Backlog: The Embiggening - March, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/07/14 at 12:48 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. March marks the de-constipation of the game development industry, as the backed-up release schedule that traditionally marks the start of a new calendar year suddenly gives way in a diarrheal flow of excrement. Let’s put on our hip-waders and run a seine through the flow – maybe we’ll catch some unseen goodness in our net (don’t count on it)!
Shovelware and licensed trash makes up a significant portion of March’s releases. And a close look at the crappiest of the crap reveals some disturbing trends. Least disturbing is the release of a new ‘South Park’ game which happens to be a turn-based RPG. My love of the genre is clashing with my distaste for the license in this case, so I will ultimately give it a pass. More disturbing is the release of a game based on “Rambo.” Why is a tie-in to a Sylvester Stallone vehicle from the ‘80s that saw a remake in 2008 being released in 2014? I guess it doesn’t really matter, as …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/02/14 at 02:36 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:
To quote the late, great George Harrison’s song, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. As such, the weather has been perfect for staying inside and playing videogames! Yet, somehow, the MJ staff didn’t manage to complete a single co-op game, despite starting “Borderlands 2” and “Diablo 3.” This quarter, I focused mostly on playing the variety of the cheap Indie games I have bought on Steam recently. At the same time, I’ve had an itch for a really in-depth Sandbox game, which “Dragon’s Dogma” and “Terraria” didn’t quite scratch. Nearly 200 hours into “Skyrim,” I’m not sure if it’s scratching the itch either, but we won’t know until next quarter.
“Guacamelee: Gold Edition” – 4/5
“Terraria” – 3/5
“The Temple of Elemental Evil” – 3/5
“Evoland” – 4/5
“Ittle Dew” – …
“Halo’s” Cortana Coming to the Real World
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/22/14 at 02:11 PM CT
Cortana, the AI sidekick to whom the ‘Halo’ franchise’s Master Chief delegates all activities that don’t involve shooting aliens, looks to be moving up in the world. According to recently revealed information, the AI character will no longer be confined to a virtual reality within a fictional game universe, but will become a competitor to Apple’s Siri digital assistant in an upcoming upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.
While it has long been the case that Microsoft’s Xbox line of game consoles have only really existed to play ‘Halo’ games, and Microsoft’s Game Studio division has only really existed to make ‘Halo’ sequels to play on Xbox consoles, it looks like the logical circle will finally be broken, allowing something from Microsoft’s gaming division to contribute directly to the company’s bread-and-butter: OS development. According to available information, Cortana will replace Bing, Microsoft’s ill-loved-but-actually-quite-good Google …
Procedural Generation: The Death of Design
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/16/14 at 03:15 PM CT
I first encountered the concept of ‘random number generation’ in RPGs shortly after my initial exposure to THE original RPG. Specifically, in the course of running weekly AD&D 2nd Edition games during high school, I came to embrace randomness in every way. I created elaborate tables containing every race and class, then mandated that players at my table create characters not by CHOOSING these fundamental aspects, but by ROLLING for them. My logic, at the time, was to prevent players from constantly creating characters that were cookie cutter carbon copies of each other. I knew that one of my players would ALWAYS be a dwarf fighter, given the chance, and I knew that my own preference would lead me to an eternal cycle of playing as the same wizard with the same complement of spells over and over again.
My introduction to Random Loot came as part of the same game. When I bought a complete four-volume set of the “Encyclopedia Magica” (which I still own), the massive treasure …
Iwata Knows Best? Two Big Ideas for Nintendo’s Future
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/08/14 at 02:44 PM CT
It seems nearly impossible to read an article about Nintendo anymore without a few ignoramuses in the comments section suggesting Nintendo ‘pull a Sega’ and become a games-only third-party developer/publisher. The second most common cry of idiocy in such instances is the call for Satoru Iwata to step down as president of the Japanese company.
I won’t dignify the first of those assertions with a response right now, but the motion for the removal of Iwata has recently suffered a blow. In a recent Q&A session (which was handily summarized by Ars Technica), Iwata has proven that he is aware of Nintendo’s current problems and that he does have a plan to deal with them. It helps bolster Iwata’s position in my mind, mainly because two of the big things he wants to do with the company are things I’ve been suggesting for quite some time.
First, Iwata wants to unify Nintendo’s handheld and stationary consoles. This seems like an essential step, considering that Nintendo’s …
Backlog: The Embiggening - February, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/02/14 at 05:07 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Like last year, February is proving to hold a bumper-crop of new releases after a disappointing and austere January. Also, miraculously, both licensed shovelware and multi-platform M-rated shooters are in short supply. So, with all the new games coming this month, surely my backlog will grow? Don’t count on it.
Two pieces of licensed trash still managed to appear this month: One, a tie-in to a movie that is itself a tie-in to the world’s greatest building-blocks; the other an annual release in the official religion of Rednecks (no, not Evangelical Christianity, the other one).
Outside of shovelware, the multi-platform releases don’t look particularly inspiring. First, there’s the PS4 and XBONE port of “Rayman Legends,” which was originally intended to be a WiiU exclusive before Ubisoft hedged their bets against the struggling 8th Generation pioneer and released the game on EVERYTHING. Then there’s the creatively-named …
Console Wars, Price Wars
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/25/14 at 07:50 PM CT
The 8th Generation Console Wars are already in full swing, with the three established factions ready to defend their unworthy champions upon the battlefield. In the early months of any Console War, picking a side and defending it to the death is common practice among hardcore gamers and nerds alike. It is also commonplace early on for gamers to lose no matter which side they pick.
With all three platforms struggling with the “NO GAEMZ” issue right now, many Console War Crusaders have chosen to nitpick on pricing. And in this worldwide market funk, threatening to plunge the globe back into recession at any moment, only fools (and the 1%) aren’t cautious with their entertainment budgets.
Let’s look at a cost breakdown of the three traditional consoles as well as the hybrid Steam Machines and see where frugal gamers should put their hard-earned cash. In each case, we need to consider the cost of the hardware itself (including add-ons), the cost of incidentals (like service …
Nintendo Cuts WiiU Sales Forcast. Sony and Microsoft Soon to Follow?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/19/14 at 03:42 PM CT
The big and overblown news story dominating the minds of Internet Trolls this week is that Nintendo has cut their WiiU sales forecast by 2/3, from 9 million units to 2.8 million. Plenty of businessy types and trolly types are pronouncing Nintendo’s DOOMED status, once again.
Nintendo may be going through a rough patch, and they may occasionally fixate on some gimmick to the detriment of the overall quality of their products, but saying the company is DOOMED and going out of business seems a bit ridiculous. We must bear in mind, after all, that Nintendo is a videogame company, while Sony is a generalist electronics company, movie studio, and recording label; and Microsoft is an enterprise-level productivity and OS developer. If either of those companies stopped making games, they’d continue making other products. If Nintendo stopped making games, the company would be gone. And despite a variety of missteps throughout their history (Virtual Boy, N64, MotionPlus, stereoscopic …
PlayStation Now? PlayStation, No!
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/12/14 at 01:52 PM CT
This past week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony finally pulled the sheet off the garage science project they’ve been tinkering with since they purchased Gaikai in July 2012. The result of almost two years of work? PlayStation Now, an underwhelming cloud-based service for streaming ‘classic’ PlayStation 3 games to PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Sony Bravia TVs, and… PlayStation 3. There has been mention of ‘future’ compatibility with non-Sony devices, but I believe that about as much as I believe Nintendo Virtual Console games will become compatible with Steam.
What exactly does PSNow bring to the table? For starters, there’s cloud-based saving and ‘always’ having the most up-to-date, fully-patched version of a game. For finishers, there’s the ‘customer friendly’ choice between renting individual titles or paying a subscription to ‘explore a range of titles.’
Sony expects us to pay for the dubious privilege of cloud-based saves and updated …
Backlog: The Embiggening - January, 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/05/14 at 02:09 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The holiday rush has come and gone once again, leaving us with the leftovers that didn’t make it out in time to be purchased as Christmas gifts. With the spectacularly low number of pre-determined January releases reaching a mere 5 titles (Steam, of course, has already had some Indie releases, with more coming throughout the month, but these releases are nearly impossible to predict in advance), it looks like there won’t be very many reasons for gamers to open their wallets again so soon after Christmas.
The five non-Indie games coming in January consist of the following:
One licensed piece of shovelware based on that lowest common denominator of anime series, “Dragon Ball Z.”
One single-game ‘compilation,’ which is essentially a rehash of the “Tomb Raider” reboot, given the game-of-the-year treatment with regard to DLC, and packaged with a couple of e-comics to give the story a bit of a boost. I’m not convinced …
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