Grind is Ground
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/15/24 at 01:56 PM CT
In a SHOCKING revelation during a recent interview, Rod Fergusson, the General Manager of the ‘Diablo’ series, let slip the STUNNING and UNPREDICTABLE fact that videogame players – even those who ostensibly ‘loved’ “Diablo 2” back on the halcyon days of the early ‘00s – don’t like so-called ‘long-chase grinding.’ The definition of ‘long-chase’ being that it can take YEARS of daily play sessions to acquire a single desired piece of loot as a random drop.
Naturally, the sarcasm dripping off of the preceding paragraph is intentional, since I NEVER actually enjoyed the ‘long-chase’ style of grinding, or, generally, random grinding at all. And it turns out that I was just – as usual – ahead of the curve, with modern Gamers making no bones about the fact that they like a quicker, streamlined grind, preferably with guaranteed rewards for time invested, with capped potential for greater rewards based on more time spent grinding.
I’ve been critical …
Windows Recall Gets Recalled, Reveals Microsoft Back Up to Old Tricks
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/09/24 at 02:23 PM CT
When erstwhile MeltedJoystick photog, Matt, asked me what I thought of Windows Recall, I said I’d never heard of it. When he described it as an AI-powered search function that obsessively screencaps and monitors everything you do on your Windows PC in order to “help” you find files or websites you may have “misplaced,” my response was immediate, without any need to pause and think about it:
“That sounds like an enormous invasion of privacy and an equally enormous waste of system resources.”
And I guess my knee-jerk reaction to Windows Recall was spot-on, since Microsoft has recently backtracked (or maybe “recalled”) their decision to turn this feature on by default in the face of massive backlash.
Yup, good old Microsoft, whose Xbox Division has been bending over backwards in recent years in an attempt to seem customer friendly when compared to the likes of Sony, Nintendo, and Apple, just let the mask slip. What a “surprise,” then, that the same …
Review Round-Up: Spring 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 06/02/24 at 02:07 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 Spring quarter started off fairly strong with 4 reviews of big games. But then I got engrossed in the gamified activities of “Get Rid of All My Late Parents’ Junk” and “Redecorating,” and really dropped off toward the end of the quarter. I even bought a bunch of new releases, expecting to get engaged and invigorated by the new hotness, but my first taste of “Eiyuden Chronicle” was so bland and uninteresting that I would literally rather clean and play Dailies in “Warframe” than actively play new releases. Maybe if I can get the cleaning and redecorating done this Summer, I can pick up more gaming to reward myself.
“Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag” – 2.5/5
“Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince” – 4/5
“No Man’s Sky” – 4/5
“Pikmin 4” – 4/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Wow, for the first …
Backlog: The Embiggening – June, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/26/24 at 02:25 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! As June approaches, it’s time for us to prepare, once again, for the annual Summer Games Drought. Of course, an industry that still primarily caters to young people (or the young at heart) has always reduced new releases to a trickle when said target audience has the most free time and said target audience’s parents are most feverishly on the hunt for something to keep the target audience placated and out of trouble. The more things change, the more they remain the same, and the more our Corporate Overlords make unpopular decisions for the sake of profit margins, the more they ignore opportunities to make popular decisions and shake-up age-old paradigms. *sigh* Let’s look at the crap coming in June…
There’s shovelware, with two of the three categories represented. In the Licensed Swill category, we have two dinosaur-themed games based on ‘Gigantosaurus’ and ‘Jurassic Park,’ as well as a game based on ‘The …
RetroArch (and Other Stand-Alone Emulators) Gain Further Legitimacy Thanks to… Apple?!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/19/24 at 02:04 PM CT
In a shocking move that I never believed would happen, Apple – the creator of Walled Garden App Ecosystems whose own walls are some of the highest, widest, and thickest in the industry – has officially decided that emulation is acceptable inside the walls. RetroArch, which made news a while back for being the first officially-endorsed emulator listed on Steam – the biggest and oldest PC gaming digital storefront – is officially up for download on the App Store, along with a few other stand-alone emulators whose RetroArch Cores haven’t quite reached parity, such as the PlayStation Portable emulator, PPSSPP.
This is fantastic news for Apple ‘Tards, who previously had to jailbreak or otherwise jump through numerous technical hoops in order to install emulators on iDevices. Of course, Apple’s draconian and restrictive nature is still on display, with the App Store version of RetroArch unable to support a handful of rather hacky emulation tricks that aren’t strictly …
The PSN-on-PC Debacle Should Make Subscription Peddlers Think Twice
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/12/24 at 02:06 PM CT
This past week, Sony revealed that a number of PlayStation Exclusives with Steam ports would require PC players to link a PSN account to their existing Steam account to continue accessing online multiplayer features. The backlash was immediate, immense, and unrelenting, forcing Sony to backtrack on requiring PC players of the inexplicably-popular “Helldivers 2” to have a PSN account (though the upcoming port of “Ghost of Tsushima” will still require a PSN account to access the online cooperative ‘Legends’ mode).
The fact that PC gamers made such a massive stink about requiring linkage to a free PSN account is somewhat surprising. However, a lot of it seems to be driven by the fact that there are many countries on the globe where PSN accounts aren’t available, and PC is generally the default – or, indeed, ONLY – gaming platform in those regions.
My biggest take-away from this episode, though, is that PC gamers will push back against corporate decisions that …
Too Much of… Everything
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/05/24 at 03:00 PM CT
Recent data from the TV and movie industries have shown that, when given access to the entire depth of said media, viewers tend to gravitate to older stuff, leaving modern shows to flop and flail, unable to recoup their multi-million-dollar budgets, let alone become the type of shared cultural touchstone TV and movies of the past were. Sadly, the same is also true of videogames, especially the loss of shared experiences.
I have lamented the loss of shared experiences before, but in the world of gaming, the process just keeps getting worse. While during the Console Gaming Golden Age of the ‘90s, most Gamers played and praised the same games – with the notable exception of those who were on the losing side of the Console War – since the turn of the millennium, gaming has fragmented from a unified, shared experience with the common ‘identity’ of ‘Gamer’ tied to it, into a large selection of exclusionary echo chambers, each with wildly different definitions of what …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/28/24 at 02:30 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! April Showers bring May Flowers… but I’m not sure what April Tornados and April Hail bring… from the looks of things, they bring ports, shovelware, and yet another month of overall crappy game releases. Let’s dissect this dead frog!
The shovelware is moderately deep. I think we can get by with Wrong DeSanctis’ white boots instead of hip waders. In the Licensed Swill category, we have… ports. The Switch is getting the latest ‘Tintin’ game and ‘UFO Robot Grendizer’ game that recently hit other platforms. The PlayStation 5 is getting an old licensed ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game, while sharing another old licensed ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game with the Xbox SeX. The only all-new piece of Licensed Swill hitting all platforms is a new ‘My Little Pony’ game.
In the 2Caz2Liv category we have… two ‘NepNep’ games, one old and one new… and the new one now includes Management Sim elements instead of strictly …
Embracer Group is De-Grouping!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/23/24 at 03:38 PM CT
In recent memory, it seemed that gaming consolidation was inevitable, as Big Corporations snatched up every smaller or Indie studio they could, building their IP portfolios while doing nothing with said IP. The consolidation phase of Late Stage Corporatist Gaming culminated with the multi-year process of Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard-King for billions and billions of dollars, while off-stage in the shadows, the Swedish holding company, Embracer Group (of which a portion is owned not by Swedes, but by a Saudi Prince) quietly accumulated an obscenely large portfolio of gaming and gaming-adjacent things, including both tabletop game and comic book publishers.
Something is definitely happening in our current state of economic corruption, as it seems that Embracer Group has finally eaten its fill, and much like Mr. Creosote in the classic (and really EFF-ing gross) Monty Python sketch, can’t hold it all together anymore. On April 22, 2024, Embracer announced that they were …
From “AAAA” to “III”: Industrial Gaming is Joining Post-Modern Language Butchery
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/14/24 at 02:19 PM CT
Oh, what new Hell is this? Mere weeks after Yves Guillemot of Ubisoft caused MeltedJoystick’s CTO, Nick, to collapse in a fit of catatonia with his insistence on coining the term ‘Quadruple-A Game,’ we’re getting a look at the other side of the coin.
The ‘Triple-I Initiative” is a new, corporate-sponsored, pseudo-grass-roots showcase aiming to fill part of the hole left behind by the discontinuation of E3, focusing entirely on meme-able Indie games. Unfortunately, even a cursory glance at the list of titles revealed in the III Initiative’s first 45-minute sizzle trailer reveals very little of actual interest, as the showcase is primarily dominated by sequels to previous Indie meme-games, plus a couple of couple of Single-A budget titles coming from Industrial Gaming studios in existing IPs like Konami’s ‘Castlevania’ and Ubisoft’s ‘Prince of Persia.’
Ugh, this is NOT what games journalism needed. Yes, a curated collection of promising Indie titles …
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