PixlBit

Yeah, E3 is becoming a dinosaur, but it can become something new and important.

Nintendo made waves in the gaming industry recently when they announced that they wouldn’t be participating in a traditional press conference at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Right off the bat, people started in with the doom and gloom. Oh, Nintendo is fading fast! Nintendo doesn’t have anything to show! Rhetoric like this was prominent --as was talk that the entire E3 conference is a dinosaur -- and perhaps Nintendo is reading the writing on the wall and is beginning to part ways with the trade show. This sentiment has been circulating for years, and even though I believe that E3 is vital to the gaming industry, it’s high time that the show evolved.

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It's probably best to keep games with "Mystery Dungeon" in the title away from Nick.

Mystery Dungeon. Seeing those two words in succession are enough to make me cringe. For years now, Chunsoft has been developing this series of roguelikes across different licenses, with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity marking the third in the respective subseries. No matter how they seem to spin this core concept, I simply can’t build an appreciation for it. While it tries to cater to a wider audience by removing the “hunger” facet and dialing down the difficulty, it’s still possible given its random nature to have the odds stacked so highly against you that there’s no chance for success.

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O Igarashi, where art thou?

As a game critic, it can be extremely difficult to set your expectations aside when playing a game for review. At this point in my “career,” I’ve become quite adept at seeing a game for what it’s worth and reviewing it without allowing my expectations to impact my assessment. I found this extremely tough to do with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate. I, like many others, expected something similar to a post-Symphony of the Night 2D Castlevania, but Mirror of Fate only resembles these titles on the surface. Digging deeper, it’s clear that Mercurysteam has merely converted the Lords of Shadow experience into 2D, placing the larger focus on combat, with only a minor emphasis on puzzles and exploration.

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How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Irrational has honed their gameplay to new levels with each of their releases, from System Shock 2 to the upcoming BioShock Infinite. The defining elements of Irrational’s game design started off in a much more basic form with System Shock 2. When looking back at the success of that first game and its initially groundbreaking fighting mechanics, it becomes a little difficult to watch and replay today, considering how far Irrational games has come. However, the once simplistic mechanics from System Shock 2 has evolved into a refined railway shooter in BioShock Infinite. So let’s take a look at where Irrational has been as we look forward to where they are going.

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You see this haircut?!?

Holy crap! This has to be PStC’s most random episode yet!  We start off with some talk on Tomb Raider, Red Dead Assassins (or Assassins Creed 4), and Monday Night Combat – Segue into some Ninja Turtles talk – get serious with some talk on games in/as education – and then finish it off with some weird Sims social experimentation.

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