Obsidian Hints at Pathfinder cRPG Project
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/29/16 at 04:36 PM CT
Do you like cRPGs? Do you worry – like I do – that the genre has been tainted by so much Action and so watered-down that it might as well not even exist? Do you get upset – like I do – that the most acclaimed and award-winning ‘RPGs’ in recent years have been Action/Sandbox games mislabeled as ‘W’RPGs in order to garner more sales through false advertising?
If so, you need to lay some truth on Obsidian Entertainment – the company crafted from the remains of Black Isle, which, along with BioWare, ushered in the cRPG Golden Age with the Infinity Engine games and pre-FPS ‘Fallout’ – in this survey, which they posted in their official forum in order to garner community feedback about the state of cRPGs. It’s a rather exhaustive list of questions, so it can take 20 minutes or so to complete, but isn’t shining the Light of Truth upon the state of videogame RPGs worth a little bit of time?
One incredibly noteworthy section of the poll is a group of …
The Nintendo Switch is a Long Time Coming
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/22/16 at 06:17 PM CT
After months of agonizing silence since unofficially taking the WiiU off life-support, this past week Nintendo finally produced a short teaser trailer revealing the Nintendo Switch, the Japanese company’s upcoming gaming platform, formerly codenamed “NX.” Unfortunately, this teaser doesn’t reveal much of anything new, as the rumors and speculation about the Switch being a console/handheld hybrid and using cartridges instead of optical discs have been around for many months. It is, however, nice to have these rumors confirmed. Even more unfortunately, Nintendo is committed to clamming up and not sharing anything more about the Switch until close to its release date in March 2017.
Looking way, way, waaaay back to 2011, one of my very first articles on the then-new MeltedJoystick.com was an exhortation for Nintendo to merge their console and handheld efforts into a single device, while simultaneously praising Sony’s efforts at Remastering PSP games for the PS3 (I have since …
From Micro to Macro: Enough is Enough
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/16/16 at 01:10 PM CT
Having recently dipped a toe into the multi-player mode of “Dragon Age: Inquisition,” I was disgusted to find a mobile-style microtransaction engine instead of a complementary game mode. Other mainstream “AAA” developers, like Square Enix, have been sneaking this type of nonsense into retail releases, like the latest ‘Deus Ex’ title, as well.
When microtransactions started out, they seemed innocuous enough. Horse Armor in “Oblivion” was one of the bigger, more memetic jokes made about early microtransactions, but, for the most part, they were indeed small, cosmetic, and fully optional.
More recently, however, I have noticed a distinct trend of ‘micro’transactions no longer remaining small. Many of the terrible mobile games that Chris and Nick just can’t stop playing are Free2Play – meaning that they are actually Pay2Win – and while the not-particularly-optional payments start out fairly small, they inexorably built, to the point that the costlier ones …
As Went TV, So Too Shall Go Videogames
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/09/16 at 02:47 PM CT
The new Fall Television Season is upon us. We’re already a few weeks in, and new shows – and new seasons of extant shows – will continue to trickle out for the rest of the year, before other shows are rotated in to fill-out the schedule for the remainder of the season, as few current shows can be bothered to produce a full 24-36 episodes as they once did.
Recently I was talking with the MeltedJoystick Crew over Steam chat about the shows we’re watching or are planning to watch in this upcoming season. While Chris and Nick both admitted to watching waaaaaaay too much TV, with gobs of shows cluttering up their DVRs, Matt – being the nauseatingly stereotypical workaholic ‘family’ guy – confessed to only streaming a single show to completion at any given time, while I proudly announced my meager TV-watching schedule as a boon, giving me more time every evening to work on my terrifying backlog of videogames (80, at time of writing).
It has actually been quite a long …
“Cinematic” is the New RPG
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/02/16 at 02:50 PM CT
In the 8th Generation, I have been gratefully relieved to see a resurgence of true, dyed-in-the-wool RPGs after the genre all but disappeared during the grim, bleak 7th Generation. However, I have been wondering why the King Maker genre, the genre that everyone agreed was one of their top-tier favorites from the 3rd Gen when “Final Fantasy” and “Dragon Quest” were breaking new ground with every sequel, all the way through the 6th Gen when nearly every publisher that mattered had their own IP in the genre, was driven to the brink of extinction in the first place.
Looking back at the RPG genre from the 3rd-6th Gens, one major feature of the genre stands out: RPGs were the only videogame genre to provide gripping narrative content and an investment by the player in a cast of characters over dozens of hours. Old-style platformers didn’t bother with story fluff. Neither did old shooters, and that genre still struggles with narrative-focused experiences to this day. As of the …
Backlog: The Embiggening – October, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/16 at 02:01 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! October is nearly upon us, which means that the official start of the Holiday Shopping Season is just a week away. We can look forward to three solid months of constant commercial bombardment and cluttered release schedules, all in the name of confusing grandparents into buying little Timmy the wrong gift for Christmas. It’s like game publishers haven’t heard of return policies and gift cards…
Shovelware is pretty bad again this month, with 7 titles looming before us. Now that Disney is out of the game dev/pub business, they’ve got Namco-Bandai working on their next effort, “Disney Magical World 2” (and it REALLY pisses me off that every Disney game needs to have ‘Disney’ in the title, apparently). Someone at BigBen apparently thinks these terrible ‘Sherlock Holmes’ titles are worthy of being released on more platforms. Warner Bros. wants PS4 owners to re-buy every ‘LEGO Harry Potter’ game in a compilation. …
Vaguely Related Review: EA’s Origin
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/18/16 at 02:14 PM CT
It has been quite some time since I gave the review treatment to Steam and Desura. I would like to do the same for GOG Galaxy, but I feel it’s a bit unfair to review software that’s still technically in Alpha. I could look at Uplay, but I don’t have it installed currently, as I have cleared the whopping two Ubisoft games I own from my backlog and don’t intend to buy any more…
That leaves EA’s Origin client. Recently, I intentionally installed this particular strain of malware on my Steambox and spent $40 on EA games. While this behavior is incredibly uncharacteristic for me, it stemmed from Sony really pissing me off lately (even before the PS4 Pro and PS+ price hike announcements), to the point of making me double-down on the idea of never owning a PS4, not even for the handful of EA games I would otherwise only be able to play if I installed Origin on my Steambox. I was further tipped over the edge by a week-long Origin sale, during which I was able to get “Dragon …
PlayStation: Hubris Awaits
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/11/16 at 01:56 PM CT
Look! What’s that up in the sky!? Is it a supernova? Is it a meteorite? No! It’s Sony entering a self-inflicted death spiral thanks to a couple of horrible decisions over the course of the last few weeks.
This past week, we finally got a look at the PlayStation Neo… except the thing Sony revealed wasn’t even close to the PlayStation Neo gamers have been teased and tempted by for months now. No, the thing that Sony revealed – the PlayStation 4 Pro – isn’t a next-gen competitor for the upcoming Nintendo NX and Xbox Scorpio. It doesn’t support PC-style modding of Bethesda games. It doesn’t include a UHD Blu-Ray drive, either. At first it also wasn’t clear whether or not the triple-stacked Pro hardware, which looks frighteningly like the ‘hamburger’ menu buttons that have exploded in popularity amongst interface designers lately, was an entirely new console or a Sega CD-style add-on for the old PS4 (it’s NOT an add-on). No, the single selling point of the PS4 …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/16 at 01:10 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:
Summer was kind to me and allowed me a significant amount of free time to plow through a portion of my backlog. It really helps that so many Indie games are short and can be completed in a single session. Amongst the wide variety of stuff I played this Summer were a couple of unfairly maligned RPGs, some overrated crap, and a rare perfect-scoring platformer.
“TowerFall Ascension” – 3/5
“The Last Remnant” – 4/5
“Shantae: Risky’s Revenge” – 4/5
“Coldfire Keep” – 3.5/5
“Skyborne” – 4.5/5
“Dungeonland” – 2/5
“Fable Anniversary” – 2.5/5
“Sword Coast Legends” – 4/5
“Mercenary Kings” – 4.5/5
“Freedom Fall” – 5/5
“Rocket Knight” – 4/5
“Megabyte Punch” – 4/5
“Glare” – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris, on the other hand, did not have a particularly …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/28/16 at 03:07 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! This summer’s Game Drought positively flew by, leaving us disheveled and confused, but not terribly dehydrated. With the oncoming Autumn, we can expect this predictable dinosaur we call the Games Industry to follows its old, established patterns, such as kicking production into high gear and crowding together a large number of releases just in time for the kids who would be rabid to play these games to go back to school. At least this way those kids will have plenty to look forward to as Yule approaches and their overwhelmed relatives inevitably buy them the wrong games.
There is sooo much shovelware this month. Not only are we getting a new “Just Sing” to blight current-gen consoles, the up-and-coming wannabe ‘Pokemon’ and ‘Digimon’ and ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ killer, ‘Yokai Watch,’ is releasing a traditional two-versions-of-the-same-game-so-you-need-to-buy-it-twice-to-catch-all-the-monsters title: “Bony Spirits” …
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