2021: The Year Stadia Died
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/24/21 at 02:57 PM CT
It’s official: Google, the search giant that embodies the very concept of “Big Data,” has decided to ‘pivot’ their ill-conceived Cloud gaming service into a ‘backend’ service for other corporations that think they can sell Cloud gaming to end-users more effectively than Google could. Stadia, Google’s Cloud gaming consumer offering, only launched in 2019 (a year in which it earned a coveted(?) spot on the MeltedJoystick List of Fails), and even after a year of pandemic lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, nobody wanted to use it, causing the service to drastically undershoot Google’s sales and usage projections.
And you know what that means! Time to pull the plug! Of course, with Google’s track record of unceremoniously discontinuing products and services that don’t meet astronomical and arbitrary metrics, end-users have become savvy to the whole issue, causing Stadia’s failure to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Users didn’t believe Google would …
The 10 Worst IPs that Somehow Have More than 3 Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/17/21 at 04:21 PM CT
Back in 2018, I lamented the lack of sequels in a number of good game franchises that were cut-off before they really had a chance to get going. Surprisingly, over the past three years, we’ve actually gotten new games in two of these neglected series; specifically, the surprise 2021 release of the rebooted “ActRaiser Renaissance” and last year’s GotY contender, “Half-Life: Alyx.” But while The Industry seems to be trying to do better, far more often than not, terrible games will either find a toehold in either mainstream or niche appeal, and the corporate IP holder will flog their development slaves into churning out sequel after sequel of crap. Here’s a list of some of the worst offenders.
10. ‘Hyperdimension Neptunia’
Allegedly a satire on the games industry itself, ‘Nep-Nep’ seems to have taken the piss – then drank it – as the series continues to devolve into nothing more than super-softcore porn for Weebs. I mean, I can’t think of a single …
Nintendo: A Bad Joke Told Twice… Still Isn’t Funny.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/10/21 at 03:00 PM CT
At the end of September 2021, Nintendo tried to be a uniter, rather than a divider, by revealing something so outrageous, so wantonly greedy, so lazy, and so stupid that every gamer should have been united in their disdain for it… Of course, Nintendo fanboys, as always, jumped to the corporation’s defense.
What was this egregious sin committed by the House of Mario? They revealed their plans to add emulation of Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games to their online subscription service.
Now, CLEARLY I hate both the N64 AND the Genesis, so I’m OBVIOUSLY too biased to hold a legitimate opinion. Isn’t that right, Comments Section?
Yeah, no, this goes beyond what I personally like or dislike, since Nintendo isn’t simply adding these terrible consoles’ games to the existing subscription – perhaps giving it some minor semblance of ‘value’ in the process. Instead, Nintendo will be creating a new subscription tier, currently just dubbed “Plus Expansion,” that will …
Capcom: “PC Will Be Our Main Platform”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/03/21 at 02:12 PM CT
The long, slow death of traditional console gaming has entered yet another phase, with Capcom’s declaration to Japanese media site, Nikkei, which later filtered to us in the west through Bloomberg and PC Gamer Magazine. Apparently, the one-time titan of console gaming wants to shift its focus and divide its sales neatly in half between PC gaming and console gaming by 2023.
This wouldn’t really be newsworthy if it weren’t for the decades-long reputation of Japanese videogame companies like Capcom as fixtures of the console space, rarely, if ever crossing over to sell (terrible) PC versions of console games. Of course, Capcom isn’t really the ‘first’ to get onboard with the idea of PC gaming being the future of the medium, as Konami, Square-Enix, Namco-Bandai, and Sega – all big names from console gaming’s past – have been quietly peddling their wares on Steam (and other PC storefronts) for a few years now. It’s just that Capcom is the first to really make a big …
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 …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2021
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/29/21 at 04:48 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! The Drought That Never Happened is officially over, and as Fall comes upon us, we can look forward to the annual Autumn Games Flood, in which publishers poop out all the content they should have released gradually over the Summer, now that most of the target audience is back in school and doesn’t have as much time to play games. We’ve got a huge Flood coming in September, so let’s just get right to seining through the septic tank, on the off chance there’s something good to be found.
Lots of shovelware is coming in September, with a whopping 10 titles that can be dismissed immediately due to their pedigree. And we’ve got all three major categories of garbage represented, to boot! First, there are licensed games based on ‘Hot Wheels’ toy cars, ‘Agatha Christie’ novels (as if the ancient women who read those have a significant crossover with videogaming…), ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ and ‘The Addams Family’ (the …
8th Gen Retrospective
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/22/21 at 04:42 PM CT
As of 2017, the 9th Generation of videogaming officially kicked off. However, with not all of the big players in the console space so over-anxious to usher their last-gen offerings into the Great Beyond, it only really “feels” like the 9th Gen has been going for a few months now. Combine the recent releases of the Xbox SeX and the PlayStation 5 with their unavailability on store shelves due to a combination of COVID-caused logistics hurdles and a global microchip shortage, and the 9th Gen still feels very new indeed.
But with the 8th Gen completely behind us, it’s a good time to look back and pass judgment on those that came before. Let’s take a look at how the platforms stacked-up and remember some of their best and worst games.
#1. PC
PC gaming continued to be an ever-growing juggernaut in the 8th Generation, stealing away gamers from both Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation in sizeable numbers. This leeching effect was not nearly as noticeable amongst the …
View Archive
