crispy4000

Neato! Let's see some comparisons now.

Excited to see more of this in motion, for sure.

There's a bunch of unknowns I'd like to see. Metroid Prime 4. Next-gen Fable. Perfect Dark. Indiana Jones. IO 007. FF7R2. But I doubt we'll get any of them. Most are on MS' side this year, which is a welcome change. Otherwise, maybe Sonic Frontiers? Buzz behind the scenes is that its good. Like any Sonic reinvention, I'm ... curious.

Full list of shows: 505 Games Showcase: May 17, 6 AM PT Indie Live Expo 2022: May 21-22, 6 AM PT both days Warhammer Skulls: June 1, 10 AM PT PlayStation State of Play: June 2, 3 PM PT Netflix Geeked Week: June 6-10 Summer Game Fest Live: June 9, 11 AM PT Day of the Devs: June 9, immediately after SGF Live Tribeca Games Spotlight: June 10, 12 PM PT Guerrilla Collective: June 11, 8 AM PT Wholesome Direct: June 11, immediately after Guerrilla Collective Future Games Show: June 11, 12 PM PT Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase: June 12, 10 AM PT PC Gaming Show: June 12, 12:30 PM PT Nothing from Nintendo known yet, but you might as well watch this if you haven't yet.

More Greak, and I'm continually impressed. There's some fiddly little flaws with it, like some aspects of the controls, and a limited inventory per character that's not shared. But overall, this is a pretty lax Metroidvania-light mixed in with some Lost Vikings. Really hope I'll stay as positive on it until the end.

Epic Games Pass strikes again Here are Amazon's headline games for next month, technically not free since you need Prime.

Someone who bought a One as their one-and-done console last gen should try to find a Series X instead, if they want to ride this gen out similarly. Games like Shadow of Mordor last gen and Cyberpunk also crossed a bridge too far. There is such a thing as a game that performs so badly it shouldn’t be sold on a system, IMO.

TL:DW: Forza Horizon 5 does great, others are either pushing beyond the hardware or aren't properly optimized for it, like Tales of Arise lacking a 30fps cap. ---- Things were already pretty rocky for the base One and S during the mid-cycle, but there were many more exceptions of decently optimized AAA games than now. It begs the question of how much sooner Series S gets blown past.

We'll inevitably see pro machines this gen with UE5 and raytracing being demanding as they are. But I'm also thinking both Microsoft and Sony will try to push these out as far as they reasonably can.

Sounds like they know something we don't.

It's up https://store.playstation.com/en-us/category/518b9425-a874-447f-b286-002ceca36cbf/1

Warioware with a surprisingly robust adventure mode, more parodies, and more puns. Physics are bonkers in a good way. It'd be a great portable game to kill some time with, I think I might prefer it to Warioware honestly. Don't want to spoil any more of it, so... 8/10 2022 Death's Door - 8.5/10 Torna: The Golden Country - 9/10 Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 7/10 Mail Mole - 7.5/10 Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - 9/10 What the Golf? - 8/10

Tried a bit of Greak last night. I know reviews have dogged it a bit, though I haven’t read into why. Could be the playable character switching mechanic gets annoying. But damn does this game look (and sound!) good. It’s like if Hollow Knight had some Ori injected into it.

They should have done something at least for those who couldn’t beat it. Like a bad ending or something. I ended up using every bee by the end of my run. Gunning through the escape sequence first try without a single bee was a fist pump moment for sure. Almost lost Laylee by the end.

One of my favorite games in recent memory. I would have beaten this much sooner, if not for the final level feeling like a game in itself. The controls feel great, graphics look good throughout, and both the 2D platforming and overworld map sections are engaging and compliment one another. One of the smartest things about Impossible Lair is how it sections off its world. You can open 'paywalls' using 5 hidden coins you can find in each level. So unlike other 2D platformers, these collectables have a tangible benefit to you throughout the game. But you don't need them all to see everything in the game either. What's the point of actually beating levels then? To give you health points when attempting the last level. It's a brilliant design setup. Each level having a remixed form also works out. The twists to each level are each unique, if not entirely original. But its always enough for it to feel like a 'new' level, which is what matters most. The Impossible Lair itself feels like an NES game in its difficulty to me. Thank goodness they patched in checkpoints, otherwise I never would have beaten it. Sadly, the ending and credits are underwhelming for all the effort it takes to get there. It's like they just assumed very few people would see it. I've come to the conclusion that this game is a modern classic, and one of best 2D platformers ever. It's way better than it had any right to be, better than most of its inspirations, better than its discount implies. (Seriously, it's $1 on PC right now) 9/10 2022 Death's Door - 8.5/10 Torna: The Golden Country - 9/10 Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 7/10 Mail Mole - 7.5/10 Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - 9/10

Torna alone is a better game than X, IMO. I'd like to see a sequel to the latter someday, but not without some serious structural improvements and revamped skell combat.

I wouldn't go quite that far. I enjoyed a lot of the Wii U library, and think Nintendo actually supported it better much of the time. But I can't think of any Wii U games I prefer now over Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread and Xenoblade 2/Torna ... other than BoTW itself. Maybe DK:TF will hang once I get around to it. 3D World doesn't get quite there for me.

I've personally ignored Splatoon since Nintendo announced their online paywall. They lost a customer for that franchise. I might still like to play 2's single player and DLC some day, but only at bargain bin pricing. The games are surely still good in spite of my personal hangups. XB3 is almost as anticipated for me as BOTW2. I'll feast for the rest of this year.

A couple of indies: Slay the Spire, Overcooked, Celeste and Hades. That's all.

There's a lot of 'big' stuff that is up in the air at this point. Saints Row, Gotham Knights, Forspoken, Hogwarts, Sonic Frontiers, Avatar, etc. I'd say the surest bets this year are Nintendo's properties, namely Xenoblade 3 and Splatoon 3.

Zelda 1 is still a much more beatable game than Zelda 2.

For $3 it’s pretty great, yeah. I got it with Amazon Prime this month, wasn’t disappointed.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say most classic JRPG pixel art doesn't look as great as people remember it. Not just because of CRTs, but because the indie games of today have taken pixel art and animation further generally. Even if they experiment a bit with modern effects. Case in point: As for 2D HD, I don't mind the style, it does allow for more interesting framing. But there's just too much bloom and chromatic aberration for my taste. This game for example (Sacrifire) could look so good if they dialed that down a bit.

Mail Mole is basically indie budget Super Mario 3D Land with an occasional 3D Sonic level. The control scheme is pretty unique: you hold and let go of the jump button to hop, and can optionally get a speed boost by pressing 'run' when you land. The feel of the game probably could have used some fine tuning, I think the 'run' speed outside of boosting isn't fast enough to really notice. There's some nice aspects to the presentation (the depth of field blur and speed effects work well), but the ugly bits really stick out. Otherwise, its not a bad approximation of what Mario does well. That's also its problem. All the interesting design bits outside of the control scheme are lifted too directly from the 3D Land games. It's cool that it gets so close on a budget, but maybe someone who hasn't played a Mario game in the past decade or two could appreciate it more. If nothing else, its fun to play. I hope they get to make a better sequel. 7.5/10 2022 Death's Door - 8.5/10 Torna: The Golden Country - 9/10 Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 7/10 Mail Mole - 7.5/10