Backlog: The Embiggening - June, 2012
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/31/12 at 10:51 PM CT
Welcome to a new monthly feature on MeltedJoystick, in which I take a look at the games coming in the next month, then weep at the fact that my backlog just refuses to get any smaller. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, at least for me) this month’s new releases look mostly like uninteresting swill. Let’s get down to it.
It wouldn’t be a month in modern gaming without the release of at least three First-Person Shooters, and June looks like it won’t disappoint with the releases of “Inversion,” a Tom Clancy game, and “Borderlands 2.” For those who like to see their character’s back, there’s also the Third-Person Shooter, “Spec Ops: The Line.” Yawn.
And a month never goes by without huge publishers smearing licensed garbage across every platform capable of running it (or a version of it). This month we’re being graced with the presence of “Madagascar 3: The Video Game,” an iCarly game, “Brave: The Video Game,” “Lego Batman 2,” and “The …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2012
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/28/12 at 02:01 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:
The MeltedJoystick staff found ourselves burning through a LOT of multi-player games this quarter… so much so that we’re running out of new things to play! When not playing couch-co-op with the rest of the crew, I found myself playing through a host of abominations. I also got my retro on with both a spiritual successor and a direct sequel to two of my favorite old-school dungeon-crawlers. Sadly, only one of those games rose to the occasion.
“Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One” – 3.5/5
“Castle Crashers” – 3/5
“White Knight Chronicles II” – 2/5
“Rayman Origins” – 4/5
“The Kore Gang” – 2/5
“Castlevania: Harmony of Despair” – 1.5/5
“Rygar: The Legendary Adventure” – 2/5
“Kirby's Return to Dreamland” – 5/5
“Legend of Grimrock” – 4.5/5
“Spore Hero” – 3.5/5
“Stonekeep: …
10 Game Sequels that Pooped on their Originals
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/19/12 at 06:41 PM CT
Sequels: Love them or hate them, they are a fact of life in creative media. There is always another story to tell for a given setting or groups of characters. It’s easier to tell a great story when free to focus on the story, rather than the nuts-and-bolts and stuff that goes on behind the scenes. Sometimes sequels are great, building upon the original and hammering out the bad parts until there is nothing left but burnished gold…
But sometimes sequels go completely astray from what earned their originals enough praise from critics and consumers to warrant said sequel. Here’s a list of the worst offenders, which, instead of honoring their originals and building on what made them great, pulled-down their metaphorical pants and evacuated their bowels in the worst possible way.
10. Duke Nukem Forever
While I am of the opinion that it’s impossible to make poop worse by pooping on it, Chris informs me that “Duke Nukem Forever” completely defiles the original “Duke …
The Dark Side of Indie Game Development
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/13/12 at 03:05 PM CT
Last week, I gushed about independent game development and how Indie was the sole hope for the future of a medium becoming increasingly consumed with and motivated by profit. Yet even such a noble pursuit as Indie development can be corrupted by the desire to turn a quick buck. One need only look at the ‘libraries’ of smartphones and Xbox Live to plainly see that there is an overwhelming amount of crap produced by nobodies hoping to become the next “Angry Birds” Guys. These Indie ‘developers’ are treating game creation like gambling: If they buy enough lottery tickets, they’ll have to win big eventually, right? Wrong: The House (in these instances, Apple and Microsoft) always wins.
Indie developers need to be constantly vigilant, watching themselves to ensure they don’t act like Big Gaming publishers… because they aren’t Big Gaming publishers. Indie developers don’t have the reputations or the venture capital to release trash, market it to death, and get …
Independent Development and the Last Crusade
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/06/12 at 09:03 PM CT
The game industry is at a crossroads. What was once an entirely niche endeavor done by geeks, for geeks, has become a Big Business. What was once an artistic endeavor has become a commodity. What was once made on a shoestring budget now costs millions of dollars. Game development has changed, and in changing has lost everything that it once was.
When I look back at the history of videogames and my relationship with the medium, I recall a time, not so long ago, when game publishers were also developers. Everyone self-published their game software, thus they were only beholden to themselves. During this time, these developer-publishers built-up the reputations they continue to rely on. Good reputations are important in any business, and there were numerous stand-outs in the game industry whose excellent games made me come to trust them to produce great software time after time. I was a loyal customer to Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft, Enix, BioWare, InterPlay, Sierra, and even …
Obscurity Through Obscurity
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/29/12 at 11:23 AM CT
While Apple fanboys may bristle at the notion that the traditionally low market share of their favorite operating system was one of the primary reasons for its lack of viruses and other malware, the newly-increased market penetration of Apple-based OSes has seen a corresponding increase in exploits. It seems that “security through obscurity” was one of the main things preventing malware authors from taking an active interest in Apple’s platforms.
Security through obscurity is the idea that the fewer people know about something, the safer that something will be. In the world of console games, however, fewer people knowing about a platform leads to fewer sales of that platform and, ultimately, the death of the platform. Indeed, up until this 7th Generation of consoles, the primary cause of console failure seems to have been “obscurity through obscurity.”
Think about it: If you were in the market for a game console in 1985, would you buy the NES, the console that was so …
Atari Delenda Est
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/22/12 at 03:08 PM CT
Astute readers of this blog will have noticed that whenever I mention Atari, I follow it shortly with the Latin phrase delenda est. I do this in emulation of the great Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, who, during the Punic Wars, said the same thing about Rome’s enemy, the North African city-state of Carthage. Cato would tack-on this statement to all of his speeches, regardless of whether or not Carthage was even the topic at hand. Cato’s indignity was just, as Carthage was a tenacious enemy that plagued Rome with, not one, not two, but THREE wars, the latter two of which could have been averted had the Romans done the job right the first time.
Atari is much the same way. While the original Atari is, thankfully, dead and buried, the name continues to live-on, painting its stain across modern videogames. While it could be argued that the Atari moniker has endured due to its high name-recognition, naming a game publisher after the company that almost single-handedly destroyed the …
Vaguely Related Review: Steam
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/15/12 at 02:37 PM CT
From November 30, 1998 until December 2, 2003, I was a happy PC gamer. Prior to that, I had tried in vain, over and over again, to play games on my PC, but DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 all had issues with each other – and my hardware, apparently – which stymied every effort. I had collected a large stack of PC game boxes, some containing 5.25” floppies, some containing 3.5” floppies, some containing CDs, that I had either partially finished but could no longer play because some minor change to my system made the games suddenly decide to stop working, or had been unable to play at all, despite the fact that my $4000 PC (yes, it cost that much at the time) was unable to run them with hardware specs that were double the minimum requirements listed on the game boxes.
When Black Isle and BioWare got their hands on the D&D videogame license, things suddenly got better. All of their products were designed to run in Windows, and they all worked in Windows. Sure, I couldn’t …
Easter Eggs
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/08/12 at 03:34 PM CT
Easter Eggs have been a part of videogames for as long as videogames have existed. While the initial Easter Eggs – the ones that defined the term – were more vanity pieces where the programmers slipped-in an inside joke or other small, hidden detail, the concept evolved over time. The term soon became associated with hidden goodies and bonus features in a game that could be unlocked by dedicated players. Easter Eggs reached their height during the last two generations, in which games like “GoldenEye 64” and the ‘Ratchet & Clank’ series featured formalized menus to help players keep track of their discovered Eggs and to activate/deactivate the associated features.
But now that dear old Easter Bunny has been bought-out by Big Business with an interest in maximizing profits. Few 7th Generation games contain Easter Eggs or unlockables, instead holding back those fun, silly options as paid add-ons via DLC. Extra costumes, extra music tracks, extra equipment, extra levels: …
Disposable Gaming
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/01/12 at 02:46 PM CT
For most people who proudly call themselves “Gamers,” videogames are more than just a timewaster. For these people, among whom the entire MeltedJoystick staff (okay, maybe not Alex) counts ourselves, videogames are a beloved hobby. Gamers enjoy playing, collecting, analyzing, and replaying the games in our libraries. Those of us who have been gaming for a long time can go back and replay old favorites and compare them to new releases, experiencing the ways in which game developers improve or worsen their craft over time and observing the evolution of gameplay mechanics.
In this way, classic games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras are like classic works of literature: Modern readers may only care about “Twilight,” “Harry Potter,” and “The Hunger Games,” but without earlier works ranging from Greek and Roman myths to Shakespearean plays, modern literature wouldn’t exist. Some of these aged writings are still eminently readable today… some are not. But by looking at …
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