Review Round-Up: Summer 2011
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/11 at 09:29 PM CT
This is the first in what I hope to make a quarterly feature in which I round-up all of the Official Staff Reviews from the previous season and put them in one easy-to-find location. As you probably know, the MeltedJoystick staff currently consists of four people: Me, Chris, Nick, and Alex. Nick and Alex spend a lot of time working on behind-the-scenes matters for the ImaJAN Media Network, so their reviews aren’t nearly as numerous as those written by me and Chris, and can easily be lost in the shuffle. These articles will also only feature full-length reviews of games we have played immediately before write-up. Since MeltedJoystick opened this year, the Summer 2011 Review Round-Up has a bit of overlap with Spring 2011.
For future installments, I’m considering featuring a member review that the MeltedJoystick staff agree is exemplary of the kind of writing we like to see. So keep submitting those reviews!
Nelson’s Reviews:
I followed my usual trend of reviewing an …
Unfinished Business
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/17/11 at 03:38 PM CT
“Skyrim” comes out in 24 days.
Do you know what that means?
“Skyrim” won’t be ready to play for at least 389 days.
The reason should be obvious: PC games have always followed the paradigm of ‘release it now, fix it later.’ Since “Skyrim” is a PC game (that just happens to appear on consoles as well), this is old news. Even worse, it’s a game built by Bethesda and a sequel to one of the buggiest games ever made. But I continually find myself asking, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’
As I have mentioned before, I think PC gaming should be moving in the direction of console gaming instead of the other way around. In this specific instance, I think Bethesda needs to keep the lid on “Skyrim” until it’s done cooking. Of course, they won’t. They want to get “Skyrim” out the door in time for Black Friday and the Christmas rush. Bethesda wants to ensure that every little child (who is at least 17 years old due to the ‘M for Mature’ rating) …
The End Comes Beyond Chaos
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/09/11 at 03:19 PM CT
Having been a stalwart supporter of the game-creation endeavors of both Squaresoft and Enix since 1989, it pains me to say this: Square Enix is dead. No, they aren’t going out of business or anything official. It’s worse than that: They have turned their last unsullied franchise into an MMO.
While the merger Squaresoft and Enix in 2003 prompted many to rend their garments and gnash their teeth, it ultimately turned out okay, combining two of Japan’s most beloved developers/publishers under one roof. Indeed, the merged Square Enix managed to produce some very nice sequels in their core franchises. But that’s all they did. Non-sequel games with new ideas diminished to a trickle from the Square Enix tap, and what did manage to leak out wasn’t particularly good. Square Enix has become a company that ONLY does ‘Final Fantasy’ and ‘Dragon Quest.’
So, knowing that the only Squaresoft and Enix games that are worth a damn have some combination of ‘final,’ …
Game Genre Ecology
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/03/11 at 04:35 PM CT
When it comes to maintaining a healthy ecosystem for videogames, it’s important for diversity to exist. While we may continually hear about how important this is in relation to grander things than games, such as biodiversity being an important aspect of evolutionary and ecological sciences, the same concepts can be applied to anything, including media, which comes in different varieties.
Regardless of the need for diversity, the history of videogames is fraught with a phenomenon I like to call “Genre Glut.” Every console generation that has mattered (i.e., 8-bit and later) as well as the eternally mutating PC have suffered from blockages in the creative flow, resulting in uninspired and rampant copycatting that frustrates customers and results in a platform going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Yet for every population explosion that has ultimately resulted in a crash, there has been another genre just waiting for the retail space to spread-out and dominate.
The …
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