I actually found Furi's normal difficulty much harder than Bayonetta at Infinite Climax (though, having poured about 200 hours of my life into the latter that's probably not an entirely fair comparison).

It's a bit tricky because the term environmental storytelling, first used by Henry Jenkins if I'm not mistaken, actually refers to a set of design principles that can be applied to any type of game (think of how each location in Dark Souls is used to tell a story, for example), so using "environmental narrative" to…

Halo 3 is so underappreciated in terms of its visuals, it drives me crazy. It's an interesting distinction and I totally agree that in its case it's more a matter of cinematic direction and a sense of scale that, actually, works better if you catch it in motion, compared to, say Witcher's postcard stills that demand…

Interestingly enough, while I do get bored with most open games and I am partial myself to even more condensed experiences than something like XCOM (roguelikes have been my go-to genre for the last few years), when I do engage with one of those games I go the other extreme and always take it slow.

It's a very interesting comparison - hadn't thought of it but it makes sense, even at an aesthetic level as you hinted with the restrained color palette and the electronic soundtrack.

I felt the later bosses almost veered into unfair territory. #7 is fairly glitchy and you may end up trapped in the environment taking damage and #8 even though I loved the melee-only style of that duel is very annoying with its QTEs. In particular, successfully completing one that follows a perfect parry, does not…

Lov'em

Close enough then, given that I was playing solo. It's a great game probably my favourite of the whole "walking simulator" subgenre, second only to the mind-blowing awesomeness that is SOMA.

Heh, caught in the act!

You know what the best part about Furi's music is? This:

Three evenings for Gone Home? Wow, you're worse than me!

Minimal experience! Unfamiliarity with the controller! But, yeah, I see what you mean - it's not that hard, but you will be repeating battles.

They're really, really not that hard (and I'm not saying that in a look-at-me-I'm-hardcore kind of way). True story: a friend of mine, used to come by and watch me when I was playing Dark Souls - she was completely entranced by the world. She had minimal experience with gaming and was mostly unfamiliar with the…

Yeah, sharing them individually first then logging on Twitter or OneDrive might be a bit of a hassle when I've been spamming the hell out of the screencap option. I meant something like plugging a USB in and copying en masse.

Funny moment when, a little after saving my 1000th-or-so screenshot of The Witcher 3 using Xbox One's unwieldy interface, I glance at my laptop (I think it was a Twitter stream) and realise that there's no way to directly download those images. Good times.

For all of the postcard moments in the game, I think nothing made as strong a visual impression on me as the griminess of Velen.

I'll add to the nostalgia-fest of pre-internet walkthrough alternatives by reminiscing about those weird listings at the back pages of '80s gaming magazines, letting you know you could contact Dave from Rochester or Mark from Nuneaton regarding The Hobbit, Guild of Thieves, and Worm in Paradise. I was quite confused…

I was a home-computer rather than a console kid but, yeah, they were impossible. This still gives me nightmares: https://www.youtube.com/wat…

Tracksuit Manager by any chance? I think that's the game that kickstarted my managerial game addiction.

Yes! Looking at a walkthrough always left a bitter taste for the rest of the game (and it almost ruined Monkey Island for me), but the Tex Murphy games offered a perfect balance between nudging you towards discovering the solution rather than simply handing it out.