Appropriately enough, this weekend I'll be playing Fire Emblem Heroes, along with Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky.

I feel like that would be one super-depressing read.

I like to picture a monocle falling off of your face as you make that exclamation.

That's one of the most delightfully anachronistic establishments I've ever heard of. Is it next to a phonograph shop or anything? Maybe it's some kind of localized temporal disturbance, and you actually step into the 1950s as you cross the threshold.

Eh, it's needed to fund programs that relied on brick-and-mortar sales tax that has evaporated.

This week I'm playing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team and Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Both are good. The former is prettier and mechanically interesting (the M&L games have really perfected timing-based RPG battles, haven't they?), while the latter has a more compelling story and offers the promise of some evening…

Is that the early boss fight? I saw one in a Let's Play, and it was terrifying/grisly/amazing, as I've never seen something that more accurately captured Evil Dead in a game.

I tried to get started on Tales of Zesteria, and have made it about three hours in, but it's not sparking for me. There are just so many little systems, and it feels mechanically convoluted for the sheer sake of complexity. Admittedly, this is a wider beef of mine with many modern AAA games, and one of the reasons…

Touché! I have no idea what I was thinking, beyond generalizing out from Resident Evil 4, which I'd say is only semi-horror and effectively set the tone for everything that was released between it and Amnesia. I'd blanked entirely on the preceding RE games and Fatal Frame.

I'd argue that neither the PS2/Xbox nor the PS3/Xbox 360 eras were especially good for console horror. The past three years or so, though, have been very good. Funny enough, I was reading a blog back during the Xbox 360/PS3 era that sort of mourned the horror games that we'd gotten in the PSOne era and then into the…

Resident Evil 7. Darn, that's a disappointing answer to your question. I guess it must be due to everyone talking about it.

I'd recommend the one by GameXplain. The audio's a little low in the first episode, but the commentary is pleasant and avoids the over-the-top characteristics that plague so much Youtube game coverage.

I suspect we're nearing the end of "more is better" game design. Given the sheer enormity of modern open-world titles, and the associated costs, I don't think game companies are getting quite enough bang for their development buck. The conversations among people interested in game design have moved radically against…

Hey there: talk me into buying Enter the Gungeon. There's a good sale on it right now, and I think I've heard good things. It looks kind of like a less exploration-heavy, less-inscrutable, but aesthetically/mechanically(?) similar game to Hyper Light Drifter. Is that accurate? I liked how Hyper Light Drifter moved and…

Heck yeah, it's night and day. Like so many great remakes, it looks how you remember Ocarina of Time looking.

I was as surprised as you. That said, Mark Brown knows what he's talking about and I do trust him as having a pretty solid analysis of what he's covering. I disagree with his conclusion on this one, though it did make me wonder how much of my enjoyment was novelty and how much was fundamental classic Zelda dungeon…

Oh no, nobody likes escort missions!

Agreed. The preview got me interested, but I'll need to hear more about it at release to determine whether I'd like to download it. Sort of funny to write this about a free title, but as they say, time is money.

NOOOOOOO! Someone else on here had those last year, and it was terrible, but they managed to eradicate the bastards.

Ocarina of Time is on the Wii U eShop, and happily features off-TV play. Woohoo!