Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/27/22 at 02:51 PM CT
The most Foolish month of the year will soon be upon us, once again. Let’s see what the fools within the Corporate Games Industry want the fools they call consumers to buy now!
We’ve got shovel-ready trash, once again, coming in April, and from some unexpected corners. In the Licensed Swill category, there’s a HUGE, all-encompassing ‘LEGO Star Wars’ game coming from… Warner Brothers, NOT Disney, somehow. Also, “Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth,” a – from all reports, shockingly good – Metroidvania based on an ancient anime is losing its PC exclusivity and coming to PlayStation 5 as well. We are mercifully spared any Annualized Releases in the shovelware category, but we are getting two 2 Cazul 2 Live games. One is a completely unnecessary port of a completely unnecessary sequel in the belabored ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ streamer-meme series. The other is Nintendo apparently trying to revive “WiiSports,”only under the less …
PlayStation “State of Play” 2022: Good, Bad, and Ugly
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/20/22 at 02:47 PM CT
E3 2022 is just around the corner, and thanks to the continually-mutating COVID-19 virus, will most likely take the same form as last year’s all-digital show. Of course, some “people” (and I mean that in the corporate sense of the word) are still pouty about being mocked for their miserable E3 presentations of years past, and are thus continuing to do their own thing. Sony is the most high-profile example of such pouting – since at least Nintendo does release a special Direct video for E3 each year – and has started releasing “State of Play” videos instead, showcasing upcoming releases that they think will get the PlayStation fanbase all fired up.
Now, I established a few years ago that I simply do NOT connect with the PlayStation fanbase anymore, even after being one of the first in my high school to jump ship from Nintendo to Sony during the early days of the PlayStation 1 vs. Nintendo 64 console wars, showing my willingness to abandon any platform I perceived as a …
He’s Everywhere VI!: Dungeons & Dragons Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/12/22 at 05:53 PM CT
Every March, our beloved Community Manager, drain clogger, stale potato chip disposal, and disappearer of money, Chris, gets a year older and a year more idiosyncratic. Last year, I threw Chris a bone and poked fun at myself for being such an antisocial misanthrope, but in prior years, I’ve pointed out the numerous people and things I see EVERYWERE across all forms of media that remind me of him, be it ‘Pokemon,’ ‘ Dragon Quest,’ ‘ Final Fantasy,’ or just videogames in general.
This year, we’re taking things back to basics and ignoring all the fancy electronics and scientific magic that makes videogames work. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of 10 creatures from the pages of the various ‘Monster Manuals’ and related tomes in the world’s most popular tabletop Role-Playing Game, Dungeons & Dragons, that remind me of Chris. It’s a game that’s close to both of our hearts, and that we’ve been playing together off-and-on for 30 – that’s THIRTY – …
ALL the Games to Watch for in 2022
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/06/22 at 01:41 PM CT
Wow, is it March already? I guess we’d better take a look at the games coming in 2022 that are worth getting hyped about before any more of 2022 is in the rear-view mirror! Unlike previous years, there are a LOT of titles coming up in the near future to get excited about: 14 of them, to be precise. Let’s get to it.
14. Steel Rising
This upcoming release from Euro-Jank developer, Spiders, and trash-tier publisher, Focus (formerly Focus Home), is filled with mystery. While the visible surface looks like a mix of Dark Fantasy Revolutionary War… with Mechs, combined with open-world game design, we won’t actually know what we’ve got on our hands until we get to play it. Will this be an amazing Action/Adventure to follow on the heels of Spiders’ last release, “Greedfall,” or will it be another unplayable wreck like… nearly all of Spiders’ other games?
13. Sonic Frontiers
Who gets excited about new ‘Sonic’ games anymore? It seems to be mostly Furries and …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/02/22 at 12:03 AM 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:
Nick doesn’t like it when I curse in the blog, but I had a FUCKING horrible quarter. The open-world Sandbox game I played, which received RAVE reviews, turned out to be the embodiment of mediocrity. “Borderlands 3” was worn so threadbare by the time we finished it after 8+ months of irregular coop sessions that I was relieved to be done and ready to move onto something else. The first Pathfinder tabletop-to-cRPG conversion by Owlcat Games turned out to be a dumpster fire. And my dog died.
“Horizon: Zero Dawn” – 3.5/5
“Borderlands 3” – 4/5
“Pathfinder: Kingmaker” – 2/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf got through a couple of decent solo games and submitted a super-late review for a coop game we played last May. Better late than never!
“Katamari Damacy REROLL” – 4/5
“Victor Vran” …
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