Mighty No. 9

Keiji Inafune needs money to make a game similar to Mega Man, without the corporate meddling that Crapcom gave him.

The main characters are named "Beck" and "Call".

Pay the man, internet.


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~A.H.

Fire Emblem: "Smash Brethren 3"

There’s a downloadable mission in Fire Emblem: Awakening called “Smash Bretheren 3”. It’s one of the most insanely fuckballs hard Fire Emblem missions I’ve played. I’ve had to restart it well over ten times. The hardest missions in these games tend to be restarted maybe 2 or 3 times, for comparison. 


The reason I bought this DLC is because if you beat it, “Lyn” from Fire Emblem 7 joins your team. This is my favourite female character in any game, and now she’s got a snazzy redesign:



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Not Very Gentlemanly

Yann Seznec's indie game was downloaded 50,000 times! ...but only 114 people paid for it.

This wasn't EA or Activision, or some other slimey faceless corporation poisoning the hobby. This was a personal project. They are not sticking it to "The Man". I think piracy isn't quite the black and white issue people want it to be, but those 50,000 losers aren't helping. 

Man, why can't Madden or Call of Duty get these kinds of sales numbers?

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~A.H.

Roger Ebert: "Awake In The Dark"

I loved Roger Ebert. I loved how important art and empathy was to him. But I did not truly start to miss Roger until a minute or so before writing this article. It didn't start to sink in until I started typing the words you're reading. It occurred to me while watching Doug Walker talk about him that there were times where he laughed so hard he could barely breathe. There had to be. And I wondered what that must have been like without being able to speak.

Did it hurt? This is all conjecture, gleamed from years of watching him spar with fellow critics on television, and pour himself into his writing. But the strangest thought has entered my head: Even with his stone-faced expression, even with half his face gone, I'll bet you could always tell when he thought something was really funny.


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The Walking Dead: FIXED

The main theme of The Walking Dead franchise is hope in the face of futility. It is not fatalism. It is not "everything sucks and it's not worth living anymore". It means that no matter how awful it gets, no matter how many times you find your daughters decapitated in a prison barber shop, or see your husband beaten to death with a baseball bat, you keep going.

Kenny says as much in Episode 5... two minutes before killing himself in a stupid and contrived gesture where he had plenty of time to escape. This is why The Walking Dead by Telltale Games is a failure. It talks the talk, but it does not walk the walk.

Fortunately, I have gone to great lengths to fix the ending of TWD. Please, hold your applause:

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Fez II Canceled

After a bitter exchange with Marcus Beer of Gametrailers.com, Phil Fish has abruptly canceled production of "Fez II".

To this day, I don't understand the hate everyone has for Phil Fish. No one can seem to point me to a specific instance where he ate a puppy to warrant the reaction I've seen. He made some valid criticisms against modern Japanese games, and then after that everyone just seemed to lose their mind. According to the Polytron website, he did this to "get out of video games", and not because of the incident with Beer.


Considering 90% of the headlines for articles talking about this read like: "Stupid Buttface Phil Fish Is A Shit-Clown Who Smells (and canceled Fez II)", I don't blame him. The comments on his own website are worse than anything I've ever heard or read from him.

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~A.H.

Activision Blizzard

Activision is now an indie studio. That is... weird.

Activision paid $8 billion to its' former parent company, Vivendi Universal, and now they're somehow in the same category as people who make games in their garage for pennies on the App store. If I recall correctly, id, the makers of Doom were the last big, AAA independently-owned studio. I don't quite know what Activision gains from this, but apparently that's a thing that's happened.

You guys... this means Call of Duty is now an indie-game. I think I need to lie down...


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~A.H.