Backlog: The Embiggening - January, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/03/15 at 01:19 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The sad, sad year of 2014 has come grinding to a close. While I’m sure some deluded folks will look back on it fondly, the first year for the PS4 and XBONE (and the second year for the WiiU) featured a lot of blandness, rehashing, and no good reasons to commit to any of the three 8th Gen platforms.
Will 2015 change gaming’s current dismal tone? Maybe… but certainly NOT in January! In our 2015 month of missed deadlines and overdue holiday releases, we have a whopping SIX games to look forward to… and by ‘look forward to,’ I mean ‘completely ignore.’
January will be our second month in a row with no shovelware. That’s good! Shovelware never really does anything but pad release numbers with terrible licensed schlock.
Unfortunately, without the looming specter of shovelware, the entirety of the January 2015 lineup looks to be multi-platform releases and ports.
The three 8th Gen platforms that matter to the …
Year in Review: 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/28/14 at 01:41 PM CT
2014 was a long and painful road to travel. While normally I like to look at five spectacular wins and five epic fails during my end-of-year retrospective, 2014 didn’t actually have any wins. Instead, it was a year of epic failures, topped-off with a sugary coating of missed deadlines and unmet expectations. It has been one of the most dire years for gaming since 1983!
Fails
5. Facebook Buys Oculus Rift, Kickstarters Kicked to the Curb
For a while there, it looked like virtual reality was going to be the 8th Generation’s gimmick, what with Sony working on Project Morpheus and the Oculus Rift getting huge Kickstarter support to bring VR to the PC. Unfortunately, instead of sticking with their Kickstarter backers, Oculus decided to take some Big Evil Corporate money when Mark Zuckerberg’s Lovecraftian tentacle monster, Facebook, bought the VR startup. Now, not only did all of that Kickstarter money, which was ostensibly going to Oculus, end up in Facebook’s pockets, but …
Sony: Letting the Terrorists Win
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/20/14 at 04:04 PM CT
The news has exploded recently with the revelation that Sony Pictures had their online infrastructure infiltrated by a group of hackers working on behalf of North Korea. The hack came in response to Sony’s formerly-upcoming release of “The Interview” in theatres, which has been canceled in the wake of the cyber-attacks.
This most recent hit against Sony Pictures is just part of a long history of shoddy cyber-security and network infrastructure on Sony’s behalf. Gamers will recall in particular when PlayStation Network was hacked offline for weeks back in 2011. Coupled with PSN’s generally sluggish nature and frequent outages, one wonders if Sony really has any business putting as much of their stuff in the Cloud as they are.
But the worst part of Sony’s response to the North Korea-sponsored hit on their servers is that they chose now to give-in to the hackers. Cyber-security experts are warning that the hack against Sony is the first in what will become a new wave …
Nintendo Attempts to Subvert the ROM-Hack Community with “Mario Maker.”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/14/14 at 01:21 AM CT
The fan communities of ROM-Hackers who take existing games and transform them into new experiences to be played via emulators have long been at odds with the companies that sell the base games that are the hackers’ medium. Between Square Enix shutting down the likes of “Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes” and “Chrono Resurrection,” and Nintendo ruffling its feathers over the fanslation of “Mother 3,” as well as completely original fangames like “Metroid: SR388,” “The Legend of Zelda: Outlands,” and “Super Mario Bros. X,” to name a few, it’s clear that these companies perceive their games only as products to be controlled and not the cultural phenomena they actually are.
While Nintendo may say that they don’t want to shut-down projects made by fans out of love for their IPs, very few of these projects manage to avoid being hit with cease and desist orders. Nintendo purports to only throw the book at fangame projects that don’t treat the source material …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/06/14 at 05:58 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:
Fall has not been conducive to the MJ crew playing coop games. Part of this dire situation is due to Nick using his turn to pick our online coop game to dump us back into the MMO void of “Dragon Nest.” We were also running low on local coop games, so Chris and I ended up doing a lot of solo gaming. I tackled numerous short Indie titles from my Steam list.
“FEZ” – 4.5/5
“Of Orcs and Men” – 3.5/5
“Valdis Story: Abyssal City” – 4/5
“New Super Luigi U” – 3/5
“Breath of Death 7: The Beginning” – 4/5
“UnEpic” – 4/5
“Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles +” – 1.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris continued his self-indulgence in ‘Chris would love that’ games, and continued to NOT actually love them (all those 3.5-star ratings equate to ‘like’ at best). The only game he LOVED was, again predictably, …
Backlog: The Embiggening - December, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/30/14 at 01:30 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. December is here, once again, to mark the coming of the “Holiday Season.” Not Christmas, because that would be exclusionary towards non-Christians (despite the fact that Christmas has never actually been about Christianity). It’s exasperating that our contemporary politically correct culture always needs to latch onto the most sterile and bland names for things. I’ll still be celebrating the ancient pre-Christian holiday of Yule and have already decorated a simulated pine tree with simulated sacrificial entrails.
What do gamers have to celebrate in December? How about A MONTH WITH NO SHOVELWARE?! Yes, it actually looks like it’s going to happen! There isn’t a single shovelware title slated for a December release as of yet (though that is still subject to change, as usual).
In fact, December’s releases are looking incredibly sparse overall, especially being the ever-important second Yule since the PS4 and XBONE …
What Was the Last Game that Had YOU Extremely Hyped?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/23/14 at 06:27 PM CT
Hype has become extremely commonplace as an advertising mechanic in the videogame publishing business. Among the Triumvirate of Evil, the production of Hype outstrips the production of quality games by an incredibly high margin.
Of course, Hype is not actually anything new. The generation of unrealistic expectations via word of mouth and media buzz has been around forever. What fueled the Old West gold rushes? Hype. What fueled the DotCom Bubble? Hype. As a frugal and savvy consumer, I try not to buy into the Hype surrounding most products, though I did find myself falling prey to both the WiiU and OUYA last year, despite the fact that the Hype around both of those consoles was rather muted compared to what we usually see.
I try to save my Hype for things that have a strong chance of meeting expectations. As such, I have found myself relatively sedate in my levels of Hype for over a decade now. Yes, I was mildly Hyped about a handful of 7th Generation games, like …
“Dragon Nest” Mercenary Monster System Can’t Come to NA Soon Enough
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/16/14 at 01:55 PM CT
The MeltedJoystick staff is generally rather averse to the MMO subgenre of games, but we did find ourselves somewhat enchanted by the not-very-MMO-like-at-all nature of Eyedentity’s and Nexon’s “Dragon Nest” when we played through the Level 60 Cap content last year. Recently, we’ve jumped back into the world of “Dragon Nest” to see what’s new since we went on hiatus.
All in all, not much is new. The level cap has been raised to 70, the experience point curve between levels 60 and 70 has been thrown completely out of whack (making daily grinding a necessity rather than a luxury), and level 40+ equipment has been revamped to use a fancy new Dragon Gem upgrade system instead of the old system of Suffixes and Hidden Ability Sparks. Almost all of the annoying entry passes required for entering the titular Nests have been removed as well, along with a few revamped locations and events.
However, something is in the works (and is already available in the Korean and …
EFF to Preserve Online Play, Misses the Point
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/09/14 at 03:06 PM CT
I am not alone in my concerns regarding what happens to old videogames when their owners no longer find them profitable. This past week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation started making noise about creating a Digital Millennium Copyright Act exemption to allow circumvention of software security for the purpose of creating unofficial servers for games that are no longer officially supported.
If the EFF gets its way with this exemption request, the idea that games don’t have an online expiration date should hopefully catch hold of both the gaming public and the developers/publishers behind the creation of entertainment software. Giving the hardcore fans who already run unofficial servers for their favorite games explicit permission to do so is a significant win for consumer rights.
Unfortunately, the EFF doesn’t quite go far enough. The exemption request specifically states that the ability to run private servers for old games should NOT apply to massively-multiplayer games. …
Backlog: The Embiggening - November, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/01/14 at 03:11 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. It’s November! Now that Halloween is in the rear-view mirror, capitalists have no other impediments in their quest to flood the market with the Crap the Came for Christmas. Thanksgiving? What’s that? In America, we’re not thankful for anything… except dupes to whom to sell shovelware!
Shovelware? Yes, there is a bit of it this mont… OH MY GOD IT’S OVERWHELMING!
It seems that some of the shovelware manufacturers – specifically Disney – have started reducing the pellet count in their shotgun blast releases in order to specifically target the vital organs of those most susceptible to buying such crappy licensed garbage. Thus the new “Penguins of Madagascar,” and “Planes: Fire & Rescue” are only targeting Nintendo platforms (what with Nintendo’s unshakable ‘kiddie’ reputation). Likewise, both Disney and 4Kids are bringing their new “Big Hero 6” and “Winx Club” games exclusively to Nintendo …
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