Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/26/21 at 03:50 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The deluge of the Autumn Games Flood is showing no signs of letting up, and has, in fact, gotten worse. The gaming community is now analogous to those doughty hurricane survivors of the Gulf Coast who refuse to abandon their land, even though it has been reduced to an inundated, toxic cesspit. Let’s start seining through those turds, again, to see if there’s anything worth salvaging.
The shovelware count from last month has nearly doubled, with a whopping 17 titles falling into one of the three major categories of ‘Crap.’” First, we’ve got a plethora of licensed games, including “PJ Masks: Heroes of the Night” and “My Friend Peppa Pig” for the pre-school crowd, “Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl,” “Blaze and the Monster Machines: Axle City Racers,” “Star Wars: Jedi Knight Collection,” “LEGO Marvel Superheroes,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “Jumanji: The Videogame” for the juvenile crowd, …
5 Licensed Games I’d Actually Like to See
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/19/21 at 07:14 PM CT
I give officially licensed tie-in games a lot of grief, most notably when I call them out in the “shovelware” category at the beginning of each of my monthly ‘Backlog: The Embiggening’ articles. However, just because a game is based on an existing IP doesn’t necessarily mean that it absolutely has to be irredeemable garbage. It’s just a good indication that it will be. Indeed, there are several un-mined veins of licensed IPs and videogame genres that have not actually been slammed together by corporate suits and focus groups, which might actually be good if someone bothered to but 2 and 2 together.
5. GorkaMorka + Direct Conversion
“GorkaMorka” is an obscure tabletop skirmish game developed by Games Workshop (of ‘Warhammer’ fame), and supported for a couple of years before the company got bored and abandoned it, as is their wont. I was never into Warhammer 40K, as I much preferred the Fantasy setting to Sci-Fi at the time I was most invested in tabletop …
Tokyo RPG Factory… Sucks.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/12/21 at 03:21 PM CT
Time flies, it seems, even when we aren’t having fun. It feels like just yesterday when I was so excited about the news filtering through the 2015 Blog-o-Sphere that Square-Enix, the one-time RPG titan of console gaming turned “complete failure,” was opening a new development studio called Tokyo RPG Factory. Somehow, the megaconglomerate of Square-Enix forgot that its two halves had both made their entire reputations by producing (and localizing) extremely high-quality 16-bit RPGs, and had turned to copying ideas from Western game developers (or just buying Western game developers). When an RPG did appear from within the bowels of the merged Square-Enix, it was usually something extremely terrible, like “Final Fantasy 13” or… “Final Fantasy 15.” Thus, when the news broke that Square-Enix was going to renew focus on their defining genre, it was such momentous news that it made the MeltedJoystick Year in Review list of Wins.
The first fruit of Tokyo RPG Factory’s …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/21 at 03:49 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 got to touch all the icky typewriter number keys when inputting review scores this Summer, as stuff I played ran the gamut between “almost unplayable” to “almost perfect”… and that was all within a single franchise! Unfortunately, with too many of the Crew taking long, drawn-out Summer vacations, coop gaming took it in the pants, making Summer a decidedly lonely season.
“Tyranny” – 3.5/5
“The Technomancer” – 2.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown” – 0.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 2: The Destiny Knight” – 0.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 3: Thief of Fate” – 1.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale Trilogy” – 1.5/5
“The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep” – 4.5/5
“Boot Hill Heroes” – 3.5/5
“Assassin’s Creed: Origins” – 4/5
Chris’ Reviews:
THE Disgruntled Dwarf FINALLY finished …
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