MS Superbowl Ad:
This post turned out to have been Microsoft trolling.
I stand by my decoding.
I don’t remember Port Royale 1 or 2.
There used to be (to my noticing, anyway) no grace period for a service interruption/ internet hiccup for Xbox services that were entirely net-based, like BC, XGP, non-home Xbox play. As in, gameplay stopped with a “do you own this game?” popup.
That margin or error seems to have increased, but MS would probably do well to make the system a bit more tolerant of authentication lapses.
That’s some good Games with Gold this month!
For Bomberman, if anyone cares about achievements, the story completion one is missable. There’s also a cute after-chapter and weird bosses. I enjoyed it. I was playing it with others around, and they did NOT enjoy the “bad karaoke” bomber. :D
Bloodstained was @DaveLong 's game of the year. I’ve wanted to try it ever since he posted this about it in the Quarterlies thread:
Best 8-bit styled game since Shovel Knight. Everything about it evokes a certain era but without any of the slowdown, shimmering, or general jank that could pervade even the greatest of games from that era. Also doesn’t end after you “finish” it, which is great. It’s short and to the point in a way I wish more games would emulate.
Yea, this is why I’m excited for it.
MS is going to release an Xbox Live SDK at GDC. Which would mean devs across all platforms can build-in cross-platform play.
I’m going to have to give the Anthem demo a try on Xbox. I played it on PC, and it looks gorgeous, but the framerate really hitches all over the place. And it doesn’t matter whether I play on High, medium or Low settings. I suspect my i5-750 is finally the bottleneck on newer games.
Still, the CPU in an Xbox One should be even slower right? (Edit: Nope, people online say Xbox CPU is equivalent to FX 8120, which has double the Passmark score that my CPU has, so I guess Xbox has much faster CPU than mine). Oh well, I’ll give the demo a try on Xbox later today.
Doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s good, Bomberman’s not showing as one of my Games with Gold anyway. I guess Europe didn’t get it.
@Gigglemoo and @kerzain, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I think it’s an excellent homage to the past while setting up their future with that series. It really got me excited for Ritual of the Night which got ESRB rated but does not have a release date just yet…
I installed it tonight and died to the first big boss thing, the firey guy with a pounding fist that doubles as stairs. It was like being teleported back to my NES-infused youth. Love that the color palette stays true to form too, instead of just being a pixelated romp through a 24 or 32 bit world.
I started on Classic difficulty (with knockbacks etc), of course.
Nice! It gets better. The way they add mechanics to the game is really cool because it supports the story as well as changing up your expectations of the game. I really liked that first boss. It’s an inventive design both graphically and within the gameplay expectation.
I really never felt like it was too hard or unfair either, unlike some games of that period. That’s what makes it so good. It seems well tested to be just right on the first play through.
This is a big plus for me. I won’t even consider playing Celeste, Super Meat Boy, or Cuphead because from I hear they’re just stupidly difficult for the sake of it. Except for Dark Soils, that’s not fun for me.
Their intention for this game was as a teaser/starter for the bigger release later so having tough but fair difficulty makes sense. It was actually set as an extended Kickstarter goal when they reached like 4.5 million or something like that. It’s a prequel to Ritual of the Night and I think it does a great job introducing the world.
Thanks for this. I did post it in this thread four days ago, but no one seemed to notice. ;)
Telefrog put it on a front page article too.