MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

Review Round-Up: Fall 2023

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 14:40:23 -0500

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 was not a particularly exciting quarter for me. I got into a rut of playing through a bunch of short, unspectacular Indie games that mostly just made me want to...

Backlog: The Embiggening – December, 2023

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 16:08:49 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! As December rolls in, we’re rapidly approaching the end of another year in Gaming, and the Big Players in Industrial Gaming are desperately tossing out everything they can in a last-ditch effort to turn a profit – or at least mitigate some losses! What do we have to look forward to as last-minute Yuletide self-gifts? Let’s dig into it! U...

Demented Wool-Goblin, Bobby Kotick, to Leave Activision after Microsoft Acquisition

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 14:49:30 -0500

Well that didn’t take long! The slow-rolling acquisition of former Big Three/Triumvirate of Evil publisher, Activision-Blizzard-King, by Microsoft, which started a few years ago, has finally g...

The Escapist Folds as the Latest Casualty in Games Journalism

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 14:53:48 -0500

2023 is looking like the year that corporate-backed Games Journalism died. All year long we’ve been seeing stories about the Gaming divisions of large, corporate media outlets facing layoffs or being completely shuttered in the face of plunging ad revenue and lack of relevance. This past week, a staple...

Capcom: “PC Game Modding is Cheating!”

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 15:30:13 -0500

Long, long ago in those halcyon days of… two years ago, Capcom, one of the big Japanese developer/publisher Corporate Samurai who lorded over the Console Gaming Golden Age of the 1990s like a benevolent Philosopher King straight out of Plato, committed to making PC its “I was incredibly excited about the fact that a new trilogy of DragonLance novels by the setting’s original creators, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, was being launched outside of the purview of the increasingly-tragic Wizards of the Coast. Sadly, the

Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2023

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 17:25:13 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! The month of horror is upon us once again… and I have a strong suspicion that the game release schedule will be the most dreadful, terrifying abomination the world will see this month (come on, Putin, Xi… prove me wrong!). After years of relative dormancy, shovelware really came roaring back onto the scene last month, and it’s EVEN WORSE...

Epic Games is Full of Debt

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 16:05:53 -0500

Remember when we all got excited about a new digital storefront being run by Epic Games joining the fray on PC? Remember how disappointed we were in the Epic Store not having basic features for YEARS after launch? Remember how nearly anyone you asked ...