Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/21 at 10:20 PM CT

After much speculation and navel-gazing on my part last year when E3 was cancelled, the venerable trade show returned in 2021, in spirit, at least, if not in the flesh. Ongoing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic lingering on into its second year caused all of the remaining E3 participants to produce pre-recorded video ...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/12/21 at 04:20 PM CT

I don’t know if part of it’s just media spin and lumping a whole bunch of things together to make them look scarier and more epidemic than they actually are, but lately we’ve had nothing but bad news in spades. 2020 was the Year of COVID-19 and the Year of Police Brutality Complaints. Now, 2021 is rapidly shaping-up to be remembered as the Year of Ransomware, and Games Industry playe...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/06/21 at 05:34 PM CT

‘Star Trek’ as an IP has been struggling for a good many years. Even now as the newly-reunited CBS-Paramount throws ever-more barrels of money at it, the new flagship series, “Star Trek: Discovery” has the lowest ratings among viewers on IMDB and ...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/30/21 at 02:54 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:
Remember last quarter when I reassured you, dear readers, that all the numbers besides ‘3’ on my keyboard weren’t broken? Well, this quarter, I assure you that...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/24/21 at 12:07 AM CT

Welcome back to another look into the near future! June is right around the corner, and gamers everywhere are huddling in their makeshift shelters, awaiting the annual coming of the Summer Games Drought: That dreaded multi-month stretch where the big “AAA” publishers barely manage to poop out anything, while smaller “A,” “B,” and Indie developers still haven’t figured out that a lar...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/16/21 at 01:07 AM CT

New Zealand is home to a number of elusive, quirky, rotund forms of life: The Kiwi Bird, the Kakapo, Gabe Newell…

Yes, our favorite expatriate to the land down-under Down-Under, has opened his beard-bedecked mouth again, and, as us...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/08/21 at 10:42 PM CT

Late last year, I was excited about the prospect of finally pulling the trigger on a VR setup to usher in the new 9th Generation of consoles… devices I will continue to steadfastly ignore unless something drastic changes. Of course, last year, we didn’t know there was going to be an

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/02/21 at 03:40 PM CT

If you haven’t managed to snag a 9th Gen console or a new PC graphics card for anywhere close to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, you might be SoL at this point. According to numerous big players in the silicon microchip industry, things don’t look like they’ll...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/24/21 at 09:12 PM CT

Welcome back to another look into the near future! April showers (of watery diarrhea) bring May flowers (or maybe some sort of fungus that grows in manure), and Games Industry watchers are getting settled-in for one last month of copious releases before the onset of the annual Summer Games Drought. Though in a post-COVID world, it’s possible some of these ‘traditions’ may have been shunted ...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/17/21 at 08:36 PM CT

I still occasionally see a particularly depraved breed of console fanboy crusading on the Internet against the inexorable tide that is PC gaming. And, of course, one of the old chestnuts that gets dragged out, dusted off, considered, and stored again for another day is always the fact that physical PC games don’t really exist anymore and that the True Faithful of gaming will always