Backlog: The Embiggening – November, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/29/17 at 08:16 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! ‘Twas the month before Christmas and all through the aisles, 45 games were released, but ‘tweren’t greeted with smiles. At least by me, because it’s another month flooded with crap.
10 shovels full of filth are inbound for November. Of the 6 new pieces of licensed swill, we’re getting a new ‘.Hack//’ title based on the anime, “Star Wars: Battlefront 2” based on the movie franchise, “LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2” based on both Marvel comics and LEGO bricks, “America’s Greatest Gameshows: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!” based on… those things, and a delayed game that I’m actually glad was delayed (AGAIN) since it allows me to correct a horrible mistake on my part: It turns out that “Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth” is based on a series of young adult novels – not a stand-alone new IP, as I thought – and therefore qualifies as shovel-ready. The final new shovelware title is yet another …
Desura’s Back! … Sort Of?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/21/17 at 05:27 PM CT
Earlier this week, Desura, the Little Indie Gaming Client That Couldn’t, which was bought-out by Danish keytailer and digital game rental outfit, Oneplay, miraculously came back online after months of straight-up nonexistence. When OnePlay’s placeholder page for Desura disappeared earlier this year, I figured the site and service were gone for good. Color me surprised to see it back amongst the living!
Err… sort of.
While the site is back online, and my old login credentials still work, bringing me to my profile that only ‘owns’ “The fall of gods,” “Monster RPG 2,” and the free open-source “Flare,” the download links for the Desura client as well as ALL THE GAMES lead to 404 errors at the time of writing. Unfortunately, when I refreshed my Windows install a while back, I didn’t reinstall the Desura client, so there’s no way for me to test whether or not extant copies of it are working at all.
Essentially, the site appears to be in a transitional …
It’s Time to Give Up on Physical Media
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/15/17 at 04:01 PM CT
I bring you dismal news, MeltedJoystick readers. Sadly, the physical distribution of videogames has reached the end of its usefulness. As much as it pains me – as a staunch proponent of physical media and perpetual software ownership – I have to admit that physical media in videogames is no longer what it once was. Cartridges and discs have remained largely the same in structure, but the ways in which they are currently used largely negate their original purpose. What happened to bring us to this point? Read on to find out.
5. Games Require Installs, No Longer Run Off the Install Media.
Thanks to Microsoft and the OG Xbox, the concept of games requiring hard disk installs was shoveled from the PC side of gaming to the console side of gaming in the 6th Gen. While the OG Xbox never got a whole lot of respect from gamers outside the ghetto, other console makers took note of its ability to snag PC game ports… thus every Sony and MS console since has followed the same paradigm. …
New DIRECTV Commercial Inadvertently Mocks ‘Dark Souls’ Fanbase
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/06/17 at 02:46 PM CT
I’m not going to give DIRECTV, the satellite pay TV company, credit for knowing anything about the videogames industry or the contemporary gaming zeitgeist. However, this ad, which started airing on network TV last month, seems to express a sarcastic awareness of the fact that there are some people out there who ‘enjoy’ unpleasant things.
The first time I saw this ad on TV, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing, as the fools contained therein instantly brought to mind the tiny-yet-rabid Cult of From, whose ‘favorite’ games are all reminiscent of banging one’s head repeatedly against a ceiling joist or intentionally sleeping under a pile of poison ivy. Would I rather play ‘Dark Souls’ for an hour or have my arm stuck in a vending machine for an hour? Hmmm… that’s a H.A.R.D. choice…
Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/01/17 at 04:58 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! October is here, and that mean’s Halloween is officially old news (as of August), and the Christmas/Holiday Season is ready to kick-off with a bunch of crap bewildered parents and grandparents are supposed to buy for their demanding Second-Run Millennials. There are a WHOPPING 57 game releases coming in October – FIFTY-SEVEN! – but once you filter through the crap, with my sage and experienced assistance, you’ll find but a tiny number of titles worth caring about. It’s like bobbing for apples in a barrel of sewage… and most of the apples have been replaced with turds.
Fourteen – count, ‘em, 14! – new pieces of shovelware will be gracing us with their presence in October. Pay attention, and you might learn something about the varieties of shovelware of which you must maintain constant awareness. The first, and easiest to identify, variety of shovelware we’ll look at this month is Licensed Swill: That is, games …
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