Can We PLEASE Stop with the Hero Shooters, Already?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/08/24 at 02:37 PM CT
Last week, something completely unexpected drifted into my Steam feed: A recommendation by a curator I follow called “Coop Cowboys” for a new game being developed by Valve…. Yes, you read that right! VALVE, the parent company of Steam, responsible for such incredible games as “Half-Life 2” and “Portal 2” is dipping a timid toe back into the realm of actual game development again after the disastrous launch and inevitable failure of their digital Trading Card Game, “Artifact” in 2018 and the well-received-but-limited-audience launch of their VR-exclusive ‘Half-Life’ spinoff, “Half-Life: Alyx” in 2020.
Valve’s new game is simply titled “Deadlock,” and based on the recommendation by Coop Cowboys and the vaguely-interesting-from-a-thematic-perspective screencaptures available on the upcoming game’s store page, I got overly excited. Just a few days later, people in the invite-only Beta test revealed that “Deadlock” is not the next great …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/01/24 at 01:26 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:
My gaming slowed to a trickle over the Summer. I found myself terribly disappointed by the two brand-new Japanese games backed by celebrated directors (who both died shortly before the games released) that I bought for closer-to-full-price than I’ll usually even think about. Indeed, a full half of my reviews ended up being for coop games the Crew completed together. I’ve got “Unicorn Overlord” and the third volume of “DragonLance Destinies” up next on my list of media to consume, but I’m still up to my chest in redecorating, so I’ve put off starting either of those for nearly a month.
“Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heros” – 2/5
“Warhammer: Chaosbane” – 2/5
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge” – 4/5
“Sand Land” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris has had plenty of time for …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/24/24 at 05:22 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Labor Day will soon be upon us, signaling the official “end” of Summer, even though all the Genderqueer, Non-Binary Kiddies will have been back in their indoctrination mills for a month already. The only reason Summer Vacation even exists as a concept is because of MY industry, Agriculture. In the past, all the Kiddoes would be called away from school during the Summer growing season to plant, maintain, and harvest the crops on their family farms, powering the engine of America’s prosperity. However, with Child Labor Laws now being a thing, along with automation, illegal immigrant labor that can flaunt red tape by virtue of being ‘illegal,’ and the dwindling number of family farms being replaced by Corporate Industrial Farming, the entire concept of letting children (and teachers) piss off and be worthless for three months seems incredibly archaic. But they’re not the only ones, as the Wage Slaves of Industrial Gaming all …
Epic Ceo: “Paid Exclusives Not Good Investments”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/18/24 at 04:15 PM CT
It seems like Epic Games, the owner and operator of the Unreal Engine which underpins so many modern “AAA” games, just can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to expanding outside of their wheel house of Middle-Ware Developer. The software house mistakenly thought they were more important than they actually were due to the Early Access PvP mode of their (now canceled) Tower Defense game, “Fortnite” becoming meme fodder and siphoning billions of dollars out of the wallets of Millennials and Zoomers.
As a result, Epic’s executives thought they were in a position to challenge Valve and its digital distribution monopoly in Steam, apparently rationalized by Valve also making a ton of money off a memetic Freemium shooter. Maybe? I dunno. Regardless, Epic transformed its mid-range-annoyance DRM platform from a mere launcher to a full-blown digital storefront for PC games waaay back in the pre-plague year of 2018… a storefront that still sucked in 2021… and, …
Latest Financials Reveal Square-Enix Makes Next to Nothing from Traditional Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/10/24 at 03:38 PM CT
Oh dear! The news just keeps getting worse for the one-time Kingmaker and titan of industry, Square-Enix. While the titles coming out of both Squaresoft and Enix drove console sales across the globe in the Golden Age of the 4th and 5th Generations, things haven’t been going so well for the company after its early 2000’s corporate merger.
Over a decade ago, it was a well-established fact that Square-Enix was a ‘complete failure,’ falling from its position of creating games that consistently sold systems into a position of vague irrelevance. The massive Japanese publisher, like so many other Japanese videogame outfits, struggled to adapt to the modern era of gaming that began in the 7th Generation, and ultimately chose to ape Western game development trends, even to the point of buying some old, struggling Western PC game developers. This attempt at adopting Western paradigms was doomed to failure, and Square-Enix divested itself of its Western investments in 2022.
After …
Bungie is Bunged
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/04/24 at 01:13 AM CT
Uh oh! Not all is well in the studio that Sony bought in 2022 as hilarious parody of parity with Xbox’s massive merger with Activision-Blizzard. No, it turns out that having one game – “Destiny 2” – a live service at that, and mismanaging it into the ground is not a great way to turn a profit.
After a round of downsizing last year to signal “Destiny 2” winding down and preparing to enter End of Life mode, Bungie just culled over 200 more employees, leaving the studio no longer lean and mean, but downright skeletal. While the studio still allegedly has two new games in the works – one being the reboot of their original MacOS FPS, “Marathon,” and the other being a colorful Gen-Z-friendly multiplayer game code named “Gummy Bears” (HOPEFULLY not based on the candies… but might be kind of cool if based on the differently-spelled classic Disney cartoon). With both titles being so far in the future we know next to nothing about them other than (working) titles, …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/28/24 at 02:49 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Summer will be over soon, and all the cute little autists and gender-queers will be heading back to their Postmodernist Deconstruction Indoctrination mills. While, traditionally, Industrial Gaming bigwigs have chosen the end of Summer to start dumping tons of games onto the market, this year’s August schedule looks like a continuation of the Summer Games Drought.
We’ve only got 5 pieces of shovelware coming in August, with only two of the major subvarieties represented. In Licensed Swill, there’s “Star Wars Outlaws” (which we know Chris will buy for full price, since he’s one of, like, 4 people on Earth who enjoyed “The Acolyte”), a 4th sequel in the ‘Gundam Breaker’ series, a new officially-licensed ‘Monster Jam’ title, and “Tiebreak: The Official Game of the ATP and WTA.” I don’t know what either of those acronyms stand for, nor do I care, but based on the genre tag Chris applied in the database, …
It’s Time to Split Xbox from Microsoft
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/21/24 at 02:09 PM CT
My all-time favorite President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, earned a reputation as a Trust Buster, regulating the Wild West of Big Business into a more manageable and publicly responsible form. It seems that today’s Federal Trade Commission has finally opened its eyes and gotten back to turn of the (20th) Century priorities in that it recently attacked Microsoft for increasing the price of Gamepass and removing some features from all but the most expensive subscription tier.
Where was the FTC when Microsoft was purchasing company after company? Why did the FTC allow the Activision-Blizzard-King deal to go through if they knew Microsoft would raise prices as they consolidated control and increased the Xbox Division’s market cap by billions of dollars?
They probably had their heads up their collective asses like all appointees from both the Trump and Biden administrations, worrying about pushing their side of the Culture War instead of neutrally and objectively …
“Unprofitable” Gamepass Undergoes Corrective Surgery, Becomes Even More Useless
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/14/24 at 03:21 PM CT
I still remember when you could buy a brand-new, just-launched console for $200. Now simply “owning” a console costs $240… annually.
Microsoft, the company that first successfully foisted subscriptions upon console gamers after the failures of Nintendo’s Satellaview and The Sega Channel, has made it abundantly clear that the only thing that matters to them, as far as the Xbox Division is concerned, is making their once-optional Gamepass service into a successful, predictable, and perpetual revenue stream. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Gamers haven’t really taken a liking to Gamepass, even among the tiny slice of the pie who are oblivious enough to Microsoft’s past failings to willingly involve themselves in the Xbox ecosystem.
As a result, the company re-branded their Xbox Live service to the Gamepass moniker in an attempt to make the sinking ship appear to be afloat, in spite of being fully underwater. Furthermore, the “introductory pricing” of Gamepass and the …
GOG Sells-Out to “Big Gaming” Company
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/06/24 at 10:57 PM CT
We at MeltedJoystick have been less-than-impressed by GOG – formerly GoodOldGames – and its failure to deliver any meaningful action to follow up its talk. GOG has been making news in Gaming circles since it first launched in 2008 with its novel approach of being a 100% DRM-free marketplace. Subsequently, the company made waves with its FCKDRM Initiative, which quietly went away; and with its GOG Connect program to provide DRM-free backups of select Steam games, which quietly went away; and with its GOG Galaxy client, which was supposed to put all of our digital games in one place, but which is poorly managed, riddled with bugs, and reliant on volunteer coders to maintain most of the third-party store plugins; and the company even made noise about being in lock-step with Gamer culture, while simultaneously kissing the asses of both the Chinese Communist Party and the Marxist Fringe Left.
It should go without saying, but GOG has failed to be the independent, outsider, pro-nerd …
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