Rfu play it safe course

The first time the Asylum Demon came crashing down to greet me in Dark Souls, I actually made a noise: the kind of pathetic mewl of protest you might let out after decanting a mug of hot coffee onto your keyboard. Really, can you blame me? The timing is divine, holding back just long enough to let you feel safe, beckoned in further by those inviting double doors. And then BAM. Corpse pancake. Of course, if I'd been a little more observant, I wouldn't have been taken by surprise. Pause in the doorway just after the first bonfire and you can spot the big pot-bellied bastard squatting right there on the rooftop, poised like an acrobat in the rafters, waiting for his queue to drop. It's a fantastically ballsy bit of theatre. Glance the wrong way and the whole moment is ruined. It reminded me of something Jeep Barnett said in the developer's commentary for Portal: 'One bizarre fact of game design is that, without some serious prompting, players will rarely look up.' Jeep and his team … [Read more...] about Forget movies – games have much more in common with theatre

Nintendo does a panning shot better than just about anyone else in the games industry. A lone adventurer standing center frame, their attention locked on a distant horizon as the camera shifts slowly behind them to reveal a lush, sprawling world. It was used to great effect in the debut trailer for Breath of the Wild , as Nintendo unveiled a spellbinding overhaul of The Legend of Zelda. And now, Game Freak has followed suit as it showcases Pokemon Legends: Arceus – a long overdue shake up of the formula that the developer has gradually iterated on for 25 years. As a tool, the execution of these framing shots is so successful because it ignites the imagination. It invites players to dream up new opportunities that they hadn't dared to before, and conjure up experiences that they have only been able to dream of until now. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a new breed of adventure for Pokemon trainers, and it's been a long time coming. "Pokemon Legends: Arceus represents a new approach for … [Read more...] about Pokemon Legends: Arceus looks to be the open world evolution we’ve always dreamt of

Publisher Kalypso Media has wanted to return to the turn-based tactical RPG Disciples franchise for years, despite the lack of any new entry in the series for over a decade. The niche franchise is getting a surprise revival this year with Disciples: Liberation , revealed via a fairly gruesome trailer. "We always knew we wanted to continue the franchise and we have been ideating on the next game in the franchise for many years," Kalypso Media owner and managing director Simon Hellwig told me. "We also took our time finding the right developer and found the ideal match with Frima Studio." Disciples: Sacred Lands didn't grab too much of an audience; if Wayback Machine can be trusted, GameSpot awarded the first Disciples the "Best Game No One Played" award back when it came out in 1999. Its follow-up, 2002's Disciples II: Dark Prophecy , is a lot more popular, while 2010's Disciples III: Renaissance (which marked developer Strategy First's departure from the franchise) did … [Read more...] about Disciples: Liberation Has Been An Idea “For Many Years,” It Just Needed The Right Developer

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, he begins a bold voyage into all things Trek. One of the most unusual things about at least the official games based on Star Trek: The Original Series is how late they arrived on the scene. That's excusable of course—games did exist in the 1960s when it first ran, but they were limited to stuff like Spacewar! or versions of Pong played on oscilloscopes. Still, it means they had a certain nostalgia element to them even when they were brand new. The earliest, an arcade game called Strategic Operations Simulator, showed up in 1985—very late when when you remember Star Trek: The Next Generation hit the air in 1987. Between those events, there were only a couple of text adventures to wave the tacky little UFP flag: The Promethean Prophecy and The Kobayashi Alternative. They're more simulation than most adventures, and very … [Read more...] about Crapshoot: Star Trek: Judgment Rites was pretty good for a licensed adventure game