redcream

I have been thinking about a game from my childhood for my Famicom. It’s in Japanese so I can’t remember what that game is but I do remember that it’s like a 4 player arena fighting with the main character being the Tecnos mascot. As I can remember, each character had a special ability. I remember characters can do a jump kick and they are in uniforms (probably). If anyone can figure out my vague descriptions it would be highly appreciated.

They can still talk over potentially everything in the comfort of their own home assuming that these press conferences will have some sort of streaming substitute so I will not worry too much. The Giant Bomb at Nite would be much more of an interesting problem to have especially since it is in the DNA of this site to pool together different industry personalities on the same couch and let them work their magic.

I am of the mind that the E3 tradition and hype-building still has a place in the gaming industry but I also want to be pleasantly surprised with how companies adapt and make the most out of it being cancelled. Maybe this would lead to something better than E3 and I'm all for that.

I should preface this by saying that I’m not an American citizen but I have been following US Politics closely as it is more robust than the politics of my country.

From the outside looking in, it’s apparent to me that the US media and the DNC is hell-bent on going against the Sanders campaign. I will provide some examples.

A cursory look at r/bernieblindness will provide plenty of examples on how the media manipulates their presentation and headlines to exclude Bernie or put him in a bad light. The DNC changed the rules for Bloomberg to be on the debate stage effectively buying his way to a nomination. The Iowa caucus, for example, is riddled with controversy as the app used for voting is bankrolled by another candidate and now the curious timing of Bernie being branded as a Russian asset just as his campaign is starting to ramp up in Nevada. I think that this would be used to justify the DNC’s use of superdelegates to choose another candidate if Bernie does not get a plurality of votes. More sinister things have happened.

When I look at the comments on Twitter, I can see all kinds of attacks, smearing him for not being a Democrat, or being a sexist (even though he has been fighting for the rights of women and LGBT all his life), or being a hypocrite for having three houses, or getting on private jets to campaign, or having a passionate following online, or running as a socialist even though he only wants to address the growing inequality of income between the rich and the poor, or being a Russian asset even though he has served in the government for all his life, I say to myself “Jesus Christ, this man just wants to help the average American have health care and a living wage and he’s getting smeared left and right. God I hope Twitter isn’t real life and I hope undecided voters are smart enough to not be convinced by these facile arguments.”

And yes, he isn’t a Democrat in how it is defined nowadays, but he sure ain’t a Republican either so where will he go? In a two-party system like the US, how can someone get nominated without falling in line with the DNC (a private organization prone to corruption, I might add). That argument is totally disingenuous it’s insane. It’s crazy to me that someone with integrity and honesty is struggling to be elected in a free country.

I can talk about this all day but this will have to do for now. I don’t know man. I got fed up with all the BS he gets from all over the place I just need to let out some steam. This man is selfless as one person can be. All I can see is his concern for his fellow Americans and it’s sad to see that he is facing an unfair fight and keeps fighting it with grace and resilience. But who knows? Maybe all this negative press will help him as much as it helped Trump. I know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions but at least let the man try to get you out of one. (I just put that there for emphasis. The US can be considered heaven in many respects compared to where I live so I have no high ground to call it hell).

TL;DR Bernie Sanders is great, he should be the Democratic nominee and the next president of the USA and I’m angered by the smears and underhanded schemes to bring him down both by the media and the elites of the Democratic party.

What a shame. The teaser they put out a while back looked fine and the pitch seems promising with Warren Spector going back to his Deus Ex roots.

God Hand or Mega Man Legends.

I'm glad I went back to this game.

Everyone in the Beastcast was gushing about it after its release and I was quick to hop in, eager to see what the buzz was about. So I played it expecting to be wowed at the very first instance. I appreciated the cool things in Timber Hearth like the remote control spaceship but nothing really stood out so I rushed to find the fun in it. I'm so impatient to enjoy this game that I barely paid attention thinking that I'll get the hype once I get to the ship and start the Groundhog Day cycle. Since it's an open world, I went to the first direction I can get my ship to land and it was in Brittle Hollow. Anyone who played this game knows that this planet can be daunting for beginners and alas this soured my taste for the game. I was falling through the void over and over and making my way back to ship so tedious even with the help of the warp machine and since I wanted to discover everything there is about this planet, it never occurred to me to visit other planets first. I struggled to find the fun. I mean, translating stuff is cool and all but why am I not engaged? Then I died, over and over and over barely making any progress which made me question why I even tried this game. I quit shortly after. I guess it's just not for me. I distanced myself for quite a while and shrugged at the thought of giving this game another shot. I remember being frustrated by its lack of purpose but I went back because SkillUp (a Youtube game reviewer) likened it to Subnautica and I love me some Subnautica. This time it clicked.

I read a beginners guide on Reddit beforehand and a suggestion that pointed me in the right direction is to take it slow and take to heart all the tools that is provided to the player in the opening area. Another great advice is to point at some clear objectives early on such as using the Signalscope and exploring the surfaces of the planets first before going deep into any of them. This filled my ship log with a breadth of information which gave me momentum. Following leads and filling the question marks in the ship log helped me get the groove I needed to get going and erase the aimlessness that I felt on the first try. Now I'm engaged. The beauty of the ship log's design is that it doesn't tell the player exactly what to do like a grocery list but it gives them a nice bird's eye view of where they can go next time to piece the story together and the game lets them discover it themselves. Going slow also served to gently reveal the mystery of this world to get the player invested without them getting overwhelmed.

One of the great things about this game is that it gives you a limited set of tools but it stretches their use in creative ways and the game gives you the luxury of finding out for yourself the said ways in which it twists its mechanics. The joy of discovery is the pull of this game and I have to admit that I used a walkthrough once I got stuck before the endgame but if I had paid more attention and had more patience I would have figured it all out on my own. That is how masterful the design of this game is. Every time I made a discovery, it was not random. It was written somewhere in the world somewhere and the acquisition of this knowledge and the application of it on different parts of the universe is the entire loop of this game.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this world. It's full of moments that inspires a sense of awe rarely replicated by other games. It has a handcrafted feel to it and every nook and cranny is intricately designed. It's hard for me to say that I had fun with this game in a traditional sense but I was heavily invested in it and I had a great time. Subnautica is still better.

@rorie Thank you for the quick response, Rorie! I'm definitely looking forward to the next episode. Cheers!

I'll be the one bringing this topic up this time. I know from time to time there will be complaints about the output GB crew and I assume they have a pipeline ready but it's been half a year since the last Demo Derby and a quarter year for Game Tapes. These are the features that made me subscribe to Giant Bomb years ago but they seemed to have slowed down for having it be a monthly feature in years past. All I'm saying is that I miss those videos and I hope that we get to have more of them this year.

Source: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/playstation-opts-to-skip-e3-for-second-year-in-a-r/1100-6472704/

"After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020," Sony said. "We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year."

I don't know if this is the right move for them. I understand skipping last year for not having any games to show but continuing down this road seems off somehow. I still believe in the value of one major bombastic event every year and I still appreciate all the hype that I look forward to June every year. E3 still has clout and reach imo. Although, I think if the value proposition of the Xbox Series X is better (i.e it's more powerful for the same/lower price) then I can see why Sony wouldn't want to be presenting alongside them on the same event. This could give them the chance to adjust things on the fly to be in parity with the Series X.

What even is E3 anymore? Any thoughts?

I really like how it looks! Its monolithic design will absolutely stand out as a showpiece in any living room. The name doesn't roll off the tongue at all though. I wonder if this will have a Wii U-like effect on the console. We'll see.