Specter generally refers to it as an Immersive Sim, and I tend to follow that precedent. If you want to be technical. I think it's fair to talk about it as a specific subgenre of Action-RPG, but I wasn't really talking about Action-RPGs anyway.

I feel like this is symptomatic of the way many developers have lost sight about what actually makes RPGs special. It's not immersive detail, leave that to the Deus Exes of the world. It's utilizing abstraction to make it mean more than what it looks like it means. Or symbols, as you say. World maps make sense in RPGs…

Miniaturized tech is more expensive than full-size tech.

Gitaroo Man! It's a music game with an integral story, and the songs drive the plot forward. I loved that game so friggin much.

I actually kinda like the green itself, but this is completely the wrong context for it. It's going to clash with like 99% of all box art.

Yes! I was about to mention Sound Shapes, with its super slick cloud sync. Loving that game, and the way it gets to exist on both my PS3 and Vita as essentially a seamless experience feels like the goddamn future.

I agree that they want to appeal to families, but I don't think that making them easier is to appeal to the kids. It's more likely that they want to appeal to the atrophied skills of people who played Mario when they were themselves children. People underestimate how much Nintendo-hard bullshit kids will put up with,…

I would fund the translation and release of a whole bunch of wacky Japanese games (especially Visual Novels) that I'd would never turn a profit in the west. First up: a Vita version of Steins;Gate in English.

Shootmaina is trying to be that thing. Who knows if it'll succeed, but worth keeping an eye on.

Oh god why did I read this at work where I don't have a change of pants?

<3

Yup. They even had a preorder deal where you get the game, the soundtrack and both DLCs in one bundle.

I actually liked how you never fight anything in Amnesia. That moment of "am I supposed to fight this or not" takes me out of it and turns the encounter into a puzzle (of the icky "guess what the designer's thinking kind") instead of allowing me to be afraid and turn that into the natural response to fear: run the…

The difference is the quid pro quo of an explicitly stated exchange.

I thought craigslist was cracking down on ads offering or soliciting prostitution?

4: PS2, PS3, 360, Wii.

We can wait and see if he keeps doing this in the future. For now, I'm willing the give the man the benefit of the doubt. It's pretty easy to get bent out of shape and do something you regret when people are ragging on your friends.

I did. Totes worth it.

I was alive for it as FF3, but I still resent Square's condescension in that period. Something about seeing an import FF5 in my local game rental shop (back when that sort of place could still exist) and realizing it was older than the "FF3" they were selling to me. I was too young to grasp the vagaries of industry…

Yes. It's also common knowledge that the game Square tried to re-name FF3 is actually FF6. There's no reason not to at least give it a nod unless you're intentionally trying to piss off the fanboys.