crispy4000

Was right about Metroid Prime Remastered, I know that at least. He just had to shave his head in shame for getting it wrong, before Nintendo shadow dropped it.

'' Time Spent: 45 minutes Rating: **** Another game that's totally my jam. Takes the squad management of classic Ogre Battle (64) and puts it in Fire Emblem. You can complete bonus objectives in each map for extra resources to upgrade your units, plus buy more soldiers to fill out your ranks. Presentation is awesome, tactical gameplay seems well thought through, including an option to swap squares with units. The in-combat, cutscene and tactics graphics all have different art styles, and the portraits are super on the nose as a Fire Emblem homage, but I dig all of it so it doesn't matter to me. Animations are suitably solid as well. Only minor gripe I have so far is the scaling. The pixel art looks good on a 4k screen, but the text, even with high res fonts enabled, doesn't look quite as polished as it could.

Should I try the new PoP or Hi-Fi Rush next?

It was free on Epic, that's how I got it.

Time Spent: 20 minutes Rating: **½ Turn based timing RPG. Slick menus, but the walking around looks bad compared to the quality of the battle sequences. Battle themselves are problematic, your success or failure rides on how well you time the button prompts, which you only see for a split second. You get used to it, but it's still not enough time when everything seems to always be riding on it. There's a weakness triangle for attacks, plenty of systems at play... I just don't know if the game would be worth it. The plot revolves around a mad girl taking revenge on mythical horoscope beings with her gingerbread sidekick. Maybe there's an audience for that, but it's not me.

Time Spent: 1.5 hours Rating: *** Maybe this is a hot take, but I don't actually think Risk of Rain is all that good. It served as a template for action rogue-likes in its day, but it's been surpassed by many others since IMO. It never managed to hook me, but I can recognize there is fun to be had here if you can get into the combat loop and don't mind endless spawning in a 2d platformer. I'm revisiting the original 2013 game edition, there's a newer remastered version out there.

Haters gonna gate. The game looks gorgeous. I’m all for blending modern tech with retro stylings. Probably the most impressive blend of it since Noita.

I already have a subscription where I can try 8+ new games a month. Its called the Epic Games Store, and costs $0 a month. In case that doesn't do it for me, there's the occasional good Prime drop within a subscription I already pay for. If that doesn't have anything appealing, there's Humble Choice every month. Then and only then might I consider paying for a month of rentals with Games Pass. Or just stick to my backlog, boosted by all the aforementioned and more. Why Games Pass hasn't succeeded on PC yet is plainly obvious. There's too many other things its trying to vie attention from, even beyond Steam. The rental model doesn't have much appeal in the current landscape there. I have to wonder how much this stuff affects the consoles too. Why buy an Xbox if you can't play all your free PC games on it? All the noise about bringing EGS, itch.io, etc to Xbox consoles reflects that reality, IMO. It's probably a preemptive move against Valve trying to enter the space again in a more meaningful way.

Speaking of PoP, Two Thrones is still on sale on Ubi's store for $20 after checkout code. Ubisoft launcher. Prince of Persia The Lost Crown STORE.UBISOFT.COM Included with Ubisoft+. Compare Prince of Persia The Lost Crown Editions. Available on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S.

Time Spent: 30 minutes Rating: **** I had no real expectations here. I played a bit of Retro City Rampage on 3DS, but remember not finding its 8-bit aesthetic appealing. The way they overhauled this to a 16-bit + 90's computer art style is perfect. It's one of the best looking games in this thread so far, from a pure pixel art angle. Better yet, the game is hilariously tongue and cheek. You're a modern day buisnessman whose 90's-era ventures are failing. How will you save your retail spaces? Taking a bat to Amazon delivery trucks of course. Creditor threatening you? Drive their car into the lake. You can walk into any old convenience store and demand part of their profits. Even the way cops just immediately turn to ram into you looks oddly comical. The game controls well, has options to zoom the view way out for larger displays (thank goodness!), and just is a chill time all around. But play it for the snark. Humor in games is hard, but here it's effortless.

Circus Electrique is free this week. Mystery game next week, presumably some kind of sale with it.

Time Spent: 30 minutes Rating: **½ Playing this just makes me mad Killer Queen Black is delisted. The general premise is that your side wins by killing their captain multiple times, taking enough gold, or blowing up their ship with a moving rowboat of TNT or canon shots. The gold and cannonballs are found around the center of the map. You can also buy a sword with gold to protect yourself, but can't use it when you're carrying anything. Presentation is extremely good outside of the music, which is grating. There's a story mode and bots, which gives it some longevity thankfully. Compared to KQB, your character moves much too slow, and a super basic melee attack is no where near as fun as flying around as a killer wasp. I don't think this would convince anyone they're missing out on anything, which is extremely unfortunate. If you ever come across a Killer Queen Black machine, don't hesitate, play it.

There's little doubt she was pressured.

Halfway through NSMB U. Is Luigi U worth playing or should I just skip straight to Wonder?

Do we know what Activision properties are underperforming?

Please don’t go third party. The industry is much worse off if Sony goes unchecked in the AAA console space.

What is the point of Xbox? WWW.EUROGAMER.NET Xbox has repeated the same terrible mistakes for over a decade. The reason is simple: its priorities are back-to-front.

Time Spent: 30 minutes Rating: *** Competent Zelda-like highly inspired by Link's Awakening. There's a bit of an Earthbound atmospheric vibe to the music that I appreciate as well. Combat feels quite simplistic and easy, even compared to Link's Awakening, but is well executed. It's not as successful of a homage as Blossom Tales, but has its own vibe.

12+ month past release would work better if game prices didn't fall like rocks (outside of Nintendo first party). Games that old are already so cheap by the time they hit the subscriptions.

I don't think that's a weird take at all. You might never get to the DLC you paid for in the time it takes for a game to get delisted, or for you to decide to drop the subscription. I much prefer the Humble Choice model where you own the games straight up. It's not a use it or lose it sort of thing. Even if the games are generally a bit lesser/older, I value them more than better stuff with temporary access.

This Resetera post, omg

They surely felt the burn too.

Fuck off Booty. Read the room.

If CoD doesn’t go to Games Pass, its a clear admission the model is broken. If CoD does go to Games Pass, maybe subscription prices go up another $6 a month.

What industry do they think they’re in?