Review Round-Up: Winter 2011
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/26/12 at 05:33 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:
I reviewed a broad variety of things, including two non-traditional FPSes and the most over-hyped game in the Wii’s library. I also got the chance to experience the full breadth of Wii MotionPlus ‘enhanced’ controls.
“Lost in Shadow” – 3/5
“Red Steel 2” – 4/5
“Create” – 4/5
“The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” – 3/5
“Trine” – 3/5
“Dungeon Defenders” – 3.5/5 (4.5/5 for the superior PC version)
“Portal 2” – 5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris is deeply submerged in the world of “Skyrim,” a game which, he tells me, he should be ready to review sometime in June. In the meantime, he managed to squeeze in a Rhythm game he has already mastered on another platform and a short platformer, alongside our two staff co-op games for the quarter.
“Dungeon Defenders” – 4/5
“Rock Band 3 …
The Great Videogame Crash of ~2013?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/18/12 at 03:05 PM CT
Videogame development has been in a state of flux for the past few years, moving from a niche business to a bank-busting industry seeking to find a home alongside the other forms of Big Media. Yet this incredible prosperity came with a lot of growing pains. This generation has seen more hardware failures than any other, this generation has seen publisher greed lead to crackdowns on used games and a variety of unethical sales techniques like Day-One DLC, games are released buggy and unfinished, nobody knows what to think about smartphones and their massive libraries of cheap & terrible games, and while more games are being released now than ever – especially from Western developers – there are few stand-out titles that are impressive now AND will withstand the test of time.
To me, the current videogame market closely resembles the one built-up by Atari (delenda est!) that lead to the Great Videogame Crash of 1983. Yes, I may have been 3 years old at the time and completely …
Value Added?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/12/12 at 03:24 PM CT
This generation of consoles has seen numerous changes – with most of them coming in the form of things I dislike. One of the most obtrusive changes is the way in which online functionality has permeated every facet of our consoles. Once stand-alone bastions of simplicity, consoles have become just as dependent upon the Internet as PCs.
Had online functionality been implemented in a console-minded fashion – that is, simple and unobtrusive – it would have been an obvious choice for the title of “Best New Innovation” of the generation. A simple and free service to provide matchmaking for online games, mandatory software patches, and a digital marketplace: This is the bare minimum of online functionality, and it’s all we really need. Yet the recent greed of the game industry has lead them down the dark and twisted path of “software as a service,” in which they bleed users dry through subscription fees and microtransactions while simultaneously driving users insane …
The Gristmill
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/05/12 at 04:07 PM CT
I have noticed a disturbing trend in games this-gen. Not just my favorite genre of RPGs, but many genres, including strategy and even FPS, have become increasingly focused on one gameplay mechanic: Grinding.
Grinding was introduced long ago in the first RPGs. Games like “Phantasy Star,” “Dragon Quest,” and “Final Fantasy” all involved grinding, but it was a side effect of the then-new mechanic of improving the character’s skills instead of the player’s. Grinding was a necessary evil as developers worked to find the right balance of challenge and playability in their games. If battles were too easy, players could blow through the game with no effort. If battles were too hard, a few hours of grinding would take care of it. It was ‘better,’ it seemed, to err on the side of challenge.
The 16-bit era brought us balanced RPGs, still the only genre to feature grinding, that could be completed using only the points accumulated from battles fought naturally through …
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