Backlog: The Embiggening - October, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/02/14 at 07:18 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Now that the Summer Game Drought is well and truly past once again, it is time for game publishers to start ramping up the hype for the annual sales onslaught that is the Holiday Shopping Season. With only three short months left to make back all of the outrageous sums of money they gave their development teams to work on “AAA” games, publishers look to be starting with a massive push, as October will have more game releases than the entire Summer season combined.
Of course, when there are a lot of releases, as anyone capable of observing and recognizing patterns will realize, there are a lot of shovelware releases. October has far too many of them, sprayed as so much buckshot into the guts of consumers worldwide. There is a new ‘Alien’ tie-in (despite the lack of an ‘Alien’ movie since “Prometheus”), a “Duck Dynasty” game (because we definitely need a game about religiously backwards duck-call crafters), a port of …
Japan Still the Only Country Giving Xbox the Respect it Deserves
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/25/14 at 01:39 PM CT
On September 3, the XBONE launched in Japan, nearly a year after launching in the West. Of course, the fact that Microsoft delayed the release of their new console in the Land of the Rising Sun makes little difference, as Japanese gamers have historically cared very little about the “too Western” Dudebro games that have choked the Xbox library since the original Xbox began ruining things in the 6th Generation.
The Xbox 360 was an unequivocal disaster in Japan, barely moving any consoles and moving so few copies of hot-in-the-West games that there’s no way anyone made a profit off localization efforts. With the small-scale Japanese XBONE launch parties looking more like modern art installations of a World Without Humans, it appears that nothing will be changing any time soon.
The chasm between Eastern and Western developers is only growing deeper, as the West adopts the Hollywood model of remaking popular things with increasingly bigger budgets, while Japan continues to do …
Who are the Real Pirates?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/21/14 at 01:15 PM CT
Editor's Note: This article originally ran on the now-defunct Ology.com back in 2011.
Recently, Sony has made the move of putting PlayStation 2 games up for download on the PlayStation Network Store. Anyone who hasn’t been anticipating this move since Sony removed PlayStation 2 compatibility from the PlayStation 3 needs to be slapped: This is how the software distribution world now operates. Instead of re-introducing full PlayStation 2 compatibility, this piecemeal compatibility with specific digital releases allows Sony to re-sell us games that we already own.
It used to be that re-releases of old games came with upgrades (and that is still the case, to an extent, with Sony’s ‘HD Remaster’ series). When Nintendo released “Super Mario All-Stars” on the SNES, not only did we get 3 NES games and 1 unreleased NES game on one cartridge, we got graphical updates that really made these old titles look sharp. When Nintendo re-released these games AGAIN, “Super Mario …
Player, Benchmark Thyself
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/14/14 at 01:11 PM CT
The “Glorious” PC Gaming Master race loves their benchmarks. Sometimes, I think this particular variety of games enthusiast is actually more enthusiastic about fiddling with hardware, spending ridiculous amounts of money on pointless upgrades, and, yes, running benchmarking software than they actually are about playing games.
Interestingly, way back in 2007, shortly after the start of the 7th Generation, the Human Benchmark project began, aiming to gather information about the dreaded input lag and display lag that gamers love to blame for their own inadequacies. Now, over 10 million tests later, the Human Benchmark project’s website has recently undergone its third revision and has plenty of tasty, tasty stats available for lag haters to agonize over. What the project has discovered in its years of testing is that human beings, in general, have a reaction time of around 250 milliseconds (my own initial results were 264 ms).
Thus, in the grand scheme of things, min/maxing …
Backlog: The Embiggening - September, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/04/14 at 02:24 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Gamers across the world have survived yet another parching Summer Game Drought. Hopefully everyone else had better luck reducing the size of their backlogs than I did. Regardless of whether I made any progress in playing through my game collection, September is bringing a refreshing downpour of a lot of new titles. Once again, the biggest, most stupidly-over-hyped title is a FPS with an online component, “Destiny,” however this FPS actually looks like an attempt to appeal to a broader audience than the typical military shooters and space marine fantasies we typically get.
Onto the shovelware! Unfortunately, it is back in full-force this month, leaving us with a significant pile of licensed crap. There is a new “Sherlock Holmes” game (because he is so popular right now), “Lord of the Rings” game that is based as tenuously on the source material as possible, “Falling Skies: The Game” which will definitely be spectacular …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/01/14 at 04:57 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:
The Summer quarter allowed the MeltedJoystick crew to get back on track a bit more with our multi-player games… well, at least the local multi-player games. We only barely managed to eke out completion of “Borderlands 2” at the last minute, and with a bit of skipped content (thanks in large part to one of the participants taking two months off, during which we were ‘not allowed’ to proceed).
I spent the vast majority of the Summer putting the PlayStation 3 out of its misery. While I did run into a pleasantly surprising (and somewhat old) RPG via a trade with Chris, I was otherwise unimpressed by the last remnants of my PS3 backlog. I turned off the manual power switch on the back of the thing and can’t foresee a reason to ever flip it back on…
“Borderlands 2 (plus all DLC)” – 3.5/5
“Iron Brigade” – …
Why are So Many People Buying the PlayStation 4?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/24/14 at 01:22 PM CT
I have already stated my position on the PlayStation 4, and have no idea why anyone would want to buy a $400 brick that plays full-priced ports of existing games, with little of interest coming in the near future. Apparently I’m in good company, however, as Sony’s own Shuhei Yoshida expressed a similar sentiment, when he couldn’t come up with any logical reason for the PS4 to have sold over 10 million units in less than a year.
Sure, Sony’s happy about making money and will delightedly take credit for creating an amazing new game console… but is that really what happened? If Sony doesn’t know what they did to make the PS4 so incredibly popular, can they avoid screwing it up? Can they keep the nascent 8th Generation console popular? Can they make lightning strike twice and follow up with a 9th Generation console in a few years that retains this unprecedented level of popularity? Can they avoid turning the PS4 into another PS3 or PS Vita (two of Sony’s biggest …
Generation 8: Every Port in a Storm.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/17/14 at 01:59 PM CT
Back in 2010, Nick lamented on MeltedJoystick’s older sister site, FilmCrave, over the dearth of new and interesting movie concepts leaving Hollywood studios. It’s no secret that game developers and publishers are trying to make videogames more cinematic, and indeed largely succeeded in doing so over the course of the 7th Generation.
Now that generation is over, and the 8th Generation has begun. Unfortunately, it appears that the games industry will be adopting Hollywood’s obsession with remakes as the new generation’s dominant feature. The 8th Generation has been going for nearly 2 years now (though the PlayStation 4 and XBONE have only been around for half that time), and the frequency of ports and remakes is an overwhelming presence in almost every console’s library (OUYA is largely exempt, for what little it’s worth).
PS4 owners are working themselves into a lather praising the apparently Higher-Definition cinematic gameplay of “The Last of Us Remastered.” …
Could the Nvidia Shield Tablet be the Droid We’re Looking for?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/10/14 at 05:40 PM CT
I have been a believer in Android since the OS was first in its infancy, competing against iOS in the smartphone revolution. Of course, my support has always been more theoretical than practical – I didn’t want to see Android succeed so much as I couldn’t stand the sight of an Apple product dominating a market uncontested.
In practice, my true operating system loyalty lies with whichever company provides the best product. Thus, despite my hatred of Microsoft as a game console manufacturer, I put all of my financial support behind that company’s operating systems. Unless MS does something really, really dumb, it will be impossible for Linux/SteamOS, OSX, iOS, or Android to replace Windows as the heart and soul of my computing experience. If I were ever to buy a smartphone (that is, if the cell providers ever provided decent reception at my home and offered reasonably-priced monthly packages), at this point in time it would most likely be a Windows Phone.
On the other …
Backlog: The Embiggening - August, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/03/14 at 01:15 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. August brings us into the final days of the long, dry Summer. And while there might not be a singular hype-magnet releasing this month – the biggest mainstream draw is the Dudebro-approved annual release of a shovelware sports franchise – there are certainly a lot more games coming this month than came in pitiful July.
The shovelware as a whole is fairly light – I’m surprised! Only the 3DS is being saddled with a tie-in game for Michael Bay’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie, while the ‘grown-up’ consoles are getting MOAR “Madden NFL.”
While out-and-out shovelware is mercifully light in August, there are plenty of ports and compilations clogging the pipeline and preventing new stuff from flowing. “Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare” will finally be gracing Sony consoles, “Hyperdimension Neptunia” will move from stinking up the PS3 to stinking up the Vita as well… and so will “Disgaea 4.” Then …
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