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. Amo...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/08/18 at 02:36 PM CT

This week, videogamers and Middle-Earth fans alike were greeted with the fantastic news that the huge stink made by games journalists and the gaming public alike has resulted in Warner Bros. allowing “Middle-Earth: Shadow of War” dev, Monolith (not to be confused with the Japanese ‘Xenoblade’ dev, MonolithSoft) to dial-back the macrotransactions in the game before

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/01/18 at 01:36 PM CT

Oh, boy! April’s here, and that means the loveable professionals of the AAA videogame industry and the scrappy homebrewers of the Indie development scene are ready to give us tons more awesome games to play! Let’s take a look at how fun and exciting this month will be. I can hardly wait!

We all love the biggest corporations because they are the best. They have the best IP and they’re not afrai...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/25/18 at 03:31 PM CT

Recently, I took some time away from videogames to do something I haven’t done since college: Read non-fiction. Among the several books I read between the Holiday Season of 2017 and now was “The God Delusion” by evolutionary biologist and promin...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/18/18 at 05:08 PM CT

I have a history of making a fuss about RPGs and the definitions of certain real and imagined subdivisions of my long-time favorite genre. I’m not going to rehash any of those arguments today, though. However, my reasons for demanding clarity, reason, and logic in the definition of RPGs radiates out from that one genre to encompass the whole of videogames as a hobby and a community. Genres and te...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/10/18 at 03:52 PM CT

With the end of 2017 bringing a storm of Trump-like ‘Fire and Fury’ from gamers and gaming journalists alike in the face of EA’s and Warner Bros.’ escalation of loot-box-based microtransactions in $60 games, it feels like there is indeed an ethical push-back from Core Gamers against the deplorable predatory monetization practices that have been used to target the Casual Gamers of the mobile phone...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/04/18 at 02:29 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 got the opportunity to christen my Yule Switch… which was really the highlight of the quarter. Both Switch games I played are excellent, while the things ...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/24/18 at 04:08 PM CT

Gaius Julius Caesar was warned to beware the Ides of March shortly before his assassination on March 15, 44 B.C.E. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t heed the warnings. For we who comment on videogames in March 2018 of the Common Era, we need not specifically fear the Ides of March... we should fear the Ports of March, as they have come, but they have not gone.

The blatant trash of the shovelwar...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/18/18 at 03:58 PM CT

While the Nintendo Switch officially launched in March 2017, we here at MeltedJoystick were relatively dubious and on-the-fence about Nintendo’s latest platform until late Summer/early Autumn when the library started to flesh out. I received a Switch as a Yule gift in 2017, and spent the better part of two months putting it through its paces with a pair of games I was really excited about – one f...

Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/11/18 at 03:43 PM CT

Lately I’ve been pounding the drum pretty hard against all the ports, remasters, and thinly-veiled remakes hitting modern consoles. With all this old stuff being sold as new stuff, it makes me question why anyone should bother with the new platforms at all, if the only thing we’re getting out of them is the ability to re-pu...