Review Round-Up: Summer 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/21 at 03:49 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:
I got to touch all the icky typewriter number keys when inputting review scores this Summer, as stuff I played ran the gamut between “almost unplayable” to “almost perfect”… and that was all within a single franchise! Unfortunately, with too many of the Crew taking long, drawn-out Summer vacations, coop gaming took it in the pants, making Summer a decidedly lonely season.
“Tyranny” – 3.5/5
“The Technomancer” – 2.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown” – 0.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 2: The Destiny Knight” – 0.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 3: Thief of Fate” – 1.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale Trilogy” – 1.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep” – 4.5/5
“Boot Hill Heroes” – 3.5/5
“Assassin’s Creed: Origins” – 4/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf FINALLY finished …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/29/21 at 04:48 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The Drought That Never Happened is officially over, and as Fall comes upon us, we can look forward to the annual Autumn Games Flood, in which publishers poop out all the content they should have released gradually over the Summer, now that most of the target audience is back in school and doesn’t have as much time to play games. We’ve got a huge Flood coming in September, so let’s just get right to seining through the septic tank, on the off chance there’s something good to be found.
Lots of shovelware is coming in September, with a whopping 10 titles that can be dismissed immediately due to their pedigree. And we’ve got all three major categories of garbage represented, to boot! First, there are licensed games based on ‘Hot Wheels’ toy cars, ‘Agatha Christie’ novels (as if the ancient women who read those have a significant crossover with videogaming…), ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ and ‘The Addams Family’ (the …
8th Gen Retrospective
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/22/21 at 04:42 PM CT
As of 2017, the 9th Generation of videogaming officially kicked off. However, with not all of the big players in the console space so over-anxious to usher their last-gen offerings into the Great Beyond, it only really “feels” like the 9th Gen has been going for a few months now. Combine the recent releases of the Xbox SeX and the PlayStation 5 with their unavailability on store shelves due to a combination of COVID-caused logistics hurdles and a global microchip shortage, and the 9th Gen still feels very new indeed.
But with the 8th Gen completely behind us, it’s a good time to look back and pass judgment on those that came before. Let’s take a look at how the platforms stacked-up and remember some of their best and worst games.
#1. PC
PC gaming continued to be an ever-growing juggernaut in the 8th Generation, stealing away gamers from both Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation in sizeable numbers. This leeching effect was not nearly as noticeable amongst the …
Who Makes the Best Sandboxes?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/15/21 at 03:33 PM CT
The Open-World Sandbox genre has come to dominate modern videogaming so completely that, at this point, it feels somewhat like the ‘default’ form-factor a game should take, not unlike the 2D Platformer across the 1980s and 1990s. However, the Sandbox isn’t just a natural progression of basic concepts, but is instead the result of decades of hard work on the part of various development teams to push hardware capabilities and software paradigms as much as possible, occasionally going past the breaking point, but typically learning from the mistakes of others in the process.
Since the genre first proliferated in the mid-2000s, I have played quite a few Sandbox games by a variety of different development teams. In experiencing these games, it has become obvious that they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but also that some just have an overall better ‘feel’ than others. Let’s take a look back at a brief history of the genre and compare the biggest players to see …
Top & Bottom DLCs of the Past 20 Years
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/08/21 at 04:35 PM CT
Downloadable Content, a.k.a., DLC, has been with us for quite a few years now, really taking off during the PC/Console singularity period that was the tumultuous 7th Generation. With the 9th Gen in full-stride and a full slate of new hardware platforms competing against each other to, essentially, run all of the same games, DLC and add-ons can still be a contentious subject in gaming communities. It’s no wonder, considering that many gamers tend to conflate the entire concept of DLC with the loot boxes and microtransactions that have made mobile gaming an obscenely profitable but wholly unredeemable cesspit, and have tried – to varying degrees of success – to worm their way into ‘legit’ console and PC gaming.
My stance is that DLC and microtransactions are completely different things, and generally don’t even consider cosmetic purchases where ‘you know what you’re paying for’ instead of random pulls to qualify as ‘true’ DLC. No, to me, DLC should be used …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/01/21 at 03:35 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Summer’s almost over. You know what that means: I’m a year older and a year curmudgeonlier, and the cute (read: nauseating) little Snowflakes of Gen-Z and later are heading back to school, where to learn Critical Race Theory and Gender Spectrum, but not math, science, or good old traditional thinking (a.k.a., philosophy) because who needs those, right?
Let’s take a look at what garbage the Games Industry is dumping on us for the next 30 days.
Out of 27 planned August releases – still an amazing turn-out for a traditional “drought” month – we’ve got 6 that I’m classifying as ‘shovel-ready,’ which isn’t all that bad. There’s a licensed tie-in for babbys in “PAW Patrol The Movie: Adventure City Calls,” another for slightly older babbys in “Madden NFL 22,” one for grognards who still think crappy ‘80s sci-fi is cool in “Aliens: Fireteam Elite,” and one for anime weeaboos in “Shadowverse: …
Japan Really Respects Their Gaming Traditions
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/24/21 at 04:04 PM CT
In spite of the word-of-mouth speculation that anyone over age 20 who still plays videogames is a NEET or Otaku, the statistical evidence that shows only 40% of the nation plays them at all, and the government’s attempts to crack-down on ‘gaming addiction’ among the youth with overbearing laws, the Japanese still put the time when Nippon was at the top of the videogame world – that time between 1983 and 2006 typically referred to as “The Golden Age” – at the center of their modern cultural identity. I mean, how else would you explain the immediately-recognizable tones of the ‘Dragon Quest’ introductory theme and the ‘Final Fantasy’ victory theme finding their way into the DAMNED OPENING CEREMONY of the 20201 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo?
Yes, even while Western media publishes story after story about Japan’s vanishing relevance in videogame markets ranging from the “AAA” space to Single-A to Indies, and yet other word-of-mouth conversations try to …
Steam Deck: What GabeN Was Rambling About
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/18/21 at 03:32 PM CT
All of the console gaming communities have been lighting up over the past few days with news of the upcoming (and up for pre-order) Steam Deck hybrid game console. While the disclosure of this new piece of hardware does make us say, “Aha!” as Lord GabeN predicted it would, it also makes me say, “Why?”
For those who haven’t heard, the Steam Deck is another take on the Steam Machines hardware paradigm from a few years back (so let’s count that as a Win for my first prediction), only this time instead of partnering with third-parties to make a range of console-like PCs, Valve is doing all the heavy lifting itself, and modeling the device after the Nintendo Switch – a handheld PC with built-in controller-style inputs that can be docked to a larger screen at the user’s whim. Valve is also selling three slightly different models of Steam Deck at $400, $530, and $650, with more money netting buyers more and faster internal storage.
The Steam Deck will come with the …
The PlayStation State of Play 2021: Good/Bad/Ugly
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/08/21 at 10:55 PM CT
After, once again, not participating in the smorgasbord of gaming news and hype-generation that was E3 for the third year in a row – only vomiting a disorganized mess of video content on their corporate Youtube account - Sony has decided to maintain its new tradition of releasing a Nintendo-style ‘Direct’ video at its leisure… which in 2021 happened to fall on July 8th. This “State of Play” video could have easily been a part of the official week-long E3 happenings, since E3 was still an entirely digital show in 2021, after being canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Sony’s got a lock on nothing if not hubris.
Since the State of Play 2021 isn’t officially part of E3, I’ll re-use my alternative format of “Good,” “Bad,” and “Ugly,” as I did for the individual digital pressers that replaced E3 last year. And I’m REALLY anticipating a whole lot of “Ugly,” considering how far-gone down the rabbit hole Sony and the PlayStation brand have …
Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/04/21 at 02:36 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! As America celebrates its independence from hereditary monarchy and The Church exerting undue influence on its political affairs *ahem*… It’s time to blow stuff up! And by “stuff” I mean gunpowder invented by, packaged by, and sold by China, America’s biggest, most dangerous rival on the world stage…
Ehh… let’s forget the patriotism and talk about some upcoming game releases! There are a whopping 30 titles on the docket, showing that 2021 is indeed the year when the Summer Game Drought didn’t manifest… instead we got a regular-old-drought that is threatening to turn the Western half of the country into a desert… except it already is a desert… Man, you can’t grab a Negro by the toe these days without running into political bullshit.
Onward to the games!
We’re really light on the shovelware for July, with only two titles. We can’t even populate the three major shovelware categories like that! …
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