Pooka's "Tl;Dr": The Nintendo Switch Reveal Impressions

Pooka's "Tl;Dr"

The Nintendo Switch Reveal (Impressions)

Let's get one thing out of the way, first: On its face, Nintendo's newest console entry is brilliant. Nintendo have apparently realized the corners of gaming that they continue to /actually/ dominate (local multiplayer and mobile gaming) and decided to combine the two into one seamless experience. And they've done this... by making the NVidia Shield.
No analysis of Nintendo's newest console reveal would be complete without a review of the state of the industry. This last E3  was an unimpressive mess of multiple companies epitomizing the meaning of the phrase "holding pattern". Not only did the games seem to blend together into one big Sandbox-ey, shootey mess, but the major console manufacturers even announced not-quite-next-gen entries into their upcoming lineup for winter 2016. All except Nintendo, that is, who were astoundingly tight-lipped about the whole affair. It has, in my humble opinion, created the perfect scenario for Nintendo to finally tip its hand. Now, in October, with the "hype" of E3 properly behind us, Nintendo could finally reveal its console without being caught up in the clash of Microsoft and Sony's latest slipshod attempts at. relocating your money from your own wallet into theirs. As it turns out, however, they needn't have worried.
With the reveal of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo seems to be the only company actually looking to bring players a new experience. Nintendo's attempts to do so in the past by forcing motion and touch control gimmicks, as well as the ridiculous Wii U screen integration on players have a history of mixed reviews. The Nintendo Switch's innovation, however, seems to be moving in the RIGHT direction for once, providing a convenient, all-in-one embodiment of what console gaming is meant to deliver.
Essentially, the Nintendo Switch is a gaming tablet. It pairs with a home docking stations that charges and connects the device with your home television. When you leave home, you can attach the controller joystick and button modules onto the sides of the tablet, and just like that, it becomes a mobile gaming device, useable as a handheld, or as a separate gaming tablet and controller. The Switch supports local multiplayer in both console and mobile mode, the latter of which uses the two separate dongles as their own controllers for simpler game formats in split-screen multiplayer.
If this is starting to sound familiar to you, it's because it is: The NVidia shield tablet isn't just similar- it's clearly the architecture upon which the Switch was built. The Switch utilizes an updated version of NVidia's "Tegra" processor, which is the hardware NVidia used as the backbone of it's Shield devices, most recently, the "Shield Tablet K1"  

Just look at that thing and tell me you're not getting just a BIT of deja' vu. Now, I'm not saying that Nintendo is repackaging the Shield tablet and selling it at a markup, I'm saying that the Nintendo is COMPLETING the Shield tablet and selling it at a markup. I'll explain:

Right now, the Shield line of gaming devices are a niche product, that already is getting forced out of the one place it actually had real value: In-home game streaming. I actually have a Shield device, from back when it was an integrated screen/controller all-in-one package that could also be connected to a TV and placed in "console mode" to stream its content to the larger screen. In-home streaming requires a 5G Wi-Fi router and a GeForce graphics card installd on your home gaming rig. Outside the home, you could access a large PC games library via the GeForce NOW paid streaming service, but since that requires a stable, fast internet connection, it's not exactly an option for gaming on the bus, train, or airplane. The Android platform, for all of its open-source glory, meant that the Shield's games library would lean on a mobile games industry that still hasn't quite expanded to take advantage of it. Half-Life 2, for what it's worth, WAS ported onto Android, along with several Telltale Games titles, but the reality simply isn't catching up to the potential quickly enough.

Enter: Nintendo. Nintendo's been programming full games to fit onto SD cards since late 2004 saw the debut of the Nintendo DS, and with the massive advances in portable flash memory architecture, giving us unprecedented capacity (The SDXC format ranges in size from 32Gb up to 2 TERABYTES), why shouldn't Nintendo try implementing this approach to its main console offering? By finally giving the Tegra architecture some meaty software to play locally, Nintendo is finally giving us the fully integrated, convenient experience that the Shield initially set out to provide.

Nintendo's Switch seems to have recognized and learned from the mistakes it made with the Wii U, and in doing so, solved a few of their more stubborn problems. They no longer are splitting their audience, for example. The Nintendo of the future appears to /combine/ their mobile and console crowds, and that convenience and user-friendliness seems likely to convert into sales, and for the sake of the gaming industry, I hope it does. Changing your product in a way that makes it MORE user friendly, adds value, and reminds us all of why console gaming exists in the first place flies in the face of many of the more prevalent trends in the big-money gaming industry, and it deserves to be rewarded. I'm very excited to see how this project develops, and if it keeps heading in the direction that it seems to be, I think it's likely that I'll have one of these things sitting in my entertainment center shortly after launch.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few things that I noticed in the reveal that have made me a little nervous regarding this otherwise promising little device:

The controller: Are Nintendo engineers aliens, by any chance? The NES was released in 1983, and I was two years old when the SNES debuted. What that means is that in the twenty-six years since, Nintendo still has not developed a default controller for their systems that looks like it was designed for humans. Yes, I do realize that they are bringing out a "Pro" controller for those of us who aren't mutants, but the default configuration for the controller looks enormous and ugly. I can't say for certain how it's going to feel in my hands (no one can yet), but it's not looking good. As far as the mobile handheld configuration, the square sides of the "Joy-con" bits make it look like it's going to feel like playing the 3DS XL, which I can say from experience is an exercise in hand-cramping agony during long sessions, until you go online and find a $15 ergonomic grip kit on Amazon. Certainly not a deal-breaker, but it DOES mean I'm going to be shelling out what I can only assume will be around $50-$60 for their "Pro" controller.

The Price: Nintendo, as of this writing, has not yet released the Nintendo Switch's price point. The Shield Tablet K1, however, sold for $199 at launch. The proprietary controller (not included) would set you back an additional $59.99. What this means is that for the first time, we actually get to have a baseline for just how much a console manufacturer thinks its contributions are worth jacking up the price of its hardware. Do I expect the Nintendo Switch to retail at $260? Absolutely not. However, the massive reduction in development costs (by simply adapting an existing platform instead of designing one from scratch) might mean that Nintendo will be able to pass on the savings (and goodwill) to players, and make it the Switch an affordable, convenient alternative to the XBOX and PlayStation's current lineup. If they release the console for less than $350 (the Wii U's "Deluxe" price at launch), I'll feel vindicated. If they retail it for less than $300, you can book me a ticket on the Hype train. Of course, it could go the other way. Who knows? The Shadow knows.

The design: Anything I could say about whether or not Nintendo is going to weatherproof the Tablet, or use something similar to Motorola's "Shattershield" component screen for the Switch would be (hopeful) speculation at this point, but two things we know for sure are that Nintendo intends for this system to travel with us, and that this tablet is going to have its screen exposed 100% of the time. Nintendo handhelds have kept the hazards facing mobile gaming devices in mind since the Game Boy Advance SP, which had a flip-up screen that closed when not in use, protecting the screen from dings and scratches when not in use. The DS and 3DS both continued this trend, as did the first generation of NVidia Shield devices. I'm assuming they'll include (or, more likely, sell separately), some kind of sleeve or carrying case for the Switch, but it still strikes me as odd that two separate companies, both of which whom have done screen protection correctly in recent history, combined to develop a device that seems to throw all that common-sense design out the window.

All of that said, the reveal of the Nintendo Switch gives gamers a lot to be optimistic about. Nintendo is back to its roots, reminding us all about why they were the ones who saved the console gaming industry from annihilation in the 80's. Now, in 2016, with its main competitors in an oddly suicidal race to see who can make themselves into a manufacturer of obsolete computers the fastest (hmm... maybe that's why Apple's taking another stab at gaming, eh?), Nintendo is looking to pioneer the future of console gaming by merging it with its mobile components. A single device is set up to offer HD gaming on your screen at home, mobile gaming on the bus to your friend's house, and what looks to be Ad-Hoc LAN party style multiplayer gaming when you get there. The concept is BRILLIANT. Now let's just see if Nintendo can stick the landing.

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Pooka's Tl;Dr: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's First TF29 mission is Tl;Didn't Play (Game tip)

Deus Ex Fans:

Deus Ex is not about following a set path. It's about options. the game dares you to use your cunning and ingenuity to find creative solutions to its challenges.

Therefore, I am not shamed to say I have found the BEST route to complete the Ruzika station mission (the first TF29 mission, where you retrieve the DSD from the police-guarded train station where the bombing took place).

I play with a slim loadout, so I don't mind missing out on all the FAT LEWTS, and i have to say, it's nice getting what amounts to basically a nice, healthy-sized, FREE XP injection in exchange for taking a three-minute complete stealth route instead of what usually comes out to be a 15 to 20 minute mission.
Required augments:
-Rebreather
-High jump
Tell smiley to beat it and go straight up into the rafters from the starting zone. Head to the BACK of the station, towards the secured door immediately visible from your starting point. The electrical current blocking the rafter access isn't constant, and you can breeze right past it with even comparably bad timing.
Once in the next room, pick up the goodies (including a pocket secretary) and power down the breaker. hop up to the top of the machinery, and there will be a vent on the right hand wall. Open it up, and head through. There is poison gas in this section so the rebreather aug should work fine, as long as you've charged up.
exit the vent and shut the valve on the large pipe on your left.
Now, the important part. Head back through the vent and grab a square cardboard box and take it back through the vent to the new room. Then go back and bring over a second. You'll need to drop the box and get a fresh grip a couple times to get it all the way through, but otherwise just wiggle it around, it will fit.
Now you've got two boxes in the new room. Stack them on the opposite end of the room, carefully jump on top, then high-jump and mantle the ledge above.
Head through the vent, move the box, and the DSD's on the table. pick up the pocket secretary from the dead body in the valve room on your way out, and use the code therein to stealthily loot the station attendant booth. head back down to the platform and peace out. Enjoy the Ghost level XP.
I have pulled this off. Enjoy!

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Pooka's "Tl;Dr": Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

   

  I suppose I should open this review with a disclaimer that I am a fan of the Deus Ex Franchise, and have been since the first game. This isn't a contrived statement meant to bolster my geek cred, it's simply to establish that I probably went into this game expecting to enjoy it.

Which I did.

Immensely.

One of the first things I noticed about the game when dropped into its prologue level was just how familiar it felt. We are, of course, still playing as Sir Adam "Growly" Jensen, a protagonist so highly modified he might as well be a Honda Civic, and he's off on a super-secret mission to stop some people in Dubai from getting up to some bullshit. It does the standard 're-familiarize the audience with gameplay in the first level' routine that's always welcome, until we reach the end of the mission, all hell breaks loose, and we have our inciting incident. And after that terrorist attack, followed by the opening credits, we're greeted with another terrorist attack. For this is Deus Ex, and there are always terrorist attacks.

What I was actually talking about, however, in terms of familiarity, was the control scheme and general feel of the game. It felt like a sequel should; based on the original's overall design and concept, but stepped up in almost every way. I realize there's a huge "BUT" hiding there, and we'll get to it, but first I'd like to let you know what you're getting.

As I said before, the control scheme feels very much like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but with a few well-placed tweaks to make it feel more fluid. The quick-access inventory and augmentation menus are a welcome addition, as well as the return of mantling, which was inexplicably left out of Human Revolution, despite its inclusion in Invisibl-ahem... I mean, "The game that shall not be named".  The cover system, which was functional enough in Human Revolution, has been slightly tweaked to be more conducive to stealth play (adding an indicator of where you'll end up when breaking from cover, eliminating the guesswork and allowing you to focus on timing your movements. With the fluidity that it lends to the experience, I felt much more confident that the mistakes I would inevitably make (and there were quite a few) would be my own doing, and not the fault of the game. There are still a few annoyances to be found among the improvements, of course. The cover-based shooting is an absolute chore when using any weapon without a scope (which Adam will use when aiming from cover) or laser sight (which provides an aimpoint). I know this seems nitpicky, but it's an entirely unnecessary frustration when a) we can clearly see Adam aiming down his sights when he peeks out from cover, b) the game has no issue letting you use your magnifying optics when aiming from cover, and c) it forces you to do a quick mental checklist of which weapons you're carrying, and which are equipped with a damn laser sight. I'm not an augmented superhuman, and I can aim down a paintball marker when I peek from cover, why doesn't the game allow us to peek into iron sights?

The second glaring control issue has more to do with the HUD actively fucking with my immersion. I don't mean that in a Boderlands-ey "Golly me, there's an awful lot of shit on the screen, how the hell am I meant to SEE?" kind of way, but more of in an "This HUD is actually interfering with my ability to play this damned game, and if these damn prompts don't disappear,  I'm going to beat the designers with a Steam Controller." kind of way. We have the kind of problem that could have been solved with some very minor tweaks. Specifically, the overuse of the 'Use' Button assignment, and bad prioritizing by the game's systems. I'm only half joking when I say you're going to spend a majority of the game holding the 'Use' key. Available Praxis? Hold 'E' to go to the Praxis menu. Available Crafting Parts? Hold 'E' to go to the crafting menu. Objective update? Hold 'E' to view the mission entry. Picked up a pocket Secretary? Hold 'E' to view the text. New Story Item? Hold 'E' to view. And what's worst... need to drag a body? You guessed it. Hold 'E' to drag. The clever people reading this have probably figured out where I'm going with this, but this problem came to a head during a mission where I was tasked with discreetly picking off guards in a crowded area, one by one. Each one I took down updated the mission status, dropped a Pocket Secretary, gave me experience for taking them out, and the target one dropped a Story Item. All of this while I'm trying to quickly hide bodies so I don't blow my cover.  So, when I tell you that I earned a Praxis Kit when I took down a guard that had a Pocket Secretary, and so was forced to flip though menu after menu, trying to get all of the HUD prompts to disappear (some of which don't immediately disappear when you access them, either, forcing you to wait), you'll understand my frustration. Luckily, I did discover that if you're positioned to drag a body when you hold 'Use', and a HUD prompt takes you to a menu, you will be dragging the body when you exit the menu. So, while that did eventually lessen the blow when I figured it out, it's still annoying to have to pop in and pop out of a menu to do a task that will occasionally require that you pull it off before a camera swings back your way, or the guard's buddy turns around to catch you dragging his friend behind a filing cabinet with a guilty look on your face, and you slowly reach for the 'Escape' button to reload your latest autosave. My point is that it seems like such a small issue, but in my opinion, the GUI should never interfere with your ability to stay on-task in a game. Otherwise you're damaging the player's immersion. Why couldn't the game have you press and hold the 'Menu' button to quickly access new additions to the Menu?

The Systems in the game get my all-around stamp of approval. the Stealth mechanics have been polished to a mirror shine, with clear indicators of whether or not you're about to be spotted, vision cones that give patrolling units credit for possessing peripheral vision, an adequate but not overly generous delay between being alerted and altering others, and new ways to make your way around security systems, by way of EMP rounds and the new Remote Hacking augmentation, which temporarily disable electronics, if you're stuck in a situation where you can't figure out how to outmanuever such challenges.  Boss Battles include new options for non-lethal combat or even a practically hands-off approach (if you can find the right terminals to hack), something we had to wait for Human Revolution's Director's Cut to see the last time around. A crafting system has been added (Because it's 2016 and EVERYTHING must have crafting now), but if that's not your speed, you can basically treat it as a slight re-jiggering of Human Revolution's "Weapon Upgrade" system, just taking up FAR less space in your inventory. You can use your crafting parts to create Multitools (The near-equvalent of the Automatic Unlocking Devices from Human Revolution), health stims, and battery packs in a pinch, but with those items being one-use consumables found both as hidden loot and buyable in most stores, the benefit of permanent weapon upgrades  far outweighs the usefulness of the Recipes, and I think in my first play-through at "Give me Deus Ex/Hard" difficulty, I crafted exactly one Multitool to use on a safe I couldn't crack open near the end of a mission. Once.
The new Augmentations are a welcome bit of flavor, providing powerful new options at the one-to-one cost of permanently disabling one of your standard Augmentations. That bit of balance provided a welcome bit of temptation and consequence for what would otherwise be a set of near game-breaking quasi-superpowers. My personal favorite (as someone who prefers the stealth approach) was the Remote Hacking aug, which allowed Adam to toggle devices like Electronic Glass switches, cameras, and turrets on and off from a distance, often without breaking cover. Deus Ex is, and always has been, a game about options, and never once during my play-through did I feel like there was only a single approach to any situation I found myself in, which means that Mankind Divided delivered on what is, to me, the greatest selling point of a Deus Ex game.

The level design deserves special mention as a genuine star of the overall game, presenting unique challenges to players regardless of whether they choose to take the direct approach, or stealth, and rewarding creative thinking. With the right Augmentations activated, very little of any level is out of reach, which actively encourages players to consider multiple angles of approach to any situation, and choose the one that best matches their abilities, augmentations, and equipment loadout. Enemy placement is clever, and forces stealth-based characters to take extra caution and observe their surroundings before each calculated move, making each successful undetected infiltration satisfying in it own way. Secret compartments, hatches, and stashes add room-based puzzles for the observant, thorough player, including one hidden in my own damn apartment that I didn't find until my second play-though. The main hub, Prague, deserves recognition as well. The effects of the Augmented Apartheid feel well-delivered, and each detail of the slums felt oppressive and visceral. The world feels very much lived-in, with scripted sequences occurring at various intervals, making the world feel alive (if oppressive), and helping immersion. The first time I went to the metro to exit the slum area, I found myself waiting in a line that the game didn't actually force me to wait in at all. The situation was just so well-designed that I felt compelled to behave in-character.

Graphically, the game is absolutely stunning. I may have lost a few Frames Per Second by cranking the graphics up to Ultra, but it was hard to argue with the results. At my monitor's native 1080p resolution, the level of detail was breathtaking. Cutscene character animation may still stray into the Uncanny Valley, and look a bit stiff for how natural the cast of characters are rendered, but it was by no means a deal-breaker, and I found myself genuinely enjoying the various dialogues and "speech battles" that rewarded paying special attention to NPC's  nonverbal communication.

The story is very much faithful to the general feel of the Deus Ex franchise, which is to say, everything is a conspiracy, everyone's a suspect, and you can count the characters you can trust on one hand. The plot and character decisions are filled with moral ambiguities, half-measures, and even occasionally doing the "wrong" thing for the "right" reasons. A lot of choices are merely implied, as well, such as whether or not to intervene in situations involving police brutality, extortion, the drug trade, or just the fact that getting to an area to accomplish a task, keep a promise, or make a choice would require putting yourself at significant risk (which has extra weight in the game's new "I didn't ask for this" difficulty, which adds Permadeath to the list of risks a character has to weigh). It does, however, seem to suffer from structuring issues, particularly at one point where the game kept waiting until I'd traversed across the entire map to activate the prompts to tie off the sidequests, each of which were located back where I'd started, forcing me to retrace my steps, tie off the side quest, then head back crosstown to pursue the main objective, which set off the next prompt right as I reached it, a process it repeated three times in a row, back to back, at which point I'd decided that either this game was deliberately fucking with me to see how many times it could get me to make a risky crosstown round-trip, or someone on the writing staff needed to be fired. I could see forcing me to double-back once, after all, it's not unrealistic that sometimes a can't-miss opportunity will present itself at the most inopportune moment, but the way it's implemented is either lazy or sadistic. While I like it when a game manipulates me in a clever way, I'd be hard-pressed to find a less creative way to pad out a particular section of a game than "why don't we just make them backtrack across the whole map three times like the world's stupidest relay race?" Still, this is just one particular glaring error in an otherwise brilliantly written game that manages weave a lot of interconnected webs of increasingly sinister plots without making it all feel messy and tangled.
The whole "Rogue Agent" angle to the plot blends in seamlessly with the main story, and ties in well with Adam's personal motivations, held over from the last game, as he's now on the tail of the Illuminati, and is leveraging his Interpol connections and skills to wage a one-man covert war against their conspiratorial activities. Balancing Jensen's genuine interests in investigating the two inciting incidents with his suspicions that the Agency he is investigating FOR is an Illuminati controlled shadow government operation is an interesting challenge that is sure to tickle spy drama fans, as well.

So far, all of the credit and blame associated with this product is squarely on Eidos Montreal, but as it is a Square Enix property, it comes with your usual boilerplate Square Enix bullshit. There's An extra game mode called Breach which basically takes the entire stealth action gameplay setup and turns it into a fast-paced, arcadey time trial that can't work out if it's a shooter or a platformer, and provides PLENTY of ways to sucker players into microtransactions. I played through the tutorial and several levels, and then, much like Adam Jensen, decided that "I didn't ask for this", and dropped it altogether. Plenty of the games journalists whose opinions I trust are bemoaning the inclusion of microtransactions in this full-priced AAA release, but inasmuch as it affects the actual Mankind Divided experience, I'm happy to say that I was, for all intents and purposes, completely unaffected in my playthrough. In my own opinion, resource management is a major part of what makes Deus Ex a challenging experience, forcing you to adapt your approach to situations based on the augmentations you have activated and the equipment in your loadout, but if someone wants to pay to ruin that for themselves, who am I to stop them? And while that certainly doesn't excuse a company known for its bullshit business practices including bullshit money-grabbing schemes in their games for bullshit reasons, I think that Eidos Montreal has delivered a solid experience that even Square Enix couldn't fuck up on delivery, God knows they tried... remember "Augment your Preorder"? *shiver*

Tl;Dr: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a beautiful, complex, well-designed, well-written entry into the Deus Ex franchise. It focuses its energies on maximizing player choice both in gameplay and story, and its execution makes it not only a worthy successor to Human Revolution, but likely will make it the new standard for stealth action games for years to come. Don't miss this one.

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Pooka's "Tl:Dr": "Infinite Warfare" and "Battlefield 1" Trailers

By now, nobody who knows me well enough thinks I've got anything positive to say about Call of Duty as a franchise, but I think the gaming community may be getting a little harsh on "Infinite Warfare".

It's the most heavily disliked gaming-related video on YouTube, literally ever (As of this writing, nearly a MILLION dislikes). While I disapproved of the trailer's use of a remix of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (The Starman died a little recently for you to be slapping his work on a video to promote a game that simultaneously trivializes and glorifies dehumanizing warfare), most of the flak from the gaming community seems to be slamming the title for its choice to use a futuristic setting, that included space combat.

Here's the thing about that: I honestly think that is a far more damning piece of evidence against the game's main fanbase than it says about the game itself. The community that is the rabid following of CoD has always been characterized as immature and lacking in imagination, buying yearly installments of the SAME DAMN THING over and over again. While CoD has flirted with futuristic combat as a franchise, it's always remained safely within the realm of edge-of-reality and never strayed too far into the extraordinary, out of a tireless devotion to an oddly suspect definition of "realism".

With "Infinite Warfare", they've taken off the safeties and thrown the players into SPACE, which in my opinion doesn't usually equate to a bad decision. Space is an awe-inspiring place, and a great setting for video game fantasy. Apparently, though, this has alienated a large portion of their audience, who have already crucified this installment.

That, dear reader, is a mistake. When a community of devoted fans refuses to allow artists to evolve and innovate, they assume that the artists will continue to crank out consistently quality work within the same damn wheelhouse, but locking artists within a creative box does a disservice to the industry as a whole. Am I saying "Infinite Warfare" is going to be an amazing game after a string of same-ey arcade shooters? No, I'm not saying that. I have no idea. I can't say that one way or another. But we must allow developers to take creative risks, in order to evolve not only themselves, but the industry, to bring us passionately created experiences and new IP's that will inevitably follow.

That said, I also wouldn't make the mistake of TRUSTING Activision. If there is anything we DO know for sure, it's that the game will be overhyped, cross-promoted onto the favorite products of teenagers and frat boys everywhere, and chopped up and sold back to us as DLC packs and/or an "Elite" subscription package. it's the same reason why I'm floored by the massive response to EA's "Battlefield 1" trailer, which presents a daring attempt at a WW1 themed shooter. A commendable goal, trying a setting that will include biplane dogfights and archaic weaponry, but while I support the direction it is taking, I haven't forgotten the debacles that have been every Battlefield/Battlefront release since Battlefield 3's "Premium" debut. Those mistakes, however, are not the fault of the artistic team, so one should be careful to delineate the two when bringing up gripes. New artistic directions are a POSITIVE thing for the industry. What the corporate interests follow them up with to ruin them is an entirely different story.

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Game comment: Nintendo Spring Partner Preview

Hello friends, Sakti here. This time I could not avoid making a comment on the Nintendo Partners Preview video for Wii U and 3DS.

The two games presented, "Tumblestone" and "Axiom Verge" look really cool, but I do wish Nintendo had done a bit more of work into actually appealing gamers to play try these new titles.

"OMG is Damon dead? Someone infuse some life and humor on this publisher guy, because he's boring as heck!"

A little marketing job would not have been bad, Nintendo friends, because the way I look at it, it seems you simply took a camera, recorded yourselves, pasted the clips together, and boom. Budget preview done. These kind of jobs just make you wonder why Nintendo is going bankrupt...

Other than that both Tumblestone and Axiom Verge look kinda "eh." Axiom looks like a copy of Metroid, which I'm not really happy to buy or try. Tumblestone seems fun to play with friends, as it is the first action puzzle game since the SNES. But considering most gamers simply wanna shoot shit in the head or beat the crap out of others in a virtual world without the need of their brains, welp, I fear for the future of the title. Time will tell.

Feel free to leave your comments, and stay tuned for more reviews!

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Anime comment: Kiznaiver

Hello boys and girls, Sakti here. This time I bring you a comment on one of the latest Trigger animes, Kiznaiver.

First of all, allow me to say I was really excited to see this new production by the studio who brought forward the jewels of Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia. Both of them had amazing art and plots, and if I'm honest, I would have LOVED to see more of Little Witch Academia. So this set the bar high for Kiznaiver.

Upon watching the first episode, however, my hopes were crushed and turned into a pulp sent down the drain.

The reason? Kiznaiver starts with the all-familiar boy loser who can't even stand for himself (yeah, thanks for that legacy Shinji Ikari). But things get weird as heck with the boy (Agata) and the episode ends up with the discovery that the pain shared between a group of selected people ("modern sins" in an effort by the writers to make this BS more flavorful) is thanks to a machine implanted on them (by a mystery girl named Sonozaki). The whole point is that the guys with such machines are an experiment to determine whether people can stop having wars and generally being assholes to each other. A new way to make our society and species evolve, to say the least.

While I would agree that this plot sounds interesting to many, I have to be a raging nerd and bring forward a much more elaborate plot from which this anime was derived. And that series is called Sense8, by the ever-illustrious and wonderful now Wachowski sisters (yes, the Matrix dudes).

Sense8 is a Netflix original series that narrates the lives of a group of 8 people whose emotions, pain, and thoughts are linked. They help each other survive multiple dangerous situations, while at the same time attuning to their new capabilities and friends.

Deja vu? Yeah, pretty much what Kiznaiver is about, or rather, will be about. I am willing to make a bet the series will turn to the resource of making them help each other to survive, while adding a lame background story with Agata to help distract the raging nerds like me compare it to the much better realized series of Sense8.

So in my opinion, Kiznaiver is not worth your time. So instead go watch Phoenix Wright in Ace Attorney, or even the bike girls of BAKUON!!

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Game Update: Pokemon Go - First Look???

Last September Nintendo and the Pokemon Company announced the new project titled Pokemon Go. Together with the team behind the sci-fi mobile game Ingress, Niantic Labs, the game aims to bring Pokemon into the real world with the use of real-world maps, cities, and scenery - aka 'augmented reality'. Not much has been given to us in regards to details about the project, but a new leaked video (above) could possibly be a first look at what the game may look like.

The video was taken during a SXSW talk by John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs. The video shows a quick and brief look at the in-game map and a user catching a found Ivysaur with multiple different Pokeballs.

Like it's augmented reality predecessor Ingress, Pokemon GO will have players venturing out into the real world, using location data to determine where various Pokemon can be found and caught. The game doesn't have a release date yet, but is expected to launch sometime this year on both iOS and Android.

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Game Update: Destiny Update 2.2.0 - Details & Release Date Announced

Yes. Those are Taken Guardians you're looking at.

Yesterday Bungie announced the release date for the upcoming, and highly anticipated, new patch for Destiny: The Taken King. Update 2.2.0 will be released for free on April 12th, 2016. The new update will be available for install for all players who have purchased the Taken King expansion.

Bungie says that over the next three Wednesdays they will be providing more information about the update via their Twitch channel. Viewers will get a chance to meet some of the game's designers and artists and ask whatever questions they desire. The schedule is as follows: 

April Update Preview: New Things to Do

Wednesday, March 23rd - 11am PDT

April Update Preview: New Things to Earn

Wednesday, March 30th - 11am PDT

April Update Preview: Sandbox and Crucible Updates

Wednesday, April 6th - 11am PDT

Bungie didn't go too much into detail with the initial announcement, but did list out some of the changes players can look forward to:

- New PVE challenges

- New and Updated Gear

- New quest featuring Blighted Chalice Strike

- Increased max Light and rewards

- Sandbox and Crucible Updates

- "And More"

Be sure to catch the Bungie streams for more information, and look forward to the changes!

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Final Fantasy XIV: How to REALLY make money fast in-game

With the dawn of Ishgardian housing available in the next patch release, many players in Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward are working their asses trying to make some gil and buy a house.

While player housing needs are wildly different (most want personal houses, while FCs shoot for either medium/large plots), one things is common to us all: we want them moneis $$$$ !!

There are plenty of guides out there but to be honest all they tell you is: resell NPC-bought items, run many dungeons, don't teleport, get a gathering class, and voilà, millions in minutes.

Well, these methods work, but on the very long run. In my experience, all NPC-bought items sell rather badly (except for iron ore, but the profit is minuscule), running dungeons doesn't give you millions in days and is very time consuming when done on duty finder, trying to walk/run thought Eorzea to get to your destination is time-consuming and boring, and not all gathering classes make you earn much coin until you unlock the unspoiled nodes.

What should you do then to get a millions in days??

This is Sakti's game secrets, so make sure to read them all!!

1. First off, get yourself a miner. Miner gathered goods are used for most of the crafting classes, and therefore you can start making sales early in the 1-50 levelling. Examples of these are saltpeter, alumen, cobalt ore, grenade and bomb ash, etc. Not to mention that once you unlock the unspoiled nodes at 50 you get access to the much demanded darksteel ore and grade 3 soil, which can make you earn thousands if gil. At lvl 60 Adamantite ore rules.

2. Get yourself a blacksmith. The miner/blacksmith combo made me earn 10 million in 3 months of casual sales. Sales are huge for darksteel ingots, wolfram ingots, and all of the end-game tools, furnishings, and special weapons. You also have to level up their desynthesis skills so you can sell special mats from primal extreme dungeons, specifically from weapon desynthesis, and the aged pestle pieces necessary for the zeta weapon relic. Not to mention, if you specialize you can make millions on the HQ item needed for the new Anima relic weapon (going for ~800K each in Excalibur as of now).

3. Spend time in the garden. I have seen seeds go for 1gil each, and their products sell for thousands. Invest your time in the garden because this is one of the best methods to make money in a short/medium term. Noteworthy are the inter crossing breeds, glazenuts, and Thavnairian onions. Oh and the new peppers for the Ifrit minion.

4. Make your retainers do quick exploration missions. Most of the time they bring back trash, but when they're well-geared they can bring you some wonderful sundries, such as Thavnarian onions, pieces of armor (which you can exchange for company seals), pieces of furniture, rare dyes, and the most desired Kingly Whisker. This is a good investment of ventures, for sure, and a good way to level up retainers fast.

All in all, this is my advice. If you want money you need to work for it, so I wish you all a happy crafting and a happy gathering and gardening. Battle does not really make you rich unless you spend all your time doing high-level dungeons and the roulettes. If you know more ways to make gil fast, please leave a comment below!!

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Pooka's "Tl;Dr": XCOM 2

October 9^th, 2012: XCOM: Enemy Unknown hits the shelves, and blindsides the gaming community with a brilliant rebooted IP that nobody saw coming.  It was a no-frills turn based tactical combat game that taught you to play as you played, and forced you into scenarios where you would need to improvise and adapt to in order to bring all of your troops home alive.  It wasn’t perfect, what with the occasional crash, almost roguelike difficulty curve, and remarkably loose definitions of “line of sight”, but  overall it was a functional, surprisingly accessible, and ridiculously fun reboot of a franchise that I didn’t know I needed in my life.

                Fast forward to today. Firaxis, not content to rest on their laurels and create the pedestrian sequel we’ve all come to expect from the AAA gaming industry, has given us a massively reworked envisioning of the XCOM experience. Did it work? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Well…

                XCOM 2 is set twenty years after the events of the first game. While your HQ staff is completely different than it was in EU, you are still the same Commander that led the XCOM forces to victory in the first game. Apparently, in a new wave of attacks, the XCOM Headquarters from the first game was sacked, and you were captured by the alien forces and kept in stasis while they took over the planet and created a sinister new world order called “Advent”, putting themselves at the head. They patrol their city streets with alien shock troops with human DNA spliced in, so they can seem humanoid around the natives.
                If that sounds a little familiar, you’re not alone in thinking that. My first thought on seeing the Advent troopers was “Okay, so they’re like the Combine from Half Life 2, I can dig that.” Then, I was written out of decades’ worth of plot to allow the aliens to take over and set up shop all over the planet, so the new story arc could happen. “So… I’m Gordon Freeman. “  I thought. Then I was expected to head up the resistance efforts by micromanaging small squads of- okay, so Firaxis may or may not have inadvertently ripped their premise straight from Half Life 2. However, give that this is a game about a resistance movement against an alien occupation, there’s only so many ways you can set that up. There’s enough games about resistance forces on earth (you know, like “Resistance”) that setting up an oppressive alien empire is practically done by handbook at this point.
                If you disregard the same-ey premise, the rest of the story holds up quite well in terms of quality, and remarkably, Firaxis harnesses each element of the game’s presentation in order to enhance the immersion and the feeling that every move, very choice, every allotment of resources counts, which in turn strengthens your connection to the story. XCOM 2 is no longer the story of earth defending itself, in a heartwarming tale of remarkable international cooperation, but rather the tale of an earth already lost, and you’re fighting an uphill strong from the onset.

“The Ticking Clock” is an almost oppressively pervasive theme in the plot of XCOM 2. You are constantly reminded that you have neither the time, nor the resources to accomplish every task, and while some things require various kinds of resources to produce or implement, EVERYTHING costs time. Picking up your supply drops takes time, flying your mobile helicarrier (Named “The Avenger” like we weren’t gonna notice that cheeky joke) takes time, Research, including weapons development, takes time. This is all time that is on an insane premium. As the story goes, Advent is working on a sinister Flubotinum/Hand-Wavium world-ending technology of some kind, called the “Avatar Project”, whose progress bar is always at the top of your world map screen in bright red “this is the time to panic” color.

Remember in the first XCOM, when you were presented with a primary objective, you had literally forever to get it done?  When you were on the offensive on every mission, until enemy Within came out, bringing Exalt with it? XCOM 2 will make you long for those days. The aliens are working on their “definitely-gonna-kill-everyone” doomsday device, and they’re not going to wait for you to finish working on that new armor or weapons tech that you wanted before taking the next major objective. Every time you hit the “scan” button to advance time to collect resources and intel, or make contact with a new resistance cell, you have to cross your fingers and pray that Advent won’t  decide to raid a resistance camp, or advance the Avatar Project’s process,  or any one of a plethora of other monkey wrenches they can throw in your already slapdash plans. “The Ticking Clock” barely covers it. XCOM 2 is like playing three separate games of speed chess, with half of your pieces missing. To expand on that point, the vast majority of your missions are either timed (hack this, capture that, extract the VIP), or require the completion of an objective that if you don’t act quickly enough, the Advent Forces will force you into failure (Retaliation missions, XCOM 2’s equivalent of Terror missions from the first game).  This would be bad enough if your old friend, the baldy from The Council, wasn’t always telling you “The clock is ticking, commander”, or the Avatar Project’s progress bar wasn’t slowly ticking up, as you watch it count down to your inevitable doom, or the Loading Screen Hints would stop saying “You can delay the Avatar Project, but you cannot stop it.” This constant onslaught of timed vents makes the juxtaposition of those missions where you can take your time and set up careful approaches a welcome breather that you’ll be happy to have.

All of this would serve to create enough dramatic tension, but the cherry on top of this wonderfully immersive cake is the soundtrack, which is a fantastic score that sounded like what The Bourne Identity’s tense, thrilling soundtrack might have been if it had been set inside of a space epic. XCOM 2, then, is the kind of rare production where the elements of gameplay, visuals, sound, and story all blend fluidly together into a must-play experience. The sound effects for weapons and gadgets have been reworked, and I have to say, I’m enjoying the clear level of care applied to the weapons fire sound effects. You’re obviously going to hear a lot of gunfire throughout your game, and hearing the satisfying, visceral chugging of your Grenadier (Heavy Weapons) firing her massive minigun never gets old. So, too, have the soldier’s voices been revamped. Not only can you opt to have the soldier’s language match the primary tongue of their home country, but they will speak it in a variety of accents, and even phrase things in different ways depending on their personality, all of which you can tweak with just a few clicks in the frankly ridiculously deep customization suite you have for each soldier.

  Combat is the same familiar turn-based tactical challenge that it was before, with some notable differences. The skill trees have been refined for enhanced game balance, and the classes are different enough from their predecessors that you will need to adjust your tactics accordingly, which provided a welcome challenge for a salty XCOM vet like myself. The changes, likes the rest of the game, are clearly deliberate moves to make the gameplay fit the theme. Snipers, for example, no longer have the snapshot ability which allowed them to move and fire in the same turn like they could in XCOM: EU, but they start with Squadsight, and from there can get a host of remarkably effective pistol abilities, or aim/damage bonuses for long range engagements. The “Ranger” (Assault class) has a shotgun, but their secondary is a sword that they can use to make sneak attacks and powerful strikes up to their full dashing move distance. The feel of the skill trees and the way the classes are deigned puts a strong emphasis on the Guerilla tactics focus of the game, most exemplified by the addition of the new stealth mechanic: Concealment.

On the missions where Advent isn’t already aware of your presence, your squad will start off Concealed, which means that as long as they aren’t flanked or in highlighted spaces that show the enemy’s vision range, they will not be spotted until you do something to alert them (like shooting them in the face). You only get one shot at this in a mission, and once you’re revealed, it’s back to the “I spotted them, so they spotted me and scatter to cover” conditions from the first game. This is a welcome addition to the core gameplay, as there is a very satisfying feeling to setting up all but one of your squad into nasty positions, in overwatch near an enemy squad, then letting a sniper or grenadier kick things off with the appropriate flavor of bang, then watching the startled enemies dash for cover only to be cut down by your squad’s ambush. Overwatch has also been tweaked so that everybody doesn’t shoot at once at the first target, but rather they shoot one after the other, and if the target is eliminated, they’ll switch to the next, fixing a frustrating flaw in the gameplay from the first game.
                A word to the wise on stealth mode: Don’t try to cleverly sneak past all of the enemies to accomplish the objective sight unseen. Advancing an objective invariably alerts everyone in the entire universe to your presence, so your squad will quickly find itself surrounded by all those dupes they crept past. It’s far more advisable to use it to set up the first round of contact with the enemy forces on the map, then slug it out from there. If you’ve minded your flanks well, you’ll be far better situated to spearhead your way to the objective.

If the first XCOM made you feel like you had to keep a lot of plates spinning, XCOM 2 will have you feeling like you have to keep a lot of plates spinning while the stage is on fire… but in a good way. Each moment to the next is tense and exciting, and one fatal mistake could bring down your whole carefully constructed house of cards, forcing you to take on a tough mission with nothing but rookies armed with pop guns, none of which have apparently ever been in a firefight before, because they all panic the first opportunity they get. XCOM 2 is unforgiving, frantic, and dynamic, and it serves as an example of when a team that has earned the faith of its fans sets out to improve on their craft, listening to the feedback from their community, and keeping faith with their audience.  If you enjoyed the first XCOM, or even Wasteland 2, you owe it to yourself to try XCOM 2 and see what a polished game, crafted with a love for the art looks like.  It’s an incredible game, and I absolutely recommend it. If you’d like to discuss it further, message me on Steam.

I’ll be playing XCOM.

Tl;dr:
A great name made an awesome game with tight controls, that’s so immersive that you’ll obsess about your tactics even when you’re not playing it. It’s got new game modes and classes to master, fully customizable soldiers, and seriously why are you still reading this? You should be playing XCOM 2!

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Thunderbolt Fantasy Puppet TV Series

Today, Taiwanese company PILI, Nitroplus, and Good Smile Company announced their newest collaborative project -- 'Thunderbolt Fantasy: Touriken Koubi', an all-puppet TV series set to premier this summer.

Well-known writer Gen Urobuchi is being credited with the show's original work, while also serving as the show's chief supervisor. The character designs come from Nitroplus with the Good Smile Company being largely in charge of sculpting the actors. The show's theme song is by the Japanese band T.M. Revolution with PILI Multimedia Inc. -specializing in puppet drama production- producing the series.

Be sure to check out the PV below! 

  

  

The Main Cast 

Kousuke Toriumi

Junichi Suwabe

Tomokazu Seki

Mai Nakahara

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Game Update: Tekken 7 Fated Retribution

This year I am excited for 2 games: Doom, and Tekken 7 Fated Retribution.

Not only did Bandai Namco stirred up the fans' emotions by presenting Nina Williams fighting in a wedding dress, now they have Akuma from Street Fighter joining the team of our favourite characters.

The newest trailer has been released, and while it is still in Japanese we see there's a new fighting system which allows to overpower your combos for a period of time, plus a hilarious amount of new dressings "glams" you can use to customize your fighter.

 Get ready for the Next Battle, and enjoy!!!

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Anime Update: PSYCHO-PASS: The Movie - Theatrical Trailer

PSYCHO-PASS: The Movie will be released in select theaters across the country March 15th & 16th! Check out the official trailer below! 

Keep an eye out for our review!! Coming soon!!

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Video Game Calendar: February 2016

Bold - Confirmed Release Date

Red - 2girls_1up Plan to Stream on Twitch.tv

Blue - 2girls_1up Recommends 

1st

2nd

American Truck Simulator (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Cobalt (Windows, X360, XBONE)

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (PS4, PSVita)

Dreii (Windows, iOS, Droid)

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4)

Megadimension Neptunia VII (PS4)

Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (PS3, PS4)

Not a Hero (PS4)

Sorcery! (Windows)

Tales of Symphonia HD (Windows)

3rd
Fortified (Windows, XBONE)

Great Detective Pikachu (3DS)

4th

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

5th

XCOM 2 (Windows, Mac, Linux)

6th

7th

8th

9th

Arsian: The Warriors of Legend (Windows, PS3, PS4, XBONE)

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Trilogy Pack (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

Dying Light: The Following (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

Firewatch (Windows, Mac, Linux, PS4)

Lovers in Dangerous Spacetime (PS4)

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

Unravel (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

10th

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Final (3DS)

Valkyria Chronicles Remaster (PS4)

11th

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty (WiiU)

12th

13th

14th

15th

16th

Layers of Fear (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

Pillars of Eternity: The White March - Part 2 (Windows)

Project X Zone 2 (3DS)

Street Fighter V (Windows, PS4)

The Escapists: The Walking Dead (PS4)

Tron Run/r (Windows, PS4, XBONE)

17th

18th

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (Windows)

Project Setsuna (PS4, PSVita)

19th

Fire Emblem: Fates (3DS)

20th

21st

22nd

23rd

Far Cry Primal (PS4, XBONE)

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 (Windows, PS4, XBOX)

24th

Disgaea PC (Windows)

25th

Superhot (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Assassin's Creed Identity (iOS)

26th

Stardew Valley (Windows)

The Town of Light (Windows, Mac, Linux)

27th

28th

29th

Soul Axiom (Windows, Mac)

30th

31st

TBA

Enter the Gungeon (Windows, Mac, Linux, PS4)

Ninja Senki DX (Windows, PS4, PSVita)

Rocket League (XBONE)

The Walking Dead: Michonne (Windows, PS3, PS4, X360, XBONE, iOS, Droid)

• Final Fantasy IX (Windows)

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