I vaguely recall that Zero Wing (the origin of All Your Base) starts with a somewhat depressing setup, in that the player’s ship is the only survivor of a sneak attack by the game’s big bad.

I remember buying Lightning Force on a whim as a kid and loving it.  Then I traded it for Sonic 2 and the kid I traded with supposedly lost Lightning Force. I was so mad. I forgot that the ending was somewhat depressing, though I haven’t played it in 25 years.

He did it through a regimen of physical training that seems disappointingly commonplace

I can remember playing this as a kid and getting really frustrated with the difficulty, though I was 7 so it makes sense I’d hit a wall at some point. Oddly, a friend of mine got it on the Wii game store back in 2006(?) and got stuck at the same level (though he was 20 so he didn’t have as much of an excuse). Though…

“okay but like, if that works so well, how come the rebels weren’t just Light-speeding into ships in the original movies!? Just put a droid in there and fly into the Death Star, bro!?”

I agree that movies aren’t that big of a deal, and in some cases I might seek out the spoilers to find out if I’ll even want to watch a movie (I’m glad I spoiled The Visit, because that twist would have annoyed me to no end if I’d actually watched the movie). For games, I definitely try to avoid story spoilers, though…

I’ll have to check those out. I’ve heard good things over the years but never found the time to actually try them out.

I’ll have to check those out.  I’ve heard good things over the years but never found the time to actually try them out.

Yeah, it made me think, “how young/dumb is Patrick?”

The color scheme makes me think of Vegeta’s armor, which is kinda cool, but the text basically ruins it.

As far as the passage of time, not many games come to mind for using time as an actual design element. The only ones that I can think of that used time effectively (at least for what the game design intended) is the Dead Rising games 1-3 (4 did away with the continual passage of time). Certain people and events are…

I’m wanting to call them idiots just for going to a historical landmark for their vacation, though I also occasionally want to check out random historical locations on my vacation. At the very least they’re idiots for not reading up on the tour. It’s history. Some of it can get pretty heavy, especially around…

Awesome, thanks!

I’ll probably continue Death Stranding on my own, and A Way Out online with my friend. Both are pretty early, with DS still being in the 2nd chapter and A Way Out only about one hour in. With DS I’d heard the tip that I should hurry to chapter 3, but I wasn’t sure if I’ll be able to return to the chapter 2 region, so…

The Rachni choice in ME1 does have an effect in ME3. It’s true that you can save the Queen in both situations, but if it’s the clone queen she won’t help you after being saved, affecting your final preparedness score (though that is sort of its own weird situation since the game’s online portion can make the in-game…

instead of having those choices culminate in something important, the ending just boils down to multiple choice, pick whatever ending you want, with nothing you’ve done up to that point having any real effect on the ultimate outcome

I feel like Enslaved (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enslaved:_Odyssey_to_the_West) never got the attention it deserved. An interesting story and world with fun gameplay, created by Ninja Theory (now made famous by Hellblade). Plus it has Andy Serkis (both as an actor and a director). Admittedly it had a few rough…

+1 for Asura’s Wrath. I don’t think I finished it, but I totally agree on the cinematic aspects.

one person can’t resolve all problems

The only game that comes to mind right now as mostly forgotten/ignored that I thought was great would be Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate. Though the gameplay was mostly a more polished version of previous Warriors games (so if you dislike other Warriors games you’ll probably dislike WO3U as well), the thing that most…