Mezmero

Since Capcom has been in the habit of resuscitating their IPs I'd echo the mentions of Power Stone and Breath of Fire. But then it's no longer sequels that only I want.

I'll say again Prototype should get another chance. Just give it some production polish, some design tweaks, and drop the dour tone of the narrative and you could have something really cool.

Nuclear Throne is a game that was so close to having it all if it wasn't for Vlambeer's inability to provide quality assurance. In the hands of a studio with more talent and better follow-through a sequel could potentially be one of the best things ever.

With that Vampire the Masquerade game possibly in the can maybe Vampyr could be brought back in some way. Obviously Don't Nod are better known for a more bespoke approach to action games but they had so many interesting ideas in this game it would be a shame to abandon it entirely.

Dang, you've been going savage on Ratchet games lately. Did they run over your dog or something? Granted I've not played any of the portable games but it's hard for me to feel any resentment towards what is generally a feel-good franchise.

Personally I think the reboot is less of a stealth game and more a capital "I" Immersive Sim, a game more about exploring and learning an environment both for gameplay and narrative reasons. Like you wouldn't list Dishonored, Prey, Skyrim, etc. as stealth games just because they have stealth mechanics available. Hitman doesn't have a skill tree like those games but instead you get unlockables for levels that are meant to be replayable. If you're the type of player who likes to be one and done with games then I could see how that's not appealing. A dirty little secret about these new entries is that they're actually decent cover-based shooters, not the best nor ideal but totally do-able.

If anything ImSims are supplanting the stealth-action genre and I am here for it. I think the last sneak-centric game I played through was A Plague Tale and while I liked aspects of the game the linear design was precisely like walking a tight rope. And weirdly enough the stealth sections of that game are probably the MOST freedom you have to diverge and it somehow still feels restrictive.

I'd argue that the major flaw of this game is its combat encounter design. The look and feel of using powers is extremely cool, the enemies you use them on however are not fun to fight as many times as the game expects you to. We had a thread within the last year where people were asked what the worst type of difficulty boost is and I seem to recall 'bullet sponginess' winning by a landslide. Control has that in spades and it's made even more irritating that enemies scale in level the further you get into the game. All I know is that at the start of this game I felt fragile, and at the end of the game after getting all my powers and upgrades I still felt fragile, I just had more cool powers. For the record I like the game just fine but my goodness does it get overrated largely on the strength of its awesome aesthetics.

I'm a few hours into Paradise Killer. First of all this soundtrack is BUMPin'. The fiction of this game's world is crazy town banana pants. There are some really great quotes from the characters about morality that I'm constantly wanting to stop and write down. I do wish it could have a big budget overhaul because it has some high concept stuff that could probably be better expressed in a different type of game with higher production values. Still, for what it's working with it's a super ambitious piece of software.

Wishing Ben the best of luck. He was a treasure in his own way and I greatly appreciated what he brought to the table. Take it easy big man. Don't be a stranger.

Truth be told I didn't write much of anything on my list which is I why I didn't submit it on the 'share your list' thread. Something about the past week kinda robbed me of my drive to do so... Appreciate the mention though and hey it at least encouraged me to post some first draft write-ups real quick.

It's such a strange idea in the first place but at the same time I wouldn't count it out just yet. Say what you want about Ubisoft they have a decent track record with at least making interesting multiplayer concepts. Structurally this business model doesn't have as much appeal to me as I'm not super into live-games at the moment. I loved Black Flag minus the Abstergo garbage, though is it meant to be solely shooting and sinking ships? I don't recall if boarding combat is meant to be a thing in this or not but does that mean they'll update it to current AC melee standards? Maybe they'll even throw some For Honored DNA in there for good measure. Trip on this though: imagine a live multiplayer Rebel Galaxy...space ships instead of water ships...

I've been keeping up with my normal anime diet but in the past several months I've been catching up on loads of western cartoons I've been missing out on for a while. So here's a few:

In terms of an Anime of the Year, Eizouken is probably the objectively correct choice. However last year also had the latest season of Haikyuu! And man what a season.