That Kirby connection is a really astute observation - Aria of Sorrow totally is a gothic, maybe even grimdark Kirby. It might be a bit toooo reductive to just leave it there, but the structure is so similar that I don’t know if I’ll ever separate that thought from playing it again.
Wolfman Jew
wolfman-jew
As for this weekend and beyond, I’ve got lots of work going on as usual, but a few interesting games as well:
(This had to be re-written because the Kinja comments section crashed. I’m writing this in a text editor then pasting in, but the experience is extremely frustrating as I just wanted to fix one typo before hitting “Publish”. Grr...)
I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 this week. Overall, it was a worthwhile experience. It’s not the best JRPG I’ve played, but it’s by far the most ambitious.
I got far in other M MILD SPOILERS TO FOLLOW: but I got to the turtle thing that shoots out metroids where you have to keep pointing the remote at the tv to shoot missiles to freeze them and then turn it back to fight them. WHY DID THEY DO THAT????
That team doesn’t seem capable of making an engaging system outside a standard JRPG template. Why Nintendo doesn’t just let them do what they’re good at is beyond me.
David Cage is so basic his favorite action movie is probably Jack Reacher.
Beat limbo last weekend, what a great game. The puzzles were fun, the atmosphere was great and it was just fun to play. Playing Inside now, probably about halfway through it. I like how it’s similar, but that the puzzles are of a different variety. Instead of trying to dodge blades and bear traps, you’re avoiding dogs…
Now playing
Man, don’t mock David Cage! Seriously, you are an unbalanced... psychopathic... ASSHOLE!
I really wish procedural games like this allowed you to work from the seed, like Freecell, so you could revisit and share your favorite adventure. It would not be terribly difficult, and I don’t think it would break the game by any significant margin. Heck, it may actually extend the life for some players.
Yep yep, exactly. Agreed. Even if he, say, embraced the pulp and had hokey fun with it, THAT would be a decisive direction. THAT would work just fine! A thread of commonality to connect all those disparate sequences together for infectious joy to the player. Heck, that’s what makes Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn so…
Now playing
Salutations~!
Heh, cool. So now I have learned about “Kinjaimproved”, and also about our shared interest in Gravity Falls. Win-win.
OK, Wolfman, I have to ask: Is there some underlying logic to the bold+underline start to each paragraph? Are we looking at some epic word-level acrostic scramble spread out over months of posts? Perhaps it’s just a way to highlight the start of each paragraph, similar to how some books start each chapter with a large…
That’s totally fair. I was reaching for some developer that was more narrative focused and they were all that came to mind. If Nintendo were to meet in the middle, where the gameplay is a storytelling mechanism in addition to there being a more focused narrative, that would be closer to the concept I had in mind. I…
Air Ride is fascinating. I even owned it at one point. I remember how it was critically savaged for its take on acceleration, but it had charming level design, that open city battle mode, it was very interesting. Here’s hoping Nintendo revives it at some point.
Synchronicity /cheer! Hadn’t played them, but definitely thought about Eternal Darkness and Fatal Frame. Heard all kinds of interesting thoughts about those blessed works. So too with that wonderfully bizarro Katamari Damacy. And Dino Crisis + Parasite Eve would make for a fascinating double-header of parallel…
Also, I keep poking and prodding at Endless Space 2. I think my core problem with the Endless games compared to, say, Civ, is that they are very unfocused. In Civ, there are multiple victory conditions, but the game systems are designed such that you’re always being funneled down at least a few of their tracks. You…