Can Microsoft Legitimize Android Games… By Making them PC Games?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/27/21 at 12:37 AM CT
Microsoft recently revealed the next iteration of Windows coming in the near future. This OS – dubbed Windows 11, even after Microsoft went on the record stating that “Windows 10 is the last version of Windows” – will include a lot of new features that are beyond the ken of the MeltedJoystick Blog, as well as an even-Mac-ier-than-ever UI refresh. However, the core feature that has the Internet abuzz is the fact that Windows 11 will natively run Android apps thanks to a dedicated subsystem that allows a virtualized kernel direct hardware access (just like the Linux Subsystem for Windows that was added to Windows 10).
When Android first appeared on the scene way back in in 2008 as a slap-dash attempt by Google, whose motto at the time was “Don’t Be Evil,” to produce a competitor for the nascent iOS that powered Apple’s new iPhones, it held a lot of promise. Android would be Open Source! Android would be Linux-based and highly secure! Android would be free to install! …
E3 Impressions 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/21 at 10:20 PM CT
After much speculation and navel-gazing on my part last year when E3 was cancelled, the venerable trade show returned in 2021, in spirit, at least, if not in the flesh. Ongoing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic lingering on into its second year caused all of the remaining E3 participants to produce pre-recorded video presentations and set-up online game demos instead of setting up meat-space stages demo booths, thus transforming the trade show into a virtual event, as so many other things did during the past year. Oddly enough, the ‘new’ E3 feels a lot more egalitarian and open than the FOMO-fueled, social-media-powered, influencer-narrated abomination that was supposed to appear. I guess we can at least thank China and their damned virus for that!
Of course, not everyone has been happy with E3 for a long time. Nintendo bowed-out years ago and switched (*snap*) to their ‘Direct’ format, and Sony followed not far behind (as is their wont). This year, E3 shed a bit …
The Year of Ransomware
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/12/21 at 04:20 PM CT
I don’t know if part of it’s just media spin and lumping a whole bunch of things together to make them look scarier and more epidemic than they actually are, but lately we’ve had nothing but bad news in spades. 2020 was the Year of COVID-19 and the Year of Police Brutality Complaints. Now, 2021 is rapidly shaping-up to be remembered as the Year of Ransomware, and Games Industry players aren’t immune.
Hot on the heels of a Serious Business report by “60 Minutes” (jump to the 16 minute mark) of Russian (and perhaps other foreign) criminal hackers installing ransomware on a broad swath of private American computer networks ranging from low level local governments to hospitals to petroleum pipelines, this week reports came to light that at least two of the biggest players in the Games Industry have been subject to similar attacks. And like the Serious Business outfits, nobody wants to report that they’ve been hacked so the government can possibly look into helping them …
Vaguely Related: Let’s Assemble the Worst ‘Star Trek’ Crew Possible!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/06/21 at 05:34 PM CT
‘Star Trek’ as an IP has been struggling for a good many years. Even now as the newly-reunited CBS-Paramount throws ever-more barrels of money at it, the new flagship series, “Star Trek: Discovery” has the lowest ratings among viewers on IMDB and Metacritic in series history. But “Discovery” is really just the small, cherry-shaped turd atop a large turd sundae with turd sauce, stretching back through the somewhat-nonsensical-but-at-least-watchable ‘Nu-Trek’ J. J. Abrams movies, through the UPN-exclusive “Star Trek: Enterprise,” all the way back to the launch of “Star Trek: Voyager” in 1995, which is really where the IP first started to sink (or stink) when compared to the critic-and-fan-beloved series – “Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” – that came before.
As videogames, ‘Star Trek’ has always struggled to find its footing, with some terrible SNES and early PC outings. These days, ‘Trek’ videogaming is largely kept alive by two …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/30/21 at 02:54 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:
Remember last quarter when I reassured you, dear readers, that all the numbers besides ‘3’ on my keyboard weren’t broken? Well, this quarter, I assure you that all the numbers besides ‘2’ aren’t broken. Yes, somehow my bad luck streak of mediocre games has gotten worse, with several sub-par games making it out of my crushing backlog this Spring. *sigh* I guess playing lots of crap makes the great experiences stand out even more…
“Avadon: The Black Fortress” – 2/5
“The Vagrant” – 4/5
“The Deep Paths: Labyrinth of Andokost” – 3/5
“Greedfall” – 4.5/5
“Front Mission Evolved” – 2/5
“Victor Vran” – 3/5
“Pine” – 2/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf has every reason to be disgruntled. He – foolishly, and against my counsel – bought the last “Destiny 2” season …
Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/24/21 at 12:07 AM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! June is right around the corner, and gamers everywhere are huddling in their makeshift shelters, awaiting the annual coming of the Summer Games Drought: That dreaded multi-month stretch where the big “AAA” publishers barely manage to poop out anything, while smaller “A,” “B,” and Indie developers still haven’t figured out that a large swatch of time in which the big competition is dormant and the largest sector of the target audience (school kids) has nothing better to do that buy and play a bunch of new games…
…
…
But wait! What’s this?! Some strange, supernatural phenomenon – also known as the COVID-19 Coronavirus – has caused a great disturbance in The Farce, and June of 2021 is positively jam-packed with releases. Should gamers everywhere start running through the streets, throwing our hats into the air in celebration of the shattering of the hobby’s longest and most enduring …
Let’s Play: “Guess What Lord GabeN is Rambling About!”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/16/21 at 01:07 AM CT
New Zealand is home to a number of elusive, quirky, rotund forms of life: The Kiwi Bird, the Kakapo, Gabe Newell…
Yes, our favorite expatriate to the land down-under Down-Under, has opened his beard-bedecked mouth again, and, as usual, cryptic, idiosyncratic prophecies about the future of Gaming have flown out. Answering a question from a Kiwi schoolkid about whether Steam would start to do more with consoles, Newell replied that, by the end of the year (2021), we will receive an “unexpected” answer and say, “Aha!” to ourselves.
So let’s play a game of “Guess What Lord GabeN is Rambling About!”
Guess 1: Steam Machines are Coming Back
Back in 2013, Lord GabeN promised to take the console world by storm with the release of a line of small-form-factor gaming PCs with a Linux-based custom OS designed for couch gaming. Alongside the Steam Machines initiative, which left the development of the actual console/PC hybrid hardware in the hands of disinterested …
I Really Want a DecaGear…
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/08/21 at 10:42 PM CT
Late last year, I was excited about the prospect of finally pulling the trigger on a VR setup to usher in the new 9th Generation of consoles… devices I will continue to steadfastly ignore unless something drastic changes. Of course, last year, we didn’t know there was going to be an earthshattering silicon chip shortage, causing the newgen consoles, new PC hardware, cars, and, yes, VR headsets to become somewhat scarce.
However, while reading up on VR a bit to see what the best 2021 options for the tech happened to be, I learned of a new contender in the VR headset space: Deca.
While Valve, HTC, and Facebook’s Oculus are the established names in the young VR space (with PlayStation VR and Microsoft’s Hololens coming across more as afterthoughts), in such a new technological space, there’s plenty of room for new contenders to appear, and so far, Deca seems to be quite impressive.
First, the company itself is a multi-national group with facilities in Thailand, …
The Never-Ending Chip Shortage
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/02/21 at 03:40 PM CT
If you haven’t managed to snag a 9th Gen console or a new PC graphics card for anywhere close to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, you might be SoL at this point. According to numerous big players in the silicon microchip industry, things don’t look like they’ll improve until sometime in 2023. Yes, that’s TWO YEARS away!
I managed to snag the new hardware I needed to refresh my 9-year-old gaming PC for a mix of prices. While I was able to get the CPU and all the other components for the MSRP (No sales, rebates, or discounts to be found, alas!), I ended up paying triple-MSRP for my graphics card, much to my annoyance. If I had pulled the trigger a couple months earlier, I could have had it for merely DOUBLE the MSRP, which at this point feels like a huge savings. Of course, learning that the chip supply, and thus the prices of hardware, would continue to be out-of-whack until the Summer or Autumn of 2021 was what ultimately spurred me into action instead of …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/24/21 at 09:12 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! April showers (of watery diarrhea) bring May flowers (or maybe some sort of fungus that grows in manure), and Games Industry watchers are getting settled-in for one last month of copious releases before the onset of the annual Summer Games Drought. Though in a post-COVID world, it’s possible some of these ‘traditions’ may have been shunted out of alignment due to last year’s lockdown of… pretty much everything. Onto the crap!
We’ve got shovelware, oh yes we do! Though, thankfully, we don’t have very much… and it seems that the purveyors of such drivel are targeting Nintendo, like they think it’s still the Blue Ocean Wii era, or something. Anyway, we’ve got a crappy valet-themed party game called “Very Very Valet,” and Nintendo is resurrecting the corpse of the 3DS’s social non-game, “Miitopia” for another round on the treadmill.
And speaking of things being dragged out of storage and plopped on the …
View Archive
