokémon faces. Battle! sees you doing the same, playing out match-3 style puzzles with Pokémon – but this time, the puzzles take the form of Pokémon battles that progress based on your performance in the game. Burst the right number and type of tiny Pokémon heads and you deal damage to your opponent.

Pokémon Link: Battle! will feature all known Pokémon from Generations 1 through to the present day Gen 6; and all of them will be “befriendable”. The game will launch on the 3DS eShop in the UK on 13 March.

Now Metroid, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Punch-Out!! among new titles to get the Remix treatment.

Remember NES Remix – the Wii U eShop Download that, as I put it at the time, “first remembers classic NES Titles… then screws with them”? After the surprise announcement and rapid release of the original game in December, perhaps it should come as no surprise that in a Nintendo Direct last night, Satoru Iwata once again surprised us by announcing its successor.

Like the previous title, NES Remix 2 takes another selection of classic NES games; and sets you specific challenges to complete in each, both using the original title’s gameplay and then in “altered” versions, where whole new twists are added to radically change the game you once knew. This time around, the titles focus on the later era of the NES, such as Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, Punch-Out!!, Kirby Adventure, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid, among others. The game will also feature a new “Championship Mode”, which was left unexplained.

As well as being a game made up of mini-games from other games, NES Remix 2 is also going to include a full-length game in its own right, in the form of “Super Luigi Bros.” Super Luigi Bros. is a fully playable, reversed version of Super Mario Bros, where you now play as Luigi throughout and can take advantage of his higher jumping ability; and in a new right-to-left viewpoint instead of the classic left-to-right.

NES Remix 2 will hit the Wii U eShop on 25 April, price TBC.

Those of us paying attention to the snapshots Mojang have been releasing in the run up to the release of Minecraft 1.8 might have long since noticed a pattern to the additions to the game, an awful lot of it is centring around making building maps of different types easier to automate. Most of this seems to be because the way blocks are rendered among other things are being subtly fiddled with ‘behind-the-scenes’ in the run up to the implementation of the plugin API that Dinnerbone has been promising for a while, meaning a lack of ‘survival’ changes to the game.

Snapshot 14w07a is no different, although it does bring new iron trapdoors to the survival aspect of the game. Otherwise the majority of changes in this ‘smaller snapshot’ (Mojang’s words) centre once again around adding new ways to customise and set-up maps and mini-games for map-makers to use.

The two major map-making additions in my opinion are the ability to now display team objectives that can only be seen by the team it is for (filtered out by ‘team colour’) and the ability to at last switch off nameplates above a player’s head, using the teams function. That last one especially will have a major effect on Survival Game type maps equal almost to how Spectator Mode did back in snapshot 14w05a.

Other notable command additions have to do with the /scoreboard command added in the last patch, with some new subcommands /scoreboard operation and /scoreboard test, operation used for math-based functions such as totalling up all the kills from one team into one single score and test used to make sure that scores are falling between set parameters (e.g. not under 0 and not over 100).

Needless to say, 1.8 looks like it’s going to be a very good update for all map-makers in the Minecraft community.

Snapshot notes are here.