Will Always Online Games Destroy Gaming Life as We Know It?
Chris Kavan - wrote on 03/23/13 at 11:13 AM CT
Scandal! Anger! Absolute hate! For those of you who have been living under a rock, March 05, 2013 was supposed to be the day EA gave us the next thrilling chapter in everyone's favorite city building saga, SimCity. Instead it has turned into a nightmare of epic proportionss. So bad, EA had to pony up a free game to smooth things over. But it hasn't stopped the landslide of epic hate that has been flowing from the Internet since the day of release.
The funny thing is, didn't we go through this a year ago - you know, with Diablo III? Granted, I think Blizzard Entertainment handled things about 1 million times better than EA has - plus Diablo III has a very respectable reviews whereas SimCity has been slammed by players and critics alike for being, well, pretty terrible. If you're going to pull this kind of crap to make people be online, the least a company can do is make a game that people actually enjoy playing.
I myself didn't really have that big of issue with Diablo III - my …
Xbox Durango Possible Specs Leaked
Nick - wrote on 03/20/13 at 01:58 PM CT
It appears we may now know a little more about what project Durango hides beneath it's speculative veneer. Everyone wants to know what Microsoft is going to have for it's next gen Xbox console, code named Durango. It appears the site VGLeaks has published what is believed to be a leaked installation for the new Xbox's documentation. This documentation has some interesting things in it, but who knows if this is actually real, or just an old copy long since changed. Either way, here is a quick run down of the most interesting points.
1. Durango will have improved hardware so it is more powerful, including a better CPU, GPU, and larger hard drive. Not that interesting, cause an Xbox basically is a computer, of course a new one is going to be better!
2. Every Xbox will have a mandatory Kinect sensor that has to be used. That way game makers know they can use the technology in their games and no gamer is left out. What it actually means is Microsoft (big brother) can watch …
The 7 Worst Types of Gaming Fanboys
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/17/13 at 03:31 PM CT
For everything that exists, there are fanboys. Thanks in large part to the Internet and its ability to bring people together based on common interests, fanboys (and fangirls) have been able to unite and form pocket communities where they can feel safe in knowing that everyone around them loves their favorite thing as much as they do.
The problem with fanboys is when they try to interact with the rest of the Internet or with people in the real world. In these situations, fanboys come off as abrasive, annoying, and, quite frankly, a little bit insane. Here is my list of the 7 worst types of fanboys I’ve encountered. Hopefully the knowledge provided here will help others identify these fanboys early on, and thus avoid being sucked into the quagmire of a fanboy argument.
7. Pedo-Taku
Who They Are:
While regular Otaku have been around for decades, and are known for their adoration of all things J-pop, Pedo-Taku are a relatively new phenomenon spawned out of Japan’s …
Backlog: The Embiggening - March, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/07/13 at 02:53 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. With March comes Spring! The long, cold, dead months of Winter have passed us by, leaving us with the promise of rebirth and renewal. The same can be said of videogame releases: March is the traditional release month for delayed games that missed their holiday deadlines. So in March, we’re getting the awesome-looking “Dragon’s Crown” and the long-awaited “Pikmin 3”… oh… no we’re not, as both of those games had their releases pushed back EVEN FURTHER. Oh well, let’s see if there’s anything salvageable amongst the rest of the crap…
Terrible licensed games and shovelware look to have been reproducing as prodigiously as the bunnies of the upcoming Easter/Vernal Equinox holiday. Every platform under the sun is getting a game based on “The Croods” (a CG movie about cavemen) and the aging HD Twins are getting a new ‘Naruto’ game (Is that annoying bastard STILL getting new episodes?). Not to be left out of the …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2012
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/03/13 at 12:13 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:
Winter saw our co-op gaming increase significantly from the previous quarter, thanks in large part to the release of the WiiU. Of course, after blasting through 3 WiiU games, we’re out of ammo now and the system will be collecting dust until at least June (provided “Pikmin 3” doesn’t get pushed back again). Outside of co-op games, I went hardcore Indie during the Winter, experiencing a wide range of quality (or lack thereof) in the process. I also continued diligently chipping away at my backlog, chiseling out a significant amount of the 5th and 6th Gen layers of strata.
“Super Mario Bros. X” – 5/5
“Torchlight 2” – 3/5
“The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition” – 3/5
“Beyond Good & Evil HD” – 2.5/5
“Brave Fencer Musashi” – 2/5
“New Super Mario Bros. U” – …
A Tale of Two SteamBoxen: Episode 2
Matt - wrote on 02/23/13 at 02:26 PM CT
Months ago MeltedJoystick Editor Nelson and I determined to build our own SteamBoxes. We had discovered the joys of Steam and had been playing games like “Dungeon Defenders” for countless hours, Nelson on his aging laptop and me on my 2010 Mac Pro, obviously with Windows installed. Steam made us feel like it had the potential to be a hit in the living room connected to a large HDTV. Playing from my couch has always been my natural place for gaming, so the lure of a SteamBox was appealing. Also there were many rumors at the time, which have now been confirmed, that Steam was prepping their own SteamBox to break into the living room and take on the traditional console giants. For all of these reasons Nelson and I took the plunge and built our very own SteamBoxen. Nelson assembled his in August of last year and you can read about in part one of this tale, and I finally built my system in January of 2013.
After much consideration I wanted my system to have two functions: 1) …
A Tale of Two Steamboxen: Episode 1
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/22/13 at 05:56 PM CT
After being lured in by the wonders of Steam back in February of 2012, it soon became obvious that the laptop I use for most things computing-related just didn’t cut it as a dedicated gaming PC. Indeed, the entire concept of a ‘dedicated gaming PC’ seemed alien to me as someone who had long tried – and failed – to maintain a PC that was capable of doing a variety of things, gaming included.
It was around this same time that the first rumblings of Valve’s upcoming attempt at entering the game console market began to shake the foundations of the industry. A PC that acts like a game console? Madness! Of course, after thinking about it for a short time, I concluded that, no, Valve’s idea is far from madness, as gaming PCs and gaming consoles abruptly became one-and-the-same during the 7th Generation.
With this idea in mind, erstwhile MeltedJoystick guest-blogger and my friend from grad school, Matt, and I made a pact: We would each build a ‘SteamBox’ – that is, …
The PS4 Debuts... Without the Actual PS4
Chris Kavan - wrote on 02/21/13 at 07:20 PM CT
So Sony had been hyping their big Feb. 20th meeting for some time. Granted, most everyone knew it was going to be about their next generation system - but what would they show? The big tease is finally over and what we got was.... a controller - some game trailers - some specs and a promise that at E3 they were really going to show us the goods.
The good news is that, despite early rumors, the PS4 (as it is now officially known) will not have to be connected to the Internet to run and it will be able to play used games. Granted, they're pushing the social aspect (much like Microsoft) but people still living in the Internet stone age (often not by any choice of their own) can at least know they'll be able to play games offline. Of course my main gripe - the lack of backwards compatibility - isn't going to change - so I'm still going to be a late adopter to the next system.
Although the PS4 was nowhere to be seen, they did debut a new Dual Shock 4 controller. While it's not a …
Windows 8 on Atom Tablets: How Microsoft Entered the Handheld Market
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/16/13 at 04:46 PM CT
Back in July, I lamented the sorry state of the tablet PC and listed the three reasons I didn’t own one. As of a month ago, those reasons no longer apply. While initially I planned to buy the Microsoft Surface Pro, I was turned off on that hardware for one reason. No, not the egregious price, as I don’t foresee Windows tablets dropping below $600 as a minimum anytime soon. Instead, what changed my thoughts about an official Microsoft x86 tablet from excitement to apathy was the fact that the Surface Pro runs on an Intel Core i5 processor. My laptop runs on an Intel Core i5 processor, and the product description when I bought it said it was supposed to get up to 4.5 hours of battery life, the same as the Surface Pro… yet in actuality my laptop has a difficult time hitting 2 hours of battery life, leaving me with a similar expectation from Microsoft’s tablet. If tablets are meant to do one thing well, it’s to last a long time on a full battery, and a current-generation i5 …
The Razer Hydra: Beyond Futility, the Journey’s End
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/09/13 at 05:35 PM CT
A month ago, I began a quest in search of a motion-control solution for the PC that was comparable to Nintendo’s Wiimote and Nunchuck combo for playing FPSes. While initially it seemed my quest was one of pure futility, fraught with a confusing mixture of terrible PC controllers, big price tags, and questionable hacks, fate, it seems, was on my side. While on my Amazon.com account page processing the return of the god-awful Splitfish SFX Evolution that I bought on a whim, something on my Wish List caught my eye: Someone on Amazon Marketplace was selling the Razer Hydra for $65.
While I had initially dismissed the Razer Hydra as out of the question based on the fact that Steam, the leader in impossibly cheap software sales, is STILL selling the thing for $140; the current Razer Hydra model is not wireless; and self-proclaimed fat-faced reviewer, Aaron Steinmetz, said the controller is not good for playing “Borderlands,” the game that specifically started me on this quest; I …
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