“Dark Souls” = The Job Market
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/25/16 at 04:44 PM CT
The 7th Generation saw the rise of many unfortunate trends in gaming – as well as the fall of nearly as many. One of the most enduring catastrophes of the 7th Generation was the sudden and unexpected surge in popularity among masochistic, H.A.R.D. games, with the movement led primarily by dogmatic fanatics from the Cult of From. These cultists, henceforth known as Souls Trolls, see to the inflation of their favorite series’ Metacritic scores through nefarious infiltration of nearly every gaming media outlet. With Souls Trolls as the only people who like their favorite series AND as the only people generally willing to review it, they promote a self-fulfilling prophecy of praise where absolutely none is deserved.
Unfortunately, Souls Trolls have infiltrated the media beyond the walls of light-weight gaming news sites like Polygon, Kotaku, and NeoGAF. Recently, it was revealed that one of their number had managed to creep his way into the respected halls of the Wall Street …
E3 Impressions 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/16 at 03:06 PM CT
After a surprise-filled E3 last year, our expectations were boosted a bit. 2015’s E3 was a welcome relief from the rut-worn boredom that was the hallmark of the conference for several years prior. Unfortunately, last year’s surprises wore a new set of ruts, and we’re still driving in them this year. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the 8th Gen consoles hardly look different from the 7th Gen, now 8th Gen E3 conferences are all starting to look alike!
Microsoft:
Want: Play Anywhere
Not Sure if Want: “Sea of Thieves” (still!)
Do Not Want: Scorpio, dead-horse-beating first-party sequels
Microsoft didn’t really do anything impressive this year. They added an official name, “Play Anywhere,” to the XBONE/Windows10 crossplay program they announced last year. They also talked a lot about upcoming sequels in their first-party franchises… which are all starting to feel exactly the same. ‘Gears,’ ‘Halo,’ ‘Forza’ – whooptee freakin’doo. “Sea of …
GOG Connect: I Totally Called It!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/12/16 at 02:36 PM CT
Back in June 2014 – two years ago – I was excited about the steps GOG.com, the PC gaming platform owned by ‘Witcher’ developer, CD Projekt, was taking in reaching feature parity with the 500 lb. gorilla of PC gaming platforms, Steam. At the time, I speculated that GOG would have to do something drastic, like give away DRM-free copies of games that customers already own on Steam, in order to grow its user-base.
Guess what GOG.com announced this past week? GOG Connect is a new feature that allows PC gamers with both Steam and GOG accounts (read: ALL PC GAMERS) to link their Steam profile to their GOG profile and receive complimentary GOG copies of select games in their Steam library.
While GOG Connect isn’t currently the 100% comprehensive Steam backup I would eventually like to see, the fact that CD Projekt was willing to make this move at all shows how insanely committed the company is to not being a Big Evil Corporation or behaving in a typical Big Media …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/04/16 at 05:13 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:
Spring wasn’t particularly productive with regard to completing games. The MJ Crew only managed to co-op our way through 2 titles, thanks to some stupid scheduling issues, and we’ve generally been feeling blasé and unmotivated about the co-op games in our collective backlog.
For my part, I completed a variety of games… but only one of them was really great.
“Apotheon” – 4.5/5
“HOARD” – 3/5
“Lost Planet: Extreme Condition” – 2.5/5
“Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine” – 4/5
“The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel” – 2.5/5
“Call of Juarez” – 3.5/5
“LittleBigPlanet 3” – 4/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris still can’t pull himself away from his damnable phone long enough to put a meaningful number of hours into his favorite genre of content-bloated Action/Sandbox games. Thus …
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