You’re a bit behind the times on this one. The Alienware Alpha is worthwhile BECAUSE it’s cheap and effective. It’s smaller than the Wii, costs $400, and power-wise it actually gives the PS4 and XB1 a run for their money. I was surprised to find people were actually running modern games at medium settings, 1080p and…

Really, it’s not like I’m saying the devs are hacks who don’t deserve our money, I’m saying it’s a big turnoff for me when the visuals are all over the place. I get that some people aren’t talented artists, but I don’t think that should be a necessity. You don’t need to be able to make Shovel Knight’s visuals to know…

It’s true that the SNES could do this, and in fact those techniques are commonly used in the GBA Castlevania games for larger enemies and bosses. But even still, they weren’t rendering in HD (so the sprites were still pixelated as they rotated, and the edges stayed constrained to the pixel grid), and this scaling and…

A lot of times, that’s what it is. Lazy pixelated art, not actually retro at all. I see a ton of games using lazy pixel art for characters but they’re doing stuff like rotating and scaling sprites/limbs, using completely different pixel density for different sprites (sometimes on the SAME character/object) and totally…

And the award for most forced pun goes to... :P

I’m really bothered by these figures, because they all kind of look like copy-paste designs to me. I like the idea of monster girls and I think it’s something great to have out there for kids, something much more interesting than most dolls have on offer. It’s very Tim Burton-esque creativity drawn from vaguely dark…

True, I don’t have a lot to say against Earthbound in detail. I never gave it a full playthrough. But then, I never gave a single numbered Final Fantasy title a full playthrough. They could be brilliant, but never hooked me for a variety of reasons. In these cases, the games presented mechanics that didn’t hold up for…

Look, Earthbound is a fine game and all, but Undertale is better. Not objectively better, of course, but there are a lot of ways in which Undertale nails the same sort of character, low-fi charm, and deceptively deep, dark narrative to a degree that a game in the 16-bit era couldn’t even dream of. Undertale did a lot…

This is pretty much where I stand on battle systems. The Etrian Odyssey series is as classic and basic as it gets - pure dungeon crawling full of puzzles, random battles, and standard turn-based mechanics - but unlike most of the FF games, I played all the way through and loved these games. It’s all because they made…

I’m happy to hear that name being used again, but I’m very skeptical. Bioshock was supposed to be the spiritual successor to System Shock, which still remains one of my old favorites, but it was too modernized and didn’t retain the elements that made either System Shock game good. I have no reason to believe these…

I don’t know, I still feel like both games have things they could contribute, especially the lesser-appreciated System Shock 1. The original not only let you tune 4 separate elements of the game’s difficulty to your liking (in such a great way that it completely changes the game’s genre and how it plays out depending…

I would get it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t priced like a full AAA release. I loved 2017, would love to play this, but it really needs budget pricing given the budget content/polish level.

Yup, played Axiom Verge and loved it. It’s probably the closest thing to Metroid since SC, though SC is closer to Metroid by a bit, at least.

I can’t log into the Epic launcher. Are their servers just... mush right now?

I actually use something similar, though it’s a rectangular plastic gadget. It unfolds from itself and a piece folds out which sticks straight into the USB port without the outer metal bit. It’s really handy and saved my butt on a few occasions at least. It also has multiple types of connectors inside and a microSD…

I actually use something similar, though it’s a rectangular plastic gadget. It unfolds from itself and a piece folds…

This is the dumbest design choice and I hate that companies are still doing this. It’s bad enough when flash drives are designed to have a removable cap that can get lost in your pants or while using the drive and you end up with the drive missing a part. But this is just insanity. If it comes apart on its own and…

This is the dumbest design choice and I hate that companies are still doing this. It’s bad enough when flash drives…

I’m sorry, but internet law dictates that any article mentioning Undertale must be clicked on, regardless of your level of interest in the game.

So far this generation, moreso than in previous ones, I would say the PC is almost certainly the way to go. Not just because the consoles have very few exclusives and the PC has a still ever-growing selection of amazing games, but also because there are cheaper PCs than ever before (Alienware Alpha - $400, smaller…

The term ‘non-gamer’ does not inherently imply that the people it refers to don’t belong, shouldn’t play games or don’t play “real” games. All it truly refers to is people who wouldn’t be considered gamers. As a “gamer” you’re expected to at least have a working knowledge of games and game systems, some understanding…

Okay, come on now, Dark Souls is nowhere NEAR hard enough to compare to this. Yes it’s harder than most games, and yes it makes you earn your victory, but anyone with average gaming skills and a little patience can clear the game in 50-100 hours their first time through.