This Week’s Topics:
Wherein I discuss: My Dragalia Lost archival efforts. Tencent gobbling up IPs for China. A showcase from a company I couldn’t care less about. And the long-lived queen.
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Wherein I discuss the completion of a beta I’m releasing on time, the encroaching anime apocalypse, Ubisoft’s potential new owners, why Pokémon is bad, DiSCoBoMBs, a ruinous remaster, a Plain-o rename-o, and a new gothic metroidvania action platformer.
Wherein I discuss my artistic inabilities, a pair of semi-pleasant acquisitions, Kirby’s cake rolls, and how games keep on dying.
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Wherein I repurpose a bit from Natalie Rambles About TSF (coming May 25th), ruminate over how the worst people are buying everything, and muse about half-formed kerfuffles.
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Wherein I discuss the ePub progress, Unreal 5, Monkey Island Part 7 3, The Rise of Max Payne, an NFT failure, and Activision finally doing something good.
Wherein I discuss my transparent tendencies, how the NFT game dream is better fulfilled without NFTs, and how much I like Japanese critter designs.
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Wherein I discuss my ‘addiction’, a PlayStation predator, Tencent’s new pseudonym, The Spike Video Game Announcement XIX, Android coming to home computer (for real this time), and the expanding veil of PlayStation.
Wherein I discuss the completion of a duo of long-standing tasks, the unlife of live services, and how the games industry is full of abuse and other terrible things.
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Wherein I discuss a lackluster fantastical reveal, the final details surrounding the next generation of gaming, a hunter returning to their true home, and a bunch of other weeb garbage.
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Wherein I discuss my writing being invalidated by patches, the highs and lows of the next Xbox, another limited remastered compilation, a most unexpected prequel, the fumblings of a troublesome trend-chaser, and the most absurd company name in all of video games. Oh, and also Ubisoft’s attempts at repressing the fact that they defended and protected abusers for years.
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Wherein I discuss why I should never gamble with legal tender, sexual misconduct amidst the largest game publisher in the world, a deadly representational misstep, and Paper Mario making me sad.
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You know what the worst past of E3 is? The fact that I cannot simply drop everything to enjoy spending an entire day in video game wonderment. As such, since 2013 the Monday kicking off E3 has always been a frustrating affair where I not only want to watch the conferences, do a write-up, which takes time because I am a slow writer, and keep up with the news that falls between the cracks, but I need to attend college classes and do part-time office work that mostly consists of spreadsheets, filing, and processing bodily specimens. Anyways, enough customary moaning. The video games are here!
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I think I’ve mentioned this before, but throughout primary school I was not allowed to take regular English classes for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I did not really mind it at the time, but I regularly wonder if I would be a better writer if I had been permitted to take regular classes. I bring this up because I recently fell down a rabbit hole of some of my old writing on this site, and found it to be rife with minor mistakes I either did not catch the first time, or did not know any better back then. It makes me wonder if I am still a garbage writer and will always be, or if this is just a natural creative process, where one grows to dislike the work they did a few years prior, as I have seen that mentality pop up from time to time.
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By the time I have published this post, I have dragged myself through a 13 hour day of work and school, wherein my free time was spent feverishly catching up on the press events in a vain attempt to remain current with the news, before going to bed and spending the preceding morning catching up on everything before the next day of news picks up. It was a rush to get this post out, but as is always the case with E3, I would not have it any other way.
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Ever since I started working part-time in 2014, that part time work quickly became full time, or at least close to full time, whenever I happened to have a break from school. Spring break has meant that I work for a full week, winter break rounds out to a full month, excluding holidays and half days, and summer amounts to, well, near full time work for several months, where the projects just keep on coming. I’m not complaining about this, I just find it odd how a “break” to me now means that I wind up working more than I would otherwise.
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Something that I tend to forget from time to time is that the video game industry is really just a large scale multi-billion dollar business run by companies that, above all else, are searching for ways to remain profitable in what is a rather turbulent market. While games are unquestionably art, they are sold as products and produced by studios with the goal of creating revenue likely surpassing whatever goals are held by the developers themselves. Yes, of course there is the independent scene where things work different, but when talking about industry, only the biggest players really warrant much attention.
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Several months ago, I reviewed Rayman Origins, a colorful, creative, and tightly designed platformer that I came away from about as positively as I could. As such, it seemed inevitable that I would get to its sequel, Rayman Legends, and seeing as how the game has a Switch port due out in about a week, I figured that now would be as good a time as any. (more…)
Trying to follow E3 news while working a very busy job where the only down time I have during lunch is not very fun, and as such I have spent nearly the entirety of my evening catching up to E3 and watching what I missed. I’m just thankful that Microsoft moved their conference to Sunday, otherwise I would have been writing until I was struggling to stay awake. Well, more than I am when finally publishing this. (more…)
I have a personal policy where I like to revisit any game that I consider to be among my all time favorites once every few years. This is my way of ensuring that they are still quality titles that deserve to be placed so highly in my mind, help reinvigorate my affection towards certain titles, and allow me to more closely understand what makes these games so gosh darn good. Rayman Origins is the latest entry in this series of never ending exploits, and it’s still pretty wonderful. (more…)
“Hallo Natalie, wie geht’s?” Why thank you for asking Maple-chan. I just finished community college, completely failed at talking to another human being for about two hours after paying for their company, and am going to come out sometime next week. “…Sometimes I wonder why I exist, and then I remember that it’s because some Aspie conjured me in their corrupted mind.” Shut up Maple-chan, it’s time to talk about video games. “Because people care so much about what you think about banal video game news.” …I may decide to kill you off in your upcoming story, Maple Loves Senpai after that comment. (more…)
So, I didn’t pay much attention to it after its launch, it’s flaccid whimpering launch, but it was pretty obvious to everybody that something bad happened in the Bundie offices when this turkey was being baked. So Kotaku, a site I visit so seldomly I do not know what the front page looks like, did a neat little piece on the development of the Destiny: Part 1 or Dest1ny if you are somebody who found out about 1337-speak in 2007, and still thinks it’s kinda cool… (more…)
Yes, my Punch Line review is still not done, I got frustrated with writing it and recently just finished the initial draft of my novel, Verde’s Doohickey, so I decided to put it off. Verde’s Doohickey is a story I am aiming to release on August 31st, probably sooner, but I still need to edit those 50,000 words. I’ll also get a game review out next week, and have been starting therapy. What have you been doing at the weekend? I’ve been organizing my stupidly constructed music library I barely touch. *Dies in a fire* (more…)
I’m pretty sure that I said I would purchase a GTX 970 a few months ago. I can still afford it along with quite a lot of other computer stuff, but the thing about upgrading is that there is little penalty to waiting if you do not urgently need something. Also, it may turn out that the GTX 970 has been falsely advertised as more powerful than it really is. Meaning I’ll just wait until the next wave of graphics cards come out before I pick my peach, as they are only going to get better… Plus, I should get some more RAM and a new monitor, as I’ve been saying for a year. *Grumble* Instead, I’m prolly probably just gonna get an SSD, as my HDD is making a beat I do not like. (more…)
Another Thanksgiving, another Black Friday pushing the holiday out of the way, and another Steam sale to consume some of my money prior to my purchase of an MSI GTX 970 Gaming edition. What did I get? Analogue: A Hate Story, Hate Plus, Planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~, The Sacred Tears TRUE, Armored Hunter Gunhound EX, Devil May Cry 4, Bleed, Shadow Warrior: Special Edition, Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, and maybe something else. Yes, I buy a lot of games, look at my wishlist. (more…)
So, on the day after my twentieth birthday I was told that the company I work for as an office boy wants me to fill in some big shoes over my winter break from school. Meaning that instead of learning how to use Ren’py as I had planned while working on the Vivian James X Girl In My Dreams story, I will be making some money to afford that MSI GTX 970 Graphics card I’ve been eying for a while. Along with 16GB of RAM and maybe a new monitor… I’ve wanted that stuff for months, okay? (more…)
So, Dragon Age Inquisition comes out on my Birthday, but a combination of the price, bugs, and how I am saving for a GTX 970 ontop of the inevitable Steam sales puts it on the back burner. Oh, and Origin, never forget about that yucky Origin! I really do want to dive in though, but I have visual novels and some PS+ games to keep me preoccupied. Also out of the streets, where there is always a war on. A nice chilly one at the moment, filled with mutants. (more…)
So, I’ve got some news to share about my upcoming Novella, as opposed to a novel that is three novellas sticked together. It is a little story of mine I dub The Vile Doohickey, which involves a group of teenage friends who find a body swapping remote. The story will come out this year, as I almost done with the final chapter, but need to edit afterwards. I am also looking into making a visual novel, but don’t plan to get started until Winter Break… where I am still working, and am going to need to type up a handbook so Santa can bring me an Nvidia GTX 970. Regardless, I have at least one more Novella I plan on doing after that, in the form of a tribute very obscure to a Z-tier Manhwa mixed with my favorite character of 2014… Yeah! (more…)
In retrospect, I really am not sure why I shoved this game onto my bucket list. I guess the argument is that it was a quality game that I could see myself enjoying, but nothing about it stuck out to me and I don’t recall hearing about its existence prior to its release, where ti was well received. Heck, the Call of Juarez series to me is encompassed by The Cartel, which is a game that involves choking strippers and misinforming people about sex slave trades. But regardless, I decided to pick it up and play it after falling into a rut of titles that were as stimulating as being in a muck-like substance that smelled like soup.
It is rather pointless for a little slice of nowhere blog with only a small number of views to do a summarization of the E3 press events, especially when they were not watching them live due to real life events, such as work. But I got home to catch the latter two, and catch up with the former before Nintendo did their event and managed to get everything done before Tuesday’s end… well after everybody and their brother did their own version of this, and often far better than my assorted ramblings that are made all the dumber by the insertion of anime screencaps. It’s Nigmabox’s third annual Super E3 Rundown!
It is three weeks before E3, I am starting a job with my mother where I need to get up at 6:30, and have several others I may pursue. I am playing a ton of P4G, current 75 hours in, and am still trying to get some content up regularly despite having nothing prepared or planned aside from a cynically written Castle Crashers review I do not want to finish, as it sucks. Life is pretty good for me as a whole and I am actually making progress in part two of my three part novel. Oh, and just as a note, do not expect an anime review this month, as P4G is enough anime for me… God, my review of that game will be four pages at this rate. Oh, and I had to film a bunch of children to get $60, so I am tired as I am posting this… thing. (more…)
I have a list of games that did not so much as peak my interest, but get stuck in my brain like little wads of gum. It is a less than stellar condition and one that resulted in me playing titles such as the good, not great, The Darkness II and the abysmal Alice Madness Returns. Now I can add Splinter Cell Conviction to that list, ending up somewhere in between the two, but closer to the latter as I did not properly complete it. I did get to the final mission of the game, but I did not care enough to get to the conclusion, thus setting a negative tone for the review right from the get go. (more…)
I have not touched the Assassin’s Creed series in nearly four years. It began with the prior two numbered titles, and I certainly enjoyed them at the time, but past-me is an idiot, as he didn’t like 999 and was adamant about defending Final Fantasy XIII, as that is why he bought an Xbox 360. So, skipping three iterations, my thoughts on this installment could have been summarized by how I ended my first day of 11 hours of play with, “Well, today was devoted to Assassin’s Creed IV. The game is fun, but it probably won’t be 40 hours in.” Which it sure as sugar wasn’t.
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…What the blazes are you saps looking at- oh, wait, I’m not sure if anybody even noticed how this place has been vacant for a good week. Now how did that… *Looks at 3DS* 100 hours, you slippery SOB. All because I wanted to train myself some extra teams. I don’t even know why I had to do that extra EV raising bull- I’ll just double down on video game news, seeing as how two weeks have passed, and it’s early October, nobody’s announcing jack or anything. They’re all too busy with reviewing the influx of titles that are crawling from the abyss.
Note: I re-reviewed this game in 2017. Please disregard this original review.
So after years of working on and developing a franchise, you tell its creator to more or less reboot it, while trying to make it flop as hard as possible. What with your terrible timing for its release, where it’s first week sales in five digits was not surprising. Oh, but by the end of the year the game managed to make money because it was made by a small team. So you plan a bigger and better sequel, only to tell the creators to spend another six months on it before finally releasing it in a manner to maximize profit by putting it on everything. Is it good? Yes. How good is it? Let’s find out. Ready, one, two, three go!
Did I ever have any idea what I was going to do with this? I just sorta started recapping big game news after I wanted to have something other than reviews. But now, I just sorta kept on doing this one weird thing that nobody in their right mind would use as the definitive news listing. Oh well, not gonna stop. As this only takes effort when I rummage through for the most fitting images I can be arsed to find. (more…)
Okay, it’s been two weeks, but I have the excuse of news being slim, yet there was enough for a good hearty rundown of the past two weeks, and the thingamajigs that happened over the latter half of July, so let’s just get this over with. Put a monkey in some 16-year-old tits, gosh darn it!
Let’s see how things went last week… no reaction, lovely! Not that it matters to me, because I just like writing, but hopefully if I keep doing something, I can at least get a fish. Because there is truly not a more noble weapon.
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Note: I re-reviewed this game in 2017. Please disregard this original review.
Ubisoft, what the hell were you thinking with this title? It is odd enough that you would decide to release a 2D platformer, a sub-genre that has been reduced to downloadable titles unless it stars an Italian plumber, at retail for $60. But you release it on the busiest day of the busiest month in the industry? On the same day as your own Assassin’s Creed Revelations? You developed an engine to make this game, so you were trying to toss it into the lion’s den? Well, joke’s on you, this game not only survived the lions, but it crashed into your office looking for more work. This is Rayman Origins, my favorite 2D platformer of this generation, if not all of time! (more…)
