Year in Review: 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/29/13 at 03:40 PM CT
The year 2013 has come and gone. Every year has its great successes as well as things that didn’t quite go as planned. Let’s take a look back at what the past year brought us:
Top 5 Fails
5. Google Becomes Evil, Implements Draconian Youtube Copyright Enforcement
One would think that a company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil” would endeavor to always serve as a vox populi in the face of other companies who want to stifle everything from Free Speech to Freedom of the Press in the name of keeping trade secrets and turning massive profits. Yet Google has already begun the slow decline into Evil, as all enormous companies inevitably do. In 2013, Google reworked the way copyright infringement claims work on Youtube – the most popular video-sharing site on the web. What does this have to do with videogames? Well, in the wake of these changes, writers, commentators, critics, and ‘Let’s Play’ performers – all of whom use sizable chunks of in-game footage in their …
I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas (and I’m Totally Okay with That!)
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/22/13 at 07:13 PM CT
This year marks the first time in (approximately) 24 years that I have refrained from providing a written Christmas Wish List for my family. I started this tradition at around age 10 when my tastes and interests really began to solidify, and after a first disastrous year of receiving videogame-related gifts in the form of things my Troll Dad thought would be good, such as “Sky Shark,” “Cobra Triangle,” and “Jaws” for the NES (all of which I hated and later sold). Every year between then and now, my Christmas has been filled with a loot-splosion of games I specifically wanted to play, and every year I received almost everything I asked for.
So what changed? Have I finally grown up at age 34? Have I lost interest in what has been my hobby for the vast majority of my life? No, nothing so dramatic or unrealistic. Instead, what has changed is that I don’t really NEED anymore videogames. And with games crossed off the list of things I could request as Christmas presents, …
Videogame Music: A Feast for the Ears
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/14/13 at 01:56 PM CT
As I graduated high school and moved onto college, I had great dreams for my musical future. Not only was I the most talented musician (saxophone) in my entire high school, but I managed to convince the music teacher to let me compose a piece for performance during my final senior concert.
Unfortunately, college level music education quickly taught me that I was not better than anyone or anything. Faced with endless hours of singing and piano (neither areas of music in which I had any interest or inclination), I never saw a single true composition course, as those were reserved for those stout souls who managed to survive the first two years of what was dubbed the “Music Academy.” Needless to say, I quickly became fed-up with the whole situation, accepted a minor in music instead of a major, and switched to Humanities.
But what was it that made me want to study music in the first place? I certainly had no illusions of wanting to be the next Billy Ray Cyrus, Backstreet Boy, …
Backlog: The Embiggening - December, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/07/13 at 10:51 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The end-of-year trend of a single massively mainstream multi-platform release each month has come to an end. Indeed, releases in general seem to have ground to a halt as the shovelware developers have already blown their collective load and are just waiting for the cash to come pouring in (and since retailers have refused to allow returns of opened videogames for nearly 30 years, once it’s in, that money will be permanently trapped and used to craft yet MORE shovelware). Let’s take a look at the last minute stragglers that will make it out the door in 2013.
December is giving us a single piece of licensed crap, based on the ‘World Series of Poker.’ And it’s not even new, but a port from the Xbox Live Arcade!
Even in non-shovelware, “AAA” gaming land, there are only a few releases… and NONE of them are new! Instead, “Deadfall Adventures” is porting from PC to Xbox 360, “Painkiller: Hell & Damnation” is porting …
Review Round-Up: Fall 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/01/13 at 11:40 AM 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:
After last quarter’s extremely short supply of staff reviews here at MeltedJoystick, Fall seems to have allowed things to ‘fall’ back into place. I focused on playing through some of my shorter games (or games that I thought would be shorter) while the staff plugged-away collectively at both the epic MMO undertaking of “Dragon Nest” and the local undertaking of “Dragon’s Crown.” And we managed to finish them both! On the whole, I ended up playing a lot of good-but-not-quite-great games this quarter, with only one breaking the 4.5 star barrier.
“Bastion” – 4/5
“RAGE” – 4/5
“PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale” – 2/5
“Dragon’s Crown” – 4/5
“Dragon Nest” – 4/5
“Glory of Heracles” – 2/5
“Bioshock” – 3/5
“Anodyne” – 4.5/5
“Okamiden” – 4/5
Chris’ …
Why I’m Not Buying a PlayStation 4
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/24/13 at 03:41 PM CT
It’s official: All of the 8th Generation consoles are in the wild and ready for purchase by legions of feverish fanboys. While the Xbox One (henceforth referred to only as XBONE) has been received with little fanfare and much hostility (finally bringing the general gaming public’s opinion toward Microsoft’s gaming division in line with my own), the PlayStation 4 is seemingly being hailed as some sort of gaming messiah. Yet I have absolutely zero interest in Sony’s latest gaming machine.
Unlike other gaming media outlets, MeltedJoystick doesn’t take bribes in exchange for positive reviews. We purchase games and hardware with our own funds and review them on our own time. We may never produce reviews days or weeks ahead of a product’s release, but when we do produce a review, you can be guaranteed that the reviewer actually wanted to experience the product in question (which makes negative reviews all the more condemning). Of course, my lack of interest in the PS4 and …
Media as the First Post-Scarcity Society
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/17/13 at 02:32 PM CT
Anyone who has ever enjoyed an episode of “Star Trek” probably has fantasized at least once about how much better life must be in the world of the 24th Century. With replicator technology and near-limitless clean energy, humans (and humanoid aliens) no longer need to work for a living, but can instead focus their lives on the things they love. The result is a universe in which most people seem to be perpetually retired, pursuing hobbies or obsessions without fear of being unable to pay for food or utility bills.
Whether or not the real world will mimic “Star Trek” is still an open question. Many of the key technologies are still firmly in the realm of fiction, while others – such as the ability for anything to travel faster than the speed of light – increasingly appear to be impossible. Yet there is one area of our modern day economy that does closely resemble the whole of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future: Media. With the conversion from analog, physical media …
Backlog: The Embiggening - November, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/09/13 at 03:28 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The trend I observed last month – that the build-up to Holiday 2013 is featuring a single massively-mainstream release per month that overshadows everything else released that month to the detriment of gaming as a whole – is continuing into November with the destined-to-be-record-breaking release of “Call of Duty: Ghosts.” In addition to that guaranteed earner, November is also the release month for Sony’s and Microsoft’s 8th Generation hardware, with all the exclusives that come with that… except the PS4 and XBONE don’t really appear to have all that many exclusives, with their launch libraries instead dominated by multiplatform releases of November games (that are also available on Sony’s and MS’ 7th Generation hardware) and day- late- dollar- short ports of other 7th Generation games that were released in the past few months. Why should we be excited about the 8th Gen, again?
As Christmas draws ever nearer, the …
Vaguely Related Review: Desura
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/02/13 at 04:32 PM CT
It has been close to two years since those heroes of modern PC gaming, GOG and Steam, dragged me kicking and screaming back into the realm of spending the largest chunk of my gaming time on a Windows box instead of a console. Of course, the antics of Microsoft, Sony, and the Big Three publishers helped…
With nothing but happy experiences buoying me, I decided to look into yet another PC gaming hub – one that gets a significant amount of praise from Linux fans: Desura. I first ran across the name Desura being spouted by “Free as in Free Speech, not Free as in Free Beer” software proponents. Apparently, Desura was supposed to be some kind of home for small-time Indie games that couldn’t bear the thought of being shackled with Steam’s DRM (or, more than likely, didn’t have the backing to make it into Steam directly and didn’t have the quality to attract enough Greenlight votes). Based upon this hearsay, I had no real desire to look into Desura. I may like Indie games, …
5 MORE Conspicuous Absences from Steam Greenlight
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/27/13 at 07:16 PM CT
Back in August, I took a look at several upcoming PC games that have been pinging my radar since they were announced, yet hadn’t managed to make their way onto Steam Greenlight, the community-based approval system. After getting positive confirmation from the developers of several of these games that they would indeed be coming to Greenlight, currently none of them have.
However, those 5 games don’t exist in a vacuum, and they have been joined on my radar by other games I’ve either only recently learned of or that were recently released on other platforms. In every case, none of them appear on Steam Greenlight, and I can’t understand why. Do these developers not want to invest a minimal $100 donation to Child’s Play for the opportunity to get their game in front of hundreds of thousands of gamers?
1-3. “Beggar Prince,” “Legend of Wukong,” and “Star Odyssey”
These three games form what is called the “RPG Trifecta” by their developer, Super Fighter …
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