Open Letter to Trendy Regarding “Dungeon Defenders II”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/20/13 at 01:08 PM CT
Dear Trendy:
On October 8th, your Studio Director David Loyd wrote a blog/forum post announcing that “Dungeon Defenders II,” which was initially revealed to be a MOBA-style PVP game, was being rolled-back to square-one and restarted as a true sequel to the original hybrid of Tower Defense and Hack ‘n Slash RPG. This announcement was met with great enthusiasm by Nick (MeltedJoystick’s software engineer and obsessive “DunDef” player) and by some of our site’s most vocal and active members. As someone who once loved “Dungeon Defenders,” but came to barely tolerate the game as it progressed, I can only say that my enthusiasm at this announcement was tempered by a large dose of skepticism.
Trendy, you are a company that does not have a long or spotless track record with making games. Outside of various iterations of “Dungeon Defenders” and DLC for that game, your only other finished release is an obscure (and unsupported) iPhone game called “Chicken Coup” …
What is STEM, and Why Should You Care?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/13/13 at 01:22 PM CT
STEM has been in the news a lot lately. It seems that American students are shying away from studies in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I’m not proud of the fact that I’m a part of this statistic, but when not everyone has an aptitude for those fields, and when given a choice between keeping a 3.8+ grade point average (and the accompanying scholarships) studying Humanities or washing out of one of the STEM fields, I think most people who value their tuition dollars would choose the sure bet. Indeed, the best way to encourage more prospective members of the American workforce to study STEM fields would be to remove the harsh penalty for failure: Tuition should be free.
What? Oh, we’re not talking about that STEM, but the similarly-named gaming product!
That’s right, the people at Sixense have decided to cut the ties that bind them to Razer and instead crowdfund their successor to the Razer Hydra with a Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter ended …
Backlog: The Embiggening - October, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/05/13 at 02:22 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. 2013 seems to be following a suspicious trend: Each month leading up to the Christmas Spendstravaganza, one massively-overhyped, overbudgeted, and underwhelmingly mainstream “AAA” release is coming per month, destined to overshadow anything and everything else releasing alongside it. In October, the elephant in the room is “Battlefield 4,” a franchise that essentially serves as the hipster version of ‘Call of Duty.’
Like last month, however, the developers of shovelware have no fear of the month’s dominant release, and are continuing to churn-out incredible quantities of excrement. Superheroes seem to be the dominant theme for licensed games this month, with a “LEGO Marvel Superheroes” game, a tie-in for the rebooted “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie, and yet another Batman game in the ‘Arkham’ series. Aside from superheroes, there are also plenty of licensed games coming based on cartoons, including …
Steam Set to Escalate the Console Wars in 2014
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/29/13 at 02:45 PM CT
It has been a long time coming, but this past week Valve, the company behind the incredible Steam PC gaming platform, made three big announcements about their intentions in the nascent 8th Generation Console Wars.
While Valve had traditionally been content to cater to the PC gaming community, recently the company’s president, Gabe Newell, has expressed nothing but disgust for Microsoft and its Windows 8 operating system. At the same time, he has flip-flopped his stance on PC gaming vs. console gaming and embraced the PlayStation 3 with a hacked-together and poorly-utilized version of Steam for Sony’s failure of a console.
With Valve’s week of Living Room announcements, however, Gaben’s true intentions have been revealed, after months of speculation and rumor mongering. Let’s take a look at each announcement in turn.
Announcement 1 – SteamOS:
It’s obvious that Gaben hates Windows 8, primarily due to fear that Microsoft will eventually lock-down the OS entirely, …
Sega & Atlus: Two Star-Crossed Lovers
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/22/13 at 01:35 PM CT
Atlus, the publisher of niche Japanese games and spiritual successor to Working Designs, has followed in its forbearer’s footsteps and gone out of business. Index Digital Media, the owner of Atlus, filed for bankruptcy back in June, leaving ‘Persona’ fans to rend their garments and gnash their teeth over the future of Japanese-schoolchildren-vs.-demon RPGs.
However, there is no need for Atlus fans to despair, as Sega, that perpetual Miss Congeniality of the 3rd through 6th Generation Console Wars, snatched up Atlus for a meager $140 million (or 100 times that amount in Yen). In recent years, this kind of major acquisition by Sega-Sammy Holdings seemed like an impossibility, thanks to the company’s inconsistent financials.
The fact of Sega’s current ability to make any acquisition seems a non sequitur after their series of recent disasters, like “Aliens: Colonial Marines” and “Hatsune Miki: Project Diva F.” Of course, Sega has taken significant steps in …
VitaTV: Sony's First Good Handheld Decision
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/14/13 at 03:21 PM CT
This week, Sony announced their first sensible decision with regard to the PlayStation Vita (and, indeed, their entire handheld ecosystem). The VitaTV is a $100 microconsole ($150 with a controller, but it supports the DualShock 3 controllers we all presumably own already) that brings the world of PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Portable games to the big screen.
I’ve long been a proponent of handheld-to-TV adapters, and had great respect for Nintendo’s past decisions with the SNES’ Super Game Boy and the Gamecube’s Game Boy Player. But recently, Nintendo has been slacking in this capability, and there is currently no 100% legitimate way to play DS or 3DS games on anything but a tiny handheld device (though DeSmume is a rock-solid emulator for PC). With the WiiU’s similarities to the DS, I have been expecting a DS Player announcement for months, yet none has been forthcoming. Instead, Sony took the world by surprise with a device (currently slated only for release in …
Backlog: The Embiggening - September, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/07/13 at 01:37 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. Perhaps the Summer Game Drought never really brought its full force to bear this year due to the impending dread by smaller developers of the juggernaut mainstream releases coming in September. Not that September actually looks to have many good releases, just that it will have at least one release that will sell to every ne’er-do-well with a game console: “Grand Theft Auto 5.”
Of course, the shovelware and licensed dreck developers aren’t afraid of “GTA5.” They’re doing their own thing since their target audience is too young to buy a ‘GTA’ game over-the-counter (no matter how fervent the desire). Thus we’re getting a new game based on HotWheels toy cars (Do kids even play with those anymore?), a DS back-port of a 3DS/Vita LEGO game, and teenaged DC Comics superheroes. Slightly older teens, whose angst surely will cause them no end of despair at their inability to legally buy “GTA5,” will have to content …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/01/13 at 02:17 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:
Summer is traditionally associated with vacations and lots of time to have fun. But as adults with multiple jobs, the MeltedJoystick crew doesn’t really get to experience that anymore. Instead of chipping away at my backlog and clearing out a large number of games (like I wanted), I ended up falling into the trap of trying to play two different RPGs at the same time – one a single-player TRPG and the other a MJ online co-op game. It is a lesson I learned long ago, but I experienced a momentary lapse that doomed me to a Summer of backlog stagnation: NEVER try to play two RPGs at the same time!
The drought of local co-op games has continued, leaving us with only a compilation of old arcade games to tide us over. It didn’t really live up to expectations. But now “Dragon’s Crown” is finally available to us, and we’re …
Could Microsoft be Pushed Out of the Console Race?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/23/13 at 06:55 PM CT
A recent TechFlash report has revealed that not all is well in the Land of Microsoft. According to the report, ValueAct, an investment firm that buys percentages of struggling companies with the goal of guiding them back to profitability, wants to make some big changes... one of which is rumored to be the disposal of the Xbox Division.
The Xbox Division, despite a few recent years of meager profits, has historically been a massive money pit into which Microsoft has joyfully poured billions of dollars that would have been better spent making their existing products better. The total of these recent profits has done nothing to dent the ever-present black hole of back debt generated by the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 during its first few years of its life. With the overwhelming amount of ill-will generated by the Xbox One even before retail availability, it doesn't look like things will be getting any better during the 8th Generation. It would be best to take the Xbox Division, …
5 Conspicuous Absences from Steam Greenlight
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/17/13 at 04:06 PM CT
With Steam Greenlight opening the doors to anyone with $100 to submit their game project for potential publishing on the world’s most popular digital distribution service, it would make sense that every Indie game with any kind of public interest would join the struggle for votes. Yet all 5 of the Indie projects currently on my radar are conspicuously absent from Steam Greenlight. Do some of these developers have access to that mysterious method by which some Indie and small-budget games appear on Steam without going through the Greenlight process? Are these projects still too far off from a finish date (even though there are plenty of games appearing on Steam Early Access as paid alpha and beta tests)? Regardless of the reasons, these are some Indie projects that should appear on Steam Greenlight, and if they did, I would encourage everyone to vote for them.
1. Project Eternity
The state of PC RPGs has been pretty dismal since 2006, when “Neverwinter Nights 2” provided the …
View Archive
