Not all tension in a story needs to be resolved. Some forms of conflict are just misdirection, McGuffins if you want. Furthermore, the narrative tension at the beginning of the game is tied to the fact that the cat falls into the walled city and thus needs to escape. All conflict in the game is tied to that initial…

Look at all the comments ranging from people claiming they can’t see a difference, to “it’s fine” to people who actually think it looks better. That’s why Squeenix keeps doing this. 

Illustrate where I conflated satisfying with happy? Nowhere am I saying it needs to be happy, you’re putting those words in my mouth. I’m arguing that the desire for every loose end to be tied is a limiting one. The argument made in this back-and-forth is that the player needs to have everything spelled out and…

To be fair, the ending isn’t a bummer so it’s not really a spoiler. 

I always find it fascinating when ambiguity as a tool of the storyteller is met with such pushback, as if didactic storytelling with nicely wrapped up conclusions is the only way to create something narratively satisfying. Sure, I get if a seven-year-old wants a happy ending, but failing to meet that desire is itself…

In my experience people get confused by L’Cie, Fal’Cie and Cie’th and get hung up on the fact that they are similar and unfamiliar. But once you understand that a lot of FFXIII is about class and hierarchal power divisions it makes sense. Fal’Cie are an advanced race that consider other beings to be beneath them; L’Cie…

After getting the Can’t Cat-ch Me achievement, I replayed the entire game in under the two hour mark for the speed run achievement and didn’t take any damage. Once you nail the opening chase the rest are not particularly difficult, and it’s very easy to avoid all the Sentinels.

I’d liken it to parkour in Assassin’s Creed rather than auto jumping. The cat doesn’t jump on a platform if you simply move up to it and press forward. That would be auto-jumping. You do need to press x to jump up onto or down from platforms. And if you hold x you can chain jumps like you would in earlier Assassin’s…

I find the video is the best at explaining what the game will be like. It’s called a Walkthrough but it’s not what we conventionally call a game walkthrough. It’s a preview of mechanics by the developer B12. It was released by the studio almost a year ago, giving us a preview of what to expect, right down to the light…

I was surprised that it veers wildly away from that.

It should be noted that it doesn’t turn into a third-person shooter and it’s an odd thing to claim the game radically shifts in perspective from that point. No reason for vitriol directed at the author, I agree, but I think people should be able to point out that the game not only doesn’t become a shooter, it only…

Except you literally don’t shoot anything in this game. The most you do is the equivalent of shine a light on something like you do in Luigi’s Mansion.

Nintendo announced a Direct, but it turned out to be an indie one, and not the AAA news everyone was craving.

God if all games had to be “fun” to be engaging we’d live in a dull world. 

Movies are critiqued in many more ways than simply how well it grabs your attention. People need to expand their notions of media criticism.

Plenty of reviews are saying it’s great, so I think you can take that to mean it’s fun.

Sadly there are people who pretty much only live and breathe AAA games, and exclusives are their bread and butter because it lets them lord their console choice over others. It’s weird, but it’s continues to be a thing for some. 

That’s great to hear. But given the known delay, a transcript would be a great way to provide accessibility in the interim. Kotaku used to provide some video transcripts in the past. I don’t know if that was an editorial or authorial choice, but it’s a really good one regardless.

Dear Kotaku, if you are not going to include accessibility options in your videos (i.e. subtitles) can you, at the very least, provide a transcript? I’d ask this any time of the year but it feels especially egregious that this didn’t occur to anyone this week.

If people can’t keep a measly three tiers straight they have bigger problems in life.