When Alan Wake came out, episodic games were fewer and farther between than they are now. Game developers had begun to experiment with the idea of releasing “episodic” games all at once—that was yet another similarity Atari’s Alone in the Dark bore to Alan Wake

Ok, I watched and loved some anime when I was a little kid, Starblazers, Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman, and Galaxy Express 999 but fell out of it as I got older. Then when I was in college in the mid 90's I picked it back up again and fell in love with Ghost in the Shell, Satoshi Kon's work, Serial Experiments Lain,…

I always assumed UFO was renamed to X-Com in North America in order to cash in on the popularity of the X-Files.

The thing is, people bitched about the big maps that had lots of open space and so they moved them out of the normal rotation. Of course I run scout rifle, so I loved the open spaces.

This thread is getting long but I haven't seen this said yet, but the Souls games actually DO have an easy option, it's just that the "easy" mode is baked into the main game seamlessly. You always have the option of summoning other online players or NPCs to help you get past certain bosses or sequences. You also…

I imagine that 80% of the Kotaku readership has no clue who any of these people are.

Oh hell yeah. A buddy of mine had the Amiga version of this game and we used to play it all the time. It was called Death Sword in the US and it was great.

My Dinner With Andre isn't even a movie. It's just two people talking, that's it. There's nothing else to it except watching them talk and eat dinner. It would have been better off as a painting.

I don't remember how many hours it took me, but I played Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit) in a single sitting. And you can get all three endings easily by reloading the last save point at the end.

Jump scare? The Stanley Parable is a comedy, not horror. I guess it could be scary if you find Monty Python scary, but otherwise, no.

The best benefit to playing role playing games is of course learning the black magic rituals that allow you to summon Satan and obtain the Real Ultimate Power.

Actually it's more like saying "Fuck Flappy Bird, play Zelda. Then maybe down the road you might want to try Dark Souls." Saying that people shouldn't play the shitty games that everyone knows about, like Monopoly, and trying out something different isn't the same as saying you have to play the hardest game out…

Gotta love the 8bit-looking Buster Sword too

One word...money. HBS is a very small niche developer and they don't have the money to port to consoles. I'm sure they would if they had the resources, after all the more people they can get their game in front of, the better.

Dragonfall was just updated recently with a new Director's Cut. And the update is free for anyone who already owns it. I haven't played the Director's Cut yet, myself.

Give Dragonfall a try, it's far, far better than Returns.

Seriously, hardest rules ever would probably be Advanced Squad Leader, followed by Magic Realm. I've been trying to learn Magic Realm for YEARS and I still barely have a grasp of it.

If by "entire industry" you mean the American home console market.

That option would be not actually voting since it doesn't apply to you.

That's certainly true for some games, but also remember most NES games had very little content. Making them difficult was a great way to stretch out the length of games. When I first got my Nintendo I only had Super Mario and Contra. After a month I eventually got good enough to beat Contra regularly, but once I…