The Good and the Bad of AD&D
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/07/16 at 02:37 PM CT
In honor of Wizards of the Coast finally doing the right thing and opening up the new 5th Edition of the world’s oldest tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, via the Open Gaming License, I’ve decided to dedicate February to taking a look back at the more long-lived editions of the game and seeing what they did right… as well as where they went wrong.
I never had the opportunity to play Original Dungeons & Dragons (or OD&D, as it is commonly called nowadays), as it was before my time. Instead, my first experience with the world’s oldest RPG came via Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D), which, itself, went through some minor revisions, that divided it into a 1st Edition and a 2nd Edition. There is actually very little difference between 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D, as the majority of differences took the form of additions, clarifications, and options rather than revisions, rebalances, and tweaks. Thus AD&D is typically perceived as a monolithic edition with an immense amount of …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/31/16 at 02:18 PM CT
Now that the gaming industry has had time to recover from its New Year’s hangover, we should be seeing some better stuff start trickling out. “Should” being the operative word. Instead the industry’s unabashed love affair with selling old material as though it was new continues unabated, with a glut of ports, compilations, and remasters padding what would otherwise be a very unimpressive month. Let’s get to it!
Is there shovelware? Of course, there is shovelware. Like the poor, shovelware will always be with us. February is bringing us three new anime-inspired games: a ‘Digimon’ PS4 exclusive – which apparently ties-into the 2015 anniversary of the original TV show, another ‘Naruto’ fighting game, and a typical Tecmo-Koei large-scale Beat ‘em Up with a coat of paint inspired by a Japanese novel series entitled “The Heroic Legend of Arslan.” Honestly, the ‘Arslan’ game sounds like it would be pretty interesting… if it wasn’t just another “Hyrule …
Vaguely Related Review: Nvidia Shield Tablet
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/24/16 at 06:01 PM CT
I bought an Nvidia Shield Tablet and its stable of accoutrements back in November of 2014, and only now feel like I have had enough experience with the thing to give it a proper review. Before I bought one of these Android devices, I mused that it might be ‘the ‘Droid we’re looking for,’ as OUYA certainly demonstrated that it was emphatically not. After a year of Shield Tablet ownership, however, I can’t recommend it.
About the Hardware
The first negative of Shield Tablet ownership is that the thing is not cheap. $300 for a wi-fi Android device is triple the price of an OUYA, and well into the smartphone price range. Of course, since the Shield Tablet is an 8” touchscreen device, it is a smartphone in every way, barring the lack of a cellular radio and monthly subscription plan (which are, conveniently, available for the $400 4G LTE version of the Shield Tablet). And since the Shield Tablet is incomplete, it takes another $40 to buy a magnetic screen cover and …
Vaguely Related Review: Sony Bravia 3DTV
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/17/16 at 03:07 PM CT
Way back in 2014, my old Vizio television – the one with all of my consoles and my Steambox hooked up to it – started playing tricks on me. When turning it on from a ‘cold off’ state, it would randomly have large portions of the LED backlighting that were dimmed out. It would correct itself after a time, but I found that I had to make accommodations to the television and treat it with kid gloves by never turning it on and off in rapid succession, and leaving it on if I was going to come back to it within a few hours.
Click to Enlarge
As time went on, the screen got progressively worse, and in the middle of 2015, the dimmed sections of the screen began to flicker as well. I knew the moment the backlighting started to dim that I would need to replace the entire TV sooner or later, but with the advent of 4K resolution, I was determined to put-off replacing it for as long as possible. I could still play games with random patches of dimmed pixels… but the flickering… it …
8th Gen Consoles: Now Streaming on Your PC
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/09/16 at 03:44 PM CT
Astute readers will have noticed that when I review a multi-platform FPS or TPS, I typically rate the PC version half a star higher than the console versions. The reason behind this non-arbitrary point dock is the fact that the PC versions of these games allow for a wide range of control options, including my beloved Razer Hydra, while the console versions… don’t. I don’t always dock console shooters for lacking control options, however, as certain console versions, such as the PlayStation 3 version of “BioShock Infinite” do support a wider range of control schemes (in this case, the PlayStation Move, which, while a pale imitation of the Hydra, is at least an attempt on the developer’s part).
Some new tech coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, however, might render my point-docking ways irrelevant, as Microsoft has already made it possible to stream XBONE games to a Windows PC, while Sony has similar functionality for the PS4 in the works.
The ability to stream …
Backlog: The Embiggening – January, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/01/16 at 12:50 PM CT
Happy New Year, 2016, dear readers! As the 4th full year of the 8th Generation kicks off, we are all left with a feeling of awe and wonder – that this new year could bring us anything. Unfortunately, with the “AAA”-ification of the game’s industry, we all know what we can expect, and it’s not ‘anything,’ it’s ‘more of the same.’
January is typically a light release month, and this year is no exception. We’re only getting a handful of new releases (that have been announced ahead of time!). There’s one piece of shovelware, a Marvel Comics and LEGO mashup, “LEGO Marvel’s Avengers,” presumably to tie-into the upcoming “Captain America: Civil War” movie.
There are two repackagings of older games coming this month. The formerly digital-only “Life is Strange” is getting a physical release, while some old ‘Resident Evil’ games are getting compiled and remastered on the PortStation 4 and XBONE.
There aren’t any significant multi-plat …
Year in Review: 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/26/15 at 01:45 PM CT
After last year’s disastrous showing, we here at MeltedJoystick are glad to be able – once again – to present a run-down of the five biggest gaming Fails and the five biggest gaming Wins of the year 2015.
Top 5 Fails
5. OUYA Gutted and Bought-Out by Razer
The Little Indie Console that Couldn’t has officially given up the ghost. After getting off to a rocky start as an Android-based microconsole without Google’s support via the Play Store, OUYA resorted to bribing customers with free money in an attempt to get more people to look at the OUYA Store (I never did spend mine). When that didn’t work, OUYA allowed itself to be bought-out by PC gaming peripheral company, Razer. OUYA’s heart and soul will be ripped out, rebranded as “Cortex TV” and included as a feature in Razer’s own Android microconsole… which will likely fare little better than OUYA itself.
4. Activision Buys Mobile Dev, King, for ~$6 billion
Let’s think about this: One of the Triumvirate …
Social Injustice
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/20/15 at 04:23 PM CT
We here at MeltedJoystick have refrained from participating in the low-brown mudslinging that made up the lion’s share of the Gamergate controversy that blew up last year between the gaming community and radical fringe liberals. Unfortunately, ignoring the issue has not caused it to go away, and the ongoing pressure from the radical left has started to bear fruit.
Last month, Tecmo-Koei, the publisher that is home to Team Ninja – the developer behind the fanservicey modern ‘Ninja Gaiden’ games and the ‘Dead or Alive’ fighting franchise – announced that they will not be localizing “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3” for the Western market. Their reasoning? They have been observing the Western gaming media and decided that not releasing the game – featuring busty women in bikinis playing games/sports on the beach – outside of Asia would be preferable to dealing with the negativity and bile the game would draw from the biggest Western gaming news and opinion …
The cRPG Fallacy
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/13/15 at 03:46 PM CT
Recently, I’ve noticed a resurgence of the use of the term “cRPG,” thanks to a phenomenon that PC Gamer Magazine has dubbed the ‘cRPG Renaissance.’ With games like “Pillars of Eternity,” “Wasteland 2,” “Divinity: Original Sin,” “Legend of Grimrock” (and its sequel), and the upcoming “Torment: Tides of Numenera” leading the way, the PC platform – traditionally considered the home of cRPGs – is indeed seeing more RPG releases now than it has since Black Isle and the Infinity Engine dropped off the face of the earth.
But what, exactly is a cRPG? The acronym itself merely stands for “computer role-playing game,” and I’ve typically used it myself to describe a type of RPG that is played primarily with a computer mouse, perhaps with the occasional banging on a nearby typewriter in order to pause the action before issuing a new round of commands. Historically, the “Glorious” PC Gaming Master Race has used the term cRPG to specially segregate PC …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/06/15 at 01:48 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 Fall, I finally got a chance to play an RPG I’ve been super excited about for a number of years. Unfortunately for you, dear readers, you won’t find a review of it on MeltedJoystick, because the game in question is “Final Fantasy Dimensions,” a smartphone game. You can, however, find a paragraph of my negative impressions right here on Google Play. Despite the fact that “FF Dimensions” ate up nearly 80 hours of my time, I managed to slog through an incredibly long ‘Fallout’ FPS Sandbox and spend a goodly amount of time with Nintendo’s “Super Mario Bros. X” knock-off.
“Super Mario Maker” – 4/5
“Rayman Legends” – 4.5/5
“Magicka” – 4/5
“Tabletop Simulator” – 4.5/5
“Fallout: New Vegas” – 4/5
“NightSky” – 4.5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Wow! For the first time in… a …
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