Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/26/20 at 03:31 PM CT
Welcome back to another year of glimpses into the immediate future, where we spy upon planned Games Industry releases, and appropriately temper our expectations with cynicism. As per usual, January is never a particularly full month, usually relegated to deadline-missers that were supposed to launch during the previous September-through-December, or low-budget junk whose publishers didn’t want to compete with the big releases of the prior season.
It’s nice to start off the new year with a little bit of good news: There’s no shovelware… well, there’s no officially licensed shovelware, too-Casual-to-live non-games, or annualized treadmill releases… but there is a compilation of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ titles, which comes dangerously close to all three categories without falling into any of them. At least now console peasants can join their PC gaming counterparts in experiencing this punishment.
Of course, the fact that the ‘FNAF’ compilation is, indeed, a …
MeltedJoystick Games of the Year 2020
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/20/20 at 02:56 PM CT
Here we are, once again. As we stand at the end of another cycle of seasons after slogging through a torturous trip around the Sun that made 2019’s “challenging” year seem like a cake-walk, we must look back and pass judgment on the hot “new” titles – that were, once again, mostly old, re-warmed slop.
But in spite of its overall insane levels of awfulness, 2020 was ever-so-slightly better than its predecessor in the realm of exclusives and RPGs, even though it was mostly flooded with big, sprawling Sandboxes, which have seemingly become the “default game” of the modern era, much like janky 2D Platformers were the default of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
As a Plague Year, 2020 saw huge sales numbers for both ‘comfort food’ style games and distanced socializing “games.” None of those actually contributed to the betterment of the medium as a whole, nor did they stand out as exemplary within their respective genres, so they’ve been left off the list.
Thus, …
Year in Review: 2020
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/12/20 at 03:37 PM CT
Another year has come and gone… and what a year it was! 2020 will live in infamy for numerous reasons, some of them actually having to do with videogames.
Top 5 Fails
5. Australia’s Conservatives Ban Basically Everything
In a year marked by social, political, and economic upheaval, it’s somewhat reassuring that, at least in the Land Down-Under, conservatives are doing what they always do, and trying to ban porn, because “think of the children!” And it’s even more reassuring to know that they’re doing it in the same ham-fisted manner as their counterparts across the sea, creating a stupidly vague law that essentially bans everything resembling ‘mature’ content from games, movies, books, and every other form of media.
4. DRM Returns in Force Under the Friendly Guise of “Anti-Cheat”
Good old corporate capitalism is still doing its thing. Instead of letting the invisible hand regulate the exchange of goods, these corrupt cronies have remained obsessed …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2020
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/05/20 at 03:50 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:
If I thought my Summer of COVID was mediocre, then the Autumn of COVID was even mediocre-er. I only had two stunningly positive experiences, with one being the huge-ass Sandbox game I started on my birthday in August, and played for a whole month. That’s what I call value for the money! There were no completed coop games in Fall (we’re almost done with our current one, but it’ll take one or two more sessions/weeks), but I did manage to get through a number of single-player titles, most of which were new acquisitions instead of well-aged muck dredged up from my backlog. Unfortunately, most of them turned out to be stunningly average.
“Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey” – 4.5/5
“Hob” – 3/5
“The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds” – 4/5
“Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night” – 3/5
“Battletech” – …
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