The above video (taken by Gamer365) comes straight from Gamescom, where Grasshopper Manufacture is reportedly showing its latest game, a downloadable, side-scrolling action title called Black Knight Sword. While the camera man's maddening tendency to focus away from the action periodically detracts, the footage shows a mixture of hack-and-slash gameplay and a sort of puppet-show, paper cutout style of artwork that looks damn nifty. However, there is one, small problem with all of this. Up until this video started making the rounds, no one even knew this game existed.
In fact, technically, it still doesn't exist, for as we've learned in recent weeks, video games cannot actually exist until they have been announced via press release and/or a Game Informer cover story. To declare otherwise would be, at best, "shoddy journalism," and at worst, tear a hole in the very fabric of reality as we know it.
And yet, here sits this video, seeming proof positive that Black Knight Sword does very much exist, and does very much look kind of cool, despite a total lack of press release, cover story, or any of the typical tools we writers rely upon to do our jobs and maintain the desperately worn thread of our personal sanity. This video's existence is hacking away at that thread right now, driving me to the brink of utter madness.
Rather than think too much more about this, I'll just leave this other video here (featuring an interview with Akira Yamaoka by German TV show GamesWorld) for your perusal, and retreat to the darkest corner of my office to rock back and forth gently while sobbingly repeating the words "Black Knight Sword how can you exist? Black Knight Sword, how can I persist!" over and over, like some ceaseless, psychotic roundelay.
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