Japan Still the Only Country Giving Xbox the Respect it Deserves
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/14 at 01:39 PM CT
On September 3, the XBONE launched in Japan, nearly a year after launching in the West. Of course, the fact that Microsoft delayed the release of their new console in the Land of the Rising Sun makes little difference, as Japanese gamers have historically cared very little about the “too Western” Dudebro games that have choked the Xbox library since the original Xbox began ruining things in the 6th Generation.
The Xbox 360 was an unequivocal disaster in Japan, barely moving any consoles and moving so few copies of hot-in-the-West games that there’s no way anyone made a profit off localization efforts. With the small-scale Japanese XBONE launch parties looking more like modern art installations of a World Without Humans, it appears that nothing will be changing any time soon.
The chasm between Eastern and Western developers is only growing deeper, as the West adopts the Hollywood model of remaking popular things with increasingly bigger budgets, while Japan continues to do …
Who are the Real Pirates?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/21/14 at 01:15 PM CT
Editor's Note: This article originally ran on the now-defunct Ology.com back in 2011.
Recently, Sony has made the move of putting PlayStation 2 games up for download on the PlayStation Network Store. Anyone who hasn’t been anticipating this move since Sony removed PlayStation 2 compatibility from the PlayStation 3 needs to be slapped: This is how the software distribution world now operates. Instead of re-introducing full PlayStation 2 compatibility, this piecemeal compatibility with specific digital releases allows Sony to re-sell us games that we already own.
It used to be that re-releases of old games came with upgrades (and that is still the case, to an extent, with Sony’s ‘HD Remaster’ series). When Nintendo released “Super Mario All-Stars” on the SNES, not only did we get 3 NES games and 1 unreleased NES game on one cartridge, we got graphical updates that really made these old titles look sharp. When Nintendo re-released these games AGAIN, “Super Mario …
Player, Benchmark Thyself
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/14/14 at 01:11 PM CT
The “Glorious” PC Gaming Master race loves their benchmarks. Sometimes, I think this particular variety of games enthusiast is actually more enthusiastic about fiddling with hardware, spending ridiculous amounts of money on pointless upgrades, and, yes, running benchmarking software than they actually are about playing games.
Interestingly, way back in 2007, shortly after the start of the 7th Generation, the Human Benchmark project began, aiming to gather information about the dreaded input lag and display lag that gamers love to blame for their own inadequacies. Now, over 10 million tests later, the Human Benchmark project’s website has recently undergone its third revision and has plenty of tasty, tasty stats available for lag haters to agonize over. What the project has discovered in its years of testing is that human beings, in general, have a reaction time of around 250 milliseconds (my own initial results were 264 ms).
Thus, in the grand scheme of things, min/maxing …
Backlog: The Embiggening - September, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/14 at 02:24 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Gamers across the world have survived yet another parching Summer Game Drought. Hopefully everyone else had better luck reducing the size of their backlogs than I did. Regardless of whether I made any progress in playing through my game collection, September is bringing a refreshing downpour of a lot of new titles. Once again, the biggest, most stupidly-over-hyped title is a FPS with an online component, “Destiny,” however this FPS actually looks like an attempt to appeal to a broader audience than the typical military shooters and space marine fantasies we typically get.
Onto the shovelware! Unfortunately, it is back in full-force this month, leaving us with a significant pile of licensed crap. There is a new “Sherlock Holmes” game (because he is so popular right now), “Lord of the Rings” game that is based as tenuously on the source material as possible, “Falling Skies: The Game” which will definitely be spectacular …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/01/14 at 04:57 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:
The Summer quarter allowed the MeltedJoystick crew to get back on track a bit more with our multi-player games… well, at least the local multi-player games. We only barely managed to eke out completion of “Borderlands 2” at the last minute, and with a bit of skipped content (thanks in large part to one of the participants taking two months off, during which we were ‘not allowed’ to proceed).
I spent the vast majority of the Summer putting the PlayStation 3 out of its misery. While I did run into a pleasantly surprising (and somewhat old) RPG via a trade with Chris, I was otherwise unimpressed by the last remnants of my PS3 backlog. I turned off the manual power switch on the back of the thing and can’t foresee a reason to ever flip it back on…
“Borderlands 2 (plus all DLC)” – 3.5/5
“Iron Brigade” – …
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