Synergy

    So the messiah of the furry fanfiction hellmare warscape   I mean the worthy franchise Sonic the Hedgehog is getting a reboot in the form of an aggravated multimedia assault. No longer will there be a game based on a cartoon, or a cartoon based on a game, or a toyline based on something fun. Instead 2014 is gonna treat us to all of the above (possibly not the fun part) at pretty much the same time. All I can say is, planning out a franchise ahead of time like that can only go well. Remember Atlantis? That went over well. Right...? Right? Moving away from that clustershart, Amazon has acquired Double Helix, the fine folks that brought us the new Killer Instinct. Plus, with their highly anticipated Strider reboot on the way this year, what could go wrong? Let's look at some of the past releases of Double Helix Games LLC. 2008- Silent Hill Homecoming... let's just ignore that one and keep going. Oh, here we go, 2009- G... G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. This is just a fluke, right? It's gotta be, because just two years later they released the-- the Green Lantern game. And uh, Battleship. Maybe my initial readings were off. As long as Amazon keeps their dicks out of licensed dreck, maybe there's a future (there definitely is) in major retailers owning studios. But for now, I'm just crossing my fingers we don't see an Amazon game, 52 episode show, and toyline this year. Let's save that for the people of real America- Japanese people who don't understand America.

It's normal to get that sinking feeling right about now

Review: Gone Home

"Dear Katie, I'm sorry I can't be there to see you. I'm... I'm just sorry. But please, please, whatever you 

    might find... don't tell mom and dad."


      There's been a lot of controversy in the industry lately about what constitutes a game. About whether it needs combat, puzzles, or asinine button prompts mid-cutscene. Gone Home has none of these, but manages to so expertly tell a mysterious, eerie, and strangely heartwarming tale that I wasn't bothered by the lack of conventional "game-y-ness".

     Gone Home has you take the role of Katie Greenbriar on the night on June 7th, 1995. After studying for a year abroad you return home to find it seemingly empty. What follows next are 2 hours of the most engaging storytelling in gaming. You'll explore the house from head to toe, opening every drawer, closet and letter you find to learn just what happened to everyone, what's up with all those creaking noises, and just what's waiting for you behind the next locked door.  Upon discovery of anything plot relevant, you'll be treated to a reading of a journal entry from your younger sister Sam. The game is chock full of these, and as you progress through the game, you begin to realize that the plot is focused much more on her than anything else. However, Gone Home manages to give every character involved their share of depth. You might find a 20 year old box of unsold books written by your father, a pulp writer with a fixation on the JFK assassination of 1963, a torn page full of Street Fighter combo inputs, or a TV Guide with the X-Files slot highlighted. The game lures you in with an impeccable 90's charm, warmly transmitting pop cultural references into your brain in without making it feel like a cheap, biding its time for the main plot get into gear.. By the time things started to come together, I was already in love with the game. Not to mention that the experience is accompanied by an incredible ambient score courtesy of one Chris Remo. In addition to that, there are several of the era 'Riot grrrl' tracks that help to tell the story in some interesting ways.

     One gripe most frequently brought up in regards to Gone Home is the price of admission. If you're picking this up without a sale it's $20 for a couple hours of gameplay. While this might seem outrageous at first, consider that instead of buying your next overpriced Blu-Ray and/or Laserdisc, you could just pick this up instead, and with a new developer commentary track available for any subsequent playthroughs, there's just as much incentive as a movie purchase. The game is so dripping with a deliciously spooky, touchy-feely atmosphere and the kind of absence that one'd feel after returning home from abroad is represented perfectly, and the lovingly drawn, written and voiced artifacts of the missing days of your family make this one of the most relatable experiences you'll ever find. All I've got to say is this- call it a game, call it a movie, call it a fucking radio drama, but put aside any preconceived notions you might have about the experience and just do it. I'd go as far as to say that if you ingest only game, hell, one piece of media this year, make it Gone Home. You'll be so profoundly stirred by this beautiful and personal tale that when the game fades to credits you'll never forget it.  Gone Home shows us that even in the most cynical era of human history, something can subvert any expectations of its own identity and give us something that we'll keep in our hearts forever.
                                                                           10/10
   

   

Actually I don't like it when that happens in space

          So it's that time of year again, that magical time of year when the annual release storm descends upon my precious video town. We've got our new Ass Cred gamuwa, which has whales and... some whales, I think? New Call of Duty, which I learned something about yesterday that made me stop for a second. And that's that astronauts shoot guns in space. Because that happens in that goddamned game. Astronauts. They come out with their guns and they shoot at other astronauts. And there you go. There's the franchise with about as much capacity to be entertaining as John Cena's Fast Lane. The quickest darn lane I ever did see. With next gen shit coming out in a matter or weeks, I feel like the annualized stuff just can't adapt quickly enough during one release cycle to really bring out the "Wow" factor that a lot of this next gen shit is eliciting from schlubs like me. Schlub town.

Another Bug Hunt

     So that one game that the boners were over for the next console generation's launch, Watch Dogs, has been delayed to Spring 2014, further proving to the world that the sale for those boxes should be in goddamn stasis until next year. Unless, y'know, you wanna play car game. If you wanna play car game, go spend money to play car game. Sega, after a massive failure with Aliens: Colonial Marines, is apparently testing the waters again next generation with Alien: Isolation.  The game is rumored to star Ripley's daughter and only have one xenomorph, so maybe it'd be kinda tense and cool if it wasn't going to be kinda cool and then awful. Pokemon X and Y have sold more than 4 million copies, making them the fastest selling 3DS thing to date. So there you go. Couple that with the Wind Waker HD Wii-U bundle and Nintendo's kicking the dicks right now. Kicking the dicks.

Carry on, my Watch Dogs son

Movie Game But Without Movie- McDonald's Edition

    So these last few weeks have been a wacky time for the gamuwas, with GTA Online releasing, it's apparently busted so uh, for shame. Rockstar is, however, releasing some sort of a stimulus package for all the poor schlubs afflicted. French-o developer David Cage and his team over at Quantic Dream in Paris just released their new game a few hours ago starring Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page titled Beyond: Two Souls. The Walking Dead and Back to the Future adventure game devs Telltale's next comic undertaking, and adaptation of Fables has had its embargo lifted and it's apparently not shit, so that's cool. The newest Pokemon shit is coming out so PETA made some more literal shit for your eyes to take in- in the form of another shitty flash game. Cool. This time it's even edgier, because they lambaste the fine folks at Game Freak for releasing two versions of each of their games! (Woooooo) That noise, right? The wooo one? That was the phantom of me caring about PETA games.

Who's that guy? Fucking Grimace? Aw shucks. 

Video Games: Not Even Once.

     Video game guy died, you know that Hunt for Red Video Game Book Man Tom Clancy. A well known name in gaming, he's attached to tens of titles- none of which I've played, which will continue to be produced way after he dies. The Last of Us DLC was teased again, and Persona 5 is apparently getting some info dropped next month. Persona's found a niche for itself over here with its past two numbered releases, and as we see other games in that same umbrella find popularity in the US, the more likely it'll be that Atlus doesn't go under or something. Community supported indie baby Mighty No 9 capped its kickstarter off at around 4 million dollars, making it one of the most successful games on the site thus far. This means it's coming to everything, so 3DS, Vita, Next Gen consoles, etc. Which is kinda cool. Also GTAV Online came out and people are mad because people are mad. Who cares.

RIP Tom Clancy I didn't know you well

More like Blowan Atkinson

     So that one video game, right? Yup. I've been playing the most hyped game everyone is playing right now, that all the cool guys on the street are chatting about online and off- Castlevania's PS2 debut from 2003. This is my life now. I play alright Devil May Cry clones. Despite the exciting nature of this mediocre video game, people have decided that they wanna play GTA V... y'know, for some reason. This shit has been blowing up the airwaves now that news has been coming out that this is the most expensive game to develop in the history of ever ($265 million is a lot of money when you aren't even factoring in advertising. You could buy like, a houseboat with money. Or three houseboats. Or even nine.) And that the game's become the fastest selling IP ever, too, doing that Avengers Billion Dollar thing in its first couple of days. It goes to show that, I don't know, people like a Stevie Wonder-infused soundtrack more than they do Chris Hemsworth doing his jumpy thing and hitting the Hulkman. Also GTA V has a Wham song. The best Wham song. Not that one, though. The one that isn't the other two. George Michael sings a song. The Last of Us DLC has been announced this week and Steam announced its next grab for the universe with SteamOS, a Steam based operating system (Get it?) allowing users to stream their games from a metal bauble to their televisions because televisions are for PC gaming now. Sony has shown a new model of their newer shot at the handheld, the PSVita. It's smaller. There you go.