Roadshell

That might have been reasonable if what they were giving us was a nostalgic paradise where we were getting a large portion of the N64 library for out money but they're only really offering something like a dozen games. That's not good enough at all. Honestly, I wish they'd just sell the damn games ala carte for $10 a pop or something.

Yeah that looks familiar, I must be mixing that up with another game that uses that music.

Trying to remember a PC 2D side scroller from the late 90s or early 2000s but only have some very vague memories of it. It was some kind of shareware type thing that might have appeared on one of those "250 Great Games for Windows" type compilations or maybe I downloaded it from somewhere. I think it had a vague sci-fi theme to it, maybe a Robocop ripoff type thing.

Aside from that I only have two key details that might be a giveaway. 1. its music consisted of (presumably unlicensed) chiptuny instrumental versions of "Karma Police" by Radiohead and "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode and 2. I remember that the "free life" pickup was some kind of cross and whenever you picked it up a voice would pop in and say "Jesus is here!" but it wasn't some kind of religious game, I'm pretty sure that was meant to be ironic. Maybe I'm getting that last thing confused with another game.

Not a lot to go on but I do hope that bootleg soundtrack is enough to spark someone's memory.

Anyone remember I Love Mondays? They should bring that back.

I'm not sure why there's this tacit assumption that unionization is going to help this. Unions represent workers in negotiation with management, which is great if you're trying to get better pay and benefits and it's probably worth doing on that level (I'm not anti-union), but it's also their job to protect workers and if it's workers that are engaging in sexual harassment the unions often come to their aid and make them harder to fire. Just look at all the bullshit that police unions defend from their members.

Maybe they should then hire some young talent that isn't already established like Abby, Dan, and the Nextlander crew now are, don't have families tearing them away, and maybe want a job with heath insurance and a steady paycheck?

I don't doubt that Jeff and co "work hard." It's readily apparent that they do. I think the bigger question is why it's come to this point. I doubt that the site was truly blindsided by the Nextlander crew giving their notice, they likely knew well ahead of time, but even if they didn't it's been three months and they're still short-staffed and don't even seem to be looking for new replacements. I would think this would be a pretty easy job to fill what with the sheer number of people interested in working in the games media industry, so from the outside looking in it seems pretty odd that it's taking as long as it is.

Well, my annual subscription doesn't run out until November... so "trapped" might be a good way of putting it. Had I known it would be like... this... I probably wouldn't have renewed last year and if there aren't marked improvements I won't be renewing this year.

People are aware of that but... at the end of the day it's kind of not our problem. Like, if a publisher puts out a bad and broken game that doesn't deliver on anything it promises and Jeff gives it a negative review he isn't going to be dissuaded from doing that by because the developer whined and said "but you don't understand, a bunch of our staff got sick of the corporate environment and quit on us, the game would have been good if that hadn't happened." Jeff may well have sympathy about that and may report on it, but at the end of the day the developer is still charging for a sub-par product.

Uh huh. The fact that Jeff seems to be primarily interested in broken shit he digs through Steam to find is a lot less charming when he's the main voice of the site rather than one of many voices. Frankly I'm a little sick of Jan's Pokemon shit too. The site needs to get some more generalists pronto.