ITS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN. Let’s do this thing. Played some games, played with some new consoles, saw some girls in short skirts. Good way to spend a Friday. As usual, Kluck was with me, and as always he sucks.
Pokemon X and Y (3DS)
This game is extremely nice looking. Really need to get that out of the way. So pretty.
Okay so yeah. Standard Pokemon fare, really. Eight directional movement is extremely nice, and the speed on rollerskates is great. Dunno if its the same as the old bikes, its hard to get a sense of scale without the tiled world.
Battles look and play great, the camera control is very nice. A subtle but nice touch is while waiting for you to enter a move command, the text box’s entry is various different things like “Fennekin trusts that Xavier will make the right decision” or “Fennekin is waiting for your command”. The 3D looks great, and some of the attack effects look amazing. Having the 3D on during certain attack animations is very cool, like Water Pulse, where you see the distortions in the water of the Pokemon you’re attacking.
Keeping a 17 year old formula fresh is impressive, and they haven’t missed a single beat. Looking forward to grabbing this… what, next week? Soon.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)
So this thing. I played this just after hearing the amazing news that its basically an open world game. There was a Field and Dungeon option, and naturally I went Dungeon. It was the one from all the original trailers, where it’s Hammer focused and you need to launch up levels on the pad things. The hammer was useful as a Stunner, and then there was also a weapon in my menu that was a rod that created cool pillars of fire, except I could never hit anything with it. I wasn’t too big on the art style the graphics had taken originally, but playing it and looking at it in the 3D I thought it looked really nice.
The only problem I had with it is I think that Purple “Use this for EVERYTHING” bar went down a bit too fast, and took a bit too long to recharge. Might be intentional to get you to be careful about Item use (Items are unlimited now, but it takes a certain amount of purplebar to use it) but I found in the short time in the demo I never adjusted to it.
Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (3DS)
Another year, another Layton game for Kluck to fail at. The demo went through one puzzle, and then a bunch of unskippable long conversations to finish on teaching you how to zoom in on the field screen.
That’s not how you run a demo for a PUZZLE game. So urgh.
Titanfall (X1)
GAME OF THE FUCKING SHOW. Holy shit. I hate FPSs. With a fucking passion. But this man.
I played a Team Deathmatch. My team was the… AFC? Defending some guy in the city. The other team was the Msomething who were coming in to capture him. Titanfall gives you the ability to Double Jump and Wallrun, and despite how basic those sound, they really make the game. Jumping up and over buildings, taking out enemies in the air, and destroying Titans flows really well.
On the Titans side, they feel very bulky but at the same time they didn’t feel slow. They’re paced well, and the advantage they give is balanced out with the Anti-Titan weapons and other Titans. You can take out a Pilot in one or two shots though.
I didn’t get the chance to let the Titan run automatically, so I can’t comment on that.
Killer Instinct (X1)
This was actually the only fighting game at the entire show. I didn’t play it, but my brother challenged Kluck to a fight so I watched them.
It’s really… weird. You win by beating your opponent twice. “Yeah, thats normal” you’re probably thinking. But with this, its not a Round. If you beat your opponent, their Health Bar fills back up, Red instead of Green. Yours doesn’t, however. There is a few seconds during the recharge where you can’t do anything so there is a pseudo-Round feature.
Kluck said it played terribly, and one of the few things I trust him about is how Fighters play so I’m gonna go with that.
Halo: Spartan Assault (Windows Tablet)
I don’t know if this is coming out or is already out but some guy handed it to me while I was in the Titanfall line so I was like “Sure” and played through a whole level. It’s fun but its basically Alien Swarm, which is free, on Steam, and doesn’t require a fucking Windows Tablet to play.
Contrast (PS4)
This was short but very cool. If you haven’t seen any videos, this is the game where you can run up to a wall and, as long as theres a light shining on it, you can merge and become your shadow, and then platformer up other shadows to navigate the maps.
Plays really well, but I found the cutscenes run too long without enough happening to justify it. Also your little sister, who spends the whole demo with you and basically acts as your guide, is a little bitch.
Some game I can’t remember the name of (PS4)
What the fuck was this thing all I remember was I could move what direction this line was moving while these things were riding it. The map was HUGE and there was no clear goal so I don’t even know. It looks visually nice but I have zero idea what the fuck this is.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3/X360)
The battle system is GREAT. A very cool fusion of the Paradigm ATB System from XIII/XIII-2 and the Action Combat from Type-0. The field play was basically the same as XIII-2, with the added feature of you can Sheathe/Unsheathe your Weapon, which will let you attack enemies to begin encounters in your favour quicker, but you need to sheathe to use certain stuff on the field.
Besides that, it looked very… jaggy? It was very unpolished, which is actually one of the things I loved about the last two Lightning Saga games. Those looked fucking stunning. But this was very rough. I assume its a demo thing though, because I doubt they’d let this out on retail without looking extremely shiny.
Oh and Lumina is love.
Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)
Okay so the part of the game I actually got to play was fun. But goddamn I got paired up with THE MOST ANNOYING KID EVER. It was like unfiltered internet in the brain of a 10 year old. Every time he jumped he yelled “YOLO” and then if anyone didn’t make it to the flagpole and got left offscreen they were “FOREVER ALONE”. It swear everytime he said Yolo it literally hurt.
But yeah, the game. Fun. Great step up from 3D Land. Co-op great if you don’t get Internet Sinspawn.
The Sims 4 (PC)
This was just a very limited character creator, but man it looked and worked nice. When EA aren’t making SPORTS games they know what they’re doing (Well, usually. Sorry SimCity).
The abolishment of tons of sliders, and letting you click and drag out parts of your Sim is GREAT.
I went through twice, once by myself and once with Kluck. I made Yu Narukami the first time, and Mikasa Ackerman the second time. Kluck made Annie Jewnose because we couldn’t remember her actual last name.
Rabla Zone 
YOLO