Year in Review: 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/25/16 at 05:50 PM CT
Happy Yule to all MeltedJoystick staff and readers alike! 2016 is on its way out the door, and I, for one, am glad to see another rather dismal year of gaming news move out of the way, allowing blind hope and baseless speculation to buoy us into the New Year. As usual, I’ve hand-picked the top 10 gaming-related events of the year, dividing the lot into stacks of 5 Fails and 5 Wins.
While 2016 was certainly better than the abysmal 2014, in which there were no wins, it was a difficult year to get excited about, especially when the Fails just kept coming. It was ultimately difficult to narrow down the Fails to merely 5 and equally difficult to find 5 unequivocal Wins, but I persevered and the results now await your reading pleasure.
Here’s hoping for a bigger and brighter 2017!
Top 5 Fails
5. WiiU Discontinued, World Says, “Meh.”
After a botched birth and short, painful life, the WiiU was officially discontinued by Nintendo in 2016… to the despair of nearly no …
Empty Nest: “Dragon Nest” MMO Switches Publishers, Murders Thousands of Characters
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/18/16 at 03:31 PM CT
With the general friendliness and reliability of services like Steam, GOG, and Netflix, it’s easy to become complacent and forget that online-only games, products, and services can vanish overnight and with little to no warning. Last week, I covered the disappearance of online Indie game marketplace/community, Desura. This week, I bring belated tidings of sadness and despair regarding one MMO – specifically the MMO into which the MeltedJoystick crew sank thousands of hours.
“Dragon Nest,” a Korean MMO regularly advertised as the ‘fastest’ MMO, recently changed publishers. While the game was always published by different parties in different parts of the world, from the time of its North American launch in 2011, it was published by one Nexon. Nexon never had a particularly great reputation with any of the online game servers it operates, but it seems that “Dragon Nest’s” developer, Eyedentity, finally got fed-up with them and decided to run the North American …
Bye-Bye, Desura! Hello… OnePlay?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/11/16 at 02:49 PM CT
That PC gaming client I love to hate is officially dead. No, not Uplay! No… not Origin either! Desura, the Indie client that I compared unfavorably to Linux way back in 2013, filed for bankruptcy back in June of 2015. After flailing around in limbo for over a year, all of Desura’s assets went offline earlier this Fall in September, 2016. For anyone who was heavily invested in Desura games (*chuckle*), the company’s disappearance serves as a cautionary tale about the ephemeral nature of digitally-distributed software. Of course, anyone who was heavily invested in Desura clearly had something wrong with them, mentally. The bright side is that Desura wasn’t DRM, so any Desura games one might have downloaded should still work. (Just remember to make a backup!)
I first noticed Desura’s absence during Black Friday, when I was checking around all of the PC gaming clients for amazing sales. When I went to Desura’s site, I was greeted with a full-screen message relating that …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/03/16 at 01:42 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 quarter, Chris and I managed to review exactly the same number of games! This is what happens when we’re both bogged down in open-world hell… and when I decide I’d rather clean up after a deceased hoarder for a month than play “Pier Solar and the Great Architects” because the game is so horrible.
“Pier Solar and the Great Architects HD” – 1.5/5
“Dragon Age: Inquisition GotY Edition” – 4/5
“Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate HD” – 3.5/5
“Adventurer Manager” – 3.5/5
“Singularity” – 4.5/5
“Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! GotY Edition” – 4/5
“Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power” – 3.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris finally finished “Fallout 4” after… what’s it been, nearly a year?! He wisely chose to follow it up with some shorter Indie games and explore some …
View Archive
