Square: “It’s a meta commentary on online culture and gaming - Sephiroth’s the ultimate troll.”

You’re right - I had thought for some reason he was in charge of XIII as well as XV, but XIII was somebody else’s mess.

Yeah, I have those same concerns. (SPOILERS here as well) I’m not someone who needs the remake to be completely faithful, but in itself the act of having the party fight a god of fate and Sephiroth himself really throws off the typical plot escalation. The escalation in the original is so gradual and well done - one…

It doesn’t explicitly change it, but the open-ended nature of FFVII’s ending leaves a lot of options open for interpretation. Since one of the main possible interpretations was that Holy may have wiped out Midgar (and by extension, a chunk of humanity and likely the main cast) in its efforts to protect the planet,…

I completely agree - my biggest issue with Advent Children is that almost all of the characters feel like caricatures of themselves at best or completely misunderstood representations at worst, not like the beloved cast that struggled, grew, and overcame massive obstacles over the course of a global battle. Cloud was…

Ari: *writes a lovely article highlighting some great indie gems that people may unwittingly have access to already and could miss in a time when there are exponentially more releases than ever, and simply expresses the joy it’s bringing them in our current hellscape*

I’ve been wondering this as well. I’ve been playing Smash since the original but have never been to an actual tournament (I’m neither good enough nor competitive enough), but I have a few friends who were really into that scene in college and I’ve read about it and watched from a distance out of curiosity. My personal…

Haha such a blast from the past. I was an angsty emo teenager who loved the first game and was SO PUMPED by that dumb commercial, and even then I thought the game itself was embarrassingly angsty and went too far with it. I’d love to hear the game developers reminisce about those choices in retrospect. But that combat…

As others have mentioned, the game looks pretty unremarkable, but what really stood out to me...what the fuck is up with this trailer music??? It’s so out of place that it pulled me right out of the action. A bland game about Greek mythology using a track that mixes James Brown, orchestral swells, and dubstep bass…

Honestly, I’d pay for a remake of Warrior Within just to witness that early 2000s emo fest and an overall tone that just makes no sense whatsoever within the franchise. I can’t imagine that game has even remotely aged well. Sands of Time and Two Thrones have a more timeless storytelling tone in comparison, but…

I’m sure motion capture is one of the most challenging aspects of modern development in a pandemic, which probably accounts for some of that jank, but still...those facial animations are not great.

100% agree. Scott Pilgrim is a great game, but carries forward tons of flaws and frustrations that have plagued the genre (especially tons of cheap hits from enemies). River City Girls is a better game with kickass flavor and style, and it plays like a dream.

Yes, it’s easy (and somewhat earned) to point and laugh at the dumb students putting themselves at risk for red cup parties and a social group they have to buy into. But it’s also incredibly disheartening to see university systems admonish a bunch of reckless and horny teenagers for failing to make rational decisions,…

What I'm really getting from this is that the SNES was one of the best values in console history. The bang per buck ratio is ridiculous!

1994 Video Game Executive: *snorts another line of coke off the glass table* “BUT LIKE, HOW’S A PRETEEN BOY GONNA KNOW HE SHOULD SAVE HIS GAME UNLESS HE’S SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO THE SAVE POINT?”

To be fair, the Metroid series, while critically loved, has only ever sold a fraction compared to Nintendo’s other series, and I seem to remember hearing that it’s much more popular in the west than it is in Japan. Even Metroid Prime, the pinnacle of the series and one of the most critically loved games of all time,…

“New in DKC Tropical Freeze Double Deluxe is Candy Kong Mode! Candy rides along on her boy-toy DK’s back, and she’ll soften up the competition for you by distracting those baddies with her...charms while you go in for the quick and easy KO!”

There are dozens of us! I know, right? Sonic fans are unusually passionate for some truly terrible and dated game design principles. I’m sure it’s confusing being a Sonic Team developer and being like “...wait, so this is really what you all want? Gameplay and level design from 2001?”

I’m curious how Microsoft is going to denote this generation, even though yeah yeah, I know that strictly defined generations are so outdated. But it’s still useful, as your post gets at, and especially as we get a couple years in and that overlap period where games still release for Xbox One ends. Is this new gen the…

Thanks! Too bad I’m only good for broad ideas, my brain can’t handle programming.