Hey folks, it’s time for Merve’s Alternative Weekend Prompt (MAWP). Inspired by one of the discussions in this thread (and the fact that the Kinja-fied A.V. Club lets us embed images), what’s your favourite video game screenshot that you’ve taken? Feel free to share the story behind it as well.

On the docket for this weekend:

Without spoiling anything, until you get ending E, you haven’t really finished the game. (See Derrick’s reply.)

I dig her yukata in Bowser’s Castle.

Whatever they do, I’ll accept no Princess Peach aside from this one:

It’s a respectable stat compared to previous Xenoblade games, which each sold around 900,000 copies. XC2 has already outsold both of them in under two months.

I think you’ve touched on an important distinction. If we care about preserving the artistic legacy of a video game, then often a remake or remaster is a good way to introduce it modern audiences. But if we care about archival and history, then we should do everything possible to preserve the original and all its…

Yeah, I totally agree. That’s the best balance. It’s how I watched American Vandal, for instance, and I think that’s part of the reason why that show stuck with me so much.

I do have a tendency to touche myself at night.

I think what it is is that binge-watching is easier for following a series as I’m watching it, but the few bits and pieces of shows I watch week-to-week that I actually do remember stick with me for longer.

Honestly, I find it difficult to remember what happened to week-to-week on the few TV series I follow. I’m just not built for following long-term serialized narratives.

I’ve made it to the (extremely gorgeous) Leftherian Archipelago in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and I’ve hit a difficulty spike. The individual enemies aren’t tough to beat, but they gang up in trash mobs a dozen strong and wreck my shit. Plus fighting huge trash mobs means nearby peaceful creatures get aggro’ed by AoE…

Makoto is so obviously supposed to be the canon waifu of the game that it’s not even funny.

There’s actually a dub on the way!

It’s possible, but unlikely, considering that Crunchyroll and Amazon usually put up episodes within a day of Japanese airing, and Funimation has dubs ready with at most a month-long lag.

Maybe this is just semantics, but I think the key isn’t necessarily “fun,” but engagement. Playing a successful game makes me want to continue experiencing the game. (That being said, I think that’s usually what people mean when they talk about video games being “fun.”)

I think it’s easy to oversell how miserable of an experience Spec Ops: The Line is to play. If the mechanics weren’t at least competent and enjoyable (divorced from the narrative context, of course), then the game wouldn’t be as effective. The player has to feel the pull between shooting dudes in the face feeling…

What they’re doing with Violet Evergarden is utter bullshit. It’s airing weekly in Canada with both subbed and dubbed versions, so it’s not like they have the excuse of a dub delay for the States. Moreover, Kakegurui aired in Japan a whole year ago, and we still don’t have a Western release date. If Netflix is going…

I’m still playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and I’m midway through Chapter 4. Without spoiling anything major, let me just say that the game is very, very bad at directing you where to go. There’s a cutscene where the game’s camera points to a tower you have to climb to unlock a door. But the camera points to the…

I’m intrigued by the possibilities that Labo could afford. I’m just worried about the durability. Corrugated cardboard is too fragile for the kind of uses depicted in the reveal trailer.