MeltedJoystick Games of the Year 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/08/23 at 03:13 PM CT
After two Plague Years, 2022 was an attempt at returning to normalcy. Of course, it seems that the pandemic and its aftershocks have continued to reverberate through our societies, bringing ever-more divisiveness and hostility, as the Culture Wars reach a fevered pitch in the West and Russia instigated a completely unjustified real war in the East.
While it was incredibly easy to come up with a single stand-out title to crown the MeltedJoystick Game of the Year, it was significantly more difficult to come up with 5 such games deserving of such an honor. 2022 was ultimately dominated by a small number of terrible releases and, as I have noted in my monthly Backlog: The Embiggening articles, an obscene number of ports, remasters, remakes, and rehashes.
With 2022 introducing the Steam Deck as its sole new platform, we knew we weren’t going to be drowning in Launch Window efforts to create and market ‘system sellers.’ However, the surprise of the year is that Nintendo …
Year in Review: 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/31/22 at 04:58 PM CT
Our planet has completed another tumultuous trek around the Sun, and human civilization hasn’t managed to wipe itself out yet – though not for lack of trying. Let’s take a look back and see just how things went for the Videogaming Hobby in the Third Plague Year of the not-so-roaring ‘20s.
Top 5 Fails
5. From Software Abomination Steals Top Prize at The Game Awards
Most awards shows are a joke nowadays, with cratering audience numbers and content packed with as much virtue signaling and self-congratulatory back-clapping as possible. Videogames have a number of different awards shows, and nearly every single videogame website or news outlet tends to hand out its own. The Game Awards are a desperate, corporate, Games Industry attempt at creating an E.G.O.T.-tier trophy for industry insiders, but it has historically failed to gain purchase amongst the individualistic gaming community (such irony). I don’t have an explanation for how it happened, but this year, the top …
Christian Gifts
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/24/22 at 03:17 PM CT
A while back, during one of the MJ Crew’s regular online gaming get-togethers, erstwhile MeltedJoystick photog and videographer, Matt, seemingly at random interjected the talking point that “Christianity invented charity.” While it came out of nowhere, it wasn’t at random, as I had previously been disparaging Christianity’s contributions to Western Civilization, and had described it “not as the Full Flower of Western Civilization, but as disease that Western Civilization merely survived, and which could relapse at any time.” Matt’s assertion about the origins of charity lead to a spirited philosophical debate between he and I (the other two MJ Crew members don’t do philosophy) over email that lasted for several months.
Since then, I’ve been cataloging a list of things that Christianity actually did invent, coming up with 7 (that most holy of numbers). And what better time to share the results of my navel-gazing than during the biggest holiday on the Christian …
Woke Leftist Politicians Accuse Gamers of Nazi “Extremism”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/18/22 at 03:02 PM CT
The famous quote by Martin Niemoller remains perpetually evergreen in its relevance. As the censoriousness of the Woke Left grows ever stronger and demanding, the list of stances, be they overtly political, politicized, or apolitical, that falls under the blanket of “Hate Speech” and “Hate Crimes” grows ever wider. First social media became infested with Wokeness, but I didn’t know or care because I don’t use social media. Then mainstream media – magazines, newspapers, television, and movies – became infested with Wokeness, but it didn’t matter because those forms of media have been obsolete since the rise of the Internet. But now Wokeness is coming for gaming and the new media, but there’s no one left to reach out to for backup.
Seven Democratic lawmakers are submitting letters to almost the entire length, breadth, and depth of the Games Industry, demanding that these companies work to censor what gamers can say on their platforms in the name of combating …
Streaming Company Imagines it Will Be a ‘Big Leader’ in Videogames
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/11/22 at 04:41 PM CT
As 2022 winds down, one media corporation just upped the ante and showed its hand for the future. Netflix, the pioneering DotCom startup that both deprecated Blockbuster via its mail-based movie rental service and also lead the way into the bold new hellscape of subscription streaming video that currently surrounds us, recently added a ‘gaming’ section to their online services. In an interview with Vox magazine, the company’s co-founder, Reed Hastings, stated that the company has “a lot of investment to do in gaming.”
Hastings’ comments follow on the heels of Netflix throwing a lot of money into the gaming space, including the creation of a new mobile game studio in Finland, bringing a number of critically acclaimed mobile games (and mobile ports) to their video streaming platform, and expressing interest in adding game streaming to their list of core features – a year after Google’s own game streaming platform went defunct.
Is anyone at Netflix actually paying …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/03/22 at 01:43 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:
Holy crap! What’s going on here?! I played a bunch of games this Fall and enjoyed all of them? Yeah, “Daemon X Machina” was the only real disappointment of the lot, but at least it gave me an opportunity to fart around with Yuzu some more. If only I could get winning streaks like this out of my backlog more often!
“Door Kickers: Action Squad” – 4.5/5
“BioMutant” – 4/5
“Dragon Quest Builders 2” – 4.5/5
“Journey to the Savage Planet” – 4.5/5
“Wasteland 3” – 4.5/5
“Daemon X Machina” – 3.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
The short, hairy creature formerly known as THE Disgruntled Dwarf has officially canceled his Twitch channel. Of course, it hasn’t really lead him into playing/finishing/reviewing more games out of his backlog, but getting out of the rat race for attention can only be a net …
Backlog: The Embiggening – December, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/27/22 at 02:40 PM CT
Welcome back, once again, to another look into the near future! The End is Nigh! That’s right, 2022, is rapidly approaching its Swan Song. December’s release schedule is usually a mess of rushed projects that have been delayed multiple times, but whose publishers are desperate to get them out the door before the end of the year in order to – dubiously – get some black ink on the ledger. December also provides the final opportunity of the year to trick and deceive consumers into buying the wrong products as Winter Solstice Holiday gifts to help loved ones get through the longest and coldest nights of the year. Let’s see if any of this December’s releases are worth getting excited about, or if they’d be better off burnt as Yule Logs.
Shoveware is quite a bit lighter than it has been for the past few months, and decidedly non-existent compared to this time of year, historically. But there’s still some, and it falls into two out of the three major categories. In …
The Top 10 Ugliest Pokemon
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/20/22 at 03:34 PM CT
Like clockwork, a new generation of ‘Pokemon’ games has dropped, with the recent release of “Pokemon Scarlet Version” and “Pokemon Violet Version,” and the fanbase is already complaining that the new designs for the titular pocketable monsters are worse than ever. Far be it from me to be a contrarian (j/k), but ugly pokemon isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. I’ve personally been offended by quite a few pokemon designs going all the way back to the beginning. Here’s my short list of the worst.
10. Shelmet"The first time I ran into a Shelmet in “Pokemon GO,” I couldn’t believe this thing made it past the Western Censors. Sure, it’s a clam that has a knightly armor-like helmet… for a shell… but the clam part also looks undeniably like a disturbing penis. Seeing this pokemon in motion, with its facial dong wobbling around just makes things worse. I never actually call Shelmet “Shelmet” when talking about ‘Pokemon,’ though, I simply call it "Penis …
Oculus Founder, Palmer Luckey, Creates Ultimate ‘Dark Souls’ Accessory
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/13/22 at 01:46 PM CT
The insufferable, elitist Souls Trolls of the Cult of From have a new opportunity to ‘git gudder’ thanks to VR Magnate, Palmer Luckey, who founded the Oculus company in 2012 before selling out to Facebook/Meta in 2014. Luckey is no Elon Musk – that is, an ignorant rich boy who buys extant ideas and milks money out of them – but started building the technology underpinning Oculus VR from scratch in his parents’ garage in 2010. It seems that, even as a wealthy sellout and Donald Trump fanboy, Luckey can’t stop tinkering, and in November 2022 revealed his latest creation: A VR headset packed with explosives that kills the user if they die in-game.
I have long pined for such a device. Not for myself, of course. I, personally, like gaming because it’s all low-risk, no-stakes entertainment, not to mention a fantastic medium for storytelling. However, the constant droning of Souls Troll mantras across the gaming sectors of the Internet has made me wish they could truly live …
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