Inside is a wonderful puzzle platformer from the developers behind the now classic Limbo where you play a young boy running from men, dogs, monsters etc. as you go through farms, labs, offices etc. The core gameplay is quite simple but there are plenty of well-constructed puzzles that test your thinking skills and many are both inventive and thought-provoking. I did end up wishing that the game was longer but, when so many of my complaints for other games involve them being bloated, that can be viewed as a sign of how good Inside truly is. As for its nomination, I fully stand behind it as Inside’s execution is superb and the ideas and concepts it presents are worthy of adoration.
No matter which award you talk about, everyone is going to have their own opinion on what got snubbed, whether the winners deserved it or not, whether they even matter etc. Thinking about them recently, mostly because people are talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 being potentially game of the year, I decided that it might be interesting to share my own thoughts on the Game Awards Game of the Year winners and nominees that I’ve played. Just to clarify first though, I’ll be making these opinions mainly from my own experience playing these games but I’ll also be factoring in how innovative I consider the game to be. I’ll also be discussing whether I think they deserved to win or be nominated with reference to their own quality and not in comparison to any other games beyond their franchise or developer. Finally, and I feel I need to emphasise this, these are my opinions only and I freely encourage you to agree or disagree with them as long as you present your argument in a respectable fashion alongside reasons why I’m right or wrong. Having said all that, let’s begin.
Game of the Year 2014 Nominee – Dark Souls II
Anyone who knows me will know that I adore the Dark Souls franchise but that’s not to say that I don’t notice the blemishes of each entry and that is most certainly the case when it comes to Dark Souls II. Often considered the black sheep of the franchise, you often see people arguing that it’s either an underrated masterpiece or an unacceptably bad game. My opinion, as noted in my review for UK Anime Network, is that it’s still a great game but easily the most flawed in the franchise. The combat remains enjoyable, exploration a delight and some of the finest bosses in the history of FromSoftware but issues remain plentiful with comparatively weak storytelling, particularly in the first half, a disproportionately high amount of average to bad bosses and some strange design choices. Granted, there were some good choices made as well such as upgrading your Estus Flask separately to the bonfires and having your weapon durability repaired when you rest but it’s a package that I all too often look at as bloated with content, seeking quantity and not quality. I still think it’s a respectable game that deserves to be played but, considering how much weaker it feels to its predecessor, I can’t in good conscience say that it deserved to be nominated.
You would think the release of a brilliant video game, Baldur’s Gate 3, would be a cause of celebration, especially one that has proven financially successful despite being part of the niche CRPG subgenre of RPGs. However, the reaction from developers has been surprisingly mixed with some praising what Larian Studios has accomplished while others reacted by stating that people shouldn’t look at Baldur’s Gate 3 as a new standard for RPGs. This debacle has unknowingly shined a spotlight on several concerns that I have so I thought it would be worth discussing some of the things that the modern video game industry needs to change.
Let’s get the whole developer debate out of the way so that I can focus on more important issues. My personal opinion is that the developers attempting to defend themselves from potential criticism preemptively have missed the point when it comes to Baldur’s Gate 3 and its potential impact. Having yet to play the game (I still have to catch up on the Divinity: Original Sin games), it seems that most consider Baldur’s Gate 3 to be a masterpiece and I would completely disagree if the sentiment of gamers was demanding that every RPG that comes out be a masterpiece on the same level. However, I don’t believe that’s what’s happening. Instead, people are simply asking that these developers examine the many things that make Baldur’s Gate 3 great, which from what I’ve heard is primarily the freedom to make whatever choices you want and solve problems in abstract and creative ways, and to integrate it into their own games. To argue that Baldur’s Gate 3 is simply an anomaly and that we should simply pretend that it doesn’t exist is completely ludicrous.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has served as a surprising catalyst for debate on the modern video game industry.
Anyone who’s familiar with anime, manga, video games or many other forms of Japanese media will know that vampires are a popular subject with numerous vampire fictions being created throughout the history of these mediums. However, it may surprise you to learn that vampires have only recently grown popular in Japan and, so, I thought I’d take a look at the history of vampires in Japanese media.
To begin, it’s interesting to note that vampires are foreign to Japan with vampires typically associated with European mythology. However, blood-drinking creatures can be found in a wide variety of cultures worldwide and Japan is no exception. Amongst the yokai of Japan, two particularly notable examples that drink blood are the Rokurokubi, creatures who look like women but are capable of extending their neck in a snake-like manner or even detaching their head and flying around, and the Nure-onna, creatures that look like snakes with the head of women, sometimes with arms as well, that uses their tongue to suck the blood out of a body.
When it comes to the most notable video game genres, I think many will view role-playing games (RPG) as being one of the most important within the entire industry. They were among the earliest video games developed with dnd, a video game adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, being released in 1975 and many of the best-selling video game franchises continue to be RPGs! However, the current state of RPG video games isn’t exactly what I’d hoped for and, so, I believe it important that I share my thoughts and opinions on the matter.
The first thing I want to start with is a question that I think many of you will be confused by, what do we look for in an RPG? This may seem like a strange thing to ask but it’s something that I think varies greatly from person to person. I myself know some people who consider the most important part of an RPG to be its story while others prioritise the gameplay. Even within these camps, I see a lot of variety in what they want. Some are satisfied with a well-written story and predetermined characters and choices, often associated with JRPGs, while others want one where you’re able to create your character and shape the story as you want. Some want an in-depth RPG system where skills and mechanics cover a vast array of things such as conversations, perception, wisdom, spells, weapons, trinkets etc. which allows for a wide variety of character builds while others want a more simple and straightforward system which focuses more on combat. The variety within this genre is staggering but this can result in a dearth of content for fans of particular subgenres.
A lot of people love Horizon Zero Dawn but I found it lacking when it came to what I look for in an RPG.
Video games and manga have a long and intertwined history. In the early days of video games, manga was often used to promote new games or to tell stories that were too complex to fit into the limited gameplay of the time. This need has waned as video games have become more and more capable of telling their story without the aid of additional media. Regardless of this, many manga based off of video games continue to be produced and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the more notable ones.
Let’s start off with, as far as I can tell, the best-selling manga based on a video game, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai. Based on the popular Dragon Quest video game series, The Adventures of Dai follows the titular character as, after being the only human on an island called Delmurin that was filled with monsters after the fall of the last demon lord, he learns that the demon lord has returned and that he must be trained by the previous hero, Avan, to fight against this menace. The series has proved popular with numerous anime adaptations and several video games and an estimated 50 million volumes sold as of 2022.
FromSoftware is well-known these days for their many successful games such as the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. However, as I noted before, FromSoftware’s history extends well before these games with two particularly notable series being King’s Field and Armored Core. While we’ve yet to see a new King’s Field game or even a rerelease of the older titles, it was with great excitement that we learned that FromSoftware is making another Armored Core game. So, with the upcoming release of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the history of these video games.
The first Armored Core game was released for the PlayStation in 1997 and was FromSoftware’s first non-King’s Field game. As with all other entries of the franchise, the player controls a highly customisable mech that proceeds through selectable missions with third-person shooter gameplay. Along with single-player, the game also contained a local multiplayer mode that allowed players to fight each other in large maps. While I’m unsure how the game performed commercially, it must’ve been successful as it led to numerous future entries.
Those of you who are familiar with the channel will know that the premise is that I, Eoghan, assist a friend of mine, Kathlynn, in playing hard games. I’ve dubbed it the “Guided Blind Let’s Play” which was inspired by some Dark Souls playthroughs I saw before on YouTube and which I believe allows the strength of a blind playthrough to shine while eliminating many of its weaknesses. One component of this though is that it requires at least one participant to have played through the game previously so that they can assist.
I was perusing some video game news when I saw the headline “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Dev Daedalic Ends Internal Development to Focus on Publishing“. At first, I didn’t think too much of it, thinking that it made sense given the issues surrounding that game, but then I suddenly came to a realisation and made an audible “Noooooo!” As you can imagine, the closure of Daedalic Entertainment’s development division breaks my heart and so I thought I might explain how this came to happen and why it breaks my heart.
For those of you who might not be aware of who Daedalic Entertainment are, I’d direct you to an article I wrote about them sometime ago. To quickly summarise though, Daedalic Entertainment is a German video game publisher and, now, former developer who began making point and click games such as Edna & Harvey, The Whispered World and Deponia to name a few. It was announced in 2019 that they would be developing and releasing a new Lord of the Rings game which featured Gollum as the main character. The game finally released this year and received a critical thrashing and, while no sales figures were provided, we can assume that it sold poorly enough that Daedalic Entertainment decided to stop making games and to just publish instead.
It’s a shame that Daedalic Entertainment’s last game they developed will go down in the annals as a turkey.
I’ve spoken about difficulty in video games a few times on this blog but, to quickly summarise, I enjoy difficult video games when I believe them to be fair and enjoyable and find them aggravating if otherwise. Recently, I’ve seen a rise in the discussion of accessibility in video games and I view this as ultimately good as I believe that it’s another crucial component to growing the gaming market. However, something that has begun to frustrate me is the viewpoint that the difficulty of a game and the accessibility of a game are intrinsically linked, something that I completely disagree with. Therefore, I thought that I’d explain why I consider accessibility and difficulty to be separate in video games.
Let’s start with a brief overview of what accessibility means when it comes to video games. Basically, accessibility in video games refers to the ability for people who have disabilities to be able to play a game with little to no difficulty caused by their condition. To give an example, many games use colour as a way to communicate information quickly and efficiently to the player but people who suffer from colour blindness will struggle to interpret these colours correctly and will find playing the game more challenging than it needs to be. The implementation of a good colour-blind mode can remove this barrier and allow the person to play the game as it was intended.
An example of colour-blind settings from Overwatch 2.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
