RubixsQube

I really, really hope that they are not related to the original series characters. I want to believe there's more than one black family running around the galaxy.

Actually, here's . This is lazy platforming design. The same enemies are presented again and again, in the same way. The platforming is repetitive, and it is as tedious when played as it seems in the video. This feels like a third-party SNES game you'd rent in the 90s. In this part of the game, you're kind of shuttling back and forth between different parts of the level clicking on NPCs, reading some silly dialogue, and then going somewhere else to do the same thing. It's perhaps unfair to be so critical of a game in its early stages (there is a "runner" segment later in the game, as well as a stealth area, so it does mix things up a bit), but I just don't consider this to be the best platformer of the year, by a long shot.

This is not true! This game is not nearly as good as Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze! I am bummed out that I don't like it as much as I was hoping I would. Each room in each generic island is full of generic enemies with generic patterns. The "secrets" are pretty ho-hum. The humor is forced. Every time I play a WayForward game, I want it to be good, and it always lets me down. They appreciate the platformer genre, but don't do anything with their games. (Also: All of the lady characters in Shantae are depicted wearing hardly any clothing, always? Is this supposed to be an ironic thing? I don't get it, and it just seems like I'm missing something, because it's pretty bad) Meanwhile, Tropical Freeze was gorgeous, difficult but not unforgiving, and featured a high level of variety and polish. It seemed like the platforming had been thought of in the way that Nintendo (and the Rayman team, as of recent) thinks about platforming: there is a flow to good platforming segments. Characters jump and move in a way that rewards getting into the groove. Shantae, by comparison, is metroidvania lite, and it suffers.

(I'm also a little busy, and I'm in the middle of a big snow storm which has made it hard to travel places for various items, so I'm hoping to send this out over the weekend!)

My thoughts: 1) Holy cow Fullbright is making a game set on the Starship Titanic 2) I really want the genesis of this game to be where Steve had an entire game planned out, with the relationships, and the story, and he realized that the setting didn't matter so much, so he put it on a space station, and the game is not even about the space station, or space, at all. 3) "WC?" Wait is this part where the fancy space station toilet is

Last night they showed off more of the upcoming Legend of Zelda game, which they indicated would be released next year (with Starfox preceding it). , where you can hear some of the battle music. The game is still a year out, but it looks as if it will make good on the promise of , or at least the last thirty seconds where Link launches from Epona into an arrow attack. Also, the neogaf thread has a good post looking at what was shown of the world map. (Still hoping Link's gender is either something you can choose, or female)

Naw, I just haven't updated the emulated client yet. I had to stop playing Spelunky since it was Taking Over My Life.

I wanted more of Jake talking about Smash Bros., but perhaps he doesn't have much to say? Maybe next week he'll get into it with Patrick? I do want to hear Jake and Patrick have a Jurassic Park-off. I want to send in a reader mail trivia contest for them both.

I will give you a hint: This is a Mac, and I play(ed) a lot of Spelunky.

And now, the right side of my menu bar looks pretty fun:

Argh, this is fucking gorgeous, and pretty funny. (I think that being able to make simple, pretty point and click adventures is a talent that I am insanely jealous of.)

(THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EPISODE, but I have always been so glad that Young Neil, who is depicted in the film as playing Link to the Past, has a DS Lite that is a) on, and has a GBA cartridge (presumably Link to the Past for the GBA) crammed in it, in the like, five seconds you can see it)

Yeah, I think Link has been buffed in a good way, especially since I always preferred him to Toon Link. Toon Link was quicker, but had no decent kill options, which makes for a tedious fight. I still find Link to be pretty cumbersome, and getting off a decent hit is always tough, but at least his projectiles are a little more powerful. I'm having a lot of fun with Bowser Jr. (as Wendy, and I'd be interested to see who everyone picks as their Bowser Jr. character), because he's/she's pretty strong, but also has that great little go-kart to use to charge into a scrum. Damn, this game, when played with people who aren't dicks/overly competitive, and at your skill level, is a damn blast.

I bought Shantae, and it's all right, but it's not on my list of GOTYs. (I'm a little disappointed in it! I was hoping for a more robust experience, but it seems a little sparse!) Right now, my list entails: Monument Valley Mario Kart 8 Super Smash Bros. WiiU / 3DS Shovel Knight Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze I really liked Mario Golf: World Tour, as well, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. Also, I haven't played Captain Toad: Treasure Trackers or Ultimate NES Remix, two games I'm hoping to get later this month.

Exactly. There are quite a few good ideas throughout, but it's just so sloppy. I see this all the time with style parodies.

Argh, that Wes Anderson trailer that moddy posted is so poorly done! They misspelled "rebels!" They Futura Condensed for some reason! They used a song that he had already used in a different movie!

I feel like this cab driver when I think about this film. It doesn't care about me. It doesn't respect me.

Well, I'm glad that some people enjoyed it! I just really wanted to like Black Flag more than I did. It has a whole bunch of fantastic things, but interwoven with a lot of stuff I could not care less about. I want to click a box in the options setting that says: "I am fine if this is maybe a 4 to 5 hour game, if you take out a lot of the fluff, please."

This is what makes Smash so good - if you have an area of the stage that people are going to steer clear of, you control that area. Duck Hunt is all about this - I was watching some high level competitive play last night where a dude was using the can in a similar way. The can's presence allowed him to essentially keep people away from that area, and so he could hide and skulk around there, daring people to try to come in and attack. With Villager, if you fiddle around near the tree, people are either going to have to get close, or else send ranged attacks, which you can pocket.

Those orange/blue comparisons you posted, Architecture, make me wonder if the standard editing decisions from the Star Wars films will carry over into these sequels, and specifically, will J.J Abrams use those iconic scene transition wipes.

I'm mostly surprised how every single person who plays an Assassin's Creed Game just wishes that it were a game set in some specific era, and not a game about some modern-day bullshit nobody cares about as a wrapper for the thing they care about, and yet Ubisoft keeps making these games with animus/memory horsecrap. I could understand if the company were Nintendo, who is almost charming in its stubbornness, but this is just absurd. I don't know anyone on the planet who thinks: "oh, this modern day part of the game is so awesome, thank goodness I can explore the offices of Abstergo"

Yeah, this is especially frustrating coming from the 3DS version where it defaulted to a given control scheme and color palette for each character. Pretty disappointing, but potentially they'll add this in with a future patch? I've been really liking this game. I've played quite a bit of it online against a friend a state over, and it's really fun, especially since you can turn items to low, and there's juuuuuust enough to keep it a little chaotic. They totally nerfed Falco in this game, my old main, so I've settled on Zero Suit Samus. I also like to swap in Mr. Game & Watch and Link, who are not great, just because I've always played Link (white tunic) and Mr. Game and Watch has the all-time best taunt (bell) (sorry, "Show Me Your Moves").

That website is clever, but too sloppy. There are mistakes all over the place (on the T-Rex facts page, Sue is not the name of the first T-Rex fossil ever found), and it looks too much like what it is: an advertisement for a fake amusement park from a movie, rather than what it could be. A quick trip to Disneyland's web site shows the information you'd want to present to the public (nobody uses a public website for ride queue times, for instance). I know that this sort of nitpicking is mega tedious, but what is the goal of this website (and a few others, including this one, for Masrani Global, the company who currently owns InGen), really? I'd assume it's to drum up excitement for the film through ARG-esque interconnected websites. On one hand, this is successful, but, if you're going to dip into the website uncanny valley, you have to really sell it, and so the little silly aspects (the Jurassic World website's page on John Hammond uses a quote from Jurassic Park in a wink-wink, audience, cheeseball way) and mistakes just ruin the illusion.

I'm the worst

Not super worried, based on the teaser design, presumably my saber's gonna slice right through the hilt, in the way that light sabers generally go through the handle bits: