By Nelson Schneider - 06/02/13 at 03:06 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:
This Spring I continued chiseling away at the lower strata of my backlog, blasting away everything from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras except for the entire ‘Phantasy Star’ series. Maybe I should play those in a marathon session this Summer…
Outside of those ancient games, I cleared out the remains of my PS3 backlog in preparation for the goodness that 2013 is finally bringing to that bereft console’s library (along with a bunch of horribleness, but we takes what we can gets), and continued to sample a wide variety of Indie games on Windows (with mixed results, just like last quarter). The one thing I desperately wanted to do in Spring was experience a good, recent RPG… but I was sorely disappointed, as the only good RPG I played in the Spring was originally released the year I graduated from high school.
After early disappointments with two different local co-op games, our staff co-op sessions were relegated to networked multi-player through Steam… which ended up taking almost the entire quarter for one game.
“Star Ocean: The Last Hope International” – 3.5/5
“Dead Block” – 2/5
“LittleBigPlanet Karting” – 2/5
“Overlord II” – 2.5/5
“Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled” – 3/5
“Kirby’s DreamLand 3” – 4/5
“Crystalis” – 4/5
“Shining in the Darkness” – 2/5
“And Yet It Moves” – 3.5/5
“Vessel” – 4.5/5
“Dwarfs!?” – 2.5/5
“Fallout” – 4/5
“Golden Axe Warrior” – 4.5/5
“LIMBO” – 2.5/5
“Borderlands” – 3.5/5
“Monster RPG 2” – 1/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Despite insisting on playing multiple games at once, Chris still managed to finish a long and involved slog through at least one game in what seems to be rapidly becoming his favorite genre. At the same time, he managed to finish a few shorter games as well. He also tossed in a few quick reviews of games that just didn’t inspire his muse enough to generate enough ideas to build into full reviews.
“LittleBigPlanet Karting” – 2.5/5 (Quick Review)
“Dead Block” – 3/5
“Far Cry 3” – 4/5
“Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” – 3.5/5 (Quick Review)
“The Eye of Judgment” – 2.5/5 (Quick Review)
“BurgerTime World Tour” – 3/5
“Cthulhu Saves the World” – 4/5
“Borderlands” – 4/5
Nick’s Reviews:
Nick is still a terrible, lazy bastard, but he was at least able to drag himself out from under his beer-soaked rock during the final week before deadline to write some reviews for co-op games we’ve played. And – miracle of miracles! – he also posted his “Dungeon Defenders” review… though about 3900 words shorter than required. He claims he heard “5000 characters,” but I distinctly said “5000 words.”
“New Super Mario Bros. U” – 4/5
“Borderlands” – 3/5
“Dungeon Defenders” – 4.5/5
Featured User Review:
This quarter’s featured user review winner is dbarry_22, for his review of “Waialae Country Club” for the Nintendo 64. Dbarry_22 has a well-earned reputation around these parts for being one of the most ardent, raging N64 fanboys ever forged in the fires of ‘NO GAEMZ.’ Yet he somehow managed to hold this specimen at arm’s length and objectively realize that it is a steaming mound of garbage. Not only that, but he wrote several in-depth paragraphs about the graphics, gameplay, and other aspects of a game that is both old AND about sports, a genre that usually lends itself to one-sentence reviews. For demonstrating that he actually is capable of objectivity with regards to his most religiously-loved platform and for a generally well-written chunk of text, we give dbarry_22 the nod this quarter. Congrats!
