Year in Review: 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/26/15 at 01:45 PM CT
After last year’s disastrous showing, we here at MeltedJoystick are glad to be able – once again – to present a run-down of the five biggest gaming Fails and the five biggest gaming Wins of the year 2015.
Top 5 Fails
5. OUYA Gutted and Bought-Out by Razer
The Little Indie Console that Couldn’t has officially given up the ghost. After getting off to a rocky start as an Android-based microconsole without Google’s support via the Play Store, OUYA resorted to bribing customers with free money in an attempt to get more people to look at the OUYA Store (I never did spend mine). When that didn’t work, OUYA allowed itself to be bought-out by PC gaming peripheral company, Razer. OUYA’s heart and soul will be ripped out, rebranded as “Cortex TV” and included as a feature in Razer’s own Android microconsole… which will likely fare little better than OUYA itself.
4. Activision Buys Mobile Dev, King, for ~$6 billion
Let’s think about this: One of the Triumvirate …
Social Injustice
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/20/15 at 04:23 PM CT
We here at MeltedJoystick have refrained from participating in the low-brown mudslinging that made up the lion’s share of the Gamergate controversy that blew up last year between the gaming community and radical fringe liberals. Unfortunately, ignoring the issue has not caused it to go away, and the ongoing pressure from the radical left has started to bear fruit.
Last month, Tecmo-Koei, the publisher that is home to Team Ninja – the developer behind the fanservicey modern ‘Ninja Gaiden’ games and the ‘Dead or Alive’ fighting franchise – announced that they will not be localizing “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3” for the Western market. Their reasoning? They have been observing the Western gaming media and decided that not releasing the game – featuring busty women in bikinis playing games/sports on the beach – outside of Asia would be preferable to dealing with the negativity and bile the game would draw from the biggest Western gaming news and opinion …
The cRPG Fallacy
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/13/15 at 03:46 PM CT
Recently, I’ve noticed a resurgence of the use of the term “cRPG,” thanks to a phenomenon that PC Gamer Magazine has dubbed the ‘cRPG Renaissance.’ With games like “Pillars of Eternity,” “Wasteland 2,” “Divinity: Original Sin,” “Legend of Grimrock” (and its sequel), and the upcoming “Torment: Tides of Numenera” leading the way, the PC platform – traditionally considered the home of cRPGs – is indeed seeing more RPG releases now than it has since Black Isle and the Infinity Engine dropped off the face of the earth.
But what, exactly is a cRPG? The acronym itself merely stands for “computer role-playing game,” and I’ve typically used it myself to describe a type of RPG that is played primarily with a computer mouse, perhaps with the occasional banging on a nearby typewriter in order to pause the action before issuing a new round of commands. Historically, the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race has used the term cRPG to specially segregate PC …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/06/15 at 01:48 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 Fall, I finally got a chance to play an RPG I’ve been super excited about for a number of years. Unfortunately for you, dear readers, you won’t find a review of it on MeltedJoystick, because the game in question is “Final Fantasy Dimensions,” a smartphone game. You can, however, find a paragraph of my negative impressions right here on Google Play. Despite the fact that “FF Dimensions” ate up nearly 80 hours of my time, I managed to slog through an incredibly long ‘Fallout’ FPS Sandbox and spend a goodly amount of time with Nintendo’s “Super Mario Bros. X” knock-off.
“Super Mario Maker” – 4/5
“Rayman Legends” – 4.5/5
“Magicka” – 4/5
“Tabletop Simulator” – 4.5/5
“Fallout: New Vegas” – 4/5
“NightSky” – 4.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Wow! For the first time in… a …
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