While in the process of squashing a new audio de-sync issue that’s been going on with my stream of late, I give the latest hero in Overwatch Ashe a try! I really like what I’ve played so far to the point where I’ll heavily consider making her my main someday!
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My Overwatch play is slightly above scrub-tier at best. However, every now and then I’ll have a standout performance or two worth sharing. One is with my current main Hanzo, and the other is with Ashe, who I think might usurp the archer as my go-to character going forward!
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30 years ago, Capcom laid the groundwork for the greatest fighting game franchise of all-time. It’s my favourite fighting game series and one that continues to stay top-of-mind, even when it’s currently not in my rotation. Let’s count down my favourite characters in the series!
For years, Blizzard toiled behind the scenes on a successor to World of Warcraft. Codenamed Project Titan, it never saw the light of day in its intended form. Instead of throwing it all away, elements of that project were carried over to create the hero shooter we now know as Overwatch. With its hype hitting a crescendo in the summer of 2016, I picked up a copy just to see what it was about. I didn’t really “get it” back then for reasons of my own doing, so I never really covered it. Now that it’s my current obsession, let’s take a look at how the game fares in 2018!
When I’m not glued to the TV playing Tetris Effect, I’m pumping the game’s soundtrack into my ears every chance I get. Even pulled out of context from the game, I’m enamored with the vibes that the music provides. Until we get the official soundtrack, YouTube user Nazo No Hito has done the world a favour and uploaded the entire soundtrack running in theatre mode. I tried to make a top 5, but I couldn’t in my heart of hearts cut the list any shorter. Here’s my top 7 songs from the Tetris Effect soundtrack!
Tetris Effect works brilliantly as one cohesive experience, but if I were to isolate one aspect of it as standing out, it’s the music. Adding Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s taste for electronic ambiance and international rhythms works wonders for creating the synesthesia that occurs when playing the game. As soon as I finished up my first stream with the game, the first thing I did was to find the soundtrack online. I need this in my ears even when I’m not playing the game. The news I found was…disheartening.
What might be my single greatest accomplishment in streaming, I completed Tetris Effect‘s main campaign on the hardest difficulty without dying once! My scores towards the end weren’t great, but I’m proud of myself for completing a clean run of the game!
Tetris Effect isn’t designed to be the most competitive or eSports ready version of the game. With the way that the game goes out of its way to obstruct your field of view for the sake of looking cool, it’s generally meant to be more about being absorbed into the vibe that the puzzle, music, and visuals create in unison. However, I understand that none of that matters when you’ve failed the final Journey mission for the hundredth time, or you fall well short of your friends on the leaderboards.
Though the core game is decades old, there’s still much to learn about this classic block-stacking game, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the modern Tetris ruleset. Maybe these tips will come in handy with whatever obstacles the game throws at you!
[NOTE: I did not play the game in VR at the time of writing, so I don’t touch on it or factor it into my current opinion of the game]
Tetris is the closest thing we have to gaming perfection. Universal appeal, easy to learn, difficult to master, and inherently designed in such a way that you’ll never win, but you can always do better. Feel free to make a case for any other game, but Tetris being the highest selling game of all-time with no signs of slowing down decades into its never-ending lifespan is a testament to its greatness.
How do you reinvent gaming’s equivalent of the wheel? If you’re Tetsuya Mizuguchi – most famous for his work on trippy games such as Rez and Lumines – you change the context of what the Tetris experience is through flashy visuals, modern electronic music, and VR support. I can’t speak to the VR side of the game, but the sheer act of playing the block-staking action in Tetris Effect becomes less about exercising your brain and more about being absorbed in the feeling that the entire experience creates.
Tetris is a timeless classic, but a new coat of paint by Rez and Lumines visionary Tetsuya Mizuguchi goes a long way towards transforming it from an intense mental exercise to a euphoric trip through time and space. In this set of videos, I complete the main campaign mode, along with an attempt at taking on the endless marathon! Full review forthcoming!
In Third Person 