Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2019
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/31/19 at 02:33 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! April is for fools, as we all know all too well. Too bad the fools in the games industry (and American government) can’t keep their idiocy contained to a single month! Let’s take a look at how big the dumpster fire will be over the course of the next 4 weeks.
Shovelware is much lighter on the ground for April than it was for March, with only three titles. One, “UglyDolls: An Imperfect Adventure,” is based on the series of plushies that is, apparently, supposed to help post-Millennial kids come to terms with how Effed-up they are. Another, “Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission,” is based on one of the oldest manga/anime IPs to make the trip from Japan to the West (and also one of the worst). Lastly, we’ve got “World War Z,” a zombie-schlock Shooter based on the movie “World War Z.” I have a sinking feeling that Chris is somehow going to force us to play this turd for Co-op Monday sometime next …
Trendy Entertainment is Now Chromatic Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/24/19 at 03:08 PM CT
In a surprise announcement at the beginning of March, Trendy Entertainment, the Indie developer we at MeltedJoystick love to hate, revealed that they were dead and gone.
While everyone at MeltedJoystick has something of a love/hate relationship with Trendy (some leaning more toward love, while others lean more toward pure white-hot hate), we all recognize the company’s amazing original contribution to videogame genre hybridization, as their ‘Dungeon Defenders’ titles are truly novel takes on the once-booming fad of Tower Defense games. At the same time, we’ve often criticized Trendy for pandering to the tiniest, vocal, HARD-headed fragment of their audience to the detriment of everyone else.
Trendy had been radio-silent since posting the Winter 2018 update to their current Live Service, “Dungeon Defenders 2,” which added a Christmas tree that gives away a free loot box every 24 hours. And I do indeed mean ‘gives’ in the present tense, because as of the time of …
5 of the Laziest Game Design Techniques Devs Should Avoid
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/17/19 at 03:36 PM CT
As we all know, game development, like any form of media and art creation, can be a lot of work. While Indie development studios typically make due with a small team of dedicated folks with a lot of passion for the project, big “AAA” corporate developers create games with credit rolls that sometimes last longer than the actual gameplay (I’m looking at you, “PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale”!). Regardless of studio size, however, developers can – and do – fall into a number of game design traps; shortcuts that will ultimately pad-out their project’s runtime, without providing any real value to their potential players or to the gaming medium as a whole.
Here are 5 of the most common laziness-induced missteps that can ruin a game, with examples of (fairly) recent good-ish games that could have been better without these shortcuts:
5. Arbitrary Performance Grading
So you finished a stage and beat the boss at the end? Good for you! Now, let’s see how well you …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/10/19 at 03:34 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:
Thanks to inclement weather, the MJ Crew’s local coop nights were canceled on far too many occasions this Winter. Between the weather, the fact that we’ve been deep into some content-dense online coop games, and the fact that I played the longest ‘Fallout’ game and a 100-hour RPG meant that my Winter output was rather low. Oh well.
“Never Alone” – 3/5
“Octopath Traveler” – 3/5
“Guacamelee! 2” – 4/5
“The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing” – 4/5
“Fallout 4” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Oh, Christoper! While last quarter, his pursuit of online fame and fortune via his streaming channel encouraged him to get into a regular gaming schedule, this quarter, his intentions were corrupted by starting (and not finishing) several long, dense games at the same time. Look forward to many more Chris …
He’s Everywhere III!: Dragon Quest Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/02/19 at 05:06 PM CT
The first time I roasted Chris for his early-March birthday, I had to cut-down the large number of Chris-like people and creatures that inhabit the entirety of videogames to 10. In the next roast, I stuck with creatures from Nintendo’s ‘Pokemon’ franchise. This year, in honor of the recent release of “Dragon Quest 11” and upcoming Definitive Edition release of said game, I’ve chosen to pick out the top 10 most Chris-like monsters designed by Akira Toriyama for Enix’s venerable ‘Dragon Quest’ RPG franchise.
Thanks to Toriyama’s idiosyncratic drawing style and Chris’ idiosyncratic… everything, there is naturally a ton of overlap between fantasy and reality when it comes to observing Chris-ness in ‘Dragon Quest’ monsters. As a bit of trivia, the humble Slime has appeared in the number one spot in the bestiaries of every ‘Dragon Quest’ game… except “Dragon Quest 6,” for some reason… but the humble Slime will NOT be making an appearance on this …
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