Quick Look: Ori and the Blind Forest

Yeah, Macklemore was such an amazing director. I'd go as far as saying he's legendary. To this day I still don't understand the career switch.

If you watch that intro and don't feel the slightest thing you must have been through some serious shit or have a dark black heart, I'm not some emotional rollercoaster and its not like they didn't telegraph what was going to happen but it's so beautiful, the tone and music are so perfect I don't understand how you don't have Some kind of emotional response.

HTML5 version of this is busted.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a good one.

Stunning art here. Very reminiscent of Dust. Kind of a long intro, though, which probably would have had more of an emotional impact if you spent more than a few minutes with the characters. The save system is a neat idea.

Also, Dan, a former writer for a magazine and an author of two books, has never heard of a comma splice?

Come on Brad, how are we supposed to make any progress with Dan if you don't give him a straight answer about anything he doesn't know? You let him think twee is an Internet word that means something akin to emo?

@bollard: HTML5 works fine here.

Damn that is a pretty game.

"Magical fat guy"? That's a mean way to talk about @unastrike

It looks good, but I don't see where all the awe is coming from, the art just looks like a slightly better, more detailed dust: elysian tale.

everyone always forgets Odin Sphere, that was the first really beautiful modern 2d metroidvania game.

also, there are a lot of 3d elements in this game, not that it should detract from it at all, hell they did it right using it to enhance the 2D.

The art is pretty but I wouldn't say it's awe-inspiring or all that overwhelmingly impressive to me. On the other hand, the gameplay seems completely on point. I love the look of the movement controls, and I like the look of the structure a lot, so I'll definitely give this a shot on the merits of the gameplay.

Yeah since twee is a really simple, basic word.

twee

adjective \ˈtwē\

: sweet or cute in a way that is silly or sentimental

Guess that makes me What's Wrong With The World (tm)!

I am gonna play the sh*t out of this game. I'm gonna wager that it will be the first game I complete in 2015.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It's look good, but we might be missing something significant because even their downloadable HD video isn't 1080P, it's 720P, and on top of that there's compression artifacting all over the place.

"Best looking 2D games: Rayman Legends, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Dust an Elysian Tail"

I can't believe the instinctive response isn't Dragon's Crown or Odin Sphere... Those games are 2D magic!

@amyggen: The HD version? Maybe it was only busted for a bit.

Video games bum me out sometime because of how low the bar is for what I consider spectacular in an entertainment medium. That being said this game seems like a neat bookmark for 2D games this generation.

I know that this isn't 100% an exclusive since it's also out on PC but it's still console exclusive to Xbox and I got to say that Microsoft is killing it with their exclusives: Dead Rising 3, Forza Horizon 2, Killer Instict and now this.

I'm still super glad for my PS4 but Sony seriously needs to start delivering some solid exclusives. Hopefully 2015 will finally be the year where that happens. Bloodborne and Uncharted 4 looks pretty cool though.

Looks pretty spectacular but I'm not feeling it. The intro turned me off for somewhat reason and the gameplay did nothing to turn me back on. It's probably just me.

Pretty much any Vanillaware game is a strong contender. Dust looked nice sometimes but had some significant weaknesses.

Definitely looks stunning. Art direction > specs and raw horsepower. I guess I need to dust off my Xbox.

Get over yourself, it's the same with the intro of Up. Showing a quick montage of them together and playing some melodramatic music does not "earn" them a touching moment, atleast not for me. It's such a cheap way to try to get someone to feel sad it just comes off as cynical.

Battleblock Theatre had some pretty mean platforming by the end. This kinda reminds me of some of those challenges. Only with gorgeous art. Damn. Does this mean I gotta get an xbone now? I love this hard as nails platforming but I got enough spending on my PS4 to do.

@bollard: HD, yeah.

Don't get me wrong I think it its a very nice intro but perhaps just a little bit long to be leading into a quick look.

I have $20 in my XBL account I'm waiting to use when this game goes on sale Wednesday. It looks gorgeous. Sounds like it plays well. And I love the music I've heard in the game thus far.

This looks really amazing. The intro had me, but then the gameplay began and I totally lost interest.

Nothing against the game really, metroidvania and Meatboy is just not something I enjoy. I would like a Limbo-like game a lot more.

This game, man. I can't wait to play it.

I still pop in Muramasa: Rebirth every few months to work through all the DLC. And every single time, I'm blown away by how amazing and creative everything looks.

Webster's defines "twee" as "affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint." So if something is twee it is always a bad thing.

Therefore, this is not twee, because it looks awesome.

Can't decide if I should watch this or go in blind.

There better be a day one comma splice patch.

When it comes to 2D art in video games, I usually prefer the likes of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, but this does look incredible. Shame there doesn't seem to be any concrete info on the artists that worked on it, other than Thomas Mahler.

WOW !

Lost me when it started getting Meatboy like. Everything else looked great though.

This game is making me wish I had an XB1.

I don't have an Xbox One, so I might grab this for the 360 whenever it comes out for it. I have no idea if I will ever get an Xbox One, and I do really want to play this.

Incredible, this game looks incredible.

Like Dan i thought this would just be a boring simple puzzle game like Limbo, but man i was wrong, can't wait to pick this up.

The comparisons to Dust seems a bit much. This game blows it out of the water and then some. This is more in the league of Muramasa or Rayman Legends, if not more.

@spitznock: it'll be on steam in like an hour

Ori and the Blind Forest: Dr. Fetus's Revenge.

I can't believe this is coming out on PC in an hour. For some reason I had it in my head that was an XBox exclusive so I'd immediately (and sadly) written it off.

Holy crap this looks insane. I'm counting down the minutes til I can buy it.

yes dan every word you never heard is a dumb internet word

This really looks amazing!! Not sure when I'm going to buck up and pick up an XBOX One, but when I do this will most likely be the first game I play.

The "Please wake up, don't be dead" trope never fails to bring me to tears...

Gorgeous.

@brad How do you feel about the Oxford comma?

The use of commas seems fine to me, but i do that all the time, maybe it's a british thing, see.

I also use a lot of commas here and there. Way better than people who overuse ellipsis.