“Dark Souls” = The Job Market
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/25/16 at 04:44 PM CT
The 7th Generation saw the rise of many unfortunate trends in gaming – as well as the fall of nearly as many. One of the most enduring catastrophes of the 7th Generation was the sudden and unexpected surge in popularity among masochistic, H.A.R.D. games, with the movement led primarily by dogmatic fanatics from the Cult of From. These cultists, henceforth known as Souls Trolls, see to the inflation of their favorite series’ Metacritic scores through nefarious infiltration of nearly every gaming media outlet. With Souls Trolls as the only people who like their favorite series AND as the only people generally willing to review it, they promote a self-fulfilling prophecy of praise where absolutely none is deserved.
Unfortunately, Souls Trolls have infiltrated the media beyond the walls of light-weight gaming news sites like Polygon, Kotaku, and NeoGAF. Recently, it was revealed that one of their number had managed to creep his way into the respected halls of the Wall Street …
E3 Impressions 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/18/16 at 03:06 PM CT
After a surprise-filled E3 last year, our expectations were boosted a bit. 2015’s E3 was a welcome relief from the rut-worn boredom that was the hallmark of the conference for several years prior. Unfortunately, last year’s surprises wore a new set of ruts, and we’re still driving in them this year. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the 8th Gen consoles hardly look different from the 7th Gen, now 8th Gen E3 conferences are all starting to look alike!
Microsoft:
Want: Play Anywhere
Not Sure if Want: “Sea of Thieves” (still!)
Do Not Want: Scorpio, dead-horse-beating first-party sequels
Microsoft didn’t really do anything impressive this year. They added an official name, “Play Anywhere,” to the XBONE/Windows10 crossplay program they announced last year. They also talked a lot about upcoming sequels in their first-party franchises… which are all starting to feel exactly the same. ‘Gears,’ ‘Halo,’ ‘Forza’ – whooptee freakin’doo. “Sea of …
GOG Connect: I Totally Called It!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/12/16 at 02:36 PM CT
Back in June 2014 – two years ago – I was excited about the steps GOG.com, the PC gaming platform owned by ‘Witcher’ developer, CD Projekt, was taking in reaching feature parity with the 500 lb. gorilla of PC gaming platforms, Steam. At the time, I speculated that GOG would have to do something drastic, like give away DRM-free copies of games that customers already own on Steam, in order to grow its user-base.
Guess what GOG.com announced this past week? GOG Connect is a new feature that allows PC gamers with both Steam and GOG accounts (read: ALL PC GAMERS) to link their Steam profile to their GOG profile and receive complimentary GOG copies of select games in their Steam library.
While GOG Connect isn’t currently the 100% comprehensive Steam backup I would eventually like to see, the fact that CD Projekt was willing to make this move at all shows how insanely committed the company is to not being a Big Evil Corporation or behaving in a typical Big Media …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/04/16 at 05:13 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:
Spring wasn’t particularly productive with regard to completing games. The MJ Crew only managed to co-op our way through 2 titles, thanks to some stupid scheduling issues, and we’ve generally been feeling blasé and unmotivated about the co-op games in our collective backlog.
For my part, I completed a variety of games… but only one of them was really great.
“Apotheon” – 4.5/5
“HOARD” – 3/5
“Lost Planet: Extreme Condition” – 2.5/5
“Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine” – 4/5
“The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel” – 2.5/5
“Call of Juarez” – 3.5/5
“LittleBigPlanet 3” – 4/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris still can’t pull himself away from his damnable phone long enough to put a meaningful number of hours into his favorite genre of content-bloated Action/Sandbox games. Thus …
Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/28/16 at 07:45 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! It looks like the eternal cycle is becoming a bit unpredictable, as June – traditionally the start of the 3-month-long Summer Game Drought – actually has a lot of release dates on the calendar. Of course, we already know half of them will be remasters or ports, and the rest will be crap, so let’s just get on with it.
Only two bits of shovelware will be sullying toy store shelves in June: First, the LEGO adaptation of “Star Wars 7.” Chris would love that. The other is an annual motocross release. You know a franchise has devolved into shovelware when it gets annual releases, but if you aren’t sure, the fact that “MXGP2: The Official Motocross Videogame” is a videogame that contains the word ‘videogame’ in the title should clue you in. Chris would NOT love that.
Let me check my watch here… yup, it’s still the 8th Generation and the gaming industry still hasn’t imploded in a Second Crash just yet, so …
Disney Infinity is Finished. What About Skylanders and Amiibos?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/21/16 at 02:50 PM CT
On May 10, 2016, Disney Interactive Studios – the videogame publishing arm of the giant tentacle monster that is Disney – announced that they were folding-up shop and discontinuing their big seller, the ‘toys to life’ figuring-selling engine, “Disney Infinity.” Having reached the 3.0 revision mark last year with the addition of the ‘Star Wars’ IP, late of LucasFilms, “Disney Infinity” appeared to be a significant money maker, earning its parent corporation around $200 million last year alone.
Yet Disney doesn’t think the ‘toys to life’ market has enough room for growth moving forward, but is instead stagnating as more and more competitors enter the arena and divide the audience’s focus. Activision more-or-less created the market with their “Skylanders” figurines, and Nintendo followed suit in their own special way by releasing their Amiibo line of NFC figurines that interact in less-than-meaningful ways with a variety of current Nintendo games …
Chinese Company Tencent to Show Microsoft How It’s Done
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/14/16 at 03:23 PM CT
Between 2000 and 2014, videogame consoles were banned in China, which is ironic considering they are all made in that last bastion of functioning Communism. It seems that psychotic Chinese parents lived up to the ‘Tiger Mom’ stereotype and demanded that their country’s government ban electronic gaming devices due to their potential for corrupting the youth and wasting precious brain power.
Whether the Tiger Moms have a point is neither here nor there. What is interesting is that the Chinese holding firm that owns a huge portion of China’s booming PC gaming market (because, of course, the government couldn’t ban PC use when they temporarily shut down consoles), Tencent, has recently decided to throw their hat into the console arena now that the ban has been lifted. And the way they’re going about their foray into consoles should make Microsoft sit-up and take notice.
Tencent will be producing the TGP, a Windows 10-powered console with the company’s own custom …
Nintendo NX to Return Cartridges to the Living Room?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/08/16 at 05:42 PM CT
The rumor mill is currently churning away to itself, working on half-baked “facts” coming out of a very tight-lipped Nintendo about their upcoming platform, codenamed NX. With Nintendo foolishly all but skipping E3 this year and supposedly launching the NX in March 2017, the rumor mill is willing to take any minor thread and run with it.
The thread with the most immediate interest is that the NX will supposedly be a discless platform. A few months ago when the term “discless” started floating around, people immediately began jumping to the conclusion that the NX would follow in the ill-fated footsteps of Sony’s PlayStation Portable GO and be a digital only platform. This line of reasoning was supplanted this past week with a new idea: Nintendo won’t be taking a bold misstep into an all-digital future, but will be taking an even bolder step backwards into a time when game consoles and game cartridges were gaming’s proverbial bread and butter.
Nintendo famously held …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/30/16 at 01:59 PM CT
Time for another painful look into the not-so-distant future! May signals the end of Spring and the beginning of the long, dry months of the Summer Game Drought. Before things wither away completely, devs and publishers are gracing us with one last diarrheal splatter of moisture before clamping shut until Holiday 2016.
Shovelware is back from its hiatus. In May, we’re getting a new ‘One Piece’ game based on the hideously-drawn anime/manga, and a new ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ game based on Chris’ favorite series of action figures from the mid 1990s… but more likely based on the recent series of Megan Fox movies.
Ports and remasters are still showing no signs of going away, or even slowing down. In May, every platform that ‘matters’ is getting a compilation remaster of the ‘Dead Island’ games (Chris would love that… if he hadn’t already played all of them), while the PS4 is living up to the title ‘PortStation’ with a remaster of the ‘Adam’s …
Sixense STEM Delayed Until Q2/Q3 2016, Hopefully for the Last Time
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/23/16 at 03:02 PM CT
April 2016 is almost over, and I have been waiting with bated breath for more news about the much-delayed Sixense STEM motion controller – the wireless, VR-ready successor to my beloved Razer Hydra. Unfortunately, no news was forthcoming, and in the case of hardware/software development, no news is usually not good news.
I emailed Steve Hansted, Sixense’s Business Development Director and sender of STEM update emails, and asked him what was up. Here’s the reply:
“Late last year, the STEM System passed all the required FCC tests with good margins and is now ready to enter into production (details below). But, as the final engineering and testing took longer than we had originally anticipated, we’ve missed our scheduled production slot. The current schedule from our CM (contract manufacturer) has STEM Systems coming off the line and starting to ship at the end of this month (author’s note: April 2016).
It’s been a long ride, obviously longer than anticipated and …
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