10 Games to Get Excited About in 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/25/25 at 04:19 PM CT
Welcome back to MeltedJoystick’s mostly-annual feature where we take a look at the most exciting titles slated to be released over the course of the coming year. While these titles frequently don’t come out when expected thanks to delays, when they do, they either horribly disappoint OR find their way into the MeltedJoystick Games of the Year list. Let’s take a look at the most promising titles coming in 2025!
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
“Clair Obscur” is titled after a French artistic term, not a woman’s name, as English speakers might assume. This game is a brand-new original IP – and inaugural effort – from France-based Sandfall Interactive, and is being published by the London-and-Singapore-based conglomerate of Indie developers known as Kepler Interactive. It could have extensive Euro-jank, but the developer’s stated goal is to provide a “high fidelity turn-based RPG,” a genre which they consider “neglected by AAA developers.” Well, I certainly …
Wokeness Strikes Japan as Square-Enix Adopts Far-Left Policy
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/19/25 at 01:57 PM CT
Oh, dear. A few years ago, we reported that Japan was straying down the path of dictatorial control with their revised copyright policy. Now they’re straying down the path of censorship and stifling opposing viewpoints, and Square-Enix is Patient Zero.
The once-great RPG publisher revealed a new Anti-Harassment Policy that is really just an excuse to shut-down all criticism. Sadly, that’s the way these terrible policies always manage to sneak through and become law. It starts with a reasonable proposition that videogame company employees shouldn’t be sent death threats, or be doxed, or suffer any form of genuine harassment… but then quickly escalates into something like Square-Enix’s new policy, in which any criticism of the company’s products can be met with not only revocation of the critic’s ability to use Square-Enix’s platforms to criticize the company, but also full revocation of any and all game licenses for Square-Enix games the critic might have.
This …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/10/25 at 10:34 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! It’s a New Year, once again, and – as is always the case with a new beginning – the Games Industry has a chance to make a fresh start and maaaaaybe not do all the same stupid stuff they did last year that lost them a ton of money and left several Big Names in Industrial Gaming teetering on the precipice of Broke (induced, in many cases, by Woke). As we’ve already seen from noodle-suckers like Mink Tinklebag, the backpedaling and about-facing has already begun ahead of the U.S. Government’s looming change of administration from a dottering old fool who let the Woke Fringe run roughshod over him to a… dottering old fool who will hand our society over to religious fundamentalists and/or Neo-Soviets as long as they give him personal compliments. Ugh.
One bit of good news coming out of the first month of 2025’s game releases is NO shovelware! Buuut I’m not going to leave this category completely blank, as there’s a …
New Year’s Backlog Ablutions 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/05/25 at 02:01 PM CT
The results of the last year’s New Year’s Backlog Ablutions are in! Sadly, we couldn’t keep our Perfect Streak going into a third year, as Erstwhile Matt – this initial instigator of this entire sorry display – failed utterly, completing only one of his three chosen games and, furthermore, failing to submit a review for that game. Even though Nick was still in a quantum state with his third (and worst) game, he managed to submit a review on the last possible day, in spite of dealing with his 3rd official bout with COVID-19.
Since Matt was a Loser this year, he was obligated to buy each of the rest of us a game from our wishlists. To mix up the formula a bit – since we seem to do that every year – Nick proposed that Matt’s Penalty Games should automatically become picks for the rest of us.
To reiterate the rules: We all have one year to play three specific backlogged games that we’ve chosen for ourselves in advance. Included within those three games must be …
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