Drowsy Emperor

Maybe it will be a stealth game for the not-mentally-challenged crowd this time around. Actually scratch that, I just watched the trailer. Same thing as before. Why can't they just focus on one thing, whether it be stealth or action and do it well.

I'll have to do that. It was the touch interface. Since there's no way to get a SNES I played it on my phone and the on-screen touch buttons are unwieldy. A slip of the finger, reset the game then saved over my only save state.

I mistakenly saved over my only save in Zelda: A Link to the Past, 3 dungeons away from the finale. :/ It was a very good game overall.

I had the same thing when I bought my last PC. Started retroactively checking on all the fancy things I missed out and was like:

In my case, I'm just tired of the "routine". High budgeted games have all been more or less the same, gameplay wise, for over a decade now. Former pure PC genres I used to enjoy have either devolved into mediocrity, like adventure games or died out (real time strategy, even turn based). Yes, we get a lot of games, but actual variety and innovation are scarce.

So as someone who liked the first game but was disappointed with the second one, is the Witcher 3 for me?

I'm surprised that they would budget that much for a Deus Ex game, but it is definitely at the bleeding edge of current technology. Also not sure what you are talking about with reused assets. edit: Pretty sure it's a different engine. A lot of the animations and models look the same or only slightly modified to me, but then this is just based on YouTube videos. The reason I mentioned it, is that if they did reuse assets, that implies that the original game was even more expensive to make. That's why I assume Mass Effect 2 looked so much better than the first game, as a significant amount of work was already done, allowing Bioware to improve what's already there instead of doing it over again.

Recently I beat Shovel Knight. Its a bit on the easy side but it has a lot of charm and the sort of brilliance and inventiveness platform games used to have back in the day. Not all of its in game items are useful, and not all levels express the same degree of creativity but its still apparent that the game was a labor of love. These days I barely bother to beat most games, so if I stick with it to the end, it must have been very good indeed. The New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS I'm playing now is a good point of comparison. Its pleasing to look at, polished to play, most of the levels are well designed - endearing at points, but its definitely more of a "product" and a case of "been there, done that" - even though I haven't played a Mario game in almost twenty years. Speaking of easy difficulty - I'm nearing the end of the game and I have 113 lives... Come on Nintendo, have a little faith in kids today, I'm sure they aren't that incompetent. The prime suspect for the easy difficulty is the liberal handouts of powerups in every course. The fire and the racoon suit make it easy to breeze through levels, avoiding what would otherwise be rather demanding platforming. But being able to clear all enemies on the screen or completely control air movement utterly defeats the purpose of levels where either enemies or jumps predominate as obstacles. Coins are also doled out in obscene amounts so when these two factors are taken together most courses are easily completed with a surplus life gain.

Wow, development cost of 70 million for what is not even the latest "tech pushing" triple AAA title. And it even looks like it reuses a lot of assets from the previous game on top of that.

The backlog: Final Fantasy VI Final Fantasy IX Guilty Gear Xrd Sign Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Kentucky Route Zero Life is Strange Technobabylon Zelda A Link Between Worlds Zelda Ocarina of Time Currently playing: Zelda ALTTP New Super Mario Bros 3DS Pullblox (Pushmo)

I've been out of gaming for a while. I realized it just wasn't as much fun as it used to be, or rather that the types of games I locked myself into playing were once enjoyable but have become a habit over time. And I don't have a capable gaming PC anymore, just a decent laptop and a new 2DS. I don't regret the change.

Well, you are entitled to that opinion, but there is a fair amount of people disagreeing with you. It was pretty well reviewed, way better than all of their iOS shovelware, that is for certain. Have you tried it since the big patch redid the graphics? I found it more aesthetically pleasing although some people complained about the camera angle. It wasn't a triple A title, but for an indie project I think it pulled off a pretty decent game. Again, these are just opinions. It was a playable product that met a fair amount of expectations. I have not tried it again since release.

There is a lot going on in this post. First off, of course it is using nostalgia, that is going to be pretty standard for any niche product like this. The mainstream market isn't supporting these types of games, so they crowdfund. The best way to stand out in a crowdfunding situation is to offer something completely new or something nostalgic. As for it being a cash grab, that implies they aren't actually delivering a product. So no, it is an investment in a company that has already successfully delivered one project using such a business model, meaning it is a pretty safe investment. Now whether you think they've delivered good games or not is pretty subjective. They have a pretty tiny library, so what exactly are we judging? I didn't like the Bard's Tale remake, so I didn't bother backing them, because no track record. But I enjoyed Wasteland 2 quite a bit, playing through it twice. I believe a fair amount of people did as well. As for being a flop, there are no numbers to support that. Maybe it wasn't a grand slam, but it seemed successful enough to keep the studio moving forward. What we're judging is that they're a studio without any acclaimed games piggybacking on big names. "We're going to make Torment again!" they said, to which I reply "You've been making iOS shovelware for 14 years and a few mostly unsuccessful action games" - how are you qualified to do anything Torment related? I played Wasteland 2 for a few hours and thought the user experience side of the game was terrible. The graphics, the interface, the gameplay all felt like a Russian dev studio project from 2005. It looked like they badly mismanaged the funds they got.

Hah, I remember having that book as a kid. Fun times.

Zelda: A Link to the Past Never bothered with it up until now, or the Zelda series in general. I have to say, this is one of the more ingeniously designed games I've played. A true open world, perfectly scaled, rife with content and possibilities. For a game from 1991, it plays better than almost anything today - no needless time wasting, length padding mechanics (grind, crafting etc) no hand-holding (but a suggestion here and there, when necessary) everything that's in the game has a reason to be there. Tangible rewards for exploring and backtracking through the game world that never feels like a chore - in fact, its more stimulating to explore than most big RPG's I've played in the last ten years.

Witcher 2's problem is that it has no heart. The Geralt from Witcher 1 was an ugly mutt that snuck in a granny's pantry while ****faced to steal pickles and lard. Geralt from Witcher 2 is a fantasy equivalent of Daniel Craig, single highhandedly slaughtering armies while swollen from his own self importance and the profanity laden "maturity" of everything going on in a story that is about as needlessly convoluted as the average anime. From a relative nobody on the streets of Vizima he goes straight to bro-terms with every important individual in the in game universe. It was quite the Michael Bay treatment.

You guys do realize that this is possibly the most brazen cash grab on nostalgia yet? InXile, a studio that has not made a single good game in its existence appropriating the name Torment to make something else entirely. Its gonna be a worse flop than Wasteland 2. I am legitimately stumped that people give Brian Fargo money.

*sigh* That brings back memories. Of when adventure games weren't written by the writing equivalent of the average deviant-art user.

Have you seen the Zelda Breath of the Wild WiiU gameplay videos? It really looks like the console is struggling to play the game at 30fps and the rendering distance is surprisingly small for a game that should have been built for it.

Yes it was even though its a miniscule update overall

I think handhelds would be dead if it weren't for Nintendo using its first party games to push them. Sony's line is all but dead. Personally my smartphone seems like a space shuttle compared to the 2DS I have, even if it was three times the price. But the 2DS has a huge games library and the smartphone has 90% shovelware junk that's impossible to sift through. IMO handhelds are definitely on their way out for casual gamers. Maybe Nintendo realizes that and that's why they're trying to play both fields. However, what's interesting is that the NX will have a 6 inch screen on its handheld unit and that's huge if you factor in the size of the pads as well! It may be portable but it sure as hell won't be pocketable. We'll see how it works out for them.

This is supposed to be a bridge between the two. Even though they're still going to "support" the 3DS and the WiiU its likely that all Nintendo first party teams will focus on the NX if it is indeed both a handheld and a console. What I'm trying to say, either way, its all you're going to get from Nintendo for a while. I have a feeling the separate handheld and console business is becoming unsustainable for Nintendo, so I think they'll try to offer both in one package but default to a more handheld type experience if that fails. Nintendo has an immense amount of money and can afford expensive mistakes but its consoles were treated as a string of commercial "failures" ever since the SNES, with the sole exception of the Wii. So, maybe they've had enough of trying to compete with a specific device in that arena.

They do love their absurd protection schemes don't they.

Bottle Gnomes As for the game, at that level of graphical quality it looks more like a proof of concept than anything else. To maintain that quality all around it would either have to be a very short game or a very expensive large scale project.