Wow you’re real fucking petty for blocking me over this. Yes I missed that one line. So now my voice should be silenced because of that? I was not rude at all in my comment, I was expressing my strong disagreement with your take. You have been much more rude to me than I was here to you.

If you think empathy is a “choice” and something you earn, you don’t know what empathy is.  

I don’t want to read a story about what gets you hot, Gita. I finished this game four days ago, and I never had any of these thoughts. Yes, I did notice Jesse’s physicality. It is quite strong, commanding, and “substantial”, but it is not sensual on its own. You are putting that on it. And you don’t bother…

Those stories are less fun :/

Holy shit he bought in front of you on eBay and then tried to return it to you a week later?? That’s hilarious! What a giant douche

They could do something like what Analogue is doing with their Pocket console, ie hardware emulation. I don’t really understand it, but I did have that specifically in mind because I’ve been eagerly awaiting their announcement of a release date for Pocket.

Given all the things others have mentioned, I feel like this would be a more exciting idea if they were using retro consoles.  Maybe it’s just me being old, but I’d be much more hyped for a PC with some sixth-gen consoles built in.

Ok that all makes sense to me. I definitely didn’t get that reading on my own, but it wouldn’t be the first time I missed something that was in the text.

Wow Mike, don’t know where this extreme hatred for the Wii U came from, but it is definitely irrational. I just finished playing Shovel Knight: King of Cards on Wii U, and the first time I picked up that pad after more than a year of not touching it, I was struck by how slender and light it was relative to my memory…

Yeah, 1up was still around back then, and I was definitely a fan of that site. Also Joystiq, which was my favorite gaming site before I started reading Kotaku around 2012.

And the majority you’re referring to is what created all this bullshit in the first place. God save Kotaku.

Fantastic piece, Maddy, thank you for this. I am a slow reader (of words), so it took me part of yesterday and today to get through this, but I’m very grateful that I did. It’s so fucking bizarre to think of all the shit that blew up just because someone made up a rumor that a game designer received special coverage…

But art has always necessarily been subjective. Iow the fact that the definition of “art” is in the eye of the beholder is built into the whole idea. A “game” has a much more specific definition, and I believe is specifically related to the activity of “play”.

Yeah the way the enemies appear reminds me of Xenoblade or FFXII, but they are more spaced out in DQXI so they are easier to avoid. Occasionally it does make the game feel like playing a visual novel with some exploration thrown in between the story beats. It would be nice if they were a little more thoughtfully…

Imo you’re not going to have a good time with Outer Wilds until you get a little better at the controls. There is some pretty tight navigation required. I’m certainly not amazing with them, but I wasn’t able to find anything truly interesting until I got used to them a bit. And occasionally there is a tight and…

This inspired me to come up with an historical analogy: Japanese game design in the latter half of the 90s was like Hollywood in the 70s: People were doing new things that were largely successful from a financial perspective, so they kept getting more experimental, and the corporate types let the creatives have a lot…

Tbf there hasn’t been a good Indiana Jones anything in decades, so there is room in the market for something like that if it is distinct and well-done enough. I don’t have faith that that would happen in this case if the movie is actually made, but the dormant nature of the Indiana Jones franchise could be a boon to…

This is a great question! Biggest one for me is Persona 3 Portable, which I’ve been playing on Vita. I’m pretty deep into it, and I know it’s supposed to be as good as P4 in terms of wrapping up the story, so I really want to see it to the end. But I got distracted by Dragon Quest XI, I got DQVIII for Christmas,…

Definitely check out Dragon Quest XI if you are looking for a modern take on the JRPG comfort food of the pre-FFV days.  It has more systems than the early DQ games, but they don’t make the game more complex; they just add variety and offer some customization options for each character.  Also the forging mini-game is…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NieR: Automata is the best! And I’m not being passive-aggressive with the capitalization; I just like how it looks.