Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2020
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/26/20 at 05:00 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into… some sort of whirling physics vortex where time has no meaning. I mean, yeah, the constant wearing-down of our spirits upon the grinding wheel of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic can no doubt cause many of us to go a little loopy, but I’ve been living that Quarantine Life since before it was cool, so I thought I’d be unaffected. Yet, October is bringing more than the horrors of an airborne plague and the dark Wiccan rituals of Samhain, it’s bringing shovelware by the shovelful and ports by the boatload, and all of this feels like déjà vu all over again.
I am… sooooo confused! In shovelware, we’ve got licensed swill based on ‘Karate Kid,’ ‘G.I. Joe,’ ‘Transformers,’ ‘Star Wars,’ and ‘Zoids’… so we must have traveled back in time to the ‘80s? But there’s also shovelware coming based on ‘Power Rangers,’ ‘Blair Witch,’ and ‘Nickelodeon’… so it must be the ‘90s? But, hold on, there’s also a game …
Compelling Console Capabilities Cease
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/20/20 at 02:36 PM CT
We’re on the very cusp of Sony and Microsoft joining Nintendo’s party and launching the remainder of the 9th Gen hardware that will take us through roughly the next decade of gaming. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are scheduled to launch in November, and both are expected to face supply issues as COVID-19 has both hampered material production across Industry as a whole, and mobs of desperately bored people sheltering in place and self-quarantining pine for some new distraction.
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to get excited about these releases. Remember back in January, before COVID, before the race riots, and generally before 2020 had a chance to become the worst year in living memory? Remember how optimistic I was about the P(i)S5 and SeX bringing compelling features like full backwards compatibility and Windows Mode to the table? Yeah, you can forget all that, because in the run-up to launch, those rumors have been dispelled, and the truth is predictably …
Movies = Finished
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/13/20 at 04:47 PM CT
The movie industry is Big Business worldwide, with huge, prolific production centers not only in America, but in Europe, China, and India. In fact, MeltedJoystick itself exists as a sister-site for FilmCrave, which is a dedicated place for movie fanatics to review, rank, and list their favorite (and least favorite) titles from across the broad history of cinema.
Personally, though, I don’t really get all that excited about movies. With their typical two-hours-or-less runtimes and formulaic formulae, I tend to consider them to be far too ephemeral and lacking in depth when compared side-by-side with RPGs and other narrative-rich genres of videogames (and even long-form TV shows that typically encapsulate a story in no less than 12 hours rather than 2). Of course, Chris vehemently disagrees with me in this respect, which is why he writes for FilmCrave and I do not.
However, this last week, an announcement about the future of movies went public that is so deplorable, so …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2020
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/05/20 at 05:07 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:
I had a fairly mediocre Summer of COVID with regard to gaming. The Crew only managed to get through one new coop game, while the majority of titles I completed and reviewed solo were mediocre to the extreme, with only “Ittle Dew 2” putting a smile on my face. Then I made the Chris-like mistake of starting a massive Sandbox game on August 1st (since, what else was I supposed to do for my birthday thanks to COVID?), which I didn’t finish until last night (September 4th), too late for submission this quarter.
“King’s Quest: The Complete Collection” – 3/5
“Star Trek: Bridge Crew” – 3.5/5
“Xuan- Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament” – 3/5
“Luigi’s Mansion 3” – 4/5
“Ittle Dew 2” – 4.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf has been even lazier than his usual self during the Summer of …
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