MeltedJoystick Games of the Year 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/14/25 at 03:42 PM CT
Well, 2025 certainly was a year, wasn’t it? While we got to enjoy the *michaeljacksoneatingpopcorn.gif* spectacle of “AAA” Industrial Gaming beginning its long-overdue implosion, we were expected to sit by like the *doginaburninghouse.jpg* and say, “This is fine.”
Of course, some of us are more stubborn than others, and this year’s docket of exemplary games contains... absolutely nothing new! 2025 was a year where remakes, remasters, and compilations absolutely dominated in a way they’ve been trying to do for years, with the 5 most intriguing releases of the year ACTUALLY being releases from many, many years ago. Let’s dive in!
1. Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars (Multi)
This HD remastered compilation of the two best ‘Suikoden’ games – originally released in 1996 and 1999 – illustrates the sad state of RPG development. Konami, who stopped publishing new ‘Suikoden’ games in 2009, still hasn’t been able to top the …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/07/25 at 01:11 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
I made the mistake of researching a game after buying it and deciding to make it the next title to come off my backlog. What I learned killed my motivation to play anything (besides “Warframe”) for an additional two months. I’m surprised I got anything done during the Fall, but I finally ripped off the band-aid, blasted through the bad game as an excuse to test Steam for Linux, played a second good game in about a week, and the crew FINALLY finished “Baldur’s Gate 3 after nearly a year of chipping away at it in pathetic 2-hour chunks.
Bramble: The Mountain King – 2/5
Revenge of the Savage Planet – 4.5/5
Baldur’s Gate 3 – 4.5/5
Chris’ Review:
Chris officially finished his last Backlog Ablution game for the year... and nothing else. He then announced that he would NOT be playing anymore huge-ass Sandbox …
Backlog: The Embiggening – December, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/30/25 at 12:34 AM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Winter is upon us, and the deadlines are all drawing near. Will the Games Industry manage to squeeze out a last minute must-play? Or will it be nothing but a succession of constipated turds? Will the MJ Crew be able to clear their Backlog Ablutions? Or will Chris and I (who already have) be getting more free games that we won’t play? Let’s dive into the last dregs of the year and see if there’s anything worth salvaging!
Ugh, well don’t get your hopes up too high for a last minute sock-off-knocker, as the shovelware outnumbers everything else coming in December. In Licensed Swill, there’s a ‘Nicktoons’ game and a ‘Terminator’ game (that was supposed to come out last month)... But that’s really it! There’s no Cazual Swill or Annualized Swill... The rest of the shovelware takes the form of Noteworthy Ports (and there are even more non-noteworthy ports that got pruned from consideration): The Nintendo Switch (not …
Microsoft Finally Listens, but it’s Too Late
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/23/25 at 03:26 PM CT
Remember how long I’ve been saying that Xbox should just be a fancy front-end for Windows that makes it easy to navigate on a TV using nothing but a controller? Remember how Microsoft and the Xbox Division have done ANYTHING and EVERYTHING besides that one simple idea to make Xbox less of a laughing stock?
Well, it seems that, as both Shoes, the Sword of Damocles, and various other unfortunate dangling proverbs fall on the Xbox Division’s head simultaneously, the House of Gates has finally – FINALLY – decided to not only create a nice, clean, controller-friendly frontend for Windows, but to make it broadly available to... Xbox Insiders? Well, they had to have a catch in there somewhere.
Yup, as a preview of coming attractions, Microsoft is making the alternate Windows 11 GUI they’re calling “Full Screen Experience” available to all Xbox Insider program members before rolling it out across the entire platform. For those not in the know, Windows 11 Full Screen …
Valve Drops the Mic, Set to DOMINATE 2026 with 3(!) New Hardware Options
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/16/25 at 02:25 PM CT
For decades now, Gamers have believed that Valve, the once-small-time developer and publisher of the ‘Half-Life’ and ‘Portal’ IPs was incapable of counting to three, since none of their games have ever gotten a third, officially-numbered sequel. Well, this week, Valve, the no-longer-small-time owner of Steam, the non-monopolistic, yet still biggest storefront in all of PC gaming, just announced THREE new hardware devices that they will be bringing to market in the first quarter of 2026 (provided no doo-doo comes into contact with any turbines regarding global trade and supply chains).
And I’m going to buy ALL OF THEM!
The world’s most charismatic nerd, Linus of the LinusTechTips Youtube channel, got a special invite to a Valve preview session with these devices, and based on what he showed off, they all look quite amazing.
First up is the Steam Frame, the long-awaited sequel to the Valve Index VR platform. Far from being a mere Index 2.0 as was speculated, the …
Nearly 100% of Corporate Suits Believe Steam is a “Monopoly” in PC Gaming
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/09/25 at 02:11 PM CT
Just when you think the corporate overlords that are actively ruining the economy on a global scale can’t get any more cringy or stupid, they always manage to find a way to lower the bar even further. In a recent study performed by the “who the heck are they” digital games sales consulting firm, Rokky, 72% of survey respondents said that they “perceive Steam to be a monopoly” in PC game sales. What’s interesting is that 75% of the people questioned in this survey were C-Suite Executive Sh!theads, so using some incredibly suspect “math,” it “seems” that only 3% of these plutocrats actually understand what a monopoly is, with the remaining 97% seeming to believe that a monopoly is “anything that prevents ME from having 100% of the business in a given sector.”
Based on their long-running stupidity, it seems that C-Suiters don’t know what a monopoly is when looking at it from either side. First, they’ve spent decades proclaiming that none of the wireless …
Backlog: The Embiggening – November, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/31/25 at 03:23 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! With harvest season drawing to a close, in our pre-industrial civilizations, November was typically a month to take a moment to give thanks for what blessings the Earth Gods heaped upon us – or, in leaner times, to give thanks that the Earth Gods bothered to give us anything at all, so at no to offend them into making the problem long-term.
The Gaming Gods have not given us a whole lot to be thankful lately, but I suppose we should at least take the time to pick through the overturned-outhouse leavings in the event that they slipped something good in there by mistake.
Thankfully the shovelware is much tamer than last month... But there’s still something in every category of uselessness. In Licensed Swill, there’s a new ‘Spongebob’ game, a new ‘Hello Kitty’ game, and a new ‘Terminator’ game. In the Casual Swill category, there’s “Let’s Sing 2026,” which conveniently abuts to the Annualized Swill …
Unity = Malware Now?!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/25/25 at 05:27 PM CT
Back in 2023, we watched the company behind the Unity Engine – one of the two most popular canned solutions for creating games without having to re-write a bunch of low-level code, alongside Epic Games’ Unreal Engine – attempt to commit non-ritual suicide by changing its licensing paradigm to something so greedy that it was completely at odds with the type of Indie and first-timer games that typically use Unity as a jumping-off point. Unity backpedaled and reneged faster than we’ve seen most other corporations do when they try to implement a stupid idea and receive huge amounts of backlash instead of praise, and it seemed like everything was going to go back to “normal,” whatever that means in the modern Industrial Gaming ecosystem.
Of course, nothing can ever just be “normal” or “nice” or “not on fire” anymore, and it recently came to light that the Unity Engine is at the center of a security nightmare, as a vulnerability was introduced in the 2017 version …
Oh, Dear. Atari is Trying Out Yet Another Retro Console
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/19/25 at 12:46 AM CT
Remember a couple years ago when Atari (delenda est) – the terrible videogame publisher that directly caused the 1983 console gaming crash – decided that the thing the world really needed was a crappy Android-powered Ouya clone shaped like an Atari 2600 console, preloaded with a library of ROMs for games so bad they aren’t even worth the few megabytes of space the entire collection occupies in an Emulator folder? Yeah, that was fun, and the failure of the Atari VCS soon lead the pathetic, shambling corpse of one of Gaming’s worst villains to dabble in creating their own cryptocurrency casino. That was even more fun.
Of course, you can’t keep a good terrible company down, and it looks like Atari (delenda est) is trying the retro-console thing again, only this time they're puppeting the corpse of one of their biggest opponents from way back then (who went on to do literally nothing): Intellivision. Promoting their new endeavor as finally burying the hatchet from the first …
Gamepass Bears its First Fruits: -$300 Million for ‘CoD’ Revenue
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/12/25 at 03:06 PM CT
Oh dear, it looks like Microsoft’s endeavors to become Gaming’s loss-leader with Gamepass have already started to bear rotten fruits. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Xbox Division managed to leave $300 million dollars on the table by putting Activision-Blizzard’s latest ‘Call of Duty’ game on Gamepass day-one instead of simply selling more retail and digitally licensed copies.
While I personally find it baffling that ‘CoD’ is still popular enough to drive those kinds of sales numbers and potentially bring in that kind of revenue, what is NOT baffling is the concept that giving away an entire library of $60 $70 games for less than $20 a month is probably not sustainable in the long-run...
...Which explains why Microsoft also faced extreme backlash and mass cancellations by Gamepass users in response to the announcement that Gamepass Ultimate will essentially be the only version of the service worth subscribing to AND that the Ultimate tier will …
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