MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

Something Worse than Hitler is Now Threatening to Conquer Europe

Sun, 16 Sep 2018 14:27:55 -0500

*sigh* Meh. Videogame news has been pretty dead lately. Nothing to get excited about or enraged by. On the other hand, those crazy kids in European government are trying to destroy the online world as we know it. Ar...

Confessions of a Square-Enix Enabler

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 15:14:50 -0500

Those who follow this blog or interact with me regularly via other online media know that I am vehemently opposed to the corrupt practices that have begun to infest the Games Industry over the last decade or so. The gold-digging behavior of big, corporate �AAA� publishers makes me sick, and when I look back on the truly classic games that emerged during the 16-bit Golden Age, I can�t help but thi...

Review Round-Up: Summer 2018

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 14:11:56 -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: I wasn�t as productive as usual this Summer, largely because I spent the bulk of July and August enjoying (!) the �Dungeon Defenders II � Protean Shift� patch, endeavori...

Backlog: The Embiggening � September, 2018

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 20:01:57 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! All of the adorable little school shooters are back in their hunting grounds, so naturally, the Games Industry traditionally choses the month when that happens to end the Summer Game Drought and start releasing things again. Of course, as we should remember from the past few months, the Summer Game Drought of 2018 was cleverly concealed by the re...

Upcoming SteamOS Feature Could Finally Revolutionize Linux Gaming. Or Not.

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 14:50:10 -0500

Earlier this year, Valve quietly removed the Steam Machines section from the Steam Storefront. Many industry watchers and gamers took this to mean that both the concept of Steam Machines � console-sized PCs that are built specifically for couch gaming � and the Linux-based SteamOS that po...

Nintendo Wins One Battle in Its Perpetual Uphill War

Sun, 12 Aug 2018 14:42:11 -0500

This past week, EmuParadise � which is not a porn site for those who wish to have sexual relations with large flightless birds � pulled all ROM and ISO files from public availability, citing recent legal pressure from Nintendo on other emulation websites, which caved and shut themselves dow...

�Item Permanency� is the Cure for what Ails Random Loot in Games

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 16:36:09 -0500

Recently, I re-reviewed Trendy Entertainment�s �Dungeon Defenders II� Live Service due to a large overhaul update that redid some of the game�s fundamental systems and caused the whole thing to take a turn for the better. One of the key ...

Backlog: The Embiggening � August, 2018

Sat, 28 Jul 2018 15:02:02 -0500

Happy birthday to me, once again, as August rolls in. Usually July and August are the worst months of the year for new game releases, colloquially known as the Summer Game Drought. Like last month, publishers are flooding release channels with ports to fool us into thinking the drought isn�t as bad as it has been in past years, but they aren�t fooling me. Shovelware starts us off with a friggi...

Freemium Economies Mirror Real Ones in Odd Ways

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:20:35 -0500

As much as we may try to avoid them like the plague, the MJ Crew has become entrapped by a handful of Freemium entertainment software � that is to say, games and apps that are ostensibly �free,� but in actuality have a cost tied to them, be it paid in time or macrotransactions. Some of us are more invested in these than others. One of the more interesting Friends and Trading to 2-year-old mobile app, "Pokemon GO" are long overdue features, and their sudden appearance has sparked at least one of my acquaintances to fire-up the app again and try, in vain, to Catch 'Em All. This same ac...