Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/30/17 at 03:42 PM CT
The Two-Faced God’s month is here again, which means the old year is behind us, while we have all of 2018 to look forward to with joy and anticipation… or more likely, dread and trepidation. Let’s take a look-see if the New Year will start off with a bang or a wet plop.
Only one piece of multi-platform shovelware will be ringing in the new year! That’s good! But it’s another ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game, which is pretty much as low as you can go without being underground when it comes to licensed anime games. There’s also an exclusive licensed ‘Digimon’ RPG sequel coming to the PS4.
Only two ports will be bothering us in January as well, which is a nice, refreshing break from what is becoming a regular epidemic. The 2017 remake of “Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap” is getting a physical release on PS4 and Switch, while the oft-delayed remaster of “Velocity” will likely/maybe hit PS4 and Vita too.
Three legit multi-platform releases are coming in January, …
Year in Review: 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/23/17 at 04:35 PM CT
Another year has come and gone, yet the videogames industry still hasn’t managed to self-destruct like it did in the early ‘80s at the hands of Atari (delenda est). Once again, it’s time to take a look back at the year and praise the 5 biggest Wins while simultaneously *facepalming* over the 5 biggest Fails.
Top 5 Fails
5. Steam Branded Hardware Flops in the Market.
Steam Machines, the officially branded SteamOS (Linux) powered prebuilt PCs manufactured by licensed partners seemed like a great way for Valve to open the eyes of the wider world to the joys of Modern Era PC gaming. Combined with the excellent and well-designed Steam Controller and the ‘any screen’ Steam Link streaming microconsole, Valve had a well-planned ecosystem in the works. But unfortunately, most gamers are too hard-headed and set in their ways to give something the benefit of the doubt. PC Master Racists decried Steam Machines as worthless pre-builts, and everyone knows that a PC Master …
The Paleo-Switch Experiment
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/17/17 at 03:51 PM CT
I just learned that I will be receiving a Nintendo Switch for Yule this year. This is a marked difference to the last four years, since starting way back in 2013 I have received ‘nuttin’ for Christmas’ except a handful of Steam gifts from my friends and colleagues here on MeltedJoystick.
I’m still kind of lukewarm on the Switch in general though. It still doesn’t have very many games* (*exclusives that I want to play; though that looks to be changing drastically in 2018/19, as I have 11 Switch games on my Wish List at present), plus there’s the dangling Other Shoe/Sword of Damocles of the Nintendo Network subscription that was supposed to kick in this Fall, but has apparently been delayed until next year. I flat-out refuse to pay for Nintendo Network services, and am generally disappointed in Nintendo’s willingness to adopt all of the worst memes from Sony’s and Microsoft’s 7th/8th Generation efforts while staunchly refusing to adopt anything good, like openness, …
Square-Enix Finally Provides Official Localization for Ancient SNES Game…
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/09/17 at 08:51 PM CT
But it’s the accursed “Romancing SaGa 2”!
I’ve discussed before how many classic SNES games were left behind by the North American branches of their respective publishers during the ‘90s. Recently, I’ve even been enjoying quite a number of these titles via the magic of emulation and fanslations.
At the Game Awards that happened this past week, a few teasery-trailery materials were also shown off, and one of them happened to be that Square-Enix – the once-beloved RPG developer/publisher(s) responsible for so many of the Greatest of All Time – are not only remastering “Secret of Mana” (meh) on all of the major digital platforms, but will also be localizing one of their Golden Age RPGs that never saw the light of day outside of Japan (barring woefully incomplete fanslation). With all of the missing ‘Dragon Quest’ and ‘Final Fantasy’ titles taken care of, we knew it had to be something else. Maybe the awesome TRPG “Bahamut Lagoon”?! Maybe another …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/02/17 at 03:26 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:
The release of “Divinity: Original Sin 2” with 4-player coop inspired me to get going and play the first “Divinity: Original Sin” (the fact that it hit $16 during a Steam sale also helped)… and what an amazing experience it was! It definitely goes on my list of all-time bests. “The Witcher 3” also hit the purchasable price of $20 for the whole enchilada, so I bought and played that too… but was far less impressed than I was with “Divinity: Original Sin.” Outside of those, I played a number of retro games, including one crufty old DOS title that has haunted my nightmares since the ‘90s, as well as a handful of coop and new-ish titles. In general, it was a good quarter for me, with plenty of high scores handed-out.
“Odysseus: Long Way Home” – 1.5/5
“Windward” – 3/5
“The Witcher 3” – …
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