Backlog: The Embiggening - July, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/28/13 at 02:01 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The Summer Game Drought should be upon us in full-force, yet there are still a significant number of games releasing in July. July is also the home of the annual Steam Summer Sale and its absurdly huge discounts. I’m expecting to add almost every game on my Steam Wish List to my backlog this month, even though most of them are old(ish).
But what about NEW games?
July will be foisting a mere two licensed trash games upon the populace, both based on animated Summer movies: One involves a mutant speed snail, and the other one involves the incarnation of Communism in the 1980s. On top of those two abominations, we are also getting a new annual release of a game based on the worst sport in the world... in college.
July isn’t looking like a significant month for non-shovelware multi-platform releases. In fact, there is only one: A new ‘Dynasty Warriors’ game. Does anyone really care about this series enough to justify the …
The Third Console Curse is Real
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/21/13 at 04:01 PM CT
There is a term in the scientific world called “multiple discovery.” This term refers to the concept that every scientific breakthrough is made simultaneously, or near-simultaneously, by multiple different individuals in completely distinct and unrelated locations.
Years ago, I thought I was quite clever in inventing a concept I called the “Third Console Curse.” Recently I discovered that others across the Internet had multiply discovered the same concept. Of course, in retrospect, coming up with the Third Console Curse didn’t really require any great feats of intellectual prowess, but merely the ability to observe and recognize simple patterns.
The premise behind the Third Console Curse is that every videogame hardware developer will completely and inexplicably fail on their third try, regardless of their success or failure on their first two tries. The observational datapoints that back up the existence of the Third Console Curse are the Nintendo 64, the Sega …
E3 Impressions 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/13/13 at 03:34 PM CT
With last year’s E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo being a complete let-down, it seemed that the former extravaganza of all things videogame was flagging and all but doomed. But this year’s E3 proved that it’s not really the expo format that’s the problem, it’s what the exhibitors bring (or fail to bring) that makes or breaks the show. This year, we have not one, but two new 8th Generation consoles (actual consoles, not icky handhelds) and all of the excitement that comes with such reveals. Is it any wonder that this year’s E3 is the most memorable in recent history?
Microsoft:
Want: Microsoft to stop making consoles
Not Sure if Want: “Project Spark” (for Windows 8)
Do Not Want: Xbox One, its launch exclusives
After their introductory tease of the Xbox One, which perplexed gamers due to the fixation on sports and TV instead of videogames, Microsoft finally solidified the details of their nebulous DRM disaster… and it pretty much lived up to everyone’s …
Backlog: The Embiggening - June, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/08/13 at 02:08 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. It has been an entire year since I began tracking the monthly embiggening of my backlog due to new releases. While, on paper, it would appear that my backlog has increased by 15 games over the course of the past year, in actuality, most of those games just went on my wish list, so as to prevent my backlog from growing out of control. Since they’re on my wish list, I can still keep track of them, but I can also wait for them to drop in price. When one has 40+ games backlogged, paying full-price for anything new would be completely idiotic. Of course, since I haven’t been feeding it and have been plugging away at completing old games that have been lingering in it for years or decades, my backlog has actually shrunk by ~20 games. I’m happy about that!
But what will happen to my backlog in June? This month is typically smack-dab in the middle of the Summer Game Drought, during which few games come to light. However, it’s …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/02/13 at 03:06 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:
This Spring I continued chiseling away at the lower strata of my backlog, blasting away everything from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras except for the entire ‘Phantasy Star’ series. Maybe I should play those in a marathon session this Summer…
Outside of those ancient games, I cleared out the remains of my PS3 backlog in preparation for the goodness that 2013 is finally bringing to that bereft console’s library (along with a bunch of horribleness, but we takes what we can gets), and continued to sample a wide variety of Indie games on Windows (with mixed results, just like last quarter). The one thing I desperately wanted to do in Spring was experience a good, recent RPG… but I was sorely disappointed, as the only good RPG I played in the Spring was originally released the year I graduated from high school.
After early …
View Archive
