Icemael

I've been playing it a bunch. It's okay. It's a metroidvania and not very similar to Dark Souls aside from the corpse run stuff. The art is pleasant to look at for sure but it's nothing spectacular, and compared to other games in this style the environments are pretty boring and monotonous. Areas are distinct from each other but within each area everything just kind of looks the same. Not much sense of place, doesn't feel like a cohesive world. Compare it to games like Symphony of the Night or even the subsequent handheld Castlevanias and the level design just doesn't hold up.

Also, it's been generally very easy and when you do get to a somewhat challenging part there's the issue of save points being relatively sparse. Even dying just two or three times on a given part can end up feeling like absolute torture when every time you have to spend several minutes running through easy, boring, monotonous shit.

The abilities you unlock as you go along are pretty cool and the boss fights seem well-designed, the last one I completed (mantis fight) in particular was really great. The regular enemies are generally uninteresting and a bit tedious to fight though.

It's a decent little game and props to the developers for putting in the effort with the hand-drawn art, but it doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done much better in numerous other games. It's not something I'd recommend unless you're really craving a metroidvania and have already played all of the better games in the style.

Rupupu Cube: Lup Salad is great. Never released outside of Japan but there are region-free DS and PSP versions. No knowledge of Japanese necessary other than for navigating menus but that can easily be done by trial and error.

Put your keyboard in your lap (or put it to the side if you're playing with a gamepad) and pull your monitor towards you until it's at the edge of the desk. Not only will there be no surface for the light to reflect from, but the screen will take up more of your visual field for a better, more immersive experience.

@rethla: Rerunning a level for fun or for a Silent Assassin challenge is very different from rerunning a level to check off x number of boxes (many of which are inane or uninteresting stuff like "use this starting location" or "kill a target with a headshot"), and playing through an old level on a new setting with a wealth of changes and new features is very different from rerunning a level that's the same as when you've previously played it.

@atwa: You don't need to complete x number of challenges to have a decent grasp on a level (in fact, by the first time you succeed in a mission you will likely already know about most of the different opportunities, and completing them will mainly be a matter of having the patience to go through the motions on consecutive playthroughs), and that shouldn't be a requirement in the first place. If Professional mode had been available back when the missions were first released I would've immediately played all of them on that setting, and ideally I'd like to go immediately to Professional for the season 2 maps when they come out (but presumably that won't be an option). Learning the layout of the map, what disguises you need in order to enter certain areas, where the targets are etc. is part of the fun, and it would be even more fun if you could go through that process of exploration while simultaneously having cool features like damageable disguises etc. Splitting up the process so that you are forced to run through the level multiple times checking off stupid little boxes before you get to play it in the coolest way possible (which is made decidedly less cool by the fact of your already knowing most of what there is to know about the level, and having played and replayed it to the point of almost being sick of it) is a terrible design decision.

@jesus_phish: I was never interested in the additional starting locations and weapons. Give me a lockpick and some coins and let me go procure anything else I need, including disguises, in the level itself. Starting in a great location with a great disguise and great weapons takes away half the point of the game for me.

I also didn't love the escalation missions I've tried. The main missions are so much cooler and grander in scale, with the targets being unique characters with unique dialogue and personalities, and in addition to that you have all of the cool unique interactions, the elaborate assassination options etc. I don't have much interest in replaying a level to kill generic NPCs in what mostly end up being pretty boring and generic ways, even if the escalating conditions do make it a little bit more interesting.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-25-hitman-is-getting-an-ultra-hard-professional-difficulty-level-next-week

"Unlockable only for main missions where you've already hit the Mastery Level 20 cap for that locale"

Yeah, fuck this. I'm not going to pedantically replay missions over and over just to check off all the Mastery Level boxes. A shame, because the Professional mode itself sounds really awesome.

It's not a deal-breaker but it's lame. Either you don't have voiced lines and you make that work, or you go with full-on voice acting and you commit to that (which doesn't mean that the player character has to be a chatterbox -- see MGSV). This in-between thing of voicing only certain lines is something that might be understandable in a low-budget game with tons of dialogue where it's simply not economically feasible, but a huge company like Nintendo have no excuse for going that route with the next major entry in one of their biggest franchises. It just feels cheap and half-assed.

A little bit. Kamiya has a pretty great track record (though I didn't like his last one) and what I've read about stuff that they only showed behind closed doors sounded cool. But on the other hand, the public E3 demos didn't look too hot, and if Microsoft went so far as to actually cancel the game after years of development and multiple E3 showings, there must have been serious reasons for it.

You paid $150 for a pin and a pen and a figurine and some stickers and they made you wait five months?

@rorie: The last couple of days it's actually been working fine for the most part (still on Chrome with the same add-ons as before), but just now I went to the latest video podcast which I definitely watched a portion of recently, and it started me from the beginning instead of continuing where I left off. It's been a couple of days since I watched that first portion though. Is there a time limit on resuming?

I didn't mind the omission of Abzu in the top three much, but I though it was a real shame that Samorost 3 didn't even get mentioned during the discussion. Not only does that game have a great soundtrack, it also ties music into the world and the puzzles in some cool ways.

Also, if you want to talk about a real robbery, Dark Souls III got mentioned like once in all of their GOTY videos. It wasn't even brought up in the "best-looking" category, where even fucking Overwatch was discussed.