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!
A little while back, I was watching Kris from Double Jump stream Deltarune. At a certain point, our conversation hit a big fork in the road. When it comes to what you enjoy more out of games, are you in it for gameplay or story? Though the true answer for everyone probably lies somewhere in the middle, I slant heavily towards gameplay, and she slants heavily towards story. Thinking back, it makes a lot of sense for why our taste in games is so different.
But then it got me thinking about the common ground we do have: Nintendo. How do we have this company’s work in common when we want very different things out of our games?
Historically, difficulty settings have been rudimentary in nature. You either get a choice of X number of settings from easy to hard, or the game simply is what it is. Whether the option of difficulty should be in every game – or no games at all – is a frequently debated topic. Try starting a thread about the Dark Souls series needing an easy mode and watch the internet explode in all directions.
Celeste may not have started it, but it’s the game that got me thinking about difficulty in a more granular sense. Since then, I’ve noticed other games that offer different takes on more nuanced difficulty settings.
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.
It’s time to catch ’em all on the Switch!
Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee are out now! Taking us back to the Kanto region, you’ll be playing in a quasi-modern reboot of Pokemon Yellow. I know there’s a lot of scuttlebutt within the more hardcore Pokemon community about this not being the next “real” game in the series, but it’s not a real concern for me. Having casually played through Pokemon X and Pokemon Ultra Moon, I’m not married to that format. If anything, a shift towards mimicking Pokemon Go might be what I need to get really invested, as it’s the Pokemon game I’m most invested in.
Since I pre-ordered it from Amazon, I’m not exactly sure if it’s coming in today or Monday. In any case, I’ll be playing it soon!
Are you returning to Kanto today or in the near future? Or are you waiting for the true Gen 8 Pokemon game?
Buy Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee Now From Amazon.com
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!
November 15, 2004. I was in the midst of my first year in college. Was also working a part-time job as a stock boy at a pharmacy. On that day, I bought Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the sequel to my favourite Metroid game.
November 15, 2018. Exactly 14 years later, and I still haven’t played the game. I don’t remember why I didn’t play it when I bought it, but it only got harder to fit it into my rotation the further away I got.
We’re back from Extra Life! Having recovered from our 26-hour gaming marathon, we discuss Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout 76, Tetris Effect, Mario Odyssey, and Into the Breach! We also review the nominees for the 2018 Game Awards!
In Third Person 