Going with the original NES version. Some of the quality-of-life and visual upgrades in the remasters look really nice, but it sounds like they removed a lot of the slog in them. And dagnabbit, I am here for the slog. :P

This weekend, I’m playing Final Fantasy! As in, the first one.

Ah, just misunderstood your comment - thought you were saying the Lee cover art (second image, not counting the header) was Jiminez. Whoops!

That I think is one of the fascinating things about Civ these days. It's clearly drawing on modern board game design; the city districts seem to be straight out of games like Suburbia or Between Two Cities, and the increasing systematic emphasis on early game decisions massively impacting your late-game choices…

"What if he's lying?"

Still has a nasty case of Lens Flare Foot though.

Wind Waker does have an excellent face-swording (to Ganondorf, not Ganon, if we're really getting pedantic), but OOT does it as well.

Oh, does he do the "I'll get you, Gadget!" routine in the very end? It's been a while, I mostly just remember stabbing him through the face with a magical sword. Which… traditionally pretty kill-y.

As an adult, two come to mind, both from Amnesia. The Cellar Archives is the first, and I think we've covered that pretty well at this point. The second is late in the game, when your character learns why he gave himself amnesia. Specifically, the flashback to Daniel committing a ritual killing himself. It's not any…

I've rediscovered the Saints Row 4 soundtrack.and have basically been listening to the 89.0 Generation X station on loop. Does it count if the music isn't originally from video games?

The Keyboard Geniuses Leaderboard returns! [Link]

It's also important to remember that it was kind of a great leap forward in terms of the single player campaign, which helped form people's attachment to play it together. It's the first FPS I'm aware of that had objectives other than "get to the end of the level" and "kill everybody", which was pretty amazing at the…

Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time are the best regarded "traditional" Zeldas, with dedicated elemental temples, killing Ganon, etc. They're the ones that could most easily be seen as direct upgrades of the original NES game, and the choice is just whether you want gorgeous SNES spritework or… impressionistic… early…

As mentioned last week, I did start digging into the World War I chaos of Battlefield 1 and found its single-player campaign to be shockingly reverent and moving so far.

The Top Chef maneuver, as it were.

Yeah, the Cellar Archives monster works in part because you avoid those kinds of moments thanks to the invisibility, and even the "floor is lava" bit gets papered over by the general creepiness of the atmosphere and sound design. The shamblers, in contrast, really only work when you catch them in glimpses. I remember…

Yeah, they really should've re-hearse-d that one a little more.

The internet is back, and now so is the Keyboard Geniuses Leaderboard! [Link]

Oh god, I love that. :)

A few friends and I briefly ran a play-by-post a while back in which all characters had two stats that were 18s, two that were 10s, and two that were 3s. There is something truly, truly hilarious about being a deformed, three-legged, one-trick pony.