Seeric

I wouldn't pay $40 for this, but it doesn't look that bad from what I've seen of it. The better Sonic games have always differed from Mario games by focusing on short yet very dense levels filled with branching paths designed to add replay value while the worst games have all tried (and failed) to mimic Mario with longer, more guided or cinematic levels which end up feeling like a slog.

Judging by the Quick Look, this one falls into the former category as I saw plenty of alternate branches in most of the levels and there seemed to be a ton of platforming variety. Dan did complain about the controls a fair amount so maybe the issues are things that don't come across as well while watching, but the gameplay looked kinda decent to me for the most part.

It feels like the creators of this game are in on the joke of Bubsy being bad. Except, they somehow didn't understand that, while people like laughing at bad games and can even have fun playing them, pretty much nobody is going to shell out $30 for a bad game.

To really put things into perspective, you could get Cuphead and Hollow Knight, both of which came out this year, for just $5 more than the non-sale price of this game or you could get the full set of Shovel Knight games for $5 less. Astounding.

I never cared for the original Metroid 2 and I've been wary of the franchise ever since Other M, but this remake looks good. Hopefully this proves to be as big of a leap up from 2 as Zero Mission was from the original. I'm happy about two things in particular that I noticed in this video:

1) The doors to hazardous rooms are color coded, such as the red glow on the door leading to the fire room

2) The aeon pulse ability looks to be a vast improvement over the X-Ray Scope. I initially thought it was revealing breakables within the blue pulse's area, but as far as I can tell it functions by revealing breakables for several seconds within the entire region of the giant, semi-transparent rectangle on the minimap. This is really nice because the duration and wide area covered make it so you don't need to constantly stop and check every single suspicious rock; you can hunt down secrets without killing the pacing.

On a final note, the counter seems like it has a nice sense of risk/reward since, unlike the dodge in Other M, it looks like you need good timing instead of just spamming it. That said, I think it would be nice if you could toggle it off entirely like you can do with upgrades in Super Metroid for anyone who really does want to stick entirely with the gun.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will only be a proper sequel if it introduces at least 3 or 4 more characters who either call themselves Ansem or who don't call themselves Ansem but look like other characters who do call themselves Ansem.

"Simple and Clean" being the theme song for the first game in this crazy mess is still my favorite part of this whole series.

It seems like the main thing to take away from this is that the game wants you to always be as specific as possible when asking questions so that you don't accidentally trigger a later plot point. For example, "Did you kill him?" probably won't work while "Did you kill Doctor Dekker?" might work because the 'him' doesn't necessarily imply Dekker. Her Story doesn't really have this problem, but that's largely thanks to that game being designed around prodding for fragments out of order to begin with.

Some sort of tutorial with explicit examples of what would be considered a 'bad question' would probably have helped a lot.

This looks like everything I hated about the 'in your face attitude' of Wildstar, but turned up to a much worse degree.

I hate this type of humor not because it's offensive (though it's certainly offensive to humor), but because it's just so damn lazy. There's nothing remote clever or amusing about it, it's just annoying. If this game is meant to take place within the notebook of a teenager, then he must be the type of kid who doesn't just draw a penis on his desk in class, but does so and thinks it's so funny that he decides to keep shouting "Penis!" over and over until school security needs to drag him away.

I'm really happy to see a Quick Look of Hollow Knight! It's been my favorite indie game of 2017 so far and it absolutely deserves as much attention as it can get. Watching Alex attempt Greenpath seemingly without realizing that you can look down to pan the camera and bounce off of enemies by slashing downward at them was pretty entertaining.

Not showing the new Playstation at E3 is an unexpected move, but it might actually be their best option. E3 for Sony is, more than anything else, the main point in the year where they clash with Microsoft as directly as possible and, even if both companies have great press conferences, people in general will be comparing them to see which one is better and the general consensus can have a real impact on console sales.

Sony knows perfectly well that people want to know more details about the new version of the Playstation 4, but it's also a subject which will inevitably lead to divisive opinions and which they absolutely cannot afford to have their playerbase go against them on; it's fine when something weird near the end of a console's lifecycle like the PSP Go or the 32X flops, it's devastating when a new version of their expensive home console doesn't catch on. Above all, Sony wants to come out of E3 looking like the winner and if Microsoft decides to spend their time talking about the new version of the Xbox One it will only aid them. They want to focus on cool new games and technology coming out with the existing version of the console in mind to give existing owners something to be excited about and to give people who are on the fence one more reason to choose their side over Microsoft's.

When they announced the poorly-received $599 price of the PS3 at E3 Sony was hit by a larger amount of negative backlash than they even remotely imagined, so it's no surprise that they don't want to risk stumbling into that situation again. For Sony, E3 is a time for generating hype and winning over consumers and, even though it may make some unhappy, the delicate, careful messaging they'll need to surround the Playstation NEO with and the divisive responses they'll receive no matter what they announce about it are better off being put on hold for a future time.

Honestly, with all the landmines it seems like Sony and Microsoft need to avoid setting off at E3 this year, it's really starting to seem like Nintendo's decision to just sort of sidestep the whole thing was the better option.

EDIT: Thinking about it a bit more, this really is one landmine that Sony really, really wants to avoid setting off. Just the quote in this article alone of "all or a very large majority of games will also support the high-end PS4" will likely spark all sorts of flames. So far, people have mainly been worrying about games not running well for the original PS4 or games simply not taking much, if any, advantage of the Playstation NEO's advanced capabilities. Now, it seems like we might also have to worry about some games not running at all unless you have the original PS4. This thing is a messaging nightmare waiting to happen.

I'll almost certainly be getting this game if it falls under $15 during the upcoming Steam summer sale. I love the early parts of Equinox, but the later parts are just actively hateful with blocks and essential rooms hidden behind things, outright invisible blocks, invisible conveyor belt blocks, and all sorts of other horrible things. A modern isometric puzzle game which is challenging and clever without actively going out of its way to be as hateful as it can possibly be at every opportunity would be great.

As to the movement options, I would probably choose the weird isometric controls over the more standard ones, but not for the sake of nostalgia. Most of the difficult jumps and other hazards will likely be made with the isometric perspective in mind and I'd rather be making those jumps while holding a specific direction over fiddling with pushing the d-pad or analogue stick diagonally.

Great article and I also have always really liked the theme Final Fantasy IX has of 'giving meaning to one's life'. Vivi's role in the game is probably the one which most strongly reflects the theme, but I also appreciate how even the main villains stick to the theme.

It's heavily implied in a few spots that Queen Brahne's destructive grab for power is her attempt to fill the void left by the death of her husband and all Kuja did was encourage her to go down that path (and it would have been so easy to simply write it off as her 'being under a spell). As for Kuja, the only way he is able to give value to his life is to compare it against the lives of others so he spends a good chunk of the game hoarding power, but when he is given the same verdict as Vivi (he has a prototype with a significantly reduced lifespan) the only way he can find to give his life value is to literally burn everything to the ground since his life must have the most value if it is the only one left at the end.

As much as people complain about the final boss, Necron, coming out of nowhere, I think it's the perfect antithesis to the theme. Necron is a big, meaningless reset button whose sole purpose isn't exactly to destroy the world, but to undo all life and therefore deprive the world of meaning.