wolfman-jew
Wolfman Jew
wolfman-jew

So it turns out that I was about half an hour from the end of Metroid: Other M since the point where I stopped. So really, I can’t say much more about it than I’ve not said before, but while it’s not necessarily “hubristic,” it is misguided to a degree that calls to mind the most stupidly ambitious of projects. It

Yeah, we talk about it being a 2D game “like” Mario, but Spelunky gets how Mario games work in a way a lot of 2D platformers don’t. It’s that tactile, almost physical sensibility. You always know how Mario and Spelunky Guy they move, but also how they move in relation to the rest of the environment. That’s also where

I just fought her; she’s one of the most unpleasant final boss fights I’ve ever gone through. It’s such an awful encapsulation of the game’s mechanics: it wants to do a first-person mode but has no idea how to execute it, it’s incredibly difficult and irritating but doesn’t realize it, the enemies are inordinately

I’ve talked about this before on the site, but one of the most maddening things about Cage’s works is how banal and generic his inspiration ends up. For a creator so obviously fetishistic of the film industry, he only seems to look at the most bland science fiction plots, Thomas Harris knockoff thrillers, or pulps.

Well, I can’t say I didn’t expect Metroid: Other M to be anything other than a huge mess with poor game design, miserable gender politics, and some of the worst, most leaden writing I’ve encountered in a long time (I’ve only just gotten to the point where I’m comfortable letting the dialogue play at a normal volume

As much as I’d love for it to be the start of some kind of elaborate LOST or Gravity Falls-style secret network of codes, it’s sadly just a way to make them easier to read. I use the “Kinjamprove” Chrome extension, and while it’s better on the whole (the biggest thing being it shows chain threads far more clearly), it

I remember reading an interview about a decade ago with Sakurai, and he talked about how much he tried to make a racing game so streamlined that you only needed one button to play it. It’s something that often comes up whenever I think about the importance of accessibility.

Honestly, I don’t feel like Naughty Dog would be a good fit for them. The former’s games can have good writing and plotting, but it’s all separate from the gameplay - which kinda just gets slotted in to fit that after the fact (which is why they mostly just make third-person shooters). And what Nintendo has always

That’s a great list; I’d have definitely pushed for killer7 and Deadly Premonition had you not included them. Some other ones I was thinking:

Good news, bad news, folks. The good news is I’m starting to get out of my slump and play more non-Fire Emblem Heroes games. Unfortunately, the game is Metroid: Other M, about which I’ll be doing an article after my self-imposed few days’ break from more serious games writing. And hoo boy, do I have thoughts after

Honestly, I think that’s the best way to put it. Dark Souls without those values of cooperation, optimism, perseverance, and humility - with nothing but the sky high difficulty - is just Ninja Gaiden with better design. Alongside the great level design and depth to the combats, it’s that respectful attitude about

Truthfully, I haven’t really played much of anything this week. I got in some time with Golf Story, which is still quite good, even though I’m not a big fan of either the writing for the main character’s wife or anything related to the frisbee mechanics. I’m doing Fire Emblem Heroes daily, but it’s such a

God of War 1 has the best “story” of the originals (which isn’t much, but at least it’s willing to tell a complete one) and some spectacle I think is still pretty respectable, but it’s also got weird pacing issues, only three bosses, and some very repetitive design. 2 has a story that’s kind of insulting in how poorly

I think the last few years - and specifically, the glut of bad or suffocating open world games - have made the importance of pacing and limits fairly clear. The original God of War games were good for being only eight hours long, because that kind of gameplay would have gotten deeply repetitive stretched longer, it

If the villain is justifying brutal violence and torture by arguing that it’s necessary to save people from a horrifying apocalypse he predicts, and then the horrifying apocalypse happens, then he’s right at least in that. And because he’s revealed to be right, the theme kind of has to go from “the ways cults can be

I thought “WAT” was “attack” just spelled poorly, since it seemed to be the only magic that did damage?

It was 3D, Flammy! And not that lame-o 3D you saw in Mario 64; this was cool, edgy 3D movement. The kind that is...actually often just 2.5D.

Yeah, Crash just...kinda sucks, right? Like, he’s visually not great, but so much of those early games just loved to employ that fake difficulty you used to get in less imaginative older games.

Gotten back into Golf Story, baby! After weeks of not really playing much beyond Fire Emblem Heroes (and dumping over 130 orbs in a failed attempt to get that gray dragon Robin - for those who don’t play, that’s a lot of time wasted for something really cool), I decided to sit my tuchus down and play Story for a

On the whole, I’m okay with pretentiousness (or at least willing to ignore it when the game speaks better than the creator ever can), but that quote was just absurd. You made a fairly excellent game that was hugely influential on the entire medium, pretty much entirely for the better. You can indulge in a little ego.