E3 Impressions 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/16/18 at 05:50 PM CT
I had no expectations for E3 once again this year. I had hoped to see a handful of titles to help justify my Switch ownership, as well as a few multi-platform titles coming to PC that the MJ Crew could play cooperatively. I was not, however, prepared for the absolute tsunami of titles shown off at E3 2018. It was tough to take notes on everything shown off during the three console press conferences, the PC Gaming Show, and the individual publisher conferences… especially when I kept running out of space in the Do Not Want category.
Microsoft:
Want: Tunic (still!)
Not Sure if Want: “Ori and the Will of the Wisps” (still!), “Battletoads”
Do Not Want: Game Pass, “Halo Infinite”/“Gears 5”/“Forza Horizon 4”/“Crackdown 3,” Touting “Exclusives” that… aren’t, Add-On Content for Crap Games (“Sea of Thieves,” “PUBG”)
Microsoft is clearly struggling, as this year’s E3 was a pale shadow of last year’s. The non-gaming company touted their …
The Money Game
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/10/18 at 02:42 PM CT
Recently, I was surprised by something said by rotund gaming pundit, Jim Sterling. While usually, I’m very impressed with Sterling’s ability to keep his thumb on the pulse of the modern games industry, this video, in which he reversed a previously held opinion about platform exclusive titles completely threw me for a loop.
I used to love exclusive games, but that was when the competing platforms were all significantly different. When the 7th Generation homogenized all of gaming into a big blob of Gray Goo and all non-first-party exclusives evaporated like so much dry ice, both Sterling and I saw the writing on the wall and decided to embrace the homogenization.
Sony’s release of the latest ‘God of War’ game, simply entitled “God of War,” caused Sterling to backpedal, but it seems he’s missing the bigger picture here. The argument goes that only first parties, like Sony or Nintendo, who are deeply invested in the success of their hardware, will sink the …
Review Round-Up: Sping 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/03/18 at 02:24 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 had a pretty good Spring as far as volume goes… but not so good with regard to quality. The MJ Crew managed to wrap up 2 coop games we’ve been working on for a while (one of which I loved, the other of which… not so much), while I was repeatedly disappointed by both fanslations and backlog scrapings.
“Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart” – 3/5
“Diluvion” – 3/5
“Seiken Densetsu 3” – 2.5/5
“Titanfall 2” – 2.5/5
“Treasure Hunter G” – 3.5/5
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” – 4/5
“Shadow Warrior 2” – 4.5/5
“Treasure of the Rudras” – 2/5
“Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas” – 2.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale (2004)” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris finally (grudgingly) submitted a review for “No Man’s Sky,” even though he insists he’ll go back to …
Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/27/18 at 03:04 PM CT
June is just around the corner, and that means it’s time to take a look at what our friendly Uncles in the videogame industry have planned for our Summer fun. This month looks a bit more evenly spread amongst the categories than last month… but the single biggest group of games being released to kick off the Season of Freedom for kids (or not, it seems that kids today are more firmly guided into thousands of hours of extracurriculars rather than being left to their own devices like we on the MJ Crew were) still begins with a ‘p’ and ends with ‘orts and remasters.’
Three bits of shovelware are poking their weed-like heads above ground in June: A new ‘Gundam’ breaker game creatively titled “New Gundam Breaker” (based on the mecha anime), “LEGO The Incredibles” (based on the Disney CG superhero movie, and released conveniently as a tie-in for the upcoming sequel), and “Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn” (based on stupid memes and an aging ex-baller who apparently …
The Nintendo Network Subscription is an Unfunny Joke
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/19/18 at 06:48 PM CT
Nintendo has been dragging their feet for over a year after the company announced that they would be adding a subscription paywall to online play for the Nintendo Switch (and presumably all future Nintendo hardware). For a while, it looked like maybe they’d changed their minds, but alas, last week they officially pulled off the obscuring tarp and revealed the monstrosity in all its glory.
For a basic price of $4/month (which only idiots would pay instead of grabbing the $20/year ‘bonus’ package, which is still of dubious value), Switch owners can pass unmolested through the paywall for games like “Splatoon 1.5,” “Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Switch,” or “Mario Kart 8” (which were free to play online on the WiiU…), plus SO MUCH MORE! Let’s take a look:
Save Data Cloud Backup
One of the biggest oversights with the Switch hardware is the inability to locally back-up saves to an SD card or USB drive. Nintendo is clearly still terrified by the way the …
Make vs. Let
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/12/18 at 06:02 PM CT
The handwringing over the popularity of the Sandbox genre (or style, if you prefer) has reached something of a head. Perhaps it was caused by the fact that Nintendo has finally gotten on board with the idea of non-linear, open-world game design; or perhaps it’s because Ubisoft has continued to produce the same basic Sandbox over and over again, and just released another iteration of it in “FarCry 5.” Non-linear, open-world gameplay is, regardless of oversaturation, still incredibly popular, and there’s a very simple reason for it that has been with gaming as far back as the transition from the NES to the SNES (and caused no small share of handwringing then too).
This concept first started to crystallize for me during a discussion with MeltedJoystick’s CTO, Nick. I was making fun of him for wasting his time speedrunning the original “Super Mario Bros.” and wondered why he was doing that instead of playing one of the many, many untouched games in his backlog. I also …
D&D 3.x Officially to Die, as Paizo Pushes Pathfinder 2nd Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/05/18 at 04:23 PM CT
I’ve frequently praised Paizo, the third-party tabletop RPG publishing house turned savior of tabletop gaming, for their consistency and willingness to stick with a rules set for a long time. Unfortunately, that praise must now come to an end, as over the last few months, Paizo has been sending out e-mail blasts promoting the upcoming 2nd Edition of the Pathfinder RPG which will enter active playtesting on August 2 of this year. It’s a pretty crappy birthday gift for me to have nearly 20 rulebooks in my tabletop RPG collection obsoleted in one fell swoop… but my tabletop gaming group hasn’t used Pathfinder in a couple years in favor of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, anyway.
While D&D 5E reverted a significant portion of its mechanics to be more similar to 2nd Edition, it also decided to adopt ‘bounded accuracy’ – which is code for ‘flatter numbers’ – in order to address balance issues, it won’t be clear what Paizo intends to do to address the numerous math …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/29/18 at 03:14 PM CT
Summer’s just around the corner, and with folks graduating from various institutions of education in droves during the month of May, there will be high demand for a videogame-based escape as they find it impossible to secure employment and begin paying-off their soul-crushing debt. The videogame industry hears the pleas of the downtrodden, and has a whopping 27 game releases slated for the month-before-Summer, perhaps in the hopes of shutting us up about ‘game drought’ as June and July roll in. Unfortunately for us, there are even more ports and remasters than usual. Seriously. This is BAD… there are soooo many ports it’s hard to wrap my head around it.
Mercifully, there’s only one piece of licensed IP flotsam floating around this month. “Conan Exiles” is based on the once-popular Conan the Barbarian pulp novels. I’ve been wanting to get into the Conan IP for some time, but find the extant volume of written work overwhelming, so I’ve been hoping for a videogame …
Enhanced Steam Reveals Russia Receives Massive Game Discounts Thanks to Regional Pricing
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/22/18 at 03:14 PM CT
I’ve been a fan of the Enhanced Steam browser plug-in for nearly as long as I’ve been using Steam. I admit, however, that, like with most fancy, multi-function software, I don’t use even close to all of Enhanced Steam’s features.
However, while browsing Steam recently, one of Enhanced Steam’s features caught my eye and really threw me for a loop. By mousing-over the little globe icon next to a game’s price, Enhanced Steam will reveal how much it costs in other parts of the world in those countries’ regional currencies, as well as whether or not the game is available in a given region at all. Naturally, I was unsurprised to find several Japanese games from my test sample that aren’t available for purchase in Japan, but I was surprised to see just what a massive discount Steam offers on games purchased in Russian Rubles.
As illustrated in the above screen captures, Russian gamers who pre-order the upcoming “Dragon Quest 11” will get it for 45% off of …
The 10 Best IPs that Somehow Have Less than 3 Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/15/18 at 03:07 PM CT
Sequels: Love them or hate them, in an Intellectual Property-driven medium like videogaming, wringing all of the value out of an idea is simply good for business. Some companies, like Nintendo, have managed to stave off irrelevance solely via the strength of their long-running franchises. Yet, sadly, in far too many cases, a great IP is cut short and never allowed to live up to its potential. Among the ridiculously long-running franchises out there, there are also a significant number of tiny franchises that, for whatever reason, never managed to receive even a full trilogy of titles. I’m not talking about one-hit-wonders or stand-alone titles that were never intended to be part of a larger series, but actual franchises that just faded away as their slated follow-ups were canceled or never materialized. Perhaps the first game in the series was terrible, so nobody was willing to give the significantly-improved sequel the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the sequel was actually at …
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