The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 22 Oct. 2017: Oxygen Not Included

Imitanis returns with more Oxygen Not Included.

Reetin Aloft – 25 Oct. 2017: Overwatch

Reetin tests his new mic which makes him sound far, far away.

Reetin Aloft – 26 Oct. 2017: Overwatch

Reetin finds out how his mic works and he basically has to eat it.

LusiPlays Live! – 27 Oct. 2017: Super Mario Odyssey

It is him, Lusipurr.

Thank you for watching all the videos of this short week. If you enjoyed the videos, make sure to comment down below and make game suggestions that we will take into consideration for future streams.

A tiresome world of chores and debt awaits you!

Download Link: Released 2017.10.30

When Adeki, Durga, Imitanis, and SiliconNooB are all kidnapped by sinister forces from the nearby Cat Fancy Kingdom, Lusipurr boards his trusty PIBS-fuelled Reetin airship, taking to the skies to search for and to reclaim his missing employees.

Iceland is home to dragons, in case anyone wanted to find one to train.

Hello again, dear readers. There was a brief delay in posts due to a convention and then illness, but now we are attempting to get back on track. As such, this and last week’s post are going to be combined into this one. For the first week, many of the shows did not start particularly strong, but there is no point in judging a series with only one episode, so this week should hopefully give more insight into just what is to be expected from the season to come. To review, the series that have been carefully selected for review are The Ancient Magus Bride, Black Clover, Dies Irae and Sengoku Night Blood. All four of these series have a supernatural feel to them, though beyond there is little that they share. Black Clover so far feels as if it will be a very generic shonen series, but the concept behind it all seems interesting so hopefully, it finds a way to shine in a sea of mediocrity. The Ancient Magus Bride seems to be something of a magical slice of life series, with intriguing characters and a very interesting premise so far. The biggest hope is that there is not too much focus on the heartache in the past and more focus on the journey towards a better future. Dies Irae looks to be a violent series with some focus on immortality, but it is really hard to say with just the episode 0 seen so far. Hardly any actual information was given, but visually it was very nice. One hopes there is some direction and information given soon. Lastly, Sengoku Night Blood is an otome series, which means it is all about a bunch of vampire guys throwing themselves at one woman. With the advent of time travel and the setting during the Sengoku era, hopefully there is something to enjoy for people who hate otome and harem series, otherwise, it is going to be a long season. Now that there has been a little recap it is time to jump into the reviews.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride Episodes 2 and 3

Episode two opens with Elias taking Chise to meet some of his friends, all of which are unique in their own way. First is Angie, another mage who also doubles as an inventor. Their meeting is amusing, as she is curious what nefarious means Elias used to acquire Chise, to which Elias assures her that he paid for her fair and square with his own money. Despite this answer, Angie decides to show Chise a little bit about magic and allow her to try and cast her own for the first time. Chise loses control and overdoes it, getting overwhelmed by her memories which leads her magic to bubble over. Elias reveals that this is because she is a Sleigh Beggy, an exceptionally rare magical person, whose magic could overpower her someday without the proper training. Shortly after this meeting, another acquaintance of Elias makes himself known, a priest named Simon. The two do not exactly seem close, with Elias giving the priest a lot of insults and the priest seems mostly just to be asking Elias for a favor. Elias agrees, and he and Chise set off for the land of dragons, Iceland. While Elias is showing Chise around, she is suddenly swept into the mouth of a dragon and flown off away from Elias, and that is the end of Chise’s miserable existence. Actually, it is just the end of the episode as we are shown that a man is riding the dragon and takin her deeper into the land of Dragons.

Poor Chise just cannot catch a break.

Episode three centers around this man named Lindel, who is actually another friend of Elias. Elias had been sent to see why the dragons had been more on the move lately than they normally were and it turns out he had actually been meaning to meet with Lindel to discuss this, as Lindel is actually the man who watches over the dragons. While he looks quite young, apparently he is even more ancient than Elias. While Elias and Lindel wander off to discuss the problems with dragon migration, Chise is left with a group of baby dragons and a very old dragon named Nevin. Nevin is on his last days and is quickly approaching the end, and the dragons all discuss how when they die they become part of the earth and sprout as trees, returning to the earth they once flew over. Dragons do not fear death, Nevin explains to Chise, who has had many experiences with death in her own life considering her mother’s suicide and other deaths only hinted at so far in the story. The dragon can see into her mind and sees that Chise had once attempted to jump to her own death as well, much like her mother, and scolds her since she has no wings that would have carried her into the sky. Nevin says that he is no longer strong enough to fly, but wishes to show Chise the sky in his mind, and the two share what will be his last dream, allowing Chise to see what it was like for him when he could soar through the skies. This whole scene is beautiful, and extremely touching to witness as Chise is shown another perspective on death rather than it just being a terrible end we all must come to eventually. After the dream is finished, Nevin begins to sprout into a tree. As he does so he tells Chise not to be sad, and to use one of his branches when she is ready to make her own wand, which Elias agrees is what they must do. Chise is blown away by the experience, confused as to why a stranger would give her such an act of kindness even though he was almost done living his life, and the episode ends with her collapsing. So far this series has been quite enjoyable, each episode offering emotional scenes as well as humorous ones, all tying together nicely to tell the story of Chise and her new life.

Sengoku Night Blood Episodes 2 and 3

This series is… hard to follow, to say the least. Every episode introduces several characters that get only a few seconds of screentime each for the most part while following a select few central characters on their journeys to do… something while trying to also find love… or something. The first episode was your general context dump, trying to explain the setting as best as it could while also introducing about a hundred characters whose names are not important beyond the main couple, but even that did not do a good job of clarifying exactly what was happening. The second episode is not much better, beginning where the first left off with Nobunaga attacking the main vampire clan, but not actually chasing them down for some reason even though it would appear he has the advantage and instead telling them to attack him if they really think they can take him down. This leads to a scene where the main leader of the clan decides he will wed the girl from the future, who is not so keen to marry someone she just met. Instead, she takes the opportunity to spend the episode flirting with a few more of the members of the clan, all under the guise of “helping” them with their duties. One is a strategist who sits up all night making battle plans, and she “helps” by falling asleep in his room and distracting him to the point of him getting all blushy and weird. That is pretty much how the whole episode goes until the end, without much actual planning or story given beyond more character names that do not matter.

The animation is nice, at least.

The Third episode is once again more of the same, with a message coming from the Takeda Army being in their borders and the boys of the main troupe running along to meet with them and see what brought them so close. Upon being introduced to yet another large cast of people that do not matter, it is revealed that the Takeda clan are all “werewolves”, but really they are just boys with dog ears and tails. More eye candy for the ladies, less character development overall as each member of the clan effectively mirrors one of the members of the main clan other than the leader, Takeda, who it seems is suffering from some chronic illness that he is trying to hide. Yet another situation happens that leads to Yuzuki the female lead falling into one of the men’s arms, but in doing so she breaks the medicine meant for Takeda and then helps to recover more. The reason that the clan was present was of course to propose an alliance between them where they could share Yuzuki and her blood between them all. Takeda is the first who could actually benefit from her magic blood, but he refuses to drink it which shows that he has a little more character than the rest who most likely will have all taken a drink of her before the show is done. The episode ends with a small attack that leads them all to run away to protect Yuzuki but there is no real threat as the villains disappear as soon as everyone starts to talk about Takeda’s illness. No alliance happens by the end of the episode but the clans do seem to be amiable enough with each other so maybe they will work together to do nothing in later episodes to come.

Dies Irae Episodes 1 and 2

Boys will be boys, or some such.

Having started with an episode 0, there was every opportunity for this series to fall behind, or to slack with its opening. Thankfully, the series starts off rather strong after the episode 0, introducing a few main characters right out of the gate with two boys getting into a fist fight on the roof of the school. Ren and Shirou are fighting for what they both say is no reason other than that Shirou likes to fight and takes it out on him, and the scene ends with them both getting knocked out. After a strange dream, Ren wakes up in his hospital room and walks out of the hospital room, apparently fully recovered. His friend Kasumi chases him down, and she screams after him for leaving the hospital without waiting for her even though she visited him every day. They go home and it is revealed that they live together, with apartments that are connected by a hole that Kasumi put in his wall so she could pop in whenever she wants. Surely this never leads to any embarrassing moments. The next day at school another of Ren’s friends is introduced, an upperclassman named Rea. She discusses the church she lives at with a nun and how there have been murders in the area with no witnesses. During the introductions, Ren has flashbacks to memories of what appears to possibly be Kasumi covered in blood with a knife at a much younger age, but not much is revealed beyond that. After all, this happens and the day seems to be winding down, Ren has a vision of some French girl singing about a guillotine, and then has a dream about himself or someone like him getting beheaded. This is enough to drive anyone mad clearly, but he handles it pretty well regardless. The episode is a little slow, but at least it is finally on track to reveal what the main plot will be one hopes.

The upperclassman proposing to the main character for no reason.

The second episode follows a lot of the same plot lines but does not really reveal much still. There is a visit to the church where Rea is with the nun, and along the way, Kasumi and Ren bump into a blonde haired priest who seems to be headed to the same place. He claims to have named Rea and that he has been protecting her all of his life. The way he talks about her toes the line between overly protective father and possible child molester with dark purposes in mind, but the exchange between them all is amusing enough when they finally arrive at the church and Rea tells him to die. After the silly exchange between all of these characters and the nun, Kasumi and Ren head off to go home. While home, Ren has another strange dream and when he wakes, he is in front of a dead body that has been dismembered. He freaks out, which is understandable, and then is approached by the white-haired man and the short redhead girl from the episode 0 as they begin to “test” him. The father from the church had sent them to do so as well as a purpled haired girl who he put in charge of the testing. Every time Ren tries to land a blow on the white-haired guy it appears to break his limbs, and the man hits him with blows that should kill a normal person. The action is decent and easy enough to follow, but not much is really explained as to why any of this is happening. After the brawl, the redhead touches Ren’s forehead and he wakes up back in his bed as if it had all just been a dream. Much to his displeasure, he meets the group once again at his school and they say they are his new classmates. So far this series feels a little confusing, as no real clear story has been put in place as to what the overall goal of the series will be. It is only 3 episodes in including the 0 episode so there is still time for this, but the pace it is revealing things seems a little slow for a series slotted for only 12 episodes. One hopes they kick things into gear with the next episode.

Black Clover Episodes 2 and 3

Asta teaching a big brute a lesson.

At the end of the first episode, the boys were being attacked by a man who had been fired from the kingdom’s magic knights who was looking to steal Yuno’s four-leaf clover grimoire. In the ensuing fight, Asta finally receives a grimoire, a black covered five-leaf clover grimoire to be exact. Instead of picking up right from this point, the series decides to spend the majority of this episode going over the past struggles of Yuno and Asta as they were growing up. From the flashbacks, it is clear that Asta was the stronger of the two when they were younger, always full of energy and protecting Yuno from bullies who picked on them for being poor orphans. One day, Yuno is sent off on his own to deliver a message to someone in town. After doing so he is assaulted by a drunk who is looking to score something to sell so he can buy more booze. Seeing the special pendant Yuno was left with as a baby, he attempts to attack the child and take it. Yuno fights back, but is small and weak and cannot do much to get it back. After waiting for a while for him to come back Asta gets impatient and goes off to find Yuno being assaulted. He charges in and also gets quite the beating, but the man finally gives back the pendant in the face of Asta refusing to give up. From here the two boys promise to become the Wizard King to prove that it does not matter what origins a person comes from, anyone can be the best if they try hard enough. From here it cuts back to the present and shows Asta thrash the dude attacking them, while Yuno smiles and looks on happy to see his rival finally showing his true power.

Asta, failing once again to propose to the nun that works at their church.

The third episode has both boys training for the knight trials, an event six months away that test new wizards to see if they have what it takes to become knights in service to the current Wizard King. The episode actually opens with a glimpse into the past, as it shows the original Wizard King fighting with a rather large demon. The Wizard King wins easily, summoning a massive sword of light that could be the same design as the one that Asta summons with his grimoire, though Asta’s is black and the King’s is solid gold light. Asta spends his training days swinging his new sword, training his body to handle the massive blade that is larger than he is. Meanwhile, Yuno is training his magic to be stronger, both using similar techniques to train, though Asta is clearly more focused on physical training. It is clear that Asta will the typical “never give up” protagonist to the story, relying on his own stamina and dumb brute strength since his bdy houses no magic. Since he still does not know what power the grimoire has given him beyond just a sword, his focus is all on strengthening his own body and building up his stamina to make use of what he does have rather than trying to figure out what else could be there. In the meantime, the man who gave out the grimoire visits the church to say that he is putting his hopes into both Asta and Yuno to become knights since the other people from this province who could have provided that hope have now given up after getting beaten up by the failed mage knight. The priest says that Yuno will probably make it but that he should not put too much faith into Asta. The boy that always calls Asta a failure confronts him and asks how he can be hopeful, saying that no orphan will ever accomplish anything and Asta screams in his ear that he cannot give up so easily. Finally, the time comes for the boys to set off on their journey, and the young boy tells Asta that if he manages to become a knight then he will believe that anyone can accomplish anything and he will allow himself to have a dream. Even the priest, who constantly doted on Yuno and had seemingly written off Asta, tells him that no matter what he has a home in the orphanage. From here is a montage showing the boys training on their journey to the capital where the tests will be, and the episode ends with the kingdom on the horizon, and the boys preparing for what will likely be a tournament to find the best candidates to become knights. All in all, the episodes have improved a lot from the first. There is still a generic shonen vibe but the biggest issues from the first episode are gone now, namely Asta’s constant shouting has been toned down quite a bit. It will be interesting to see the characters they introduce for the first true arc of the story.

With that, we have reached the end of the rather long recap and review of the past two weeks. More to come in the next week, to be sure, stay tuned and see what happens! For now, how are people enjoying the current anime season so far? Have there been any stand out shows? Feel free to answer questions and make suggestions in the comments. For now, thank you for reading and keep on watching.

The hill that Molyneux died on!

Project Babby Has Been Thrown out with the Bilge Water

After a seven year gestation, during which time it became over-ripe and began rotting in the womb, Project Nadir Project Natal has this week been pronounced dead, and its cadaver donated to science! Who could have seen this coming? A motion sensing device which demanded a maximal expenditure of effort on the part of the player in order to perform an input that could be accomplished with the push of a button has this week been consigned to the trash heap. That is to say that Microsoft has confirmed that they have ceased all production of Kinect units in spite of the fact that the next console generation looks to be two or more years away.

But let us not dwell on the sad demise of Kinect, but rather cherish the fond moments that it has gifted to us over its seven year run on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Who could forget the way that Peter Molyneux basically pulled the plug on his career at Microsoft over a Pedophile grooming simulator named Milo? Or who could forget the way that Don Mattrick basically pulled the plug on his career at Microsoft over his insistence that Kinect functionality had to be integrated into every facet of the Xbox One? And who could forget the way that Xbox basically pulled the plug on any chance of eighth generation dominance by pricing their system at $100 more expensive than the PS4 in order to pay for Kinect? Back in 2010 we viewed Kinect as an irksome threat to the industry, but really it was the gift that kept on giving. No single product or policy has done more to expose the vulnerabilities of all the worst characters at Microsoft than the humble Kinect. Take a bow Kinect, you have earned it!

Oh, you main with Wolvie?

Infinite Misery

For weeks now word on the street has maintained that the sales for Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite have not been that hot. The first piece of bad news came with the game’s Japanese sales, as Media Create reported that Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite sold just 8,000 copies in its domestic market, meanwhile Pokken Tournament DX released a few days later and sold 53,395 units. Pokken is a re-release of an old fighting game released to a system with a very limited installbase; it should not be out-selling the hot, new Capcom fighter!

Capcom’s woes were then further compounded by the release of Sony’s digital PSN sales for the month of September. Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite barely made the top-20, placing 19th on the list. To an extent this is made to sound a little worse than it actually is, as placing a game on sale can often result in older titles receiving a substantial number of additional purchases. For instance Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite charted below Bloodborne and The Last of Us Remastered which are often discounted, and goodness knows how many of the other titles were also on sale. That being said, trying to write off the game’s poor performance as simply being the result of digital discounts is a bit of a stretch – especially when one considers that Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite has only managed to sell 36,812 copies on Steam according to Steam Spy.

Now just this week the NPD rankings have come in, which have a chart that ranks games based on how many dollars they have earned, along with the typical charts which rank them based on the number of units sold. In dollar terms Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite was ranked sixth in September, coming in behind Destiny 2, a bunch of sports games, and August’s release of Mario & Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Not too surprising, but at the same time not at all impressive; the very next game on the list is 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V. In terms of the number of units sold there are no surprises on PS4 – Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is ranked fifth behind Destiny 2 and some sport games. The Xbox One chart is a bit more illuminating however, as Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite placed eighth, behind both 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V and 2015’s Rainbow Six Siege!

Capcom predicted that Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite would sell two million copies, but it will be lucky to crack 500k units sold without some deep sales and a bunch of time passing. Capcom’s own ailing Street Fighter V has still yet to crack two million in sales, so Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite never had a chance. Is it really such a surprise that the game is flopping? Fighting games came out of the arcade scene where titles primarily differentiated themselves with unique art styles and flashy graphics. Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite does not have flashy graphics though, the game looks rather drab, and substantially worse than the original Marvel vs. Capcom which released on Saturn and Playstation back in the 90s. Moreover, Marvel certainly did not do the game any favours by preventing Capcom from using any of the X-Men characters, which have been series staples since before Marvel vs. Capcom was even a thing. Before there was Marvel vs. Capcom there was X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and ever since the X-Men characers have been series favourites – especially Wolverine. By all accounts the gameplay of Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is extremely competent, so it is not as though we are talking about a bad game here – but given the drab presentation and the conspicuous absence of fan favourite characters, is it really any surprise that the game has flown beneath the notice of the mass market?

This is a big step up from Shin Megami Tensei IV.

Shin Megami Tensei V Revealed

This week the Nintendo Switch Shin Megami Tensei project was revealed to be Shin Megami Tensei V. This will likely come as little surprise to anybody who owned a 3DS, as Shin Megami Tensei IV seemed to work out pretty well on a portable platform, so it stands to reason that Atlus would look to repeat that situation – insofar as anyone could credibly claim the Switch to be a portable platform.

Shin Megami Tensei V is being developed using Unreal Engine 4, and it certainly looks a tangible step above its 3DS prequel [in the limited footage currently available]. Kazuyuki Yamai, the director of Shin Megami Tensei IV, is returning to direct Shin Megami Tensei V. Apparently Atlus chose upon Switch as the target platform for the game because the team wanted to have the game portable, so as to allow users to grind when on the go or in bed at night. The unintended implication of this is that Atlus chose the PS3 and PS4 as Persona 5‘s platforms because the team did not want to allow their users to grind when on the go or in bed at night. Probably better to say that the Switch was chosen because Nintendo is a good partner and the home of Shin Megami Tensei IV [along with Apocalypse and Strange Journey] was on a Nintendo handheld, so it made a lot of sense to continue with this tradition.

Finally, Atlus wants Shin Megami Tensei V to reflect the character of our times. As such they intend to include weighty social themes such as terrorism, unemployment, retirement, and nuclear weapons. This is no great surprise given the heavy use of contemporary political and social issues found in Persona 5. Hopefully Atlus continues to explore such issues in more nuance than here in the West.

The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 15 Oct. 2017: Oxygen Not Included

Imitanis plays a game or something.

Durga’s Den – 16 Oct. 2017: Dark Souls II

Durga decides to die a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AofuO9sn-vM

Reetin’s microphone dies.

LusiPlays Live! – 18 Oct. 2017: Overwatch

Lusipurr and friend(s) decide to play Overwatch.

Durga’s Den – 19 Oct. 2017: Dark Souls II

Durga dies some more. He really likes dying.

Thanks for watching. Post a comment below telling us how awesome we are and what games you would like to have people play.

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB share a happy birthday hug.

Download Link: Released 2017.10.23

When the podcast recording falls on Lusipurr’s birthday, SiliconNooB gives him the gift of flight. Shortly thereafter, in a fluke accident, Adeki leaps high into the sky and over a cliff, before Imitanis follows him in a suicidal death plunge.

[ESOTERIC RITES]: EA devours another of its children to stave off impending mortality.

EA Does It Again!

EA has done it again! The company has not been voted as the worst company in America for a couple of years now, and it seems they have begun to miss the notoriety! That is presumably why the company which is notorious for acquiring developers, draining them of their innovation, before discarding them like broken fetuses on the way out of Planned Parenthood has decided on returning to form by removing Visceral Games with a coathanger!

This is not to say that EA should never close studios. If EA were to decommission Bioware then few could blame them, especially if the forthcoming Anthem should happen to tank. Bioware is no longer a good developer, and thus they do not deserve to be making vidya. Visceral on the other hand seem like they are being punished for playing the hand that EA dealt to them.

Visceral turned Dead Space into a multi-million selling franchise with the first two installments, before EA decided to kill it off by insisting on forced co-op and an excessive amount of micro transactions. Following this EA forced them to help out on tired EA franchises like Army of Two and Battlefield. Recently EA had Visceral working on a single player Star Wars adventure, yet apparently at this late stage the EA execs have suddenly got a bee in their bonnets about turning the game into a Destiny-esque experience, and so they have handed it over to EA Worldwide – a studio which specialises in sports games:

“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design. We will maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.”

Visceral was a studio which specialised in making great single player games, and had even hired Amy Hennig, the creative force behind Soul Reaver and Uncharted, as the creative director of the game. A great single player game is what would keep players coming back for a long time, whereas yet another multiplayer Star Wars game is something which will be switched off in a couple of years time, leaving nary a trace behind!

The typical set up of the average Call of Duty player!

Activision Patents Wrongdoing

EA might fancy itself the front runner for this year’s Golden Poo (TM), but they certainly have some stiff competition from Activision. It is almost like in response to the previous story an impressed Warner Bros. Interactive loudly proclaimed “Wow, there’s simply no beating EA for worst company this year!“, and in response Bobby Kotick said “Here, hold my beer!”

This week a document has come to light which pretty much confirms that Activision have patented the concept of evildoing! It is one of the most brazen and predatory patents yet seen in gaming, and is designed to manipulate players into purchasing micro transactions through a deliberately coercive matchmaking system.

The way that it operates is that if the player has a history and preferences which indicate that they like using a certain type of weapon, then the matchmaking system will attempt to match them up against a player who has that type of weapon at a much higher level than their own so that they are motivated to go acquire this high level weapon from the store using real money. This all becomes much worse if one considers the fact that many publishes have adopted the “gacha” style of randomised lootcrates with great enthusiasm, meaning that the sought after weapon likely cannot be bought outright, but rather must be attained through luck, in a process which is practically indistinguishable from gambling.

“A system and method is provided that drives microtransactions in multiplayer video games. The system may include a microtransaction arrange matches to influence game-related purchases. For instance, the system may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player.

In one implementation, when a player makes a game-related purchase, the microtransaction engine may encourage future purchases by matching the player (e.g., using matchmaking described herein) in a gameplay session that will utilize the game-related purchase. Doing so may enhance a level of enjoyment by the player for the game-related purchase, which may encourage future purchases. For example, if the player purchased a particular weapon, the microtransaction engine may match the player in a gameplay session in which the particular weapon is highly effective, giving the player an impression that the particular weapon was a good purchase. This may encourage the player to make future purchases to achieve similar gameplay results.”

And there you have it, folks. The muddy-brown pool of creativity which powers the science of evil! The science of turning customers into helpless hyper consumers! Activision plans to transmute you into Pavlov’s dog, and then rub your belly. Hope you brought your wallet, because it is time to go fetch!

Let’s hope that Steam doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Steam Direct Has Been a Failure

Steam Direct has failed. It was implemented in place of Steam Greenlight last year owning to 2016’s unprecedented number of game releases: 4200. Steam was keen to get the number of shovelware releases down, and thought that by requiring a publishing fee Steam Direct would help eliminate nonsense releases. Sadly that has not transpired, as 2017 is on track to see over 6000 game releases!

Think about that! In a single year Steam will see roughly six times the number of game releases as an average Playstation console will see in its lifetime!

While Steam Direct has been an unequivocal failure, it seems more like a failure of implementation than a failure of concept. The policy change seemed underdone from the outset, as a $100 fee is simply too low to serve as much of a disincentive. Thus, it is not much of a surprise to see Steam Direct failing to this extent. The publishing fee should have always been at least a thousand dollars, if not two or three thousand dollars. Steam does not take a cut of a game’s sales until the publishing fee has been paid back, so any game that actually deserves to be on the platform will not leave its developers out of pocket. Hopefully Steam Direct can be re-calibrated for success, rather than being thrown out with the rest of the bathwater.

Be one with the head.

Headlander was released for the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows on July 26th, 2016 and a few months later on November 17th of the same year the game made its debut on the Xbox One. Developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Adult Swim Games, Headlander is a 1970s themed Metroidvania title centered around a future society’s decision to store their collective consciousness in the cloud. This means that there are no humans in the series of spaceships Headlander takes place in and instead people move around by implanting their consciousness in different robots depending on the task they need to get carried out. For the most part though, the humans just lounge around and dance. This is due in part to the fact that an A.I. program named Methuselah has trapped all the humans inside the robots and tasked them with carrying out his mysterious plan. This leaves the protagonist to sort everything out after being awoken from their mysterious slumber. Only one problem: the protagonist only has their head left and that head is also plagued with a serious case of amnesia.

So the adventure begins as the player is tasked with flying around sans body as they explore different areas of the space colony they reside in, all while guided by the voice of Earl who found the protagonist as they woke up. Fear not though, the player can easily take the head off of nearby robots and take control of it for themselves. This means the protagonist can play with or without a body depending on where they need to go and what they need to do. For example, there are many instances where the player has to take control of a security robot in order to attack other robots or to pass through security gates. This is where the color-based security hierarchy comes into play as security levels are separated in the following order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet (shortened to the acronym ROYGBIV in-game). What this means is that a red robot can pass through the most basic security gates while only the elite violet robots can access any colored gate they choose to. Not only this, but there are also a handful of rooms that only vacuum robots can enter along with some vents that only a disembodied head can fly through. This, along with different power-ups found in the game, sets up a fairly enjoyable exploration system.

Headlander has a very distinct visual style.

Exploring the topic of exploration (subtle), one of the problems with Headlander is actually the ease in which the average person can play it. Right off the bat, the player can scroll through the menu and see how many rooms they have explored so far compared to the total number of rooms and the same goes with upgrades too. In addition, the player can suck the head off of different MAPPY units that roam different areas and download the majority of that location’s map data. While being able to download map data is not inherently a bad option, the problem stems from the fact that there are too many MAPPY units and they appear too soon when exploring a new area. Not only this, but upon entering a room, the map automatically fills out all the possible entrances and exits to said room before the player has actually seen them. Thankfully, MAPPY units do not tell you where every single room in the game is but the game as a whole would have been better off had it not told the player so much information so soon. In turn, these factors make Headlander a bit easier than it should be and can also make it as if the the player is filling out a checklist rather than actually exploring an interesting world.

Ha! It says boob tubery. Funny, right?

Speaking of the world, Headlander is a game that oozes charm which is quite obviously a pairing of Adult Swim Games and Double Fine intermixed for a zany but still easily accessible world. Some robots can be found staring at magical rocks as others lay on shag carpeting that they most likely can not even feel (one of the slight drawbacks of having one’s consciousness implanted in a robot body is the inability to feel shag carpeting). The areas have fun names like the “Pleasure Port” and the “Boob Tubery” and what starts off as a fun 70s fueled romp somehow takes a drastic detour into a chess-themed area where the players have locker rooms and robots designed in the form of chess pieces attack each other with lasers because the A.I. host of the game enjoys chess but wanted to make it *that* much more exhilarating for the viewers. No matter the problems the game has, the setting is still extremely fun to roam around in and, if anything, it is a shame that there were not more areas to flesh out the concept of entertaining seemingly immortal humans. The main problem with this though is that the game can lack a sense of cohesion between different areas, and some more world-building would have definitely been helpful in this regard.

Chess 2: Laser Chess!

Moving right along, the combat in Headlander is decent, but easily one of the weakest parts of the game. It is not actively bad, just very basic. This is in spite of the numerous upgrades one can accumulate throughout the game. It does not help that the game also gives the player multiple scenarios in which they must clear through a room full of enemies before either of the door unlocks which transitions from being a plot-related “trap” to a way of padding out the game. Another way Double Fine attempts to pad out Headlander is through an extremely useless quest system which is comprised of about three to four quests. None of these quests are particularly inventive, entertaining, or even plot-related and instead just feel like the game was not long enough so the developers decided to add content any way they knew how to. There are also two boss fights in the game, the mid-way boss being “ok” while the final boss was almost completely unnecessary. The music in Headlander is also fine, no track particularly stands out aside from the MAPPY theme which plays throughout the credits of the game. Other than that all the tracks just fit. It is also worth mentioning that the game did crash while it was being streamed for the site’s Twitch account. However, to add context to this event it was directly after the newest PS4 firmware was installed on the console and no other noticeable technical issues occurred during playtime. So while it could be potentially blamed on the firmware, it could also very well be an issue on the game’s side and unfortunately the reviewer has no way of knowing which one is the root cause of the event at this time.

All the pros keep their pieces in a locker.

Headlander is a decent game that does not rise up to being more than it potentially could be, which is a shame. The story is forgettable but attempts to surprise the player with a “twist” here and there but none of these twists are monumental in any sense. The music is fine but not anything to write home about, which is the same case as the combat. The quests and bosses feel like padding and the game lacks a general sense of cohesiveness between areas. So while the game may still have visual charm aided by a unique cast of characters, Headlander is still bogged down by its other failures and missteps. Headlander is not a bad game, just an average game that makes the player want it to be better because it is a game that deserves to be enjoyed. The problem ultimately lies with the developers and maybe in the future there will be a second installment in the franchise which fixes the problems the first one has, but this is more than likely not the case of what will happen in the end. Instead there will be more popular games released by Double Fine and Headlander will barely be remembered. Doomed to be washed away by the sands of time. C’est la vie.

The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 8 Oct 2017: Heroes of the Storm)

Imitanis has fun with a Blizzard Entertainment game.

Durga’s Den – 9 Oct 2017: Cuphead (Part 1)

Cuphead is the Dark Souls of video games!

Reetin Aloft – 10 Oct 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 4)

Reetin cannot afford to buy spells!

Reetin Aloft – 11 Oct. 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 5)

Reetin goes the wrong way.

Reetin Aloft – 12 Oct. 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 6)

Reetin dies a lot. [This has not been Reetin’s best week with video games. -Lusi]

LusiPlays Live! – 13 Oct. 2017: Overwatch

It is Junkenstein’s Revenge time with Lusipurr and friends.

Adeki’s Adventures – 14 Oct. 2017: Overwatch

It is Junkenstein’s Revenge time with Adeki and friends.

Thank you for watching the videos this week. As always, we take suggestions for games to play and sometimes Reetin might possibly listen to the games you suggest [If I permit it! -Lusi]

Hi-Ho Cherry-O!

Download Link: Released 2017.10.16

Lusipurr and SiliconNooB are joined by two other people to discuss ethical game design, South Africa’s T20 league, the autumn anime season, vintage board games, fair and competitive business practises, and Lusipurr’s approach to ending relationships.

Shelob now looks like this!!

Give Middle-Earth a Wide Berth

If there is one industry where the potential for a slippery slope situation is always an absolute bloody certainty then it is definitely video gaming. It was not enough for greedy publishers to simply have DLC, and it was not enough for them to simply have in-app purchases and leave it at that – it was not even enough for them to have static loot crates, because randomised item loot crates give players less of what they want, and as such are much more profitable! It was not enough to have all this rubbish as strictly optional, as this cynical industry always has to push the bloody envelope! Publishers do something awful, and just as soon as the complaints die down they do something even worse!

And thus, in a week that began with the Battlefront 2 pay-to-win loot crate modifier scandal, we are now closing out the news cycle with the even more egregious Shadow of War pay-to-advance loot crate scandal! Warner Bros. Interactive want to sell loot crates in their $60 game, and so to achieve that goal they have decided to gate away the game’s ending behind twelve or so siege battles, which require that the player has access to a squad of legendary status orcs! At this point the player can spend a score of hours doing some of the most tedious grinding in gaming, else they can buy some randomised loot crates in the hope that they will contain the manpower required.

Not even much of a question, is it? For Gamespot to have mentioned how awful the grinding was in their review it must be pretty bad, and for a few dollars it can all be bypassed. The real problem here is that even if a player does spend that money, what they are buying is a reprieve from tedium. A player can spend the money, or a player can resign themselves to the grind – but in neither case are they getting engaging endgame content. The quality of the game has been sacrificed to the business model of the game. These are predatory practices, and they only get worse, never better. This is the slippery slope.

Western gamers have more in common with Japanese devs than they do with these weird alien cucks.

SJWs Devour Their Own At GIC

This past week has seen the Game Industry Conference 2017 being held in Poland, and it has also seen a scenario that we are well familiar with – the SJWs eating one of their own. Over the course of the conference the Game Industry Conference Twitter account was signalling hard, as industry progressives are wont to do. In this instance the Twitter account was signalling a little too hard however, and the person doing the signalling did not take into the fact that female privilege does not work when an individual is manning a faceless corporate Twitter account.

When Eveline Wiznerowicz tweeted:

“Women in games is about to start! Gamedev ladies, join us and meet the pretty side of #gamedev”

A professional outrage peddler (who also worked on No Man’s Sky) immediately assumed that Eveline was in fact a Man, and that her tweet was intended to be patronising!

“i hope whoever is tweeting here at least shuts the hell up and listens to them, that’s an incredibly sexist description”

She was then followed up by the usual cast of shrieking nobodies who spared little thought to Evaline’s cache within the progressive stack before piling on:

“Beauty has nothing to do with our *professional* accomplishments. It is Insulting to reduce part of their professional worth to their looks.

A group of male devs (in a professional context) are never mentioned as “handsome” or “pretty” no matter what term you use.”

This situation then reached fever pitch until i7 was disarmed by the event organiser, who sacked the Woman responsible for making the ‘sexist’ tweet:

“Dear All,

Jakub.”

You know a person has hit peak shitlib when they start getting their own guys fired for imagined infractions. One cannot help but imagine that there would have been no problem whatsoever if Eveline had made the offending tweet using her own avatar, which in all likelihood has blue hair and problem glasses. As soon as that same tweet was made by a gender-ambiguous corporate account however, its audience assumed it was male, and immediately ascribed to it the worst possible motives that could conceivably be supported by its content.

Perhaps those responsible for this episode should look to themselves for the reasons why there are so few women in tech.

About 10p is all it’s worth tbh.

Game Caught Selling Free Beta Keys

It is not just the publishers who are able to cook up the creative means to shake loose any cash still left to their consumers, as retail chains are able to do pretty well in their own right. This week has seen the commencement of the Star Wars Battlefront II beta ahead of next month’s release of the game proper, and gamers took note of something a little sneaky taking place in the UK. UK retail chain Game managed to get their hands on a bunch of beta codes for Battlefront II which were meant to go to people who had pre-ordered the game, Game then turned around and started selling these beta codes for 10p a pop on their web site. Game has since apologised and claimed that this was all a big mistake.

“For a short time this morning a Beta Code was shown on our website through a broken link today priced at 10p. This link has subsequently been fixed. We apologise for any confusion caused. Early access gained through the Beta Code is exclusively available for free for customers that pre-order the game, however we will honour the purchase for those customers that did buy the code only via the broken link.”

So a broken link which takes customers to the product page, allows the financial transaction to take place, and then delivers a working beta code to them! That is quite a broken link! In fact that broken link sounds so robust that one might even say that it was a fully functional link! Are these dipshits serious? These arseclowns must have a pretty low opinion of gamers to imagine that we would buy the complete nonsense they are peddling. When your company creates a fully functioning product page in order to sell a product which should actually be free, then one will have to do better than fantastic claims of broken links – that shit is just insulting. Game got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, and now they look like proper liars–and incompetent ones, at that!

I wonder if the blonde haired blue eyed character is a Nazi?

Hello again Lusi-readers and welcome to the Autumn season of anime. The anime seasons are generally broken into seasons the same way as the weather, meaning Summer Autumn Winter and Spring, with the year beginning on the previous Winter season. This means that this is the last season that will be qualified as 2017, even though at least half of the Winter season will take place there. It has been an odd year for anime. There have been some great titles, and some very mediocre ones, as well as some titles that started out great and became increasingly more disappointing as the season went on. For the most part, there has been at least one anime that has managed to be good in each season. With that said, the previews for this season had so many possibly strong shows that it was hard to pick just four to include in the review series! For the record, this reviewer typically prefers to let a show finish and then binge watch the whole thing in a couple sittings, or one if there is enough time. That is why the review series does not cover more of the season. That, and even with just four shows, the posts end up being quite long as they are. Fortunately for this season, there was input from the other members of the Lusi-staff in terms of what anime they were looking forward to, which made picking anime for this season much easier. The anime selected and curated by this reviewer and the staff will be as follows. First, with a dip into Nazis and the Occult, we will be looking at the anime Dies Irae. Dies Irae is presented by the studio A.C.G.T, a studio with only a few titles under their belt. The second series will be Black Clover, which comes from Studio Pierrot. Studio Pierrot is responsible for some rather major shonen series, including both Bleach and Naruto, as well as some more classic series like Great Teacher Onizuka and Yu Yu Hakusho. With titles like this under their belt, one would hope they could bring another shonen series forward very well. The third series will be Sengoku Night Blood, coming from the studio TYPHOON GRAPHICS, another relatively new studio with only a couple of shows to their name. The final series for the Autumn series of reviews will be The Ancient Magus’ Bride, from Wit Studio. Wit has put out some pretty decently animated stuff, with Attack on Titan being the main star of their library (for animation quality, obviously not for story). Each show has had promising information about it on display, but that does not necessarily guarantee quality. With so many relatively new studios involved, it could be a chance for those studios to shine, or it could lead to disastrous adaptation. the only way to be sure is to begin diving in.

Dies Irae Episode 0

Oh look, he was a Nazi.

In something of a rare move, this series begins with an Episode 0. The act of an episode 0 is not in itself uncommon, but usually, they are released far before a series starts airing, or afterward as something of an extra. Instead, A.C.G.T. has decided that the 0 Episode should be the beginning of the series, which is an odd decision. The purpose of an episode 0 is usually to fill in some backstory to the beginning of a situation that the audience is already familiar with, a way to get an idea of things that were happening before events that have already taken place for the audience. As such, this episode is very confusing and does not explain much of anything that is actually going on. Instead, it introduces the Nazi side of the cast, which one can assume will be the villains, shows some of the magic that will be in the show and for a moment reveals what appears to be a floating golden city over Japan in modern times. The only real coherent moment of the episode involves a young German officer approaching a man named Karl Krafft in a cell who is considered to be a mage and feared for his power in hopes that the man can help Reinhard (the German) rebuild the Reich, which has been suffering major losses. Krafft agrees, and from this point in the episode onward it is mostly just a showcase of the villains, or at least it seems that way. Most are not named, and the only real reveal they get is some sort of montage toward the end of the episode. There are two that appear to be immortal, on boy and one boy in a dress (it is assumed), A large breasted redhead who has an apparent lust for violence, a priest/mad scientist, some characters that do not even feature in the episode but appear in the montage towards the end and of course Reinhard himself in all his Aryan glory. Hopefully, in the next episode more of the actual plot will be revealed, but as it is now at least there was some shiny animation, and some of the villains definitely do look cool. This reviewer nearly did not include this episode as it does not feel like it will actually have anything to do with the series as a whole beyond some extra shiny bits, but at least now anyone who watches will know what to expect.

Black Clover Episode 1

Behold, the most annoying anime character since Shinji Ikari.

Black Clover has several things going for it right out of the gate. The setting is a very interesting world where magic is so commonplace that nearly every single person in the world can use it to some degree. The animation is quite pretty, which is to be expected from Studio Pierrot, though there is definitely a B team for some episodes of some shows where there is a noticeable dip in quality. Even the premise is pretty good for a shonen series. Two boys are left on the porch of an orphanage and raised as brothers in a world filled with magic, and both hope to one day become the Wizard King and are rivals because of this. The two are pretty generic as far as shonen series goes, with the lead character being annoyingly energetic and bouncy but having zero magic potential, and the other character being tall, handsome and aloof, and of course a magical genius. The episode goes about how one would expect a series like this to go, with both heading over to a ceremony where they will be awarded grimoires that allow them to fully access their magical potential. Yuno, the child genius, is awarded a grimoire that has a four-leaf clover on the cover. In the lore of the world, the three leaves of a clover represent faith, hope, and love. The fourth leaf is extremely rare and represents luck. Thd last Wizard king had a grimoire with a four leaf clover on it. Asta is also present at the ceremony, but he is not given a grimoire at all. After they exit the ceremony Asta runs off in disappointment and Yuno is accosted by two other boys from the ceremony who had hoped to be the stars of the show but were outshined by Yuno. Since Yuno comes from nothing and they both come from wealthy families they feel they need to teach him a lesson by burning his grimoire. Yuno beats them without even needing to use his grimoire, but then all of the boys are attacked by an ex-knight who hopes to steal the grimoire for himself. Nobody but the person it chose can use a grimoire, but four-leaf clovers fetch a high price from collectors regardless. Asta hears the commotion and runs back to save his friend despite his total lack of magic, and in the heat of the moment, a black grimoire appears in front of him, marked with a five leaf clover. Narration explains the four leaves, and that the fifth leaf represents a demon in the grimoire. With this big reveal, the episode ends. This reviewer really wants to like this episode. Everything was handled in ways that, while generic, work well for this genre. There is just one huge, major, massive flaw with the episode that prevents it from being a total success: Asta’s voice actor. The actor himself is not bad when he is talking normally or under attack. The problem lies in the voice direction. Asta the character is. Constantly. Shouting. Not just talking loud, but it is like he is constantly trying to go into a super Saiyan mode or something. The sad part is after some research it appears this is the actor’s first role. This is one that will probably haunt his career forever. other than this detail, the episode is pretty solid as a shonen opening episode. There is definite potential for this to be a huge series, so long as the character learns to shut his damn mouth in future episodes.

Sengoku Night Blood Episode 1

Is it possible to do a show about Japan in a historical sense without Nobunaga?

To preface this review, this reviewer feels it is necessary to state something. There are only a couple of genres of anime that this review does not enjoy, and this series falls into one of them. For those that are unaware, Otome anime and games are essentially the opposite of harem. Harem is typically fanservice-filled anime where several girls throw their love and bodies at one guy. Otome is the opposite in that it centers around a single female character with all the boys flocking to her. The plots for both are generally extremely silly and repetitive, with lots of excuses for the characters to lose their clothes and lots of love triangle style drama. This is fine for some, but boring for others. The setting at least for this series is not entirely terrible. The anime is based on an Otome romance game for smartphones of the same title and is about a girl whose smartphone somehow takes her back to feudal Japan during the Sengoku period (obvious from the title) and surrounds her with two warring factions of creatures, one beautiful vampire men, and the other catboys. Even among fans of Otome anime and games, adaptations of phone games are generally not received well. This episode was not terrible, though it began about how one would expect a series based on a phone game stuffed with guys for girls to drool over would. The female character appears in the midst of a battle that ends as she shows up, and is immediately swept into the arms of several vampire men and carried back to their base. From this point on pretty much, the entire rest of the episode is devoted to showing the male characters, and so many are shown that it is clear it will be pointless discussing any of them until they actually do something important to the story. The final scene reveals Nobunaga himself, but not much more than him menacing over everyone else is revealed. It is clear this may end up being a hard series to get through, but at least the character “introductions” are out of the way now and there was some decent action animation, even if nothing really happened. Hopefully, better things are in store for this series.

Ancient Magus’ Bride episode 1

Elias and Chise meeting for the first time.

It should be noted that there is an OVA series that is three episodes long that serves as something of a prequel to this series, that takes place at some point during the series after the events of the first episode, but flashes back to events that take place before this first episode as well, and should probably be watched before starting this but is not entirely necessary to do so. The main focus of the series, and indeed this first episode, is the character Chise who is an orphan girl that can see spirits and has been shunned all her life because nobody around her can and so they think she is crazy. The other primary focus of the series is Elias, a powerful and ancient mage. The episode opens in a rather depressing situation, as Chise has reached a point in her life that has her being sold into slavery for some reason. The details of what led to this are not given, but the important thing is that Elias buys her and immediately frees her, as he has no use for a slave but was instead looking for an apprentice, and hopefully someday a bride. Chise makes it clear she is not used to being treated like a person, as everything Elias does for her from running her a bath to removing her chains comes as a huge shock that seems to shake her down to her foundations. He does refer to her as a puppy, however, and it is clear he is not used to interacting with regular humans either. The bulk of the episode is spent with Chise adjusting to not being a slave, meeting some fairies (ariels, but she calls them fairies) and nearly getting tricked by them into entering another dimension. Fortunately, at the last minute, she decides that she will stay with Elias because he is the first person to tell her she has a home that is her own now. The episode is both sad and a little heartwarming, and it is clear there will probably be a lot more of both of those feelings if this first episode is any kind of indicator. Now go watch the OVA!

With that, we have reached the end of the first week. For the most part, it is hard to tell just how good or bad any of these series will be just based on these first episodes, but that is what the rest of the season will be for. Some definitely do not feel like strong starts, but others felt as if there was the promise of great things to come. The only way to see what the future holds for these series is to either keep reading or keep watching, so do one or the other, and leave a comment with your own opinions on the season below! Also, do the readers prefer to watch a series in its entirety all at once, or week to week as they are airing? Answer below, and thank you for reading!

Not unlike the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The first game to be covered in this editorial is Super Mario Maker available for the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS, released in late 2015 and late 2016 respectively. Although the game does come with over 60 pre-built courses to either be played or used as a template, over seven million courses have been uploaded by users since its release using the game’s built-in creation system. Players are given the option to create stages in four different styles, each representing a different era of the “Super Mario” video game franchise. These four styles being: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U. Players can either access courses through the game’s menu which highlights new stages to be played, or if they want to play a specific stage they can enter the stage’s custom code in order to play it. Unfortunately, although Super Mario Maker has many fans worldwide many have taken issue with Nintendo’s bizarre policy to delete unpopular stages without giving specific reasoning for this deletion. Aside from this, the game has received very positive reviews for the Wii U and the 3DS and it offers a tremendous value for the asking price.

Look at this stuff! Oh, it is so neat!

Next up is LittleBigPlanet 3 released for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in late 2014 which is another platformer with lots of creation tools ripe for the plucking. The game is already equipped with an adventure mode that is fully voice-acted with a star-studded cast including Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and it supports four player co-op throughout. In addition, DLC packs from the previous two games in the “LittleBigPlanet” franchise are fully transferable to LittleBigPlanet 3 giving players a real bang for their buck. Once players are done with the story mode though, they can partake in create mode and make their own stages either to be played with friends or shared online for all to enjoy. The create mode includes over 70 tools along with the ability to make new power-ups using the Power-Up Creator. In addition, the game also gives the player ways to “stitch” levels together in order to make them longer and more expansive than usual. Although the game continues to be played three years after the fact, initially the game received less than stellar reviews due to the many technical issues found at launch which have since then been patched. Another good reminder that initial impressions mean a lot and its a good idea to release a game without a medley of technical issues that prevent players from enjoying the game when it comes out.

That car is missing a tire.

The final game to be covered in this week’s editorial is Grand Theft Auto V. What a twist! Originally released 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 the game has also been released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC and has gone on to sell extremely well with over 80 million copies sold. Grand Theft Auto V is known for its large world with a wide variety of weapons and vehicles for the choosing but if a player wants to try something different the GTA Online Content Creator is also available. This tool allows players to make custom games which can be as basic as Capture the Flag or as exhilarating as sumo wrestling with large cars on floating platforms. This is just the tip of the iceberg as Grand Theft Auto V gives the player a lot of tools to work with in order to make their own fun in the case that they have gotten bored of Los Santos. These custom games are also readily available for players who are not as creative as others and only want to enjoy what others have made for them. It is also worth mentioning that Grand Theft Auto V is still being updated to this day with new content including vehicles, weapons, and missions but in many cases this comes with an added price.

So that is it for this week’s editorial all about games that give you something to play and the tools to create your own game as well. What is one of your favorite examples of this type of game? Maybe it is a game designed with creation in mind or it is just a standard game with a very generous map editor. Whatever the case may be, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 1 Oct 2017: Heroes of the Storm

Imitanis plays Heros of the Storm. It is a decent MOBA, I guess.

Reetin Aloft – 3 Oct 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 1)

Reetin’s game capture will not display 240P video. Thankfully, he has a Playstation 3.

Reetin Aloft – 4 Oct 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 2)

Reetin continues with Final Fantasy.

Reetin Aloft – 5 Oct 2017: Final Fantasy (Part 3)

It is Reetin with his special guest Durga!

Adeki’s Adventures – 7 Oct 2017: Headlander

The original title is saying that Adeki is going to play BioShock Infinite but, that’s a liar!

Thanks for watching all the videos and enjoying every single moment of them. Please do feel free to comment on what games you would like us to play in the future and Lusipurr will ignore every single suggestion.

Hello, your rumpled ROEN clothing suggests to me that you would like a delicious meal of NISSIN CUP NOODLE.

Download Link: Released 2017.10.09

When Adeki’s rumpled ROEN clothing suggests that he is famished, Imitanis and SiliconNooB open the spacious boot of their AUDI automobile to find the COLEMAN cookstove stored there by Lusipurr, and they then cook up a hearty meal of NISSIN CUP NOODLE.

Capcom are setting up Street Fighter VI for catastrophic failure.

Capcom Announces Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition

“People might say that they don’t want to buy a game because they know that there will be a newer version later in the year and they might have some concerns. But this is it. If you go and buy this game on the day it comes out, you’ve got Street Fighter 5.” ~ Yoshinori Ono

It is very difficult to overstate just how disappointing Street Fighter V has been. It launched in a state that would have been barely sufficient for early access, and flopped spectacularly because of it – barely scraping its way to a million sales. Despite this, at least owners had Yosinori Ono’s solemn promise to go on, that there would never be another more complete release of the game to make early adopters rue their purchase. Fast forward a year and a half and Capcom are back to their old tricks, announcing Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. It is a package which includes the $60 base game, along $80 of DLC, comprising the game’s season passes for 2016 and 2017. All of this comes complete on a nicely minted disc for the modest sum of $40, as opposed to doled out piecemeal over the course of years at the cost of $140!

The game will release in January 2018 for PS4 and PC, and will come with a roster of 29 fighters, along with a fully featured assortment of game modes – which should have been in the core game when it released in 2016:

“Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition will come with all 28 characters, which includes those from Season 1 and Season 2 – there’s still one more character that we’ll be announcing very soon. In order to introduce more variety in each match, all characters will receive a second V-Trigger you can choose before the match begins! It’s time to see what else your main character is capable of. We’ll be rolling out more details in the future.

As previously stated, Arcade Mode will be present, but this isn’t your cookie cutter version. Being the #1 requested addition to Street Fighter V, we’re making sure it’ll be an experience rather than just a mode. As it’s our 30th anniversary year, we wanted to add even more to Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition! Extra Battle Mode, V-Trigger moves, Gallery, and a UI design overhaul are among the features we can’t wait to show you in the future. There’s a lot of information to share with each of these new additions, so keep an eye out as we approach January.”

This likely comes as a big slap in the face for the Street Fighter V fans who suffered through the game’s botched roll-out. that being said, it is good in a sense, because this with further corrode the market’s willingness to purchase such games on release, when they could just wait for the ‘Game of the Year’ edition. Capcom hurt themselves.

Tabata doesn’t want to wreck the Final Fantasy VII Remake…

Hajime Tabata Wants to Run Final Fantasy VII into the Ground

Tetsuya Nomura is already hard at work ruining the Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it would seem that this is not hardship enough for long-suffering Final Fantasy VII fans. Now Hajime Tabata, director of the broken Type-0, the horrific Third Birthday, and the irredeemable Final Fantasy XV, has indicated that he would very much like to squander any opportunity we will ever have of receiving a competent follow-up to Final Fantasy VII. Instead Tabata would like to personally direct any potential Final Fantasy VII-2, in order to ensure that it plays like shallow action crap!

When asked whether Tabata would be amenable to taking over the development of Final Fantasy VII Remake the way he did with Final Fantasy XV if Square Enix required it of him, he wisely declined. He can see that Nomura is completely fucking up the development of the VII Remake, and so he does not wish to be left holding that bomb:

“Final Fantasy VII is a special game.

It’s such a special numbered game that I don’t think I can remake that one. There’s so many fans out there, if I were asked to satisfy all those fans, I don’t think that’s something I could do, 100%. If [Square Enix] asked me to make a new Final Fantasy and take it in a new direction, I’d be happy to accept that one, but if they asked me to remake Final Fantasy VII — to release as if it were a modern game, just released today — no, I don’t think that’s something I can do. I think the only people who could do that are Mr. (Yoshinori) Kitase and Mr. (Tetsuya) Nomura.”

Kitase and Nomura cannot do that which is why the Final Fantasy VII Remake will fail.

While Tabata does not wish to suffer the fallout of wrecking VII proper, he nevertheless does wish to squander the only potential shot that we will ever have of receiving a well made Final Fantasy VII sequel:

“Yeah, it wasn’t the main game. Now, if they asked me to do Final Fantasy VII-2, that might be different.”

Apparently Tabata imagines that the blowback he will receive for wrecking Final Fantasy VII-2 will be significantly less than the blowback that Nomura receives for wrecking the VII Remake, which is why he is willing to give it a shot. Each year which passes makes it harder for former Squaresoft fans to watch from the sidelines as these clowns churn the company into the ground. One thing is for sure, Final Fantasy will never be salvaged so long as these worthless hacks are calling the shots!

Sony have redesigned PSVR!

Sony Is Still Trying to Make VR Catch On

One past release which certainly should not be getting a reissue is Sony’s PSVR. It launched like a wet fart on October 13 as a product that nobody wanted, and limped its way to 915,000 sales by February, and over a million sales by June. Thus it has sold 915,000 units during its first four months on sale, and a further 85,000 units during its second four months on sale. During its second four months on sale the PSVR sold less than ten percent of the units that it sold during its first four months on sale. This is one hell of a slowdown!

Given the dire failure of PSVR, the rational course of action would have been for Sony to drop support for their retard goggles in order to double down support for the PS4, though this obviously did not happen. Instead Sony are throwing good money after bad by redesigning the PSVR SKU in order to try and kickstart sales of the headset. The new model will do a better job integrating the headset’s cords, and the external processor now has the ability to support HDR in the video that it passes through to the TV for onlookers to view.

This is not really exciting stuff, so it is quite mystifying to see Sony wasting their guys developing it. VR is dead, there has still only been one proper game [Resident Evil VII] released for VR, so it is not like this hardware refresh is going to rekindle a renaissance of VR on the PS4. Just ditch this failed tech and focus on bringing more exclusive content to the PS4 for gamers to enjoy!

Alliance looks MUCH better than the original.

The first game that will be highlighted in this editorial is Guns of Icarus which is not about the mythical Icarus who flew too close to the sun and then tried to shoot it with whatever would have been an acceptable substitute for a gun at the time (a slingshot?). Instead Guns of Icarus is a steampunk-themed first-person shooter where teams of four pilot a large airship and battle it out against another team of four while also being sure to avoid storms and large landmasses. The game originally launched all the way back in 2012 and since then has had a notable drop-off in terms of player count which has in turn led to negative Steam reviews as those who still enjoy the game are unable to find a match in a timely fashion. While the initial concept of Guns of Icarus may have sounded appealing five years ago, the developers have lost many players. No doubt due to the fact that the game looked like it was an early access title when it comes to visuals and polish many years after release the fact that the developers have now released a “definitive” version of the game titled Guns of Icarus Alliance which is $15 while the original continues to be sold for $5. To release an expansion of an online multiplayer game is one thing, but to release a second version for $10 more than the original and then effectively abandon the original title is a separate matter entirely. While the definitive version continues to be updated and a PlayStation 4 release is scheduled for 2018 only time will tell if the player-base is to rise again.

Here comes the song again!

Second at bat is Skies of Arcadia originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000 where players follow the story of Vyse, a teenage air pilot who is a member of the Blue Rogues along with his friends Aika & Fina. A fourth party member will also be assigned to the party between three different characters (Drachma, Glider, and Enrique) although this can cycle throughout the story. As implied by the title and the term “air pirates,” Skies of Arcadia is centered around airships which travel throughout the world commandeered by their crew in search of treasures. Although it is structured like a traditional JRPG with a party system and experience points, the game had a larger focus on exploration. After its release Skies of Arcadia was met with extremely positive critical reception and continues to be regarded as one of the best games released for the Dreamcast, although sales were not exceptionally high. A GameCube port of the game was released three years later although aside from these two editions the game has not been seen in the marketplace since aside from some of the characters appearing in other Sega franchises. The most noticeable being Valkyria Chronicles which includes Vyse and Aika as optional playable characters while Fina makes a cameo as being a non-playable medic. Vyse and Fina also appear in the anime adaptation of Valkyria Chronicles while Aika is absent, but that is still no replacement for wanting a modern re-release on PC.

Honest Abe took a dark turn.

Last up is Bioshock Infinite which does not shock the player upon entry nor does it contain an infinite or even near infinite amount of content. Lying aside, the third entry in the “Bioshock” franchise takes place in the flying city of Columbia where main character Booker DeWitt is on a mission to save Elizabeth from Columbia. This then takes the duo through a series of rigorous trials and self-realizations which all ends up with at least two drownings. Be sure to note the word “flying” as Columbia is in fact suspended in the air through a variety of methods including giant blimps, propellers, and quantum levitation. Ignoring the questionable physics, Bioshock Infinite was extremely well received at the time and won many Game of the Year awards by the end of 2013. Since then it has been released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as one third of Bioshock: The Collection which includes Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite and all of the respective games DLC. So, as long as the player does not have a fear of heights or giant mechanical birds, it is highly recommended to go out and pick up the trilogy for the console or computer of their choosing.

That is it for this week’s editorial! Have you played and/or enjoyed any of the games featured in this editorial? Maybe you have a different favorite game that takes place primarily above ground. Or, maybe you have an idea for a future editorial. Whatever the case may be, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 24 Sep 2017: Stellaris

Imitanis continues through the stars in Stellaris.

Reetin Aloft – 26 Sep 2017: Chrono Trigger (Part 22)

Reetin and Lusipurr discuss things while Reetin gets nearly to the end of Chrono Trigger.

Reetin Aloft – 27 Sep 2017: Chrono Trigger (Part 23)

Reetin did it, he beat a video game. Where is Reetin’s star?

Reetin Aloft – 28 Sep 2017: Castle of Illusion

This is a short one from Reetin because he was dealing with hemorrhoids.

Reetin Aloft – 29 Sep 2017: Star Trek: The Next Generation

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reetin plays a bad game.

Adeki’s Adventures – 30 Sep 2017: Crash Bandicoot Trilogy

In celebration of the day after the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Adeki is bad at video games.

Thank you all for watching the videos this week. As always, if you have any suggestions for games we should play, list them in the comment section below. As a side note: Reetin would like you to tell us your best cures for hemorrhoids [Buy a better cushion! -Lusi].

Rincewind and the Tourist

Download Link: Released 2017.10.02

Lusipurr, Adeki, and SiliconNooB review the latest autumn anime offerings, comment on the recent surprise release of Ben Stokes’ Punch-Out!!, report pertinent news about Nintendo and Square Enix, and seek to discover the Colour of Magic.

Final Fantasy I North American Box Art

Welcome to our playthrough of Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, originally released in Japan for the Famicom on 18 December 1987 and 17 December 1988, respectively, with later releases and remakes in North America and worldwide on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Wonderswan Color, PlayStation, Playstation Portable, and iOS, amongst other platforms.

Square’s release of Final Fantasy on the Famicom in 1987 has become legendary. A last-ditch effort by Hironobu Sakaguchi to revive the flagging fortunes of himself and his company, the name of the game itself alluded to the desperation of the director. However, the success was so immediate, and demand for a title so great, that Square would go on to produce two sequels for the Famicom, let alone a veritable avalanche of further titles in the series which continue to this day in media far beyond the realm of video games. However, the early days of Final Fantasy were formative for the series, establishing series concepts which would return in later games, eventually becoming central to the concept of Final Fantasy itself. The original Final Fantasy established the basics of a menu-driven battle system and a party of customisable characters which remains fundamental to most people’s conception of the Final Fantasy series, and introduced recurring themes such as elementally-aligned crystals and bosses, magical spells, character classes, airships, the dragon Bahamut, and a fantasy-medieval setting familiar to players of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. A year later in Japan, Final Fantasy II advanced further series staples such as Chocobos and the character Cid, which helped to ensure their centrality to the Final Fantasy series.

Cornelia in Final Fantasy I

Final Fantasy I was not released in a vacuum, borrowing concepts from previous role-playing games, including elements from tabletop RPGs. In fact, artwork and material from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monstrous Manual was used as the basis for many of the enemies in Final Fantasy. ChunSoft’s Dragon Quest (published by Enix), released a year earlier, doubtless provided additional inspiration, but Final Fantasy determinedly went further, with character classes and a party of four players fighting large groups of enemies, in an attempt to emulate the party-sized combat which was a staple of tabletop role-playing games. Generic characterisation added to that feeling, with the player avatars absent any significant character development so that players could personally occupy the roles themselves. Final Fantasy II, for its part, established a lasting series shift by presenting characters with names and an established backstories, so that players would instead inhabit predefined character roles and discover the motivations, histories, and fates of those characters by playing through the game.

Although Final Fantasy II did not initially see release in North America, 2003 saw an official North American release on the PlayStation in the Final Fantasy Origins compilation. Later releases on other platforms followed, including an expanded 20th Anniversary edition of both Origins titles, released individually on the PSP.

The Pirate Battle from Final Fantasy I

Use the comment thread below to discuss your approach to the games, challenges you have faced, secrets you have uncovered, and what you are getting out of your playthrough. Do you feel that the Famicom presentation of Final Fantasy I and II has held up since the original releases in 1987 and 1988? Or, do you prefer the aesthetics and extra features of more recent remakes? How have your experiences with JRPGs released after Final Fantasy I and II, affected your impressions of these games? Tell us all about it and join in our discussion below! We will select some of the best comments, each week, for our podcast discussion.

The aim in this playthrough is to complete the entirety of both games in four weeks:
– Week 1: Obtain the crystals of Earth, the Airship, and the Class Change in Final Fantasy I.
– Week 2: Complete Final Fantasy I.
– Week 3: Complete the Colosseum mission with Gordon in Final Fantasy II
– Week 4: Complete Final Fantasy II.

Please join in, even if you are behind on the playthrough. Anyone and everyone is invited to participate, regardless of speed of play or familiarity with the series. Comment and tell your friends!

SAG-AFTRA funny buggers is the reason that Claire Redfield’s actress will not be reprising her famous role!

SAG-AFTRA BTFO!

If one were to remove the acting talent from the production of a movie then there would not be much of a movie left. If one were instead to remove the acting talent from the production of a video game then one is left with a video game without voice acing – and the game might be all the better for it! After more than a year of striking against the video game industry SAG-AFTRA is poised to accept the terms that were essentially offered to them at the outset of the strike. SAG-AFTRA had been pushing for actors to be entitled to residuals based on the number of copies a game has sold, but is now set to accept a deal which will see actors being paid a small bonus once recording wraps. The bonus is set at $75 for one recording session, and caps at $2,100 for ten or more sessions. Actors will also be entitled to know some very general information about the roles they are auditioning for, including the genre of the game, and whether they are required to voice expletives or racism – because goodness knows that is a likely workplace scenario when employed by the risk averse shitlib video game industry!

This is all stuff that SAG-AFTRA were offered at the opening of negotiations. In all likelihood the size of bonuses were revised upward by some negligible amount to allow SAG-AFTRA to save face after dragging this out for a year, but ultimately this is a year of lost productivity on their end.

“This is an important advance in this critical industry space, we secured a number of gains including for the first time, a secondary payment structure which was one of the members’ key concerns. The courage of our members and their fortitude these many months has been admirable and I salute them. We are always stronger together.”

On the one hand it is satisfying to see SAG-AFTRA having to cuck on their unreasonable demands. On the other had it is saddening that a deal has been reached at all. The way that unions like SAG-AFTRA operate is by artificially raising the cost of voice acting by limiting the supply of talent: either a studio uses union talent exclusively at the mandated price, or the studio is forbidden from using any union members at all, and must source an entirely non-union cast. In either case the potential voice acting workforce is being artificially fragmented along union lines. What this usually amounts to is individuals being prevented from working unless they join a union – in short it is a racket, and a disgusting one at that. One would have been infinitely more happy if SAG-AFTRA just took their union actors and fucked right off for good and all.

The emperor is wearing no clothes!

Fuck Off Atlus

It will surprise precisely nobody following the recent conduct of Atlus that their abhorrent behaviour continues unabated. It is always weird reporting on these Atlus stories, because the fact that they still produce high quality JRPGs makes a person want to support them, but their actions when stripped of sentiment are some of worst and most tone deaf of the industry. So fuck them!

This week Atlus USA attempted to shut down the PS3 emulator RPCS3 for being able to play Persona 5, only instead of hitting the emulator’s developer Nekotekina with a cease and desist, they instead went behind their backs and delivered the cease and desist directly to Patreon. Complete bitch move.

“The PS3 emulator itself is not infringing on our copyrights and trademarks; however, no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable.

We kindly ask that you remove both for this reason – to make Persona 5 work on the emulator, the user has to circumvent our DRM protections.”

Of course Patreon was having none of this malarkey, as there is nothing illegal about the creation of an emulator, and it is fucking ridiculous to suggest that an emulator should not be able to play any games! Studios do not get to decide which pieces of hardware we choose to play their games on, which is why it is perfectly legal to play licensed vidya on hardware clones. In the face of Atlus’ unreasonable demands, the only stipulation that Patreon required of Nekotekina was to remove any mention of Persona 5 from the RPCS3 funding page, as the extent to which it is possible to play through Persona 5 was being used as one of metrics employed to illustrate the progress being made on development.

Atlus later commented further on their bitch move in their official blog:

“You might have heard earlier today that we issued a DMCA takedown notice involving emulation developer group RPCS3 and their Patreon page. Yes, it’s true. We settled upon this action for two reasons:

2. We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. Unfortunately, when our content is illegally circumvented and potentially made available for free, in a format we do not think delivers the experience and quality we intend, it undermines our ability to do so by diverting potential support from new audiences.”

Persona 5 plays better on the target hardware, Atlus? No fucking kidding?!! Considering that the degree to which Persona 5 could even be played on RPCS3 was what the development team was using as a metric for progress, it is such a huge surprise to hear that the game plays better on Playstation hardware! Fucking simpletons!

Do Atlus honestly believe that the ability to half-play a buggy version of Persona 5 on PC is actually costing them game sales?

It is possible to pirate the fuck out of Persona 5 and play it flawlessly on cracked PS3s running custom firmware – is this the method that Atlus would prefer for optimum enjoyment of the game?

Oh, that method is not to Atlus’ liking, eh? Well, perhaps go after those people instead of a bunch of emulation enthusiasts who are more concerned about the progress of emulation than they are about the ability to play vidya for free. Nobody sees emulation as a viable way to play through Persona 5 at this point in RPCS3’s development, so it is just perplexing why Atlus are so keen to portray themselves as a bunch of overreaching dicks – but fuck them!

Would you buy this for $300?

Oh For Fuck’s Sake!

Lusipurr.com has previously discussed the news that the people who own the rights to Atari’s name are planning to crowdfund an Ataribox which comes pre-loaded with some retro Atari games. Well, it turns out that the funding campaign will surface on Indiegogo some time before the end of Autumn, and when it does it will have a pricetag that is somewhere between $250 and $300! This shitty Ataribox is going to be priced somewhere between the PS4 and the fucking Nintendo Switch! Suddenly paying $300 for a Switch does not sound all that bad! Fucking hell!

Not to be outdone, Retro Games Limited revealed this week that they are planning on releasing a Commodore 64 Mini in 2018. Mercifully, this plug and play shitbox will only be retailing for $70, making it something of a steal when viewed alongside the Ataribox. The Commodore 64 Mini will come pre-loaded with 64 games, which is kind of cute.

For the record, the Coleco Chameleon has already come and gone, and now we have the Ataribox and the Commodore 64 Mini – so next year expect to see the Amiga Micro and possibly the Sinclair Spectrum Jr! The nostalgia industry has much to answer for. Jesus!

Nearly everything is destructible!

First up in the travel pamphlet is none other than Just Cause 3 which takes place on the fictional island of Medici. Released in 2015, the game recieved middling reviews in terms of narrative and initial performance issues although over time the game has been praised for its large open-world combined with its destructible enviroment. Not only this, but Just Cause 3 gives players a lot of choices when it comes to what they want to do and how they want to do it. This includes the ability to control comically large vehicles along with being able to fly around the map with a physics-defying wingsuit. Add all of this to a varied arsenal of weaponry and it is no wonder why the game has sold over three million copies (when combining all platform sales). As for a vacation players are free to explore the island of Medici and destroy just about anything without much fear of reprecussions so it could be understood why someone would boot it up from time to time to relax their mind. Just sit back, relax, and rain hellfire down upon innocents.

Vacationing may mean threatening to jump off a roof.

Next is Super Mario Sunshine which coincedentally starts off with Mario attempting to take a vacation from the Mushroom Kingdom. Unfortunately, this vacation is stopped dead in its tracks at the Delfino airport when a giant sludge monster is found gobbling up the native people of Isle Delfino. This forces Mario to help the vacation spot’s citizens with the aid of his new water backpack F.L.U.D.D. only to be wrongly accused of vandalizing the island with graffiti immediately afterward. Mario is then set with the task of cleaning the island of its graffiti along with finding the real culprit in order to prove his innocence. Although the game is mission based only a small handful of these missions have actual time limits which leaves Mario the ability to fully explore the numerous locations on Isle Delfino ranging from a haunted hotel to an out of control amusement park equipped with roller coasters and a ferris wheel. A positive of this mission based structure is also the ability to replay missions without having to start the game over meaning that players can relive their favorite moments whether it is chasing Shadow Mario or shooting rockets out of a roller coaster to destroy a giant mech of Bowser himself. This makes Super Mario Sunshine another perfect candidate for a vacation because players can jump around varied tropical locations to their hearts content, hover and rocket with the power of F.L.U.D.D., and even find Yoshi eggs to be hatched in certain locations so he can be played with too!

Do not fear the giant robot!

Last but certainly not least, the final recommended vacation spot from this editorial is none other than the seemingly endless vaccuum of space! Yes, space is quiet, desolate, and full of free NASA technology ripe for the plucking. Unforuntately, most people die when shot into space so the next best thing is to pick up a copy of No Man’s Sky instead. No, the game is not a substitute for your favorite spacejet shooter, but instead a game filled with countless amounts of planets to explore along with new species, languages, and sights to see. Although it was seen as an upset for many in its launch others have found it to be an extremely interesting game to explore without having to stay on one’s toes. This has also been helped by the fact that the fine folk at Hello Games have continued to update the game with various improvements, some of which were released very recently to the publication of this editorial. Also, thanks to this upset copies of the game are relatively cheap! Never before has an excursion to space cost less than $30, so thank you No Man’s Sky.

So that does it for yet another one of “Adeki’s Gems” which is what all these editorials have secretly been called unbeknownst to everyone else on staff. Do you have a game you play on repeat no matter how many times you beat it or just because you enjoy being in that virtual world? Maybe you have a suggestion for a future editorial because you do not relate to playing the same game as a miniature vacation. Whatever the case may be, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

The Imitanis Entertainment Hour – 17 Sep 2017: Oxygen Not Included

Oxygen is still not included with Imitanis this week.

Reetin Aloft – 19 Sep 2017: Chrono Trigger (Part 19)

Sadly, Reetin fails to save Lara in this video.

Reetin Aloft – 20 Sep 2017: Chrono Trigger (Part 20)

Reetin saved Lara! She was so happy to have her legs.

Reetin Aloft – 21 Sep 2017: Chrono Trigger (Part 21)

Reetin gets ever closer to beating Chrono Trigger!

Adventures with Adeki – 23 Sep 2017: Crash Bandicoot Trilogy

Adeki tries how hand at a platformer which was made before he ever was alive!

Thank you so much for watching. As always, if you want to tell us some games to play please do so in the comments and we might possibly ignore every single one of your suggestions.

Those who did not have their fill of Cup Noodle in 2017 can look forward to a second helping in 2018!

Download Link: Released 2017.09.25

Adeki, SiliconNooB, and Lusipurr discuss– you know what? It is more Cup Noodle. You read that right. There is still more Cup Noodle to come. I cannot believe they have not given up on this crap already. What the hell are they thinking? STOP! STOP! STOP!

Anyone else looking forward to Episode Cup Noodle?

More DLC Announced for Final Fantasy XV

It is the perfect ruse! Release a blatantly incomplete game with a narrative that is full of holes, and then charge $10 a pop for DLC episodes which attempt to plug the huge gaps in the game’s plot! If you think about it this is a way better strategy than making a Final Fantasy XV-2, as making brief DLC missions is way cheaper with a far superior return on investment, and millions of people already own the base game, and are inclined to throw good money after bad in the vain hope that the game’s narrative will be able to be salvaged into something comprehensible!

Maybe we will finally get Episode Escape of the Prisoner DLC which finally reveals how Noct’s buddies managed to incompetently lose their captive off-camera. Maybe we will finally get Episode Seaside Mafioso DLC, which chronicles how one man was able to make the career move from cartoonish mafia stereotype to professional journalist and aspiring amateur jeweler! Whatever the case, Square Enix is claiming that the demand for more Final Fantasy XV story DLC is so great that the team has committed 2018 to churning out more DLC for this shitty game!

Switch owners might not be getting this version at all…

Square Enix Is Thinking of Building a Third Version of Final Fantasy XV

To sell a lot of DLC you have to support a lot of platforms, and that is a problem when one of the prospective platforms in question is the underpowered Nintendo Switch. There has been some recent speculation that the Switch would simply receive a port of the smartphone version of Final Fantasy XV, however the structure of that version of the game does not support the DLC being produced, and so Square Enix will only port that version as a last resort. Square Enix have already tried running Final Fantasy XV on the Switch in its original form, but that was obviously never going to end well, and so now they are considering remaking the game from the ground up for a third time using Unreal Engine 4!

When asked at TGS about the progress of Final Fantasy XV on the Switch, the game’s director Hajime Tabata had this to say:

“We’re actually doing very specific technical investigations into what’s possible at the moment. Where we are at the moment – we’ve completed those tests and have worked out where the ground lies. We’re currently in the middle of the discussion and debate about what we should be doing, and how to realise that on the Switch.

Honestly, when we did the technical test to see if we could use the same native engine we used on other console versions on the Switch, we tried to run it there, the results weren’t satisfactory. It wasn’t what you’d want from a final game. It doesn’t mean that’s the end of that – we’re looking at the options, like the customisation of the engine. To give you an example how open those discussions are – we’re talking to Epic at the moment, about maybe what we could possibly do there, and if we did a Switch version maybe we’d be able to partner and do something there. Their Unreal environment is just amazing, and will be very useful. You have to have all those options on the table – without that it’d be impossible to make a decision about what we can do on that platform.”

Is this real life? How is this a thing? Only in Clown World could a company be considering remaking a game for a third time within the span of a year! Nobody wants this! Every time there is an article on Final Fantasy XV multitudes of people line-up to pass comment on what a bad game it was. There is no demand for this. Just the one or two same Nintendonlies who ask for it at every open gaming event.

Here is some free advice for Square Enix: do not remake the game in Unreal Engine 4, but instead remake it using the Project Octopath Traveler engine, as it is already optimised for Switch, and that way Final Fantasy XV might finally have a decent battle system. Also, forget remaking Final Fantasy XV at all, and instead use the Project Octopath Traveler engine in order to remake Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, because that shit would be amazing!

The Switch has had a working NES emulator since release…

Nintendo Switch Has Had a Working NES Emulator since Launch!

Lusipurr.com has spent many weeks since the launch of the Nintendo Switch bemoaning the state of backwards compatibility on the system, or rather the lack thereof. Here is the thing though – every single Nintendo Switch that has ever sat on a store shelf has contained a working NES emulator. Nintendo has had NES emulation working on the Switch since day-1, as every single console to ever have been manufactured has contained a working copy of Golf.

Golf was one of the first games that former Nintendo President Satoru Iwata worked on, and so this game is set to unlock on July 11 2018, three years to the day that he passed away. Because of this, if one wishes to play Golf on the Switch right now, then what they need to do is adjust the system’s internal clock to that date – however, this only works if the Nintendo Switch being used has never been connected to the internet. Once a person has taken their Switch online, they will then have to wait until the game’s unlock date.

So there you go, the Switch has had a working NES emulator from day-1, but Nintendo in their infinite wisdom simply decided not to make any use of it! They would rather have their console be shitty and sell another ten copies of Snipper Clips than to be awesome with a range of great older titles. If we are being honest here, Nintendo probably did not wish to have the Switch competing with the NES Classic. Hell, they have probably been sitting on working SNES and N64 emulators too for the very same reason!