Review Round-Up: Winter 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/02/22 at 12:03 AM 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:
Nick doesn’t like it when I curse in the blog, but I had a FUCKING horrible quarter. The open-world Sandbox game I played, which received RAVE reviews, turned out to be the embodiment of mediocrity. “Borderlands 3” was worn so threadbare by the time we finished it after 8+ months of irregular coop sessions that I was relieved to be done and ready to move onto something else. The first Pathfinder tabletop-to-cRPG conversion by Owlcat Games turned out to be a dumpster fire. And my dog died.
“Horizon: Zero Dawn” – 3.5/5
“Borderlands 3” – 4/5
“Pathfinder: Kingmaker” – 2/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf got through a couple of decent solo games and submitted a super-late review for a coop game we played last May. Better late than never!
“Katamari Damacy REROLL” – 4/5
“Victor Vran” …
Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/20/22 at 04:02 PM CT
With the coming of March, Spring is officially sprung. You know that that means: The crappy games will start replicating like rabbits. Let’s take a look at what Fiscal Year 2022 is going to lead off with from our beloved corporate overlords in the Games Industry.
There is, unfortunately, some shovelware popping up above the soil as the Winter freeze bleeds away. Four such titles are assaulting us in March, with half of them falling into both the Licensed Swill and Annualized Swill buckets: The (in)gloriously-titled “Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 5” (at least Monster is attaching its name to a videogame, after suing Ubisoft out of using “Gods and Monsters” as a title for a completely unrelated game) and “WWE 2k22” are both set to rape the wallets of the ignorant. Meanwhile, two 2Cazual2Live titles are getting ported from their original platforms to offend a wider audience: “Instant Sports Paradise” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security …
5 Amazing, Irreplaceable, Discontinued Pieces of Hardware
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/13/22 at 03:47 PM CT
Hardware comes and hardware goes, usually with a new-and-improved version replacing older tech as it’s phased-out and discontinued. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way, and with increasing frequency, incredible, novel pieces of hardware are quietly discontinued, vanishing off store shelves and out of Amazon warehouses, with no apparent successor intended to replace them. Here’s a short list of the most traumatizing discontinuations that have affected me, personally.
5. Gyration Airmouse
The Gyration Airmouse isn’t officially “discontinued,” however, the company that invented it – Gyration – has been bought-out by another company – Adesso – which seems more interested in security cameras than wireless, gyroscopic computer mice. The Gyration Airmouse is now “legacy” hardware, which means it’s not getting any R&D money dumped on it, and there won’t be any newer, better versions. As far as I’m concerned, this is THE best way to interact with …
WTF? Sony to Buy Bungie
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/06/22 at 03:24 PM CT
It seems like only a couple weeks ago that we were all expressing shock and bemusement over Microsoft’s announced intentions to buy Activision for 69 billion dollars. Oh, wait that was only a couple weeks ago!
Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s massive corporate bulldozing, Sony felt the need to participate as well, by purchasing Bungie – the original developers of Microsoft’s ‘Halo’ FPS series, who jumped ship from the Xbox Division after the parent company gave the ‘Halo’ IP to 343 Games, went to Activision, then jumped ship again to be ‘independent’ with their ‘Destiny’ IP – for a less-than-staggering $4 billion.
Yes, there are already memes.
Furthermore, Sony has already announced their plans for Bungie – for whom $1.2 billion of that acquisition cost allegedly went into retention fees to make sure Bungie’s employees didn’t bail (as they have been shown to do) to start their own Indie-indie studio – and, unsurprisingly, Sony’s plans …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/29/22 at 04:59 PM CT
The shortest month of the year is back with 28 days’ worth of crap.
For the second month in a row, there’s no blatant shovelware being dumped on the unsuspecting game-buying public. That’s good news! I wonder how long it can last...
As with last month, though, February isn’t letting off the gas in the slightest when it comes to ports, remasters, remakes, and whatnot. Indeed, the Nintendo Switch – the near-constant Port King for the last half-decade – is getting several ports of remasters: “Grand Theft Auto Trilogy” and “Assassin’s Creed: Ezio Collection.” But that’s not all the Switch is getting dumped on it; it’s also getting “Life is Strange: True Colors.” However, the Switch isn’t the objectively worst dumping ground for February, as the PS5 is getting both “Tormented Souls” and “King of Fighters 15,” is sharing a port of “Assetto Corsa Competizione” with the SeX, while the Playstation 4 and XBONE are getting a port of PC-centric …
WTF? Microsoft to Buy Activision
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/23/22 at 03:26 PM CT
The Triumvirate of Evil is about to become a duo. This week, Microsoft, the tech giant of operating systems and productivity software – and also-ran gaming platform holder – announced that they were going to buy Activision-Blizzard for nearly $69 billion dollars. No, that’s not a typo!
Microsoft has been on a buying binge over the last few years, fattening up the Xbox Games Division with the scattered remains of once-great Western videogame publisher, Interplay, along with a number of other smaller-and-Indie studios like Double-Fine. It was earthshaking when Microsoft bought Zenimax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks and id Software, last year, but buying one of the three biggest, evilest gaming publishing houses for more cash than most of us mere mortals can truly conceive of is positively earthshattering.
Microsoft representatives have made statements to reassure the fanboys of “competing” platforms that their favorite third-party multi-platform games …
New Year’s Backlog Ablutions 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/16/22 at 02:20 PM CT
The MJ Crew is back from an extended holiday break, and the results of the last year’s re-re-revised New Year’s Backlog Ablutions are in. After tasting the bitter sting of failure and growing my own personal backlog by three penalty games in 2020, most of us buckled down and cleared our ablutions. I, of course, have never failed this challenge since we started it in 2019, but for 2021, I wasn’t alone, as both Chris and Erstwhile Matt managed to clear and review the three games allotted to them – even if it took constant badgering and ass-riding on my part to steer them away from failure.
That, of course, leaves Nick. While he actually did put some effort into clearing his three Backlog Ablutions in 2021, said effort didn’t actually manifest until December 30. Procrastination’s a real bitch, eh? So, alack, and alas, Nick failed the Backlog Ablutions challenge for the third year in a row, and since everyone else succeeded, he owes each of us a game off our wishlists …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/08/22 at 04:41 PM CT
A new year is officially upon us, as 2022 roars in with… more COVID, more home-grown extremism on both fringes of the U.S. political spectrum, more economic woes, more China being China, more Russia being Russia, and generally no indication that things on the grand scale are going to improve any time soon. (Seriously, how is the U.S. bursting with Omicron Variant cases, while the Taliban puts no effort into public health and Afghanistan’s COVID situation never makes the news?) But what about GAMING? What about that most glorious form of escapism, where we can forget about how awful the real world is, and enjoy fictional scenarios where the Good Guys win, violence solves everything, and progress is inevitable? Neverending corporate greed is ensuring that gaming’s going to suck too. Let’s take a look at the new year’s opening releases to see just how hard it’s going to suck. After all, January sets the tone for the entire year!
We can, at least, rejoice in one small …
Year in Review: 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/30/21 at 09:11 PM CT
Alack and alas, 2021 has come and gone, and it was nearly a dreadful remake/remaster/port/whathaveyou of the exceedingly dire 2020. Was there anything praiseworthy to get excited about? Or was it all Fails? Read on to find out:
Top 5 Fails
5. The Year of Ransomware
Ahh, remember back in the Summer of 2021, when we thought the worst thing the year had to offer was a bunch of ransomware attacks? Yeah, they were pretty annoying, and blew up the news during the brief window in which it seemed that COVID might be under control. Fortunately European investigators and the FBI managed to find and arrest a number of the shitheels behind the wave of cyberattacks. Of course, this rare competence shown by bureaucrats is likely going to give us all a false sense of security, so when the next big cyber-meltdown hits, we can all stand around with our mouths open, wondering how it happened. Again.
4. Nintendo Network “Plus Expansion”
Nintendo demonstrated some Sony-grade hubris …
MeltedJoystick Games of the Year 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/26/21 at 04:04 PM CT
For the second year in a row, the watery rock floating torturously around Old Sol, which we call “Earth,” was beset by plague. While at first it seemed like things might be getting better, it was but an illusion, as not only did the virus that shut-down the whole of 2020 mutate into “delightful” new forms such as Delta and Omicron, but the true extent of the havoc caused by 2020’s torpor finally came to light. Supply chain issues, microchip shortages, and mass resignations combined to make for another challenging year.
Gaming didn’t fare particularly well, with continued delays, cancelations, and long-time-coming projects turning out to be lesser than imagined. Even as console gamers attempted to forge ahead bravely into the 9th Generation, the lack of available hardware units helped to disguise the dismal “launch window” slates for Sony and Microsoft.
That said, even with an overall uneventful and poor release schedule, 2021 turned out to be one of the most …
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