Seeric

I actually really like this game, but I think a lot of that comes from my preference for using the lance guy (Eric). So many of the stages and bosses are designed with his weapon's range in mind and watching this playthrough really highlights for me just how much of this game isn't designed with a whip in mind. For example, when you are using the other character you only need to stand still and stab upward to hit the Stage 3 boss and the gargoyles in the autoscroll section can be hit long before they charge at you. There's actually a split path in the middle of Stage 3 depending on which character you use, but it's only for a short segment and I think that's the only point where that occurs.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people who have fond memories of this game are like me and went through it with Eric because it really does look significantly less fun with the whip.

I think the most interesting part about all of this will be seeing how the messaging differs for any products which are at both E3 events.

This whole thing will probably be a chaotic, awkward mess, but it's good that they're trying new things and they might learn something from it for next year.

I think this was meant to say "...why Nintendo currently wants to expand...".

As to the news itself, I'm starting to get a bit worried about Nintendo being quite so tight-lipped about the NX. Namely, I feel like they really need to give at least a slightly less vague piece of information about it at E3 in order to start managing expectations and focusing their audience on actual reasons to be excited for it. Otherwise, I think a whole bunch of people are going to simply be disappointed when their theorycrafting turns out to be completely off the mark; playing up a mystery to generate hype can only go so far without a few clues.

Star Fox games made in the original style don't necessarily seem outdated to me, but I think they are similar to Mega Man games in that they would work fine as $15 downloads, but definitely not as full-priced physical products. While I do still think that quality is far more important than quantity, that does not make quantity inconsequential; the price ranges for games have expanded greatly over the last half a decade and older companies like Nintendo are still struggling to figure out what works.

From the sound of it, this particular game has issues which go beyond a lack of content, but the price is certainly a major factor. The original game was a graphical marvel for the SNES and Star Fox 64 was its beloved sequel near the start of the Nintendo 64's life and came out at a time when, excluding 'bargain bin' games, just about every new game went for $50. Meanwhile, Star Fox Zero is a $60 game released near the end of the Wii U's life at a point in time when consumers have access to significantly more games for lower prices than ever before - it could have been the best game in the entire franchise and it still would have sold poorly at that price.

This has been such a weird console generation. The Wii U hasn't even been out for 4 years yet and already we're getting the NX, to say nothing of the PS4 and the Xbox One getting incremental upgrades which may end up costing as much as a next-gen console (though I suspect they'll cut a deal with existing owners if that's the case, they'd pretty much have to in order to move units).

If the NX actually does launch this year or very early next year, this could serve as a real chance for Nintendo to shoot ahead of the competition. They're generally about a generation behind when it comes to hardware capabilities, but if most developers don't bother to take advantage of the upgrades offered by Sony and Microsoft that means it'll pretty much be an even playing field in that regard. Nintendo's also been good about keeping online free and they have been improving their online services at a painfully slow but steady rate; if they can offer a better online experience than they currently have while keeping it free with the NX that would be a further point in their favor. The trickiest part is still inevitably going to be same stumbling block they've had trouble with for years - actually getting decent third-party support for a home console.

It'll be tough for them, but the lukewarm reception to the vague future plans of Sony and Microsoft means that timing is almost certainly on their side for the first time in a while and Nintendo may very well shoot to the front again if they can just nail the execution.

Part of the question is if games will be available for play across a variety of Xbox hardware and at this point it's largely a guessing game because we just don't have enough information, but console developers have traditionally opted to make one version of a game per platform, either by making their game 100% exclusive to the newest version or by making their game with the original version of the platform in mind and not bothering to take much, if any, advantage of the new model's boosts.

It's also different from the mobile market for more than just price. When people upgrade to a new tablet or phone it's usually not just to play games, it could be to have a bigger screen, or maybe they broke their old screen, or the buttons are starting to wear out, or other potential issues where the console equivalent would be to get a new television or a new controller, not a new system. Mobile devices also handle a lot more than gaming, they are used for messaging, for calls, for watching videos, for business, and just about everything else; the Xbox is capable of more than just playing games, but gaming is far and away the primary reason to have one. There is also the general understanding that, unless you have a ton of free time, many people make more use out of their phone or tablet than they do a gaming console; you can use a phone while making use of public transit, during a break at work or school, and any other time you get a few minutes of free time throughout the day and probably accomplish something, but you generally need a decent chunk of free time while at your own house to really make use of a console.

However, the actual cost of owning a mobile device is also inherently cheaper than the cost of owning a console (unless you're the type to shove thousands of dollars at Puzzle & Dragons); if you pay a few hundred dollars to upgrade a phone or tablet, you can expect that to be the only real money you shell out for the device other than your phone bill and possibly a dollar or two here and there for some apps, not the cost of upgrading plus the cost of Xbox Live plus the cost of controllers plus the $60 cost of the games themselves and plus the cost of a headset if you want voice chat.

As far as the process of upgrading hardware itself goes, why would you even get a console over a PC if you need to constantly upgrade anyway? You could shell out $800 for a fully-built PC and have access to a larger variety of games, a larger amount of functionality, and still not need to worry about needing to upgrade for quite a few years. Two of the biggest reasons to own a console over a PC have traditionally been 1) not needing to worry about upgrading and system specs or anything else and 2) console exclusives. Nintendo's been very careful to keep many of their games exclusive to their consoles (though they certainly have issues when it comes to getting third party support), but Sony and Microsoft have only the smallest handful of exclusives between them with most games eventually appearing on both the PS4 and the Xbox One in addition to the PC. Requiring yearly upgrades to a console in order to have the 'privilege' of a decent framerate (or potentially to play certain games at all depending on how this goes down) abolishes the remaining advantage.

On a final note, it's also important to keep in mind that a large portion of people playing on consoles are either children who get the consoles as gifts or adults who, like your friends, shy away from PC gaming because figuring out what can and cannot run on what can be complicated, confusing, and scary. When the Wii U launched there was a good amount of confusion with plenty of parents buying original Wii systems for their children because they thought the Wii U was the same thing or was just an add-on; having multiple versions of the exact same console with some versions having 'higher specs' than others is, short of a marketing miracle on Microsoft's part, going to be just as much of a disaster as a significant portion of the audience won't understand the difference, won't understand why the difference matters, or won't be able to buy the console for themselves.

If this ultimately works out for them that's great, but at this point in time I just can't see a scenario where this does anything other than make people question why they want to use a console over a PC if the former is going to start having the cons of the latter without gaining much in the way of pros.

I honestly and truly do not understand the weird, nearly-obsessive drive Microsoft has had for years when it comes to unifying things across its various platforms, especially when this drive so frequently results in decisions like making the original Windows 8 interface look more like it was designed for touch controls instead of mouse and keyboard controls.

In my opinion, if you want to have multiple platforms, you should learn to play to the strengths of each platform. One of the strengths of console gaming is the general assumption that, unlike with the more flexible PC market, you only need to pay a single time for the system itself and then you are set for the next 5+ years until the next console generation comes around. Games coming out fine on PC's and then turning into giant, barely-functional messes on consoles has been a legitimate issue for this console generation, but talking as though you plan to treat your console like it is a PC is not the right solution.

An Xbox is not a PC and it's definitely not an iPhone - if Microsoft tries to make its playerbase shell out cash every year or two for some sort of weird add-on or, worse, an entirely new system model, most players are simply going to either go over to the PS4 or, if it's going to basically end up costing the same amount anyway, move over to PC gaming.

Microsoft has a habit of putting its foot in its mouth when it comes to announcements for the Xbox One, often resulting in a message which leads to an idea coming across as far worse than it actually is, so it's too early to really know anything for sure until they start giving more concrete facts, but I do think there is still a valid reason for concern whenever Microsoft starts spouting off about unifying their Windows/Xbox/etc experience since it so rarely works out.

I understand why some people would be upset over the system's removal, but I'm personally completely fine with not having it in my games.

When I'm playing a game I may become invested in the character I am controlling, regardless of if that character is one I built from scratch or one which is set in stone from the start, and, just like with a character in a movie or a book, I may indeed care about their personal life and if they live or die by the end. However, mechanics such as this one often serve to push me away from a game and its characters because it always feels like they demand that I the player, and not the character I have created and have been controlling, should feel some sort of romantic attraction towards a fictional character. This sense of demand is only increased by the fact that performing such interactions often leads to some sort of useful reward or, in some cases, you receive an outright penalty for refusing to partake in these strange scenes.

With the way these scenes usually work, they make sense for dating sims where the perspective is constantly in first person and the protagonist is often designed from the ground up to be a generic cutout for players to project themselves onto, but these interactions between the player and a character are horrendously awkward in games where all other forms of interaction are between two characters or the player and their own character.

I'm kinda sad since I thought this game looked like it had a ton of potential from the E3 previews, but it looks like it just gets boring really fast. The levels seem like they go on for way too long - it would be nice if you could exit a level and then choose to restart at any reached checkpoints to break things up a bit (unless this already is an option?).

I think what it really just comes down to is physics-based puzzle platformers usually come across as tedious to me. There's just so much time spent dealing with the finicky controls and precisely manipulating environmental elements that games in this subgenre usually just end in frustration more than anything else.

Though I do not like Hearthstone myself, the removal of old expansions makes sense and is something Magic and many other games have been doing for years. Part of it really is just to keep the cash flowing since tossing out old expansions means people will always have to buy new ones if they want to stick with the game (though the inclusion of the Wild format ensures that old cards don't become worthless). The other part of it is that, in addition to preventing game-breaking combos from inevitably cropping up in Standard mode, it allows them to try out new mechanics without getting locked into using those mechanics forever (Magic does this constantly with its blocks) and it allows them to play around with stat balancing a bit.

The complete removal of old content is weird though and I don't see any good reason at all to do it. Maybe it's an attempt to push people into buying it and/or to make them use the crafting system more, but it just seems completely disrespectful to both the playerbase and to those who worked hard to create that content in the first place. Blizzard as a company has generally approached their games with a mindset of making old endgames and content obsolete in favor of changing things up (especially in the case of WoW), but making it outright inaccessible is kinda ridiculous.