Sounds like fun! How much of these twists and turns are pre-planned vs. reacting on the fly to your players?

Ok, so I have seen you mention My Nintendo coins a couple of times… but what the hell are these? I thought all the perks went away with Club Nintendo.

There aren't enough games out there that make it tempting to be bad, from an incentive perspective. Maybe that's because, for the most part, justice works OK in our world. While some people DO have a string of successes as they act like an asshole, many of the assholes also flame out and fail. Most people find that…

The map really is fantastic, as is the use that the game puts the map to. The one feature that really changes the game is the ability to climb basically everywhere. That means that if you can see it on the map, you can at least try to get there. And you can often use the map to plan your best route. (I evaluate…

This is the problem with the tutorial-heavy approach to games (expecially games with a lot of mechanics like RPGs). Your first couple of hours represent "sunk costs" towards playing the game. You convince yourself to keep with it because you've already invested time knowing the mechanics, etc. But if you put it down…

But seriously, there's a sense that each of the things you see just might be unique. The game lacks any real "rails" as far as limiting what you can or can't experience. Which just makes it feel like almost everything you see is something that you weren't supposed to see, and maybe something no-one else has seen.

"Here be dragons"

Yea, it was a great game with great core gameplay. It's funny how much personality they pack into that tank just based on the way it moves. And they have a good exploring/puzzles aspects attached to the whole thing, too. Overall it just excels in all categories. It feels more like a downgraded Genesis game than NES…

It's weird to think, with that and other Wii games, that there probably won't really be any ability to play with motion controls. Emulating games that have basic controls is "simple" compared to whatever challenges there would be for emulating future motion control systems.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. How likely is it that you re-buy? And how likely is it that you really miss the added perks the Switch brings (mostly portability and some performance). I plan on playing it on the WiiU and I don't plan on giving a second's thought to the alternatives.

…maybe when it comes out for the Nintendo Switch.

I get the feeling that it will perpetually be the game that's next up on my "to play" list. Always tempting but always daunting.

Essentially, Torment got the user to have to defend the statement, so common across the human experience, of "things will be different this time" or "I'm different this time". Is change possible? And even when it is, how much change counts as anything other than a superficial shift? Each incarnation of the Nameless…

Woo-hoo! Another chance to talk about Torment. I have actually been thinking about that whole "world remembers your identity better than you do" point since talking about it on that article. It struck me that there's one way we all experience this phenomenon. For any organization that you belong to that you have to…

I've done the coast-to-coast road trip thing a few times, and for the first half of the first day, it’s all boredom. And then, slowly, the experience transforms. What was once “boredom” becomes more like a thoughtful calmness. There’s just a change of expectations about how quickly things will happen. And once your…

Virtually every one of these articles has introduced me to (1) either a new movie, (2) a new way of looking at a movie I've seen, or (3) a new way of looking at movies. Sad to see it go. But thanks for all the good times along the way!

For some reason, Matt's review reminded me of a passage in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the author talks about how journeying through the country on motorcycle transforms the way you experience the 'scenery':

As someone who had never played Skyrim, there's a strong appeal for me. It's exactly the sort of game I don't play anymore because of its huge demand on my hours. But with the convenience/portability of the switch, I could see myself finally giving it a try.

The whole game felt like an elaboration on the alignment-setting Q&A that often opened up the original Ultima games.

Also, it's always fun/strange to try to piece together which of your previous "identities" the NPC had interacted with. The manipulative one, for instance, does bad things but the paranoid one does too. What were "your" motivations the last time you talked to this person?