Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/16 at 02:01 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! October is nearly upon us, which means that the official start of the Holiday Shopping Season is just a week away. We can look forward to three solid months of constant commercial bombardment and cluttered release schedules, all in the name of confusing grandparents into buying little Timmy the wrong gift for Christmas. It’s like game publishers haven’t heard of return policies and gift cards…
Shovelware is pretty bad again this month, with 7 titles looming before us. Now that Disney is out of the game dev/pub business, they’ve got Namco-Bandai working on their next effort, “Disney Magical World 2” (and it REALLY pisses me off that every Disney game needs to have ‘Disney’ in the title, apparently). Someone at BigBen apparently thinks these terrible ‘Sherlock Holmes’ titles are worthy of being released on more platforms. Warner Bros. wants PS4 owners to re-buy every ‘LEGO Harry Potter’ game in a compilation. …
Vaguely Related Review: EA’s Origin
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/18/16 at 02:14 PM CT
It has been quite some time since I gave the review treatment to Steam and Desura. I would like to do the same for GOG Galaxy, but I feel it’s a bit unfair to review software that’s still technically in Alpha. I could look at Uplay, but I don’t have it installed currently, as I have cleared the whopping two Ubisoft games I own from my backlog and don’t intend to buy any more…
That leaves EA’s Origin client. Recently, I intentionally installed this particular strain of malware on my Steambox and spent $40 on EA games. While this behavior is incredibly uncharacteristic for me, it stemmed from Sony really pissing me off lately (even before the PS4 Pro and PS+ price hike announcements), to the point of making me double-down on the idea of never owning a PS4, not even for the handful of EA games I would otherwise only be able to play if I installed Origin on my Steambox. I was further tipped over the edge by a week-long Origin sale, during which I was able to get “Dragon …
PlayStation: Hubris Awaits
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/11/16 at 01:56 PM CT
Look! What’s that up in the sky!? Is it a supernova? Is it a meteorite? No! It’s Sony entering a self-inflicted death spiral thanks to a couple of horrible decisions over the course of the last few weeks.
This past week, we finally got a look at the PlayStation Neo… except the thing Sony revealed wasn’t even close to the PlayStation Neo gamers have been teased and tempted by for months now. No, the thing that Sony revealed – the PlayStation 4 Pro – isn’t a next-gen competitor for the upcoming Nintendo NX and Xbox Scorpio. It doesn’t support PC-style modding of Bethesda games. It doesn’t include a UHD Blu-Ray drive, either. At first it also wasn’t clear whether or not the triple-stacked Pro hardware, which looks frighteningly like the ‘hamburger’ menu buttons that have exploded in popularity amongst interface designers lately, was an entirely new console or a Sega CD-style add-on for the old PS4 (it’s NOT an add-on). No, the single selling point of the PS4 …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/16 at 01:10 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:
Summer was kind to me and allowed me a significant amount of free time to plow through a portion of my backlog. It really helps that so many Indie games are short and can be completed in a single session. Amongst the wide variety of stuff I played this Summer were a couple of unfairly maligned RPGs, some overrated crap, and a rare perfect-scoring platformer.
“TowerFall Ascension” – 3/5
“The Last Remnant” – 4/5
“Shantae: Risky’s Revenge” – 4/5
“Coldfire Keep” – 3.5/5
“Skyborne” – 4.5/5
“Dungeonland” – 2/5
“Fable Anniversary” – 2.5/5
“Sword Coast Legends” – 4/5
“Mercenary Kings” – 4.5/5
“Freedom Fall” – 5/5
“Rocket Knight” – 4/5
“Megabyte Punch” – 4/5
“Glare” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris, on the other hand, did not have a particularly …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/28/16 at 03:07 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! This summer’s Game Drought positively flew by, leaving us disheveled and confused, but not terribly dehydrated. With the oncoming Autumn, we can expect this predictable dinosaur we call the Games Industry to follows its old, established patterns, such as kicking production into high gear and crowding together a large number of releases just in time for the kids who would be rabid to play these games to go back to school. At least this way those kids will have plenty to look forward to as Yule approaches and their overwhelmed relatives inevitably buy them the wrong games.
There is sooo much shovelware this month. Not only are we getting a new “Just Sing” to blight current-gen consoles, the up-and-coming wannabe ‘Pokemon’ and ‘Digimon’ and ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ killer, ‘Yokai Watch,’ is releasing a traditional two-versions-of-the-same-game-so-you-need-to-buy-it-twice-to-catch-all-the-monsters title: “Bony Spirits” …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/12/16 at 02:57 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Every August, I’m another year older and another year more jaded and disappointed by the games industry. As this relatively mild Summer Game Drought draws to an end, let’s take a look at what we’re getting before the Holiday Rush starts… in September.
Ugh. Shovelware. Sony is getting an exclusive new ‘Hatsune Miku’ title, PS4 and XBONE are getting a licensed “Attack on Titan” game based on the manga/anime of the same name, and the 3DS is getting a… thing… called “Style Savvy: Fashion Forward” that can’t be ANYTHING but shovelware. We’re also starting to see the obligatory annual entries dripping out for certain sports and racing franchises. Currently it’s just a new ‘Madden’ and a new ‘F1,’ but more will follow, as they do every year.
Ugh. Ports and remasters. “Resident Evil 4” and “Assetto Corsa” are coming to the XBONE and PS4, while the PS4 is getting “Among the Sleep” and an …
Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2016 (Super Late Edition)
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/12/16 at 01:50 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! I made a bit of a boo-boo last month and completely forgot to look at upcoming releases. Make-up time!
July is traditionally smack in the middle of the Summer Game Drought. While the drought may seem milder than usual, it’s really only because of the amount of bad behavior on the part of publishers making it look like there’s more new stuff than there is.
One new licensed shovelware released in July: A tie-in for the new SJW-branded “Ghostbusters” movie. Aside from that, two old pieces of Marvel shovelware got bundled together and released on PSN and Live as the “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Bundle.” Since half the bundle was already on Steam, instead of getting the whole thing, PC just got a port of “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.”
There was a lot of disgusting porting around in July. “Fairy Fencer F” got remastered on the PS4 (unsurprising), “MX vs. ATV: Supercross” finally got remastered on XBONE, …
5 Tweaks to Take D&D 5E from Great to Perfect
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/07/16 at 03:08 PM CT
The 5th and most recent edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s oldest (and greatest) tabletop RPG launched a couple years ago, and perusal of the relevant corners of the Internet reveal it to be a rousing success for Wizards of the Coast. Outside of a few old, crufty, neckbearded grognards, who can’t stand the fact that THAC0 is gone and never returning, everyone loves 5E.
I love 5E too, but like most things, it isn’t quite perfect. Every edition of D&D has a handful of small, annoying things at minimum that players have traditionally beaten into submission and shaped to the will of their specific group via the use of House Rules. After playing 5E for a year, the following list of five tweaks, mostly drawn from the four older editions of D&D, feel much better than 5E’s defaults.
1. Draw Magic Items from the Complete “Encyclopedia Magica” Four-Volume Set
The magic items detailed in the 5E “Dungeon Master’s Guide” manage to capture much of the flavor of …
Slack Given, Slack Taken
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/31/16 at 03:12 PM CT
Japan is no longer a force in the videogame industry. We simply have to accept this fact. As I covered last year, all of Japan’s biggest, oldest, and most beloved videogame studios are committing ritual suicide one after another, mostly sacrificing themselves upon the altar of mobile gaming. Things have changed little in a year, with Capcom now facing down dismal sales and profits. Why is everything going so wrong in the nation that revived an industry on the brink of collapse in the 1980s? Well, in Capcom’s case – as well as many others – it simply comes down to a lack of productivity. If Japanese companies don’t produce killer games that sell consoles and build their reputations as providers of great entertainment, they will wither and die on the vine as new generations of incoming gamers wonder who these companies are, having never heard of them, while old, jaded gamers fume with resentment about how far these companies have fallen from their best.
The loss of …
The 9th Gen Draws Near! Command?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/24/16 at 02:34 PM CT
With all three of the big hardware manufacturers – Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – announcing a new set of higher-spec hardware, the majority of gamers and the gaming media have declared that the 8th Generation will be the first to receive a ‘mid-gen’ upgrade. I, however, am not afraid to announce that the majority of gamers and the gaming media (as per usual) are flat-out wrong. The Nintendo NX, PlayStation Neo, and Xbox Scorpio aren’t mid-gen ‘refreshes’ of old hardware; they are the harbingers of the 9th Generation, bringing with them a focus on backward AND forward compatibility.
The primary reason so many people errantly think that these three new consoles are ‘mid-gen’ refreshes is because these people are basing their conception of hardware generations on an unstable foundation. Because Sony spouted-off about the PlayStation 3 being designed for a 10-year lifespan, the assumption is being made that console hardware generations are roughly 10 years long. …
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