Review Round-Up: Winter 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/05/16 at 04:48 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:
This Winter, I played through new WiiU games as I received them, ensuring that the only backlog that gets bigger is the one Lord GabeN hath bestowed upon me. The MJ Crew also managed to co-op our way through “Fight the Dragon,” but since Chris has not yet successfully fought the dragon and since Nick is on strike from even clicking a star rating, let alone writing a review, I’m the only one who got it reviewed by the deadline.
“Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3” – 4.5/5
“Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4” – 4.5/5
“Yoshi’s Woolly World” – 4/5
“Legend of Grimrock 2” – 4/5
“Deadfall Adventures” – 2.5/5
“The Last Tinker: City of Colors” – 3.5/5
“Until Dawn” – 2/5
“Xenoblade Chronicles X” – 3.5/5
“Fight the Dragon” – …
Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/27/16 at 04:30 PM CT
Spring is sproinging, and with it comes the promise of new life and vibrant renewal. The world has been sleeping under a frozen blanket for months, and we’re ready for the hibernation to end – especially those of us who enjoy videogames. Sure, sitting inside playing games when the weather finally gets nice again is a waste, but the release slump we’ve been in since, oh, the 8th Gen started really needs to come to an end. Will it? Nope!
Shovelware is hard to come by this month. There is no traditionally licensed shovelware coming in March based on TV shows, movies, or other terrible ideas. Instead, the only shovelware being heaped upon us is a handful of annual sports releases: ‘MLB The Show,’ ‘EA UFC,’ and a PC port of the latest ‘WWE’ wrestling title.
But the ports… oh God, the ports! It seems they are becoming more and more numerous as the 8th Generation trudges on. This month, PC is getting the very old “Hitman” and the very new “FarCry Primal” …
The Good and the Bad of D&D 5th Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/21/16 at 02:56 PM CT
The third and final part of my look at the flaws & features of various editions of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG will bring us into the present, with D&D 5th Edition, which released in 2014. I will be skipping 4th Edition entirely because, as I mentioned in a previous article, it garnered a lot of hate from long time D&D players due to being very much un-like D&D and more like the tabletop version of “World of Warcraft.”
4th Edition was an obvious failure on Wizards of the Coast’s part, as it released in 2008 and was replaced by 5th Edition in 2014 – a mere 6 year lifespan. 5th Edition, however, rectified all of the problems with 4th Edition, not to mention many of the issues that have dogged the world’s oldest RPG since the very beginning. While 5th Edition is, unfortunately, not directly compatible with any previous version of the rules, the new mechanics and behind-the-scenes workings have been streamlined to the point where it is fairly easy to convert all but …
The Good and the Bad of D&D 3.x Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/14/16 at 02:43 PM CT
Last week, I took a look at the best and worst aspects of classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the version that introduced new players to the concept of tabletop RPGs for over 20 years. This week, I’ll be looking at AD&D’s successor, Dungeons & Dragon’s 3rd Edition… and 3.5 Edition… and Pathfinder.
After TSR’s collapse as a business, Wizards of the Coast – at the time a heavy competitor to TSR focusing on Trading/Collectable Card Games instead of RPGs – bought the remnants of the House that Gygax built and went about transforming the world’s oldest RPG into a form more suitable to the 21st Century. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast released the first ‘version’ of 3rd Edition, which kept most of the flavor of AD&D while simultaneously explaining how everything behind the scenes worked, clarifying rules concepts that had previously always been foggy, and generally clearing out all of the arbitrary weirdness that commonly got House Ruled out of AD&D, while also …
The Good and the Bad of AD&D
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/07/16 at 02:37 PM CT
In honor of Wizards of the Coast finally doing the right thing and opening up the new 5th Edition of the world’s oldest tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, via the Open Gaming License, I’ve decided to dedicate February to taking a look back at the more long-lived editions of the game and seeing what they did right… as well as where they went wrong.
I never had the opportunity to play Original Dungeons & Dragons (or OD&D, as it is commonly called nowadays), as it was before my time. Instead, my first experience with the world’s oldest RPG came via Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), which, itself, went through some minor revisions, that divided it into a 1st Edition and a 2nd Edition. There is actually very little difference between 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D, as the majority of differences took the form of additions, clarifications, and options rather than revisions, rebalances, and tweaks. Thus AD&D is typically perceived as a monolithic edition with an immense amount of …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/31/16 at 02:18 PM CT
Now that the gaming industry has had time to recover from its New Year’s hangover, we should be seeing some better stuff start trickling out. “Should” being the operative word. Instead the industry’s unabashed love affair with selling old material as though it was new continues unabated, with a glut of ports, compilations, and remasters padding what would otherwise be a very unimpressive month. Let’s get to it!
Is there shovelware? Of course, there is shovelware. Like the poor, shovelware will always be with us. February is bringing us three new anime-inspired games: a ‘Digimon’ PS4 exclusive – which apparently ties-into the 2015 anniversary of the original TV show, another ‘Naruto’ fighting game, and a typical Tecmo-Koei large-scale Beat ‘em Up with a coat of paint inspired by a Japanese novel series entitled “The Heroic Legend of Arslan.” Honestly, the ‘Arslan’ game sounds like it would be pretty interesting… if it wasn’t just another “Hyrule …
Vaguely Related Review: Nvidia Shield Tablet
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/24/16 at 06:01 PM CT
I bought an Nvidia Shield Tablet and its stable of accoutrements back in November of 2014, and only now feel like I have had enough experience with the thing to give it a proper review. Before I bought one of these Android devices, I mused that it might be ‘the ‘Droid we’re looking for,’ as OUYA certainly demonstrated that it was emphatically not. After a year of Shield Tablet ownership, however, I can’t recommend it.
About the Hardware
The first negative of Shield Tablet ownership is that the thing is not cheap. $300 for a wi-fi Android device is triple the price of an OUYA, and well into the smartphone price range. Of course, since the Shield Tablet is an 8” touchscreen device, it is a smartphone in every way, barring the lack of a cellular radio and monthly subscription plan (which are, conveniently, available for the $400 4G LTE version of the Shield Tablet). And since the Shield Tablet is incomplete, it takes another $40 to buy a magnetic screen cover and …
Vaguely Related Review: Sony Bravia 3DTV
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/17/16 at 03:07 PM CT
Way back in 2014, my old Vizio television – the one with all of my consoles and my Steambox hooked up to it – started playing tricks on me. When turning it on from a ‘cold off’ state, it would randomly have large portions of the LED backlighting that were dimmed out. It would correct itself after a time, but I found that I had to make accommodations to the television and treat it with kid gloves by never turning it on and off in rapid succession, and leaving it on if I was going to come back to it within a few hours.
Click to Enlarge
As time went on, the screen got progressively worse, and in the middle of 2015, the dimmed sections of the screen began to flicker as well. I knew the moment the backlighting started to dim that I would need to replace the entire TV sooner or later, but with the advent of 4K resolution, I was determined to put-off replacing it for as long as possible. I could still play games with random patches of dimmed pixels… but the flickering… it …
8th Gen Consoles: Now Streaming on Your PC
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/09/16 at 03:44 PM CT
Astute readers will have noticed that when I review a multi-platform FPS or TPS, I typically rate the PC version half a star higher than the console versions. The reason behind this non-arbitrary point dock is the fact that the PC versions of these games allow for a wide range of control options, including my beloved Razer Hydra, while the console versions… don’t. I don’t always dock console shooters for lacking control options, however, as certain console versions, such as the PlayStation 3 version of “BioShock Infinite” do support a wider range of control schemes (in this case, the PlayStation Move, which, while a pale imitation of the Hydra, is at least an attempt on the developer’s part).
Some new tech coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, however, might render my point-docking ways irrelevant, as Microsoft has already made it possible to stream XBONE games to a Windows PC, while Sony has similar functionality for the PS4 in the works.
The ability to stream …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/01/16 at 12:50 PM CT
Happy New Year, 2016, dear readers! As the 4th full year of the 8th Generation kicks off, we are all left with a feeling of awe and wonder – that this new year could bring us anything. Unfortunately, with the “AAA”-ification of the game’s industry, we all know what we can expect, and it’s not ‘anything,’ it’s ‘more of the same.’
January is typically a light release month, and this year is no exception. We’re only getting a handful of new releases (that have been announced ahead of time!). There’s one piece of shovelware, a Marvel Comics and LEGO mashup, “LEGO Marvel’s Avengers,” presumably to tie-into the upcoming “Captain America: Civil War” movie.
There are two repackagings of older games coming this month. The formerly digital-only “Life is Strange” is getting a physical release, while some old ‘Resident Evil’ games are getting compiled and remastered on the PortStation 4 and XBONE.
There aren’t any significant multi-plat …
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