Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/30/25 at 04:54 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! April is here, and, naturally, the Fools are out in full force. It won’t be long now until the little darlings who make up the bulk of gaming’s target demographic are out of school for the Summer and the big players in Industrial Gaming decide to turn off the tap again. Let’s see if Mid-Spring has anything for us to get excited about.
Is there shovel-ready crap coming in April? Of course there is! And it’s coming in all three major flavors of Shovelware. In Licensed Swill there’s a new ‘Care Bears’ game… what is this, 1984? In Casual Swill, there’s a new ‘Big Buck Hunter’ title for deer hunting fanatics who would rather bag imaginary trophies during the off season than hunt something else or go to the shooting range, and a “100 in 1 Game Collection” that wouldn’t feel out of place as the pre-installed content on a Chinese bootleg console. Lastly, in Annualized Swill, we’ve got entries in ‘MotoGP’ …
Legitimize Mobile Gaming? Microsoft Doesn’t Think So!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/23/25 at 02:07 PM CT
The last time I took a look at the state of mobile gaming, it was in those halcyon days of 2019, before the COVID pandemic made the entire world a duller, gloomier place to live. Back then, Apple and Google were trying to tame the monster they unleashed upon the world with a muzzle shaped like perpetual subscriptions. Unsurprisingly, very little has changed within the mobile gaming ecosystem, and ad-infested microtransaction engines providing the absolute bare minimum of interest and functionality have continued to clog the app stores, making it next to impossible to find anything legitimately good to play on a mobile device that isn’t already a straight-up port of a PC/console game.
For a while, though, it seemed that Microsoft was going to flex its muscle as the still-dominant OS manufacturer, by creating a way to access Android apps – through the Amazon storefront, NOT Google Play – on Windows 11 devices. To me, it seemed that Microsoft was hoping for two things to …
Former Exec: Microsoft Should Quit Gaming
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/16/25 at 05:28 PM CT
Well, well, looks like it’s time to add another voice to the ever-growing choir of people who think Xbox should just go away. Enter one Bobby Kotick, who looks like a cross between some sort of sheep and a Wizarding World goblin, the former CEO of Activision-Blizzard(-King) before Microsoft initiated the purchase of the massive Industrial Gaming publisher to use it as fertilizer for the ever-struggling Xbox Division back in 2022.
In a recent interview, Kotick, now free from the shackles of Microsoft as a redundant executive unleashed a full salvo of disparaging comments about the Xbox Division. According to Kotick, Xbox was near death before the merger, and Microsoft’s desperation to acquire Activision was spurred by the fact that only the infusion of a massive existing customer base could possibly jump-start Xbox’s flagging life-signs. Prior to the Activision/Xbox deal, Kotick had even advised Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, that purchasing Activision in order to feed it to …
He’s Everywhere IX!: Yu-Gi-Oh! Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/09/25 at 01:24 PM CT
It’s that time of year, again! The coming of March means that MeltedJoystick’s favorite non-Euclidian Elder Thing, Chris, is another year older and another year more madness-inducing. Last year, I opened Chris up to the wonderful world of Name, Image, Likeness Lawsuits that he could level at the Indie Games cottage industry.
This year, since I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time enjoying the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game, Duel Monsters, via the “Master Duel” mobile app, I’ve been exposed to tons of bizarre, Japanese monsters drawn from the imagination of the late, great Kazuki Takahashi… and let’s just say that Mr. Takahashi obviously had Chris on the Brain.
10. Big Belly Knight"Starting off this way seems a bit on the nose… but I couldn’t help myself."
9. Il Blud"We know Chris’ internal world is an undead hellscape full of horrors, and Il Blud does a good job of representing that. He also looks like Chris wearing Beetlejuice’s pajamas."
8. …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/02/25 at 01:28 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:
Once again, the entire MJ Crew was pretty much in the doldrums and didn’t do a whole lot of gaming over the gloomy Winter months. But at least I did get started on my Backlog Ablutions, clearing the shortest of my three titles and actually experiencing genuine JOY while gaming for the first time in a while.
“7 Days to Die” – 1.5/5
“Hogwarts Legacy” – 3.5/5
“TinyKin” – 4.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris also got started on his Backlog Ablutions, and has been playing “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” fairly non-stop since the holiday break. Of course, he still has to make time for his day job, two evenings per week (provided Nick hasn’t caught the plague again), and Saturday afternoons for couch coop, so he still hasn’t finished it. But at least he did submit some overdue reviews for our enjoyment… though …
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