Back to Yakuza: Like A Dragon after a week of playing steam demos from the Next Fest. I was surprised at just how many I ended up enjoying. Crypt Custodian is a neat little metroidvania about a cat sentenced to be the underworld's janitor. Nice art style, sense of humor, and good puzzles. Cryptmaster is a typing-based dungeon crawler where every enemy you defeat gives you letters that you use to spell out the names of the skills you use in combat. It's certainly an inventive take and I'm looking forward to the release. Surprisingly, my favorite demo ended up being for a platformer called Happy! the Hippo. It's based on janky PS2-era platformers like Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. The game is purpose built for you to pull off those kind of tricks where you skip chunks of the level or even break outside the bounds of the game entirely. It's really fun to play, but what I'm really enjoying about the game is the weird, almost horror game stuff that shows up the longer you play. It feels like an ARG game in a way, like Crow 64 if anyone remembers that. Or something like Shipwreck 64, a game that is a platformer on the surface but is actually a horror game once you get in far enough. Except Happy! the Hippo never turns into a horror game. At least not in the demo. There's plenty of strange stuff the more you explore, but it never descends into an outright horror game. It feels like all the talk about how old 3D platformers could be unsettling and odd was a major inspiration for the game. Hoping the finished the game keeps that tone when it releases.
Computerchairgeneral
It's kind of crazy thinking about how all these countries that we think of as so different in culture, religion, etc. used to be part of one state. Obviously levels of control varied, but by this map you could travel from the Atlantic to the shores of the Caspian Sea and never leave Roman territory. But yeah I'd give a reformed Roman Empire ten minutes before we ended up with a Crisis of the Twenty-First Century.
Hard to say if he's right given how much of this is behind-the-scenes business dealing. I honestly didn't think much about them ending support for the game, since it had been so long since it was released. Still, announcing they were going to support the game until 2025 and then ending updates the same year their sequel game is supposed to launch isn't a great look. Especially since Evil Empire was still talking about continuing updates last year. Makes it seem like a sudden decision on Motion Twin's end. It's impossible to say for sure, but it really feels like they didn't want their old game serving as competition. Hopefully Evil Empire is able to recover and start work on their own project.
The gaming industry is dying is an ice-cold take at this point, but I really don't see how it's sustainable in its current form with the way things are going right now. Sure, the analysts are saying things will course correct, but how is that supposed to happen if nothing in the industry changes? Games are just going to get more expensive to make and it feels like the cost-cutting is only going to get worse as more companies invest in AI tech.
Seven years feels about right for a length between consoles. I am curious to see what they do with it. It's hard to see Nintendo not sticking with the handheld console approach with the Switch 2, but just building a more powerful Switch doesn't feel very Nintendo, if that makes sense. Like there has to be some feature or gimmick to set it apart from the Switch.
They're charging people higher prices and refusing to allow them to keep their digital content? They're basically just handing out the pirate hats and eye patches at this point.
That's fine. Everyone knows handcrafting those poison swamps takes time.
It's really been whiplash inducing to go from reading about how Microsoft was going to dominate gaming because of the Activision buyout to reading about how Microsoft is going to be the next Sega and are possibly exiting the console market. And it all happened in the span of a few months.
Loved Season 1, excited for Season 2. Although, I'm not sure how I feel about trying to fit the entire time period between the show and Rogue One into one season. Feels like they could have gotten multiple seasons out of that, but I understand not wanting to have the show drag on.
Man can't catch a break can he? I hope something he's working on actually makes it to release.
Sure it is, Yves. If any game would qualify as quadruple A it's the Black Flag spinoff that's been in development hell for years. Genuinely curious how long this game lasts, even if it does get good reviews and finds an audience. Feels like Ubisoft would have cancelled this ages ago if the government of Singapore hadn't been providing subsidies to help fund the project.
Always impressed by the lengths people will go to preserve game history and more than a little concerned about them getting cease-and-desisted by Nintendo. At least it looks like it's already on the Internet Archive, so that's good.