5 Crappy Games That Scratch a Unique Itch
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/05/17 at 04:12 PM CT
Some games are good, some games are bad: Such are the facts of life when it comes to the production of any media. The most insidious games, however, aren’t particularly good – they can even be downright crap – but something about them is so unique, so untapped by copycats or clones that the only way to experience said something is to suffer through the rest of the game’s flaws and annoyances.
What games affect me in this way? Read on to find out.
5. Spore
I still haven’t played the original “Spore” yet. I never bought it back in the day because EA was experimenting with the horrendously evil SecuROM DRM scheme, but I did get to see Chris play his copy, and I played the spinoff title, “Spore Hero” on Wii. “Spore” is unique in the way it lets the player design their creatures, shepherd their evolution, and follow their progress from primordial ooze to spacefaring civilization. Maybe one day I’ll get around to playing the DRM-free GOG version of the game I …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/30/17 at 04:01 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Summer is winding down already, and all of the cute, little children (read: insufferable semen-stains) will be back to school, and no longer clogging up ‘Call of Duty’ servers 24 hours a day. The looming approach of August also means I’ll be another year older and another year more jaded. So let’s see what kind of garbage I can hope not to get for my birthday.
The shovelware is fairly light for August. One licensed anime game based on ‘Naruto’ is joined by two worthless annual ‘sport’ releases, ‘Madden’ and ‘F1’ (racing not being a real ‘sport,’ and all).
The ports, remasters, and compilations are still plentiful, though. Modern-day ‘Wolfenstein’ is getting a two-pack compilation, while ‘Mega Man’ is getting a second legacy collection. Critically-ignored “Troll & I” as well as Telltale’s “Minecraft: Story Mode” are coming to the Switch, while the saddest of the sad console peasants …
Console Gaming is Dead: It Just Doesn't Know It Yet
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/23/17 at 03:39 PM CT
For years, we heard the cries of those in the know: “PC gaming is dead! Rampant piracy, nobody is buying new PCs, and the market is stagnant! DOOOOOOOOOOM!” But now the tables have turned, leaving the future of console gaming a big, empty void filled with more questions and uncertainty than hope and excitement.
It all started when Microsoft tried to do a console and couldn’t get their heads truly into the console space. They ended up creating a horrific chimera that bolted a lot of negative PC gaming aspects from the 90s and 00s onto a unified, console-style hardware target.
Sony followed suit with their disastrous PlayStation 3, and transformed the appliance-like simplicity of the PlayStation brand into a knock-off PC that could even run Linux at one point in time. I have called this elision of PC gaming and console gaming a “singularity” moment, but it has ultimately proven to be better for one side than the other.
Nintendo, however, has proven that there is …
How I Destroyed Console Gaming: A Tale of Superstition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/16/17 at 03:40 PM CT
I generally pride myself on not being a superstitious person. Witnessing the *facepalm*-worthy antics of my Catholic grandmother growing up pushed me away from superstition and toward the path of rationality, even while my personal interests in the paranormal and supernatural tugged me back toward madness.
No matter how hard I try to discard all superstitious nonsense in my day-to-day life, clearing the temple of my mind for Truth and Reason, there lingers a vague feeling that a specific thing I did during the 7th Generation had far-reaching symbolic significance and somehow, via proxy, the actions of one insignificant man reverberated through the ether, destroying the part of the videogame industry I held most dear.
What is this terrible thing I did? No, it wasn’t building a gaming PC and switching to Steam and GOG for 90%+ of my gaming needs: That was a reaction to the continuing downfall of console gaming. One cannot immediately assume that those who leap from the deck of …
First Official Pathfinder CRPG Coming from Paizo and… Owlcat?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/09/17 at 03:15 PM CT
Remember back in October, 2016 when I got all excited about Obsidian Entertainment, the semi-Indie RPG developer crafted from the remains of Black Isle Studios, hinting at a collaboration with Paizo Productions, the company that kept tabletop RPGs alive while Wizards of the Coast worked through a number of psychological issues?
I don’t know if I should still be excited or not. Paizo has officially announced that, yes, they will be collaborating with a videogame developer to create a cRPG based on the “Kingmaker” Pathfinder Adventure Path… but the developer in question won’t be Obsidian. Instead, Paizo will be teaming up with an unknown quantity called Owlcat Games, an Indie outfit so new and untested they don’t even have a Wikipedia entry at the time of writing.
Owlcat Games consists of former employees of both Nival Interactive and My.com. It appears to be a foreign company, perhaps Polish or Russian, due to the rather… ethnic quality of the development team’s …
Backlog: The Embiggening – July, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/30/17 at 05:24 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! June was full of lies, and the dreaded Summer Game Drought does appear to have snuck up on us, once again. July features a LOT of delayed releases from previous months that never quite got out the door. The remaining releases aren’t looking particularly inspiring.
There are only two pieces of shovelware coming in July: One in each major shovelware sub-shovel. There’s “Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star” coming to Switch, for those who like their shovelware based on a non-game IP. Then there’s “Miitopia” coming to the 3DS, for those who like their shovelware so casual that it’s hard to find an actual game in there.
There are four ports/remasters slated for July as well. The PS4 and XBONE will both be receiving a compilation of the completely uninteresting “Don’t Starve” games, as well as a delayed port of loathsome Roguelike, “Rogue Stormers,” and “Minecraft”-ugly RTS, “8-Bit Armies,” while the PS4 …
Chasing the 16-Bit Dragon
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/25/17 at 03:48 PM CT
I have a LOT of “RPG Maker” games and other retro RPG titles in my Steam library. I also have a lot of Kemco’s retro RPGs in my Google Play library. Yet I find myself rarely playing these, as, after an initial taste of these titles that aim to replicate the classics of the Golden Age, I have been bitterly disappointed.
Yes, I got solid enjoyment out of “Skyborn,” and, yes, the spoofy parody games by Zeboyd have been enjoyable in a very “Earthbound” sort of way, but all of the other neo-16-bit RPGs I’ve played in the last few years just haven’t done anything for me. I feel like a Chinese addict who finds themselves constantly “chasing the dragon” in my attempts to find a new RPG that will instill in me the same feelings of awe that “Final Fantasy 6,” “Dragon Quest 5,” “Suikoden 2,” or “Chrono Trigger” did, yet always failing because the metaphorical ‘dragon’ is an unreachable target.
However, the ‘dragon’ actually gave me some …
E3 Impressions 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/17 at 03:33 PM CT
I honestly didn’t get my hopes up for E3 this year. No significant rumors have been circulating about major upcoming reveals, and the only new hardware we’ve been waiting for is yet another Xbox (which nobody should care about anyway). Fortunately, Nintendo managed to produce a large enough quantity of surprises to carry the rest of the show single-handedly.
Microsoft:
Want: Expanded Backward Compatibility, “Sea of Thieves” (still!)
Not Sure if Want: “Metro Exodus,” “Super Lucky’s Tale,” “Ori and the Will of the Wisps,” “Age of Empires Remastered”
Do Not Want: 4K Pandering/Hardware Fetishism, XBONEX, Ridiculous Car Stunt Reveal for “Forza,” “Last Night,” “Crackdown 3,” 22 ‘exclusives,’ of which only 1 is actually exclusive
Microsoft finally pulled the concealing tarp off of Xbox Scorpio… revealing the milquetoast mid-generational upgrade whose official name is Xbox One X. It is incredibly disappointing that neither Sony nor MS had …
Always Destroy the Head: Atari Set to Release New Hardware
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/10/17 at 10:08 PM CT
Alas, you all did not heed me! Woe to the videogames industry, for a wicked spectre from the past is come to bring ruin to us all!
It has long been my vehement opinion that Atari, the perpetrator of the Great Crash of 1983, the same Atari which later acquired, then painfully abused the Dungeons & Dragons videogame license from Wizards of the Coast, should be completely and thoroughly destroyed – Its intellectual properties broken up and distributed to other rightsholders, its offices razed to the ground and sown with salt.
Now this same Atari (delenda est), which you all believed to be no threat, has risen from the dead, marshalled its forces, and is about to make a move. In a surprise pre-E3 2017 announcement, Atari (delenda est) revealed that they will be producing an upcoming device called “AtariBox.”
YouTube channel, SpawnWaveMedia, has been picking-apart any new information they can get their hands on regarding the AtariBox, and have come to the frightening …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/04/17 at 02:46 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 Spring, I decided it was finally time to dust-off the original two ‘Deus Ex’ games in order to educate myself before playing “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” sometime this Summer. In general, though, I had a rather disappointing quarter, without a single game scoring over 4 stars.
“Krater: Shadows Over Solside” – 2/5
“Deus Ex: Invisible War” – 4/5
“Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition” – 3/5
“Yet Another Zombie Defense” – 1/5
“Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut” – 4/5
“Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris” – 4/5
“CastleStorm” – 3.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris didn’t have a particularly good quarter either. He was disappointed by a Survival Horror game, as well as the dumb zombie coop thing we played for one evening. He also didn’t like the coop experience of “Lara Croft and …
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