Give us pumpkin to talk about

We just hit October, and you guys know what that means: it's officially spooky season! Break out your cozy jumpers, grab some candy corn, and take a big whiff of that pumpkin spice in the air, because it's the best time o??f the year. Of course, to adequately celebrate the holiday, I'm going to be watching some of my favorite Halloween movies (the Disney Channel ones go so hard), and easing my way into some scary games, which I haven't really been brave enough to tr?y yet.

I'm kind of the biggest wimp in the world, so the selection of what I can handle is pretty small. I've heard Inside has the whole spooky-without-being-too-frightening thing going on, so maybe I'll give that one a shot. I think I'm gonna start with Until Dawn, though �if I have to be scared, at least I get to look at Rami Malek and Jordan Fisher, right?

So this time around, the prompt is pretty simple. We just wanna know what games you like to play for the Halloween season. Let us know your favorites, and feel free to share any spine-chilling stories from your own adventures. If it makes your hair stand up on end, we want to hear about it for October's Bloggers Wanted.

If you want your story featured, head on over to the community blogs, and feel free to headline your article however you see fit �we’ll find it. Submissions are closing at the end of the month (October 31), and we’ll be highlighting our favorites on the front page!

The post Bloggers Wanted: It’s spooky season appeared first on Destructoid.

We wanted bloggers and they delivered

If you were to ask me what's the one thing that's had the biggest impact on my life, I would say that horrible childhood disease that's still with me 35 years later. But if you were to ask me what's had the second biggest impact on my life, my answer would be The Legend of Zelda. I know it's a cliche for somebody who writes for a video game website to say video games made an impression on their life, but as cliche as it may be,? any other answer would be a lie.

I've been battling depression for as long as I can remember. When I was at my lowest of low??s, this series was there for me. It'd probably be a bit much to say it's saved my life, but I honestly don't know where I'd be without that little elf boy in the green tunic.

The Legend of Zelda is the reason I still game, and it will likely be the only franchise I care about when I'm pushing 80. That's why I wanted to host a Zelda Week on Destructoid, to really show my appreciation for everything this franchise has done. All week, you've hopefully been reading what the Destructoid staff has had to say about the series, but right now, I want to highlight the wonderful blogs published this month to mark 35 years of The Legend of Zelda. I put out a Bloggers Wanted call at the beginning of February and ??the? community did not disappoint.

• Robotayon kicked things off this month with a touching look back at how video games can br??ing people together. It's a beautiful and heartfelt read, and I implore everybody reading this right now to click the link.
• beatlemani?axx details why it's okay for ?Link to not be a talker. I'm with them on this one. I like my Link like I like my child in a movie theater: completely silent.
• Eggs&BrewsterJr recounts their long and storied history with the Zelda franchise, from Link's Awakening to Skyward Sword. I hope that someday in the next few years, they finally get to play Breath of the Wild and its upcoming sequel.
• Exber gets poetic on us with memorable Zelda quotes. I assure you, unlike the guy in Zelda II, this blog is not an error.
• HoneyCrisp recalls their first encounter with The Legend of Zelda on the GameCube. Gotta love those collector's editions.
• Sam van der Meer takes time to shout out the memorable NPCs from the Zelda franchise. Though I will say Sam, that snot boy grosses me out!
• welshmetalhippy didn't enjoy their time with Wind Waker, but I'm not going to hold that against them. It's clear from their blog they have a deep love of most of the rest of the franchise.
• A perfect companion piece to Sam's post, Eggrollbuddy (great name) recounts some of the best moments in Zelda history. The flute boy's transition in A Link to the Past is burned into my brain.
• Planet P1ss 69 reminds us all that Zelda's pretty weird, and that's part? of wh?at makes it so great. Also, who doesn't love the music in Zora's Domain?
• A late addition, Gamingnerd gives a quick rundown of the Zelda franchise over the years and why it's just as important as Super Mario.

And finally, while it was written before the Blogge??rs?? Wanted post went live, I won't pass up a chance to highlight portable outings for the series:

• GoofierBrute looks back at the beautiful and brief The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. It's an absolutely lovely game if you have access to it and a great candidate for a remake with that Link's Awakening Switch art direction.

The post The jbsg?ame.?community looks back at 35 years of The Legend of Zelda appeared first on Destructoid.

There will be blood

This edition of Bloggers Wanted is going to be focused on video game “families.” We’re steamrolling ever-closer to Thanksgiving and then onto the hell month that is December, culminating in yet another reason (aka Christmas) to spend time with your awesome/demon spa?wn relatives.

Much like the? waking world, video games tend to force a group of people onto you who you’re going to be spending a whole lot of time with, whether you like it or not. There’s no choice involved. By some dice roll, or divine intervention, these are the people? who will largely come to define how you experience life and the world around you.

With virtual stories, we’re often thrust into the company of people we might not want?? to even share an elevator with given a choice. Whether through Stockholm Syndrome or revealing themselves to be genuinely compelling companions, it’s easy to get attached? to these folks.

Maybe it’s destiny or maybe your path has been prewritten to include some annoyin??g kid/mascot companion who thinks they’re coming across as endearing, but actually, you fantasize all the time about the day when they’re finally no longer a part of your world. The day they finally just shut the fuck up for good.

_{[Looking at you, Karol...]}

Maybe it’s so?meon??e, or even a group of characters, who you ended up really caring about, despite initially seeming incredibly lame. Maybe it’s an unassuming main character who eventually shows himself to be more likable than you initially thought.

Yes, for this prompt, I want you to ?spill the deets on your favorite, or even just particularly memorable, video game “families.” We’re taking some li?berties with the term “family,” but I’m specifically referring to the people where you have no choice whether they’re in your life or not.

You can celebrate them, lament them, or even just descri??be them. Maybe you have a story about your real-life family, relating to ??video games, that you want to share? That’s fair game too.

We aren’t particularly picky. The important thing here is to write a damn blog. Head on over to the community blogs and be sure to use “The Fam: [insert title here]” for the title of your blog! There’s a chance you might even see your words on the Front Page of Destructoid!

The post Bloggers Wanted: The Fam appeared first on Destructoid.

Cheap Bastard Day

I have no problem admitting this: I am a cheap bastard. A very cheap bastard indee?d, as it were. For about 90% of the things I buy, I'd rather wait until there's a decent sale or discount and go without them than pay full price and have it now. This goes for literally everything -- food, clothes, toiletries, games. You name it, and I'm waiting to buy it until it's much cheaper than it is right now.

Which is why Black Friday kicks so much ass. Retailers are desperate to pull money out of my wallet and into their cold clutches, and will stop at nothing to lure me into their web of consumerism. For the most part, I withhold my affection to the Retail Gods like a distant stepmother; but ?come Black Friday, I wiggle these fingers and grab indiscriminately like Uncle Terr?y after four too many glasses of wine over Thanksgiving dinner.

There are always a few items I specifically hold out on until? they hit those sweet, sweet Black Friday prices. I think pretty much everyone holds out for TVs and other electronics, and Amazon usua?lly has some good deals on their brands of various consumer goods. Hell, my mom used to wait to buy candles until Black Friday. Uh, I guess there are good BF deals on candles? Who knew?

But for me, gaming is where this capitalist spending orgy of a "holiday" really shines. Consoles get huge discounts and special bundles, and games hit those magical sweet spot prices that I kept sayi?ng I'd bite on back when those suckers were sitting at full MSRP. You just know you're going to get some hot deals on those games that have been sitting on the shelves since February, anxiously waiting for those perfect price points to finally find their home.

So our question to you is: What specific games or gaming items hav??e you been holding out on until Black Friday?

We asked our C-Blogs readers what was on their Black Friday hitlist, and here's w?hat they had to say.

Retrofraction knows all about paying ?too much for so??mething too early:

There is DBZ Fighters for $25 at Walmart...I paid $60.

Boxman214 is in the holiday spirHEY WAIT:

I'm saving a??ll my money to buy your mom so?me lingerie.

Confused as he may be to the locations of the deals, at least Shoggoth2588 knows what he wants:

Kirby: Star Allies! It's going to be....I think between $30 - $35 and I think it's Wal*Mart with the cheaper price. I'm probably going to grab Monster Hunter World too which is $20 at...I think Best Buy.

ThisIsAName and I have many similar problems:

Looking at my bank account...not a whole lot. Instant gratification is a hell of a drug. Though I?? should probably invest in a new ??non-gaming laptop. My 2008 alienware I stole from my partner is finally giving up the ghost.

I'm glad I don't have kids to entertain. Pour one out for Vesalius:

I don’t know yet. Birthday is coming up and I normally don’t get myself muc??h of anything. Kinda feeling impulsive this year.

Kids really want a Switch, but I’m probably gonna hold out. I want to get the XCOM 2 season pass and finish off my Total War: Warhammer DLC. I need to find a game on steam with local coop the kids ca??n play and won’t lose interest of after five ??minutes. They’re really into Genesis and Atari ports.

What's this restraint you speak of, Voodoome?

?I'm waiting till Black Friday to grab my wife a new headset. As far as myself is concerned I don't usually buy for myself around this time of the year. My wife has plans for Christmas I'm sure and I don't want to ruin them.

I just finished Spider-Man and DQXI though and I'm really resisting the temptation to buy RDR. I'm playing Assassin's Creed Unity instead, and just waitin?g to see what Christmas brings.

Good luck, FakePlasticTree...

Dragon Quest, assuming it goes on sale.

That's our Adzuken, always looking for new games to play:

Oh, you know. Whatever becomes affordable. Wouldn't mind picking up WWE 2K19, EDF 4.1 for the hubby and I, Mutant Football League, and any number of odds?? and ends. I don't discrim?inate, I just want something new to play.

I'll probably also obsessively look at Calico Critter prices, trying desperately not to buy any. Will I cav?e? Probably.

Occams goes for the essentials:

A Playstation Pro.

Toilet Paper.

House4Lyfe sounds like a man with a plan:

God of War ($29.99) and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy ($9.99). I'm a pat?ient gamer and with a huge backlog I h??ave no rush to buy anything at full price.

Oh, M Randy, you had me at "also cocks:"

Xbox One X
Shadow of War
Spider-Man
Maaayyybe God of War
Oh and your love

Hey sp testure, you should change your name to sp posture:

Well I alr?eady ordered a new gaming chair. They were hav??ing one of those pre Black Friday deals on Amazon. So I took the plunge...

So,?? what ab??out you? What's on your Black Friday hitlist?

The post Hey Dtoid: What’s on your Black Friday hitlist? appeared first on Destructoid.

'When there's no more room in hell...'

October is upon us! The month of spooky usernames and avatars, horror movie marathons, and the ??scariest holiday of them all: Hallowee?n.

Of equal importance is that it's a new month, and with a new month comes a new Band of Bloggers theme. Last month, dephoenix delighted us with the theme of Leading Ladies. I hope that you all enjoyed read??ing, blogging, and playing games with a girl protagonist. This month, however, things will be getting a little scary... Octobe??r's theme will be "The Undead".

The dead will rise again to terrorize the living in a jealous and hungry rage. While decaying zombies roam the streets, ghosts rise through the air, chilling the skin and freezing the hearts of their victims. Bones rattle together as once dormant skeletons burst free from their tombs, a sinister glow in their eyes as they seek to bring the world under their heel. Fear reigns as the dreaded vampire hunts through the n?ight, quenching its thirst with the blood of its victims. Ancient mummies rise from their sarcophagi, bringing a curse with them. Behind it all, the necromancer weaves his magic, bringing new, corrupted life to those once thought dead, giving power to his liches so? they may command his army of the undead.

Spooky.

Video?? games have never shied away from the undead. Zombie games once flooded the market, with many games still sporting a zombie mode. As you prepare for Halloween, play a game with some sort of undead monstrosity, then return to Destructoid and write a blog about your experiences. There are many games to choose from this month, but here are a few su?ggestions.

Resident Evil:

Resident Evil is what immediately comes to mind when you think of a zombie game. While there are varying levels of quality when it comes to these games, you'll always find some??t?hing undead to shoot.

Most RPGs:

Most RPGs will have some type of zombie or ghost enemy. The games usually aren't themed around the undead, but will have a graveyard where you can fight ghosts or something like that. You might have a hard time finding something undead in a sci-fi RPG, but things like Parasite Eve will still give you undead enemies to hunt down.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne:

Everything in Dark Souls is undead. Everything. Most things are undead in Bloodborne.

Diablo:

Diablo 3 has an expansion called Rise of the Necromancer where you can play a necromancer and command the undead. As I understand it, this was also present in Diablo 2, and I'm assuming that the first Diablo also has some sort of undead shenanigans.

Yo-Kai Watch:

What? This is a game about ghost??s. All the yo-kai you collect are spirits that possess people and objects. They "enspirit" their victims, affecting how they behave. Yes, it's lacking anything spooky, but it still ??counts.

What undead terrors are you planning to have haunt your game systems this month? Comment below and let us know what yo?u'll be playing, or perhaps give even more suggestions for finding the undead in video games. 

The post Band of Bloggers – October 2018 Edition appeared first on Destructoid.

Pour one out for my homies

There are so many aspects of a story that tend to get overlooked, but one of the hugest is ??the trusty sidekick. These characters are mostly subjected to simply being the butt of a joke or only exist to service the narrative, but they help immerse players in the world, and they’re too often forgotten in favor of the star of the show.

For instance, look at Clank from the Ratchet & Clank series. This adorable robot spends the majority of the game strapped to Ratchet’s back and mainly works to further gameplay, but the experience would not be the same without him. Even if it’s only for a brief moment, he even gets his own playable segments in ?the newest reboot of the franchise. This little guy means a lot to me, and it’s tough not to love him.

Then, of course, there are annoying fucks like Navi in Ocarina of Time. How many times can you scream, “Hey, listen!” before I start daydreaming about strangling you until you’re but a distant memory? In Navi’s case, I’m going to throw out an arbitrary number and say twenty-three. I get why Navi exists, to help lead players in the right direction and offer vague tips, but holy fuck do I wish someone? had the common sense to delete that bastard fairy f??rom existence.

For this month’s Bloggers Wanted, I want to hear about your most memorable sidekicks and companions. It doesn’t matter why you remember them, whether love or hate, but I know there are plenty out there that folks are passionate about. Hell, you could even talk about the cute, furry little creatures that all of the best developers put in their creations, like the floating death machines in Castle Crashers. I don’t care if their story is written into the script or it’s part of your own headcanon that only exists inside your sick, twisted, totally fucked up ??brain. Lay it on me, y'all.

To participate, head over to the community blogs and format your title as “Just For Kicks: [insert title here].” If it’s good enough, there’s a chance that you might even see your words grace the Front Page of Destructoid!

The post Bloggers Wanted: Just For Kicks appeared first on Destructoid.

Mother may I?

Welcome to yet another installment of the newly revived Band of Bloggers. Thi??s time I, dephoenix, shall be your humble host.

Last month my fellow Band of Bloggers-er Greenhornet214 blessed us with the theme of A Walk Through the Woods, a very novel concept tha?t resulted in some very fine blogs. But it's a new month, which means a new theme. And that theme is...

Parents. Without them, none of us would be here. Literally. Think about it. But not too hard, or you’ll end?? up with an image in your brain that no amount of bleach can remove. We don’t want that now, do we?

Yes, this month's theme is parents/parenthood. What does that mean exactly? Well that is up to interpretation. However, what this basically means is that for this month I want you to play and/or write about a game where parents or the idea of parenthood/parenting play a major role. It could be a game about rescuing a parent. Or a game in which you play as a parent. Or just a game where parenthood is a major theme. Or you could ??even just write about a video game parent or parents that you like a lot. Or hate a lot. It can be about both parents, or just one. Games about single mommies or daddies are fine. There are so many options it's almost overwhelming! Much like the crushing weight of responsibility that comes with parenthood.

In fact, the amount of options is so v??ast, I thought I'd help you out with a few suggest?ions of games with parental themes to check out. You don't have to play any of these specific ones, they're just here in case you need some help choosing a game.

God of War (PS4)

I’m sure that for most of you, you’ve already played this if you were going to. But if not, definitely consider the new God of War. It’??s a very good action game with an overarching theme of fatherhood throughout it. It’s a game I can not recommend enough. Bloody enjoyable -- pun intended.

The Last of Us (PS3/PS4)

This game is about a crusty old man (Joel) who develops a father figure relationship with his teenage girl companion (Ellie). It’s not without its faults, I won’t lie, but The Last of Us is worth ?playing in my opinion for this narrative element alone. At first Ellie is just another game character. But by the end of the game she becomes more; she becomes your daughter.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)

The idea of mothers plays a big part in Horizon Zero Dawn’s story. Without spoiling too much, having and/or being a mom is a big thing to protagonist Aloy’s tribe. Which sucks, because Aloy doesn’t have one, and is therefore considered a freak. And this whole "not having a mom" thing is a pretty big driving force behind Aloy’s character and her journey through the world of Horizon. ?I absolutely love this game and highly recommend it.

Devil May Cry/DmC (PS2/PS3/PS4/360/XBONE/PC)

No. I’m not joking. Dante’s parents are a definitive part of this series. His dad is a demon, and his mom a human (or angel if you are playing DmC). And it’s partly because of who his parents are that he gets into the hijinks he does. So you know what? It counts. Plus he does what he does in the first game bec??ause Trish looks like his mom, so there. Close enough.

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and/or A Crack in Time (PS3)

Both of these games involve plot points surrounding both titular characters' parents. Tools of Destruction involves the mysterious fate of the Lombaxes, including Ratchet's parents. And A Crack in Time largely focuses on Clank’s father. And both games are quite fun and unique. Really you can’?t go wrong either way.

Dream Daddy (PC)

This is a game a??bout a dad who dates other dads. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s there for those who are interested. The game made some waves when it first cam??e out, but has since kind of slipped back under the radar. Still, it got some good reviews when it came out, so if this interests you maybe consider trying it out.

Super Metroid (SNES/Wii/WiiU/SNES Classic)

This one is probably the biggest stretch in this list, but hear me out. The basis for this game is that the Space Pirates have taken the “last” Metroid in the hopes of raising a new army of the monsters. This last parasite is the same one that at the end of Metroid 2, which saw Samus as its mother. And so the game is ?kind of about Samus going on a kick-ass mission to save her child. Sort of. Maybe if you squint at it hard enough.

For this month’s theme, I have chosen to play Venetica, an action RPG about Scarlett, the daughter of Death. The plot revolves around Scarlett going on a mission to defeat a group of necromancers who have managed to escape Death's reach. Throughout the game, Scarlett will unleash the powers of her father for herself. I bought Venetica years ago on a whim and it has sat on my backlog ever since. But th?is month, I will finally dig into it and get it off ??my accursed backlog.

I’m sure there are many other games themed around parenthood that I have missed, so feel free to shout them out in the comments. Let me know what you’ll be playing for this month’s theme if you are so inclined. I hope you’ll join this Band of Bloggers on our quest to play more ?games and write about said games. If you do, remember to preface your blog title with either Band of Bloggers or BoB. Either way I hope you enjoyed this month's theme. Also maybe call your parents (if a?pplicable). I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

The post Band of Bloggers – June 2018 Edition appeared first on Destructoid.

May the forest be with you

Hello dear friends! It's time for a new theme for Band of Bloggers! Last month's theme of Dragons went remarkably well. We had some phenomenal blogs written as a result and I couldn't be more excited to see where Band of Bloggers goes in the future! Of course, it's still not too late to write about last month's theme a??s well.

As I pondered what our theme might be for May, I considered many things. I thought about Spring and how it makes me actually want to go outdoors for once (then I go outdoors and I'm allergic to everything). I thought of trees, greenery and fresh air. I envisioned going for: A Walk in the Woods.

I really like the phrase "A Walk in the Woods." I find it evocative, I hope you do as well! Maybe this similarly titled piece of music, from Halo, will give you some inspiration.

"What does this mean to me?" you ask. I would respond, "What does it mean to you?"

Perhaps you think of a game that takes place inside of a forest, or possibly just a particular forest level within a game. Write about ??that game. Maybe your mind is drawn specifically to the "walk" portion of the theme. Write about a walking simulator. The world is your burrito!

The idea is just to use this as a jumping-off point. Find a game that relates (no matter how remotely) to?? this theme and write about it. It would be great if you discover a new game and play it for the first time, but that is by no means a requirement.

Write about a game you once loved or even about how much you hate forest levels in games! Go (tree) nuts! When you've written your blog, be sure to throw "Band of Bloggers" in the title, or "BoB" if you want to short?en it, ?and we'll have a lovely month discussing these games together!

The post Band of Bloggers – May Edition appeared first on Destructoid.

It takes a village

Greetings, gentle gamers. It’s your old pal, Mr. Westructoid here, and I’m on a mission. Not like the Mormon kind of mission - I can’t imagine hav?ing to wear slacks and a tie while riding a bike around all day in the heat. No, my mission is far less ball-sweaty, and far more important. My mission is noble and pure, but also a simple one.

My mission is to g??et more C-Bl??ogs. And I need your help.

This is part of the reason I wanted to resurrect the long-dormant Monthly Blog Recaps. I remember being a wee lad and seeing the monthly recaps, and catching up on some of the fantastic community posts I had missed over the course of the month. It was a great way to get some new eye??s on things that were posted, as well as maybe get a little extra attention to things tha?t might have been missed in its first go-around. It was awesome. And just like that, it left the mortal coil.

Now, here we lie, directionless and monthly-recap-less with no guide to lead us to the Blogging Promised Land. Unt??il that Moses comes to lead us through the desert that our blogs section is swiftly becoming, you’ll have to settle for me. The bad news is, I’m kind of an idiot, so you’ll need to make sure I don’t break anything, or offend any of the locals with my brash American-ness. The good news is that I’m very open to suggestions, so if you know of a way to help make this feature the smashing success it once was, let me know! I’ll do my best to live up to the legacy set forth by my pontificating, pioneeri??ng predecessors.

Join me in highlighting the wonderful, diverse, and perverted jbsgame.community Blogs, th??en get out there and write your own, damn it.

Promoted Blogs

If I had?? to choose the one best thing about?? how the Community here at Dtoid works, I’d say it’s that we have the power to promote a user’s blog to the Front Page. As in, your blog shows up as a regular Destructoid post that goes out to our homepage, Twitter post, and Facebook account like any other story would. It’s a power we like to abuse, when the mood strikes.

How does one’s blog achieve this goal? There’s no set way, really. Sometimes if something sparks huge debate, it’ll get the nod. Or if a blog is downright hilarious, we’ll make sure our readers see it. Or if it offer??s a unique perspective. Or if it’s batshit insane. Or if it’s just that damned good. Each member of the Community team has their own preference for promoting blogs, which hel??ps to ensure that a wide variety of blogs gets to our Front Page.

So tickle me in just the right ??way, and get your work featured by Destructoid.

Kevin Moonsereauioux&nbs?p;wrote a blog about several heel turns in gaming - featuring, most notably, a heel turn of his own - but somehow forgot to consider that maki??ng a heel turn first requires one to actually be a face. Burn, Kevin!

This kind of stuff is really, really awesome. Who knew video games could teach you so much about life a?nd loss? Christopher Harper knew. Read his words on Hotline Miami 2 and how sometim?es a game can be a great parable for death.

Twitter loved this one! This is an old, previ??ously promoted b?log from SpielerDad stickin??g it to GameStop’s wonderfully bad idea of asking you to spend all your tax return money at their stores! If you don’t know what humor is, you’ll probably hate this article.

My favorite thing about strong opinions in an article’s title (no matter how inflammatory or “c??lickbait?y” internet randos may find it to be) is that so few people actually read the article before getting upset. I don’t love Deediddle’s title, and I disagree with most of what he said, but it’s still an interesti??ng piece that provides a well-constructed counterargument to the widespread undying love of a game (an undying love I, myself, hold). Give it a read, and consider his points as valid criticisms, as opposed to baseless clickbait. It’s how conversations used to work.

If you like science, and art, and science-b??ased art, you’re going to dig Gamemaniac3434’s new blog, since it’s about all?? of those things. I read through it and still don’t understand how one draws with bacteria, but I’m a man of reason and intellect and short shorts, not science. It’s a cool read, either way!

I bet you didn’t know we could feature Qposts, did? you? Well, guess what motherfucker - we can! It’s a privilege we reserve fo??r only the best, which is exactly what Luckrequired delivered with his birthday wishes to Destructoid. Happy birthday, Dtoid! A?nd thanks Luck, you kille?d it with this drawing.

Goemar put more thought into Bubble Bobble than anyone on the history of this planet ever has. And he’s correct. It is stupid??. Read t??his blog or I’ll apprehend you.

Bloggers Wanted

Our monthly Bloggers Wanted prompt does the hard work for you and tells you what to write about - all’s ya gotta do it actually write it! Coincidentally,?? a clerical error occurred and our dog, Mr. Dogstructoid, ate our homework, resulting in no new prompt for March. But, we were still accepting entrants for February’s Hell Turn prompt, inspired by the sick and twisted acts of a Community Manager gone rogue. He then went rouge once he saw his face photoshopped over professional wrestler, and civil rights advocate, Hollywood Hulk Hogan.

Anyway, here are our entries for February’s?? prompt! I’m including February because l??ol why not? You’re not my mom.

I had considered making a specia??l c??ategory for Kyle Yadlosky (nee Vadicta) with jus??t a picture of a trash can, because that would be pretty funny. But this blog is actually pretty dope. It follows the early days of Flash on the internet, and how incredibly dumb everything was. Kyle revels in dumb, so it&r?squo;s right up his alley.

Village idiot Wes Tacos writes a lot of words abou??t how Nathan Drake is kind? of a giant douche. Nothing you didn’t already know, mind you, but his mom did pin it on the fridge. So, check it out, maybe?

JPF720 treats us to ??his favorite heel turn in gaming, that of the main chara??cter in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Spoilers abound! I appreciate the?? subject matter, even though I’ve never actually played the game. Give it a read, either way.

Spec Ops: The Line was such a weird game to me. I appreciate the story and attempt to subvert the macho-man military shooters we seem to only get, but at the same time I couldn’t justify the gameplay being bad for the sake of bein?g rote like all the others. That said, it’s something you should definitely play. TheLimoMaker does a great job of walking us through the plot, and the inevitable descent into madness through which it dra??gs us.

Superman is such a fuckin’ dweeb. Zordan and I are ??on the same page here in enjoying the story in Injustice: Gods Among Us, as it gives us a glimpse of Supes we don’??t often get t??o see outside of the comics. Give this a read!

Comments of the Week

Our comments sections are lots of fun. Ok, sometimes they’re awful and I want to burn the site down. But generally, they’re lots of fun! Our CotW team works hard every week to ensure that only the highest-quality comments make their round????up of highlights.

And, also, Dere’s puns.

CotW 40

CotW 41

CotW 42

CotW 43

CotW 44

Band of Bloggers

This is where I’m going to ask you, the jbsgame.community, to jump in. We used to have a Community-ran feature called Band of Blogge?rs, which in simplest terms is kind of like a book club for games. The organizer would choose a particular game or series or director, and everyone who wanted to chime in would play the game, and write about it. It’s a little like Bloggers Wanted, I guess, but less officia??l and a little more focused. We used to get dozens of entries a month, but then The Great Schism happened. What was The Great Schism? It was when Harry left One Direction, of course. It devastated the Community, and we’ve yet to recover.

This is where you come in. Or not. Up to you.

I want to gauge interest in brin??ging this feature back. It would of course? mean having a Community member come in to take the mantle, so to speak, and organize and lead the front. Think you’re up for it? Well, then, get to it! Drum up some interest, and get the Community writing about games again. And if no one steps up, I guess we’ll retire the feature and give it a 21 Nailgun Salute. At least I tried.

UPDATE: Band of Bloggers has returned! LaTerry revives the old Community feature for a new generation, starting out with his area of expertise - dragons! If you wann?a join in on the fun, simply write a blog about your favorite dragon-related story, preface ?it with "Band of Bloggers:" then your title, and let that baby fly!

Staff Picks

Not everything can make it to the Front Page, sadly??. There have been plenty of times where the staff decided something simply would not work for one reason or another. It’s no slight against the author; in fact, it’s usually some sort of technicality or audience engagement thing that prevents these gems from getting that honor. This section is their second chance.

Here we will highlight our favorite blogs from the month that just didn’t quite hit the Front Page. Please also keep in mind that a blog that doesn’t make this section doesn’t mean it’s unworthy of your time - I’d like to strongly encourage everyone reading to hit the C-Blogs ??and check out some of the awesome stuff that gets posted there every single day. Our Community is truly our lifeblood, and the C-Blogs are a huge part of that. Keep cracking at it, and you’?ll see your work featured by us.

Mozsta69 (nice) drops a doozy of a first blog about rac?ism in a particular game from a non-white perspective. Interesting read!

Deediddle writes about why he loves Dark Souls. I’m not? a fan of the series, but this is a really good perspective on the matter.

Zordan writes about how Arkham Asylum rescued his video game-playing ca??reer. Crazy how one game? can reinvigorate your passion in the hobby.

Bass&n??bsp;forgot to make a card for me, but at least the series is still alive. Check out the communit??y member-themed Magic: The Gathering cards!

Seymour reflects on his seven years wi??th the site on Dtoid’s twelfth birthday. Some gre?at memories in here - take the trip down Memory Lane with him!

Dere reflects on why he keeps returning to video games, despite his distaste with cur??rent trends in the industry. Another heartfelt read from this dude.

Lord Spencer reviews Bug! for the Saturn. I love bad mascot games, and I love inane and dumb g??ames even more. This hits all the sweet ?spots for me.

SpielerDad is ??truly a Renaissance Man of gaming. He does it all, and increasingly with age, does it well. Let his gaming dad bod embrace you in its comforting grip.

LaTerry knows Final Fantasy XIII is an extremely flawed game, but he still finds himself loving it regardless of its blemishes and general reception. We can still love thin??gs we know are bad, as he so eloquently states in this thought-provoking journey.

NakedBigBoss perfectly encapsulates where I am with gaming in my life right now. When is it time to give up the ghost, and put the sticks down forever? The answer is subjective, of course, but this is a grea?t blog to read if you’re at something of a standstill in your gaming life.

Genoforprez comes out of nowhere with a ??bomb-ass first blog doing a deep dive into the intricacies of NPC interacti?on, using ICO (an example of? great empathy-building with ??companion characters in a game) and Prince of Persia (a not-so-great example) to ??compare and contrast different approaches. It even has MS Paint art! Read this??.

A Brief Message from Qtoid

Do you know about Qtoid? For those that don’t, I like to put it like this: Qtoid is basically Destructoid’s less shitty version of Twitter. Here, users get to post micro-musings about games, art, music, life - whatever they&rsquo??;ve got going on at the time. And just like our normal-sized blogs, comments sections are there to elaborate on your point, as well as to interact with other users on their goings-on.

Using Qtoid, we’ve commiserated with our peers, helped out our fellow gamers in need, expressed our mutual ??joy in new releases, and loads, loads more. And also shitposted. Can&rs??quo;t forget about all the shitposting we do there. If the C-Blogs are the Body of Mr. Destructoid, consider Qtoid his Blood.

If you’re down to clown around with us, join up! Further integrate yourself into the jbsg??ame.community until complete mass assimilation i??s achieved. I mean, uh, post here or something.

GetNekKid is our cutest boy, and as s?uch, it is our honor to present him as the first-ever Intro to Qtoid. Keep being a little dreamboat, NekKid!

Hopefully seeing all of the wonderful and weird blogs from the jbsgam?e.community has inspired you to join in on the fun. Keep at it, and you could see your work in this very recap n?ext month!

Now get out there and blog!

 - Wes Tacos

Picture credits:
Blog Header - MeanderBot
Promoted Blogs Header - Inquisitive Ravenclaw
All Other Headers - ZombieCORPS

I'm looking to cut Zombie down to just one header image, so if you want to submit an or??iginal piece for one of our headers, please contact me at tacos@jbsgame.com

The post March 2018 C-Blog Recaps appeared first on Destructoid.

Content out the Yakuza!

[If there's one thing I constantly hear about the Yakuza series, it's how incredibly stuffed to the brim it is with stuff to do. For some, that much content habitually crammed into a series is great! For others, it can be just a bit much. Kerrik52 falls somewhere in the middle of that distinction. Join him as he guides us through the massive amounts of stuff to do in Yakuza 5, and remember that writing a prompt for Bloggers Wanted is a great way to get your work featured by Destructoid! - Wes]

The Yakuza games are near and dear to my heart due to their drama, silliness, and face-breaking fights. After struggling to both purchase and download it (46 GB Sega! On PSN! How's that for overstuffed!?), I finally got my hands on Yakuza 5.

After playing 4 and Dead Souls, I was hyped to continue the s??tory of the Dragon of Dojima and friends. And boy, what an odyssey it was.

There was a conspiracy, family troub??les, Japanese quirkiness, betrayals, honour, and that specia?l kind of shirtless final boss that always brings me back to the series. But that wasn't everything, oh no.

As dictated by the title, there's five playable characters, all with their own story, abilities, sidestories, and minigames. It's an exercise in excess that I partook in fully. Since my gaming time is precious and I wanted to go for ”light completion” (do all quests) plus what else I could be bothered with so that I wouldn't be tempted to replay it for years to come. Follow your own teachings, and whatnot.

First up, there?'s Kiryu ”Disarmed & Dangerous” Kazuma himself, who has taken up work as a taxi driver. Playing as him is basically cheating, since he has Heat moves for almost every situation. And a drop kick that chains onto a backflip, can't forget that. He's more or less a god on the streets. Very fitting for the tutorial character.

Every character (besides Shun ”Dancing Feet” Akiyama) has a big sidequest that takes at least two hours, if not more. Kiryu's is centered around his service to the masses as a taxi driver. It's split between driving properly and engaging in crazy races. By playing both, you earn regular EXP and get the chance to pimp his ride. The races?? get samey, but they have a fully-developed story to go along with them. And that's one of the appeals of the series - the writ?ers went through much effort to give all side activities some flavour and context.

Taiga ”The Bear Whisperer” Saejima has a hunting minigame to his name. It's quite layered, but still not that deep. You hunt animals with a gun, set traps, collect meat, and earn upgrades, all so you can earn a rematch with a giant bastard of a bea??r and punch it in the throat.

The survival aspect is very easy, since hunger does little to impede your healt?h and the western release comes bundled with a golden gun that's rather easy to earn and abuse. But shooting ?angry animals between the eyes is rather satisfying.

Changing gears, the game then let's you play as Haruka ”The Japanese Pop Industry Is My Oyster” Sawamura, Kiryu's adopted daughter, as she tries to win an idol competition and get her big break. This is accomplished by engaging in the game's biggest timesink, as you must train her up and earn her fans in an idol sim. It's a weird thing to do in a crime drama, but it's fun for a while. Sadly, it does get tedious as you engage in yet another dance-off, listen to the same few songs or have to shake more sweaty hands than you'd ever want to. And she doesn't even use the power of her ??singing to ??slash airships in half or parry tank shells!

Kinda makes me wish that this was canon:

To round out the cast, there's everyone's favorite washed out B-Baller, Tatsuo ”Kanada!” Shinada. He starts poor and weak, so random battles are actuall??y a bit threatening. This soon fades as you level up and get involved with his batting minigame. It's an extension of the normal batting cage, except you can make it much easier with some grinding.

Taking the main story, the sidestories and the big minigames together adds up to a lot. But this is Yakuza, w?here content rules and your free time doesn't matter. Let's go through all the other crap you can do!

For every character (certain exceptions apply, naturally, you can't get Haruka to go on dates.) there's the main story, sidestories, and big minigame, as previously mentioned. But there's? also the locker keys and town-specific collectibles? to find plus tourist spots to photograph.

Then you need to scout out the restaurants for a chef for food buffs, find a master to train with, beat? up Komato and his grandson in order to break the level limit, track down revelations, date a h??ostess, win enough encounters to earn the right to compete in Victory Road, compete in Victory road, and also do VR training with Japanese Doc Brown.

All of this culminates with a fight with the Amon family. The fight is a majestic marathon where you compete with each of the family members to see who can cheat the hardest. Filling your inventory with nothing but the best?? healing items is just enough to win, they are that evil.

I swear that Jo Amon has to be a Stand user, since he not only switches to the powers of the others, but also can summon and shoot exploding umbrellas! I call it Unchain The Rain (Power B, Speed C, Range B, Durability D, Precision B, Pot??ential D,). Haruka even gets a dance-off with Jo's niece!

That's where I gave up, but you can go even further beyond! There's the assorted minigames, like gambling, fishing, snowball fights, bowling, Virtua Fighter, and probably a dozen more I can't name right now. And if you're completely crazy, there's also Heat move and food completion. Did I mention that there's NG+ as well? Jesus ”Heffing” C??hris almighty on a trampoline!

Even with all that said, Yakuza 5 is very engrossing. I feel?? like the 80 hours I spent on it could've been reduced to 60 though. Less is more sometimes. Then again, most of what I did was optional content, so the blame is on me. Still a good game.

And I still have an unplayed copy of Kiwami resting on my shelf! And my copy of 0 is on the way! 6 comes out next year and Kiwami 2 isn't far behind! It really is a great time to be a Yakuza fan.

Loads of cinematics...

Dozens of minigames...

Hundreds of sidestories...

Thousands of collectibles...

just...great...

The post Overstuffed: Conquering Kamurocho appeared first on Destructoid.

My mind is telling me no, but my body is telling me yes!

[As he is often wont to do, Cedi gets at the subject of overstuffing one's self in games with the thought and analysis worthy of a scientific journal. Today's topic: Grinding in RPGs/mobile games! Do you, like Cedi and countless others, find yourself compelled to grind just to get so OP that you wipe that flamboyant grin off Kuja's face? Let us know in the comments! And while you're at it, contribute to our Bloggers Wanted prompt, where the Dtoid staff could find its front page overstuffed with user blogs! - Wes]

Level grinding is a very curious thing. Many times? when critics refer to grinding in RPGs, it’s a complaint. Yet grinding has remained a staple mechanic of effectively every game within the genr??e, and even several games outside of it, for decades. It seems weird, doesn’t it?

The concept itself was borrowed from tabletop RPGs, which are built around characters growing stronger from completing encounters. Yet the vast majority of GMs don’t want players to be too strong or too weak for any given plot climax, so they always orchestrate encounters in such a way to provide just enough EXP or loot for their desired difficulty curve. Most video games don’t have the lux?ury of being GMed by a human brain, so they’ve instead settled into the trend of repeating encounters which (traditionally) never diminish. Strange how such a tiny change completely alters the dynamic of what EXP and leveli?ng up means in two otherwise similar mediums, isn’t it? I myself am no exception to the trap of the grind. I’ve repetitively mashed buttons for hours, days, sometimes even weeks just to get a few more points into my stats. Too many for any practical purpose, for sure.

And yet even when it’s obviously too much, I feel as if I can’t get enough of it. Not in tra?ditional RPGs, not in mobile games, not in Dynasty Warriors games, not in…anything.

RPG fans are intimately familiar with the feedback loop of grinding.?? You do stuff (which, 99% of the time, is defeating enemies) to fill your EXP bars. Fill the bars enough, you gain a level. You gain a level, you gain a bunch of stats, possibly with other bonuses, which make it easier to do stuff like defeating enemies. So you do more stuff and, after a longer time or with more effort, your EXP bar is full again. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a classic dopamine-fueled cycle of effort and reward feeding into each other. Usually, grinding is used as a means to an end, such as catching up with the difficulty curve of a powerful boss enemy, but it’s common to hear of people grinding for its own sake.

People often grind by seeking encounters in areas that aren’t too strong for them to clear. Repeatedly clearing such enemies is usually a low-risk, low-stress activity, since the party can probably spam basic techniques to easily clear basic enemies. Alternatively, the player might pursue more challenging foes that require more effort - such as the Elite Four in most Pokémon postgames - but the repetition will cause them to form habits and patterns that consistently lead them to vic??tories, thus making it simila??rly trivial in practice. In either case, the lack of stress tends to make grinding a calming activity.

It’s easy to zone out and just fall into the motions, trading the high stakes of a climactic battle for a calm before the storm. It gives you the opportunity to reflect on things, take it easy, maybe multitask ?a little on the side while you hammer away at buttons or let Auto Battle do it’s thing. It&rs??quo;s like when you just take a moment and relax on a sofa or grab a drink; you’re taking a break from all the stressful things around you to make yourself more willing and able to face them later. I’ve watched many Twitch streams that just consist of players grinding as they chat with their audiences, and they’re a great way to unwind after a tiring day of work!

Another contributing factor to this habit, at least for me, is rooted in my love of shonen-style character growth. I enjoy seeing the weak become the strong. I enjoy nurturing the underdogs into the leaders of the pack. Struggling against increasingly greater challenges, discovering hidden strengths and abilities…gaining something from every little victory, progressing towards greater feats. Seeing arduous eff?ort rewarded. Watching stats rise, skyrocket, multiply all the time! Me and my allies transforming into an overwhelmingly powerful team that can curbstomp the most threatening armies in the world! Kyaaaaaaaaaaaa!

You know, just that intrinsic human desire of striving to ?improve.

For these reasons, grinding is a rewarding and relaxing aspect of RPGs that moderates the pace of a game. It sounds fun, right? Well…let’s not beat around the bush anymore, most gamers already know why grinding is looked down upon by so many. Oftentimes, it’s an arbitrary limitation that forces repetition to surpass number-based walls, rewarding time invested more than skill. As for why the process itself isn’t fun? If you sit on a couch doing nothing long enough, your attitude begins to shift from relaxed to bored. And if you grind for a very long period of time? ?It’s so mind-numbingly dull you want to step away from it all.

And yet, even when I&?rsquo;m bored out of my skull by grinding? I keep telling myself to push on farther, until I hit a point where I feel I need to remove the game from my console.

Nippon Ichi Software develops a lot of RPGs that tout themselves for their grindiness, most iconically the Disgaea series. I love these games’ over-the-top style and gameplay, indulging in their creative worlds and creating my own armies of demonic "heroes." But boy, the advertisements aren’t kidding, these games do so much to spur me to grind. I can grind character levels. I can grind Mana to fund special features and upgrades. I can grind HL to fund new equipment and new party members. I can grind skill levels to make individual skills more powerful. I can grind stat-raising items to empower my favorite units further still. I can grind inside of my own equipment to make it more powerful. Everything you can think of and then some? has a grinding aspect to it, creating multiple feedback loops that interconnect a??nd overlap with each other. And it is exhausting.

More importantly for my case, Disgaea veterans often tell me these mechanics are structured in a way that mostly rewards overpowering a si?ngle character. But personally, I have no interest in making only one overpowered unit; I want a personal army of overpowered units! So I invest even more hours and days and weeks into trying to grind up my forces for the next big challenge! And what’s that you tell me? The Winged Warrior is a far underpowered class? Fudge that, I’m gonna transform this underdog into the strongest Overlord the Netherworld has ever seen no matter how much extra time it takes!

I convince myself to keep grinding even when I already h??ave a team more than strong enough for the next story chapter, because I want to be ready for the next several battles after that! I tried so hard to overprepare myself that I end up burning myself out before I actually attempt to continue the plot! Even to this day, I’m still only at, like…Chapter 5 or so in Disgaea 5? And I never ??got much farther? than that, if any, in Disgaea DS. I want to continue playing these games. I’ve enjoyed so muc?h of my time with them, and I believe someday I will?? get back to them…but thanks to my grinding habits and the exhausting note they last left me on with these games, I struggle to find the motivation to do that at this point in time.

Yet somehow, I remain capable of consistently returning to another series (in)famed for its repetitive and grindy nature, Dynasty Warriors and its countless spinoffs. I think the big reason why is how the gameplay differs so much. It’s a very active type of game that often asks the player to juggle multiple tasks, and playin??g as different characters often brings different playstyles that radically break up the monotony of these tasks. While I am, in essence, doing the same thing for countless hours on end? I feel as if these games are always challenging me to find the most efficient ways to clear waves of mooks and protect my defensive objectives, given different variables in my moveset and the battlefield around me. It’s still repetitive, but it doesn’t feel as repetitive as it looks.

That still hasn’t saved me from burnout ??altogether. Hyrule Warriors is my favorite Warriors game by far, thanks in part to the Adventure Maps. It’s also a huge grind to 100% complete thanks to the Adventure Maps. There are so many different battles with slight variations that throw just enough wrinkles into the gameplay to feel di??stinct, yet remain similar enough to still fall into the same pattern as grinding. For the first several dozen hours, it’s a blast to discover new weapons and characters to play with and explore new battle rules! But there is still an overwhelming amount of repetitive content.

By the time you reach the end of the first map, obtaining every piece of loot becomes walled off by enemies who can ruin your S rank rewards within a few attacks, if not just one. The best way to counter that, unfortuna??tely, is to grind enough so that your attack power overwhelms them ??just as much. Even with all of the helpful updates to expedite the forging of an ultimate weapon and the creation of new Badges and the training to level 99 (or rather, level 255 now!), it’s an extremely long journey to get the characters needed for 100% Adventure Map completion up to that point. I’ve managed to come far closer to clearing everything than I first thought I would - perhaps someday I actually will complete it - but probably not until 2019, if even that soon. I just keep burning myself out every time I go back to it, no matter how much fun I have. And I have a lot of fun with Warriors games, as my ??past blogs can testify. That’s just how hot the grindstone gets with the series.

And then there’s mobile gacha RPGs! I’ve already written at l?ength what I think about them and why I enjoy them despite their controversies, but if there’s one of their trappings I can’t seem to escape, it’s the eternal grind. Always getting new characters I need to raise to the level cap. Always encountering new repetitive quests with valuable freemium currency as a reward. Always stumbling into limited-time events that give event-only rewards my teams can benefit from. Especially those events! Do you know how many hours you need to pour into these games to actually get every significant prize from them? The dozens of Raids in Granblue Fantasy you need to host to obtain and fully uncap the event exclusive SSR weapons? The hundreds of [insert event-flavored loot here] to get character level cap extensions in Tales of the Rays? The countless Tempest Trials you must clear to obtain every new event item and character in Fire Emblem Heroes!?

…Actually, FEH added a twice-a-day bonus multiplier to Tempest Tri?al runs, so that cuts down on grinding a ton. But everything else in that game! I grind so much, a part of me is actually grateful when my Stamina depletes s?o I can more easily divert my attention elsewhere!

Even as I’m writing this, I’m trying to?? grind enough Tough Lens in Tales of the Rays to afford myself a Stahn Nexus Shard. And I’m planning on temporarily uninstalling the game immediately after I accomplish that so I can make room for other apps! I am grinding for a game I'm planning to go on hiatus for. Well, I’m doing it in part because if I don’t do that first, I won’t get to use these items when I re-install?? later, but the fact remains tha?t I’m choosing to grind instead of freeing up my phone space immediately. That says a lot about my tendency for grinding in mobile games.

I get into these games in the first place because they always do something fun. I don’t like to keep playing a game if I expect that it only becomes fun later. If I play a game that I’m not having fun with on its own merits, I abandon it with no remorse. That’s what I did with Dragon Coins, which has very little to i??t other than the novelty of using a coin pusher machine as an RPG battle system.

By contrast, Tales of the Rays plays almost much like a traditional Tales game, condensed for mobile phones. When I’m not grinding, it’s a fun and challenging thrill to command my little fighters to victory in active combat with careful strategies and skillful combos, even against foes with a far higher Pow. Lv than my team! Even the cutscenes are in??teresting to watch and read! But the timed events command so much of my schedule to get everything of value that at times, it’s far more practical to leave the game running on Auto as I type this blog out. At that point, I’m doing it for the end result, not to enjoy the journey. And that’s the point where I become overstuffed with grinding.

Am I ever going to stop grinding altogether in games? I don’t think so, and I don’t want to either. Like en?joying good food, this mech??anic has an intrinsic appeal to my tastes that I proudly embrace. But am I ever going to stop overstuffing myself with grinding? I don’t know, but I’m reflecting on my tendencies now because I want to improve upon them. I enjoy gaming as an opportunity to explore and indulge in other worlds; not necessarily as a vehicle for escapism, but to gain creative experiences.

The fact that I’ve played certain games so much that I shy away from them as if they are chores runs counter to my goal in enjoying games. I’ve done a ton of fun ti?me-wasting things in games because they are exactly that; fun. That’s the only thing I need to justify playing games. That’s why we call it playing games. ??But when the things you normally find fun start to taste a little stale? It’s a better idea to put down your plate and wait for your stomach to settle, rather than try to force it all down right away. You’ll enjoy finishing your meal much more that way.

The post Overstuffed: Back to the daily grind appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

_{[LaScary (the artist formerly known as LaTerry) and I have something in common. I don’t mix well with horror games typically. For me, it’s not even the scary stuff that gets to me. I’m fine with that. It’s that dreaded resource management that kills me, and this genre loves to shoehorn that in to everything. I end up stressing out so much over it that I eventually spend more time outside smoking cigarettes than actually playing the damn game.}

_{My dude here took up the call of arms for this month's Bloggers Wanted, and he found himself on the Front Page as a result! There’s still one more day left in the month, so head over to the Cblogs and get writing! - Kevin]}

I don't do well with horror games. I can't handle them even if I love the ideas behind them. The only one that I've been able to finish was P.T. and that was only because ?my brother was also in the room with me. It was just a tech demo! 

Some time ago, Alien: Isolation went on sale on Steam and one of my friends convinced me to buy it. We were going to play it at the same time and voice chat while we did. I suspect he just wanted to hear me whimper like a small hurt child, and if that was the case he definitely got his wish. The gam??e starts out fine enough. The opening scenes are free from danger and dread. There's j??ust a bit of narrative build up to when everything goes wrong. 

If you haven't played the game, you play as, Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley from the original movie. Amanda hears about a possible lead for her missing m??other and goes out into space in search of her. She comes upon a space station that is supposed to have clues about her mom, but it's been damaged, and its communications are out. Amanda attempts to board the space station but is hit by debris and loses contact with the group that she came with. She is now trapped on a spaceship with a Xenomorph. Lovely.

The Xenomorph can hardly wait.

Alien: Isolation is a terrifying game in a?ll the right ways. Once you enter the space station and the real game begins, nothing will hurt you for about an hour. I was convinced that I was going to die?? every time I turned a corner. Since the location is a derelict space station with a prowling alien, the devs got creative with the sound design. The space station creaks and groans in horrible ways. There's an ambient sound that slowly and insidiously gets under your skin and pokes your heart to make it jumpy. The alien is crawling around in the vents, and sometimes you can hear its footsteps or its tail slithering across the ground. There are some robots who are probably malfunctioning that mutter to themselves in warped voices. Long before I was in any real danger in the game, I was scared to open every door.

Somehow the person who uploaded this called it relaxing ambient noise.

The space station that you are exploring has seen a lot of death. The alien caused havoc, and the automatic protocols of the ships A.I. didn't know how to handle the situation. People started rioting and killing each other. Early on in the game, you come upon a room filled with rows of body ba?gs. This place is filled with death at every corner. You quickly learn that the alien won't be your only issue. Everyone still living on this ship will see you as hostile. I was fine with this. I've played stealth games before. I can sneak around and avoid human characters. It was still spooky, but the human characters didn't give me any problems.

Then the alien finally showed up. Your first few encounters are scripted, so it doesn't kill you, but you quickly learn that this thing doesn't mess around. It will crawl through the vents and come out of holes in the ce??iling. It will always be looking for you. I was terrified, but my friend was there pushing me forward?, so onward I went. We came upon the first area where the alien encounter wasn't fully scripted. It starts out scripted, with the alien cutting through some NPCs, but then it starts to wander the area. It killed the NPCs in the area below where you walk in, and the door that you need to go through is right where it killed the people. My friend, who had played the game before, got through the room just fine. I couldn't do anything. I kept walking around in circles trying to see if there was a safe way down, but I got too scared to check anymore, and I just ended up hiding in a side area. My friend informed me that this wouldn't work. It would find me eventually. He tried to talk me through what I should do. It was all for nothing, as I wasn't in a state of mind to follow his directions, and the alien ate my face off.

That's a big pile of nope. Nope, nope, nope. Nope.

That was over a year ago now. I hadn't played it since. Then this month's bloggers wanted asked us to write about overcoming our fears, and I knew what I had to do. I needed to get past that moment in the?? game. I needed to overcome my fear of the alien! So I downloaded the game again and booted it up. I was a little lost for where to go at first since it had been so long, but I eventually reoriented myself and entered the room that I couldn't get past before. I didn't have my friend to help me this time, but I was determined. 

The familiar screams of the NPCs reached my ears as the alien did away with them. Instead of hiding in the shadows and cowering in my space s??uit, I crept to the stairs and watched the alien do its dirty work. Then I saw it walk off and up the stairs opposite me. I took the opportunity, crept down the stairs, hacked the d??oor, and suddenly I was clear for that mission. 

That was easy, and now I'm embarrassed. Since it had been so lo??ng??, I wasn't influenced by two hours of creepy atmosphere like I had been the first time. I was in a video game state of mind instead of a trying not to soil my pants state of mind. 

Well shoot, if tha??t was so easy, I should easily be able to play even more of the game. I had just taken an elevator too, so the alien will take a while to catch back up to me. Heck, this'll be simple.

Just a friendly android who only wants to help you, and possibly curb stomp you if the situation warrants it.

But then there were androids. At first, they were cool. They were ju??st doing their own thing, mostly ignoring me. Then, I tried to go to the communications room, and they weren't going to have that. So I sneak in like any good video game protagonist, and, while creeping through the vents, I watch an android politely murder someone who was doing what I was doing. Oh. Now all the android were on the lookout for intruders, and this is getting creepy again.

It's fine. The an??droids aren't nearly as big a threat as the alien. I?? can handle the androids if I need to. Well, then, as I was sneaking along, an android spotted me, called one of his friends, and started chasing me. I tried to hide, but, in my panic, I went into a locker and then right back out as I was pressing the button repeatedly. I tried going back in again, but they had caught up to me, and they then proceeded to break my neck. 

Oh good, their eyes are red now. That's fine. It's okay. I'm not creeped out by it.

Okay, this is fine. I can still do this. I upped my stealth game, watching out for the androids, and got past a big area. I hid behind a desk and nearly jumped when I saw a body behind the desk with me. It was clearly dead, so I ignored it and watched for any other androids to come by. As I made to step away from the desk, the screen shook, and I heard a "where are you going?" The body that was ??behind the desk was a damaged android, and now it had grabbed my leg.

I turned off the game. My heart was racing so fast. I couldn't do this. I was already back to how I was a year ago when I was playing with my friend, and the alien wasn't even there. I ?was wrong. I can't handle this. I'm going back to colorful, lighthearted platformers about hats.

The post Overcoming Fear… except not really appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs!

[I always considered Metal Gear Sold something of an action/suspense/horror game...and it looks like I'm not the only one! Sir Charles of Shred takes us through his childhood in having to face his fears through three key games he experienced on the original PlayStation. It's okay, bud, Psycho Mantis freaked me the hell out - how did he know what I was doing?! Get your work featured by Destructoid by participating in this month's spooptacular Bloggers Wanted prompt. You've still got a few days to participate! - Wes]

When I think of true fear in video games, I think of the ??original PlayStation.

Growing up as a ?Nintendo kid could not have prepared me for the PlayStation when I got one for Christmas in 1998. Everything about Sony's gaming machine was decidedly different than my previous systems. The graphics were different, the cartridges turned into CDs, and unbekn??ownst to me, a dramatic tonal shift occurred in my gaming sensibilities.

One of the more fortunate things about my childhood was that I was able to have a PlayStation and an N64 at the same time. I had the N64 all week at my mom's house, and when I would see my dad on the weekends I would be able to play on the Sony PlayStation. Only being able to play PlayStation on weekends really added to the mystique; more solitary single player experiences were at my disposal, and every time I got to play a game, the feeling was that of an event. At home, in the glow of a big CRT, I was experiencing games like I never had before. The first game to really give me a wake up call was Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear Solid was the game that first made me feel fear - a feeling I hadn't gotten from any video game until that point. The alert music and just the overall tension of trying to sneak around were enough to have me hooked. When Psycho Mantis pulled the "HIDEO" trick, I was terrified. My curiosity was the only thing keeping me going. Frankly, I hadn't seen anything like MGS, and? I knew the only way to see more was to keep going. Letting my dad kn??ow I was scared would have jeopardized him buying me M-rated games in the future, a situation I'm sure many kids of that era had been in.

Hideo Kojima's PlayStation epic kept scaring me the whole way through. The trail of blood left by Ninja down that hallway was a visceral thrill that left young Shredder awestruck. When Ocelot told me my tur?bo controller wouldn't work, and that my physical gaming skills were the only things keeping me from life or death, terror filled my heart. After some perseverance, I was able to get through the torture sequence. Getting past Ocelot eventual??ly led to the moment that Otacon let me in on a secret: The four people that stole the stealth camo were in the elevator with me the whole time!

My reaction at the time was akin to the following lyrics from Michael Jackson's "Thriller": "You try to scream/but terror takes the sound before you make it." In a panic, I was somehow able to beat this part on the first try, and for the first time, I actually had to shut the game off after a sequence - the intensity was too much for a young shredder to handle. If I didn't get through that part on the first try, I don't know if I would have been able to get through it at all. Beating MGS was one of my proudest gaming achievements at the time, due in large part t??o my own willpower. While other games had tested my skill, none of them pushed me to fight my own fears quite the way this o??ne did.

Shortly after this, two more PlayStation games would frighten me to my very core and change my gaming interests forever: Diablo and DOOM.

A faithful trip up to my grandparents' house changed my life forever. See, there was this small video store we used to rent from whenever we would go up there. I'd be able to get some Super Nintendo games to play while the rest of the family watched a movie. One weekend I was sick, and my dad offered to go to the video store to get me a game that I could play while I recovered from the flu. At the video store, my dad asked for some game recommendations, and he came back with DOOM and Diablo.

This was fear on an entirely different level. In hindsight, both of these games have a lot in common: One man against waves of enemies, demonic themes, and, most importantly, dread. That feeling you get when you don't know what's gonna be behind the next door or around the next corner. The next threat was always on its way. With Metal Gear, controlling Solid Snake led me to believe I could take on?? any challenge; but this time all I had was my own w??its.

The enemies in these games were unrelenting, giving chase until one of us was dead. I’ll never forget finding The Butcher on the second level of The Cathedral. He came at me with incredible speed and power, to the point where all I could do was run. Back over in Doom, seeing the injured face of Doomguy at the bottom of my screen was enough to keep that fear in me, because dying meant I would lose all of my?? weapons as well. In both of these games, death had hard consequen??ces. Fighting against the hordes of Hell in both of these games pushed me to my limits.

One thing that I learned through all three of these masterpieces was to keep pushing forward. There’s an old saying: “To get through Hell, you must go through Hell.” While this is true from a literal standpoint, this saying is very true from a metaphorical standpoint as well. The way I got through these games was to go through Hell. As more time passes, that saying applies to all aspects of life. To think, video games were teaching me that the more I practiced and persevered, the better the results would be. In Metal Gear, I was rewarded with a tremendous story. In Doom, I knew I’d sent the beast back to hell. In Diablo...I got the warr??ior ending, so I just became that which I?? feared.

These three games, and the aesthetic they created, helped lay the foundation for me to fall in love with another one of my favorite pastimes: Heavy metal. These three games, and the palpable sense of both fear and accomplishment I felt after completing all of them, has stayed with me until this day. The Diablo and Metal Gear Solid franchises are two of my absolute favorite franchises in gaming, and like most of us, I was all over DOOM 2016.  Without these three games, I would have never been so into another one of my favorite series: The Souls series. So when I think of my favori??te games, and facing ??my fears, I'll remember that it first started with these three games on the original PlayStation.

Until the next shreditorial,

Sir Charles of Shred.

ALSO I’M STILL SCARED OF THE BEES FROM DONKEY KONG COUNTRY 2 AND I HAVEN’T FIGURED OU??T HO??W TO GET OVER THAT FEAR 20 YEARS LATER FUCK THOSE BEES DAMMIT

The post Overcoming Fear: Sir Charles vs. PSX appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs!

[Whomever started the whole trend of 'making learning fun' did the world a huge favor - just like Michael Giff has done in writing about everyone's favorite scarlet-clad rogue, Carmen Sandiego. If you make it through this whole blog without getting the legendary theme song from the TV show stuck in your head, you're not human. Join Michael in getting your work promoted to the Front Page by participating in our Bloggers Wanted prompt! There's nothing we love more than getting your work in front of the world, so get to work, gumshoes! - Wes]

How do you inspire kids to learn? Sadly, it seems the consensus would be to stick a kid in a seat for a 90-minute lecture, force said kid to read an additional 60 minutes of material in their free time, and finally comp??lete a 30-minute questionnaire for homework. The poor child will have to do this four to five more times depending on how many classes they're taking. Also, he or she better pray that they excel at this form of learning because they will have to devote twelve years of their life to this monotony. Heaven help you if you fail because the standard solution for under-achievers is to hire a tutor, who will just force you to go through this exact routine over again but longer. Talk about torture! Is there no other way? Thankfully a couple of programmers asked this same question during the early 1980s, and proceeded to combine the latest in graphical user interfaces and a trusty almanac to create not only video games greatest thief, but quite possibly the world's greatest teacher.

2019 can't come soon enough!

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego really is an ingenious creation. It tasks players in solving a bevy of crimes by deciphering riddles and clues that can only be solved by reading the included World Almanac. Now why on earth?? would a kid read a text book to complete a game you may ask? Simple: We really, really want??ed to capture the alluring and ultimate enigma, Carmen Sandiego!

By engaging our imaginations and showing us a world that we never knew existed, kids wanted to read. By linking geography and culture into a crime serial, kids everywhere were ready to learn. This formula would end up being a smash hit for the elusive Latina; Carmen Sandiego would go on to appear in? c?ountless games, teaching not only geography but also math, astrology, vocabulary, and history. The woman was a one-lady wrecking ball to ignorance, and all because of that sassy attitude and badass hat and trench coat.

Of course she drives a red convertible.

After becoming the undisputed queen of interactive education, Carmen set her sights on stealing our hearts outside the realm of video games. She was on our cereal boxes and our Monopoly boxes, but more impressively stormed our idiot boxes to turn them into something smarter. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, the game show was a big deal in my household. Nobody cared about Alex Trebek and Jeopardy; we were all in on Lynn Thigpen's Chief, canned animation?s, countless puns, and of course that immortal theme song. Car?men would repeat this successful formula with Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, alon?g with the animated Daytime Emmy-winning, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego. Education may have always been the first order of business in her TV offerings, but by splicing it with the competition of a game show or ??th??e musings of a Saturday morning cartoon, she had every boy and girl wrapped around her finger and we were learning, whether we realized it or not.

In an era before the internet, Carmen Sandiego was our window to the outside world. Sure our social studies and history professors desperately wanted to teach us the same material, but Carmen e?nticed us all with a sly smile and a dare to give chase. ??I myself have never captured the crimson garbed cat-burglar, but our adventures were epic and numerous, and I must thank her for being my favorite teacher.

The post Schooled: Why video game’s greatest thief is the world’s greatest teacher appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs!

[I think for a lot of gamers my age, Final Fantasy VII was the game that really introduced us to RPGs. Cedi, on the other hand, cut his teeth on our dear friend Mario's papertastic adventures and learned to love the genre as a result. Why is this blog being posted on Destructoid's Front Page? Because it's awesome. Also, because Cedi joined us for this month's Bloggers Wanted prompt! Tell us in the comments which game finally helped you to understand a new genre in gaming! - Wes]

RPGs are a fascinating genre of games. Their biggest draws to fans involve a lot of reading, doing math, and sometime?s bawling uncontrollably. They're things that many kids don’t like doing, but somehow, they've captivated large audiences of all ages. If you described RPGs like that to me decades ago, I would maybe have treated them like Brussels sprouts. And yet, as I said last Sunday, one ?particular game won me over to this genre from a?n early age. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door lured me in with the platforming icon every kid knows, ??and I left ??the credits sequence having learned to love this genre. But Paper Mario, in all of its iter?ations, is very far from the standard RPG. So how did this game lure me into the genre as a whole?

I know this game is pretty much ancient a??t this point, ??but fair warning: I will be discussing TTYD story spoilers. If you're fine with spoilers, cool, but if you’ve never seen its story and you think that doesn’t matter in the slightest? Just gonna add that I felt the same until I played thi??s game myself. I urge you to play it if you can. I?t’s worth the experience points.

But before we dig into that, I should briefly explain my experiences with the only other RPG I played before TTYD, which was Pokémon Gold. What other RPG series were kids more likely to get into first? It’s a great game with a lot of writing and turn-based battles. The creature collecting and raising mechanics are deep and fun. And yet, I never really took much notice of that. I enjoyed the writing, but only in the same way as an average Saturday morning cartoon; just as an entertaining vehicle from one battle to another (though the postgame final boss was a climax even little Cedi understood the awesome impact of). Similarly, I didn’t bother training up other monsters because I didn’t want to spend that much time doing so, especially since my Typhlosion was strong enough to nuke every enemy trainer alone. Yes, I was one of those players. I wasn’t excited by anything other than the c?reature collecting at this point, but I was acclimated into what basically? defines the genre.

Also, I used a Master Ball on a Doduo. That’s a solid? indicator of how much I understood about the whole thinking part of RPGs.

Then in the early 21st century came along a shiny new Nintendo system, and with it, a metric ton of games starring our favorite plumber. Dozens of new Mario games I was destined to rent and buy, but one of them didn’t have Mario as I knew him. Why was he flat? Why was he friends with a cute Goomba girl and silly Koopa dork? How come I never played the original Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64? “Who cares, it’s a Mario game, I gotta play it!” said little Cedi, as he enthusiastically inserted the disc into his GameCube. The back of the box told me it was going to be a very different type of Mario game, but I had already accepted that going into it. “It’s a lot like Pokémon but without the ??monst??er catching,” little Cedi guessed.

Little ??Cedi guessed wrong. And ?like any good teacher, ;Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was determined ??to make him not just know the right answer, but understand it.

The gameplay was my first lesson. Pokémon taught me a few of the fundamentals; you take turns selecting actions, you can level grind to get stronger, and you want to exploit elemental weaknesses everywhere you can. That’s what I always did back in Gold, playing only with my starter and abusing the heck out of TMs. Much to little Cedi’s surprise, TTYD didn’t allow either of the latter two, at least not to ??the extent of ignoring other aspects of the battle system.

You can grind, but levels don&rsqu??o;t make everything stronger. You never gain attack or defense from leveling, and you can only choose one stat to increase every level. I was quickly forced to accept two very important facts about? this RPG: You can’t level grind to instantly overpower every encounter, and you have to make choices that matter for your play style in the long term.

Sure, some similar stipulations regarding what you should and shouldn’t do exist in the positional/situational attacking mechanics. Your hammer can only hit the first grounded enemy, and your jump can’t hurt spiked enemies. But these were limitations to work around, not advantages to exploit. My party may have had much more HP, but the enemy had an advantage I mostly couldn’t turn to my own. Instead, I had to ask myself how I could use my skills and resources to overcome those disadvantages, or even create new opportunities. Jumping on Koopas flips them over and renders them defenseless, so I learned to prioritize ??them over less easily incapacitated foes. Hyper Goombas can charge to deal a crapton of damage, so I learned to either take them out pronto or shield up from their counterattack. Pink Fuzzies can suck FP to nuke you the following turn, so I learned to not be stingy with my special moves against them. The game acclimated me towards understanding little tactics like that.

I never got really deep into st?rategies such as with Danger Mario builds, and I didn’t need to. Paper Mario is still a simple and easy RPG. But I was actually strategizing in a sense. I was reacting to my foes’ actions, utilizing a wide array of abilities, relying on my party members, and building a character who can do a lo??t but not everything. It was much more engaging than just spamming Earthquake on my overgrown fire mouse (no hard feelings Typhlosion ilu). I learned to l?ove the element of making choices in gameplay, both in battle and to prepare for future battles.

By the time I finished the fortress east of Petalburg, which taught me the vital importance of items in battle, I was getting the hang of the game’s basic mechanics. Then ??a bit later, I got my second party member, Koops. I liked Goombella and her tattling a lot already, but he brought his own interesting traits I would come to appreciate. They included a long-range first strike, the defensive capabilities of the Koopas I’ve fought up to this point, an AoE attack??, and a quest to avenge his father and overcome his self-esteem issues.

“Wait, what? But… this is a video game!” Little Cedi exclaimed. “People do??n’t have problems like that in video games! You just gotta have fun, beat the bad guys and save the world!”

Mrs. TTYD took a deep, long sigh, and tapped her chalk against the TV screen. Midterm???s had begun.

Gradually, the chapters of this game dragged me into more deep and personal plotlines. Koops had a heartfelt reunion with his father. Mario uncovered a conspiracy in the Glitz Pit with the aid of a vendetta-carrying secretary. One of my own enemies became my sworn ally after I consoled her from her sister&rsq?uo;s abuse. A depressed sailor spent a moment in the a?djacent room after I delivered him the late dying message of his wife. Despite the slapstick and on-point jokes keeping me laughing, this game was bold enough to dive into subject matter that was dark, serious, and most of all, emotional.

I can feel th?e tears trying t??o come back right now.

I was beginning to see my partners and the cast members around me not just as party members and NPCs, but as characters and people. They had personalities. They had goals. They had fears. They had roles to play. Even Mario kinda had his own role to play, depending on how I played up his multiple choice dialogues. I felt their relationships, their camaraderie, their grudges, their excitement, their depressi??on, their relief. The writing had pulled me into their story. I learned to love video games not just for gameplay, but for storytelling.

Sure, stories ??of similar, if not greater calibers exist somewhere in every genre these days. But a great story with great writing and great characters is considered the core of a great RPG, not an optional extra. TTYD is the gam?e which showed m?e that, through a series that I never expected any such thing out of.

Mrs. TTYD felt like a cruel teacher at times. Her l?essons challenged me. Her demonstrations crushed my understanding of things. Her lectures broke my enthusiasm. But she didn’t do it just to make me suffer. She did it to help me understand something I should appreciate knowing in my future.

It might be a thousand years old, but this was the door that led me to another realm of gaming. I’m not sure where my appreciation for games would be today if it wasn’t for that. I’d eventually come to play Kingdom Hearts II for completely unrelated reasons, and I love that game in different but related ways. I never even knew that Kingdom Hearts&n??bsp;was an RPG series until I picked it up. Who knows, maybe destiny would have?? led me down this path sooner or later?

But I ain’t complaining. I played Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. What? better gateway into RPGs could I have asked for? Regardless of the future of the Paper Mario subseries, I’m?? simply glad that I had the opportunity to explore such a wonderful RPG.

As long as Paper Mario’s future stays away from the battle sy??stem used in Sticker Star and Color Splash. I might be ?less glad if they m??ake a third game like that.

The post Schooled: How I learned to love RPGs appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs!

[Has a pesky backlog got your hard drive and game shelf all clogged up worse than a Taco Bell bathroom? Let TurboKill's handy-dandy tips on completing games give you a little boost! This is an entry from August's Bloggers Wanted prompt. We're going HAM on blog promotions this month, so write something for this month's prompt and you just might get your work featured by Dtoid! - Wes]

Look at your backlog, now look at me. Look again at your backlog, then turn to a mirror, and now back to me. That's a lot of games and I'm sure you're struggling lo?oking at yourself in the mirror. Unfortunately, I can't fix that face of yours; however I'm willing to give you some tips to help you with that backlog problem. Here are a few EZP?Z games to get started with:

Far Cry 4

If I said you could complete an open-world game in 30 minutes or less without having to monotonously practice glitching the game, would you believe me? Well it doesn't matter if you believe me - you ??can and I'm about to unveil the secret: All you need to do is to follow directions. ??[Minor spoilers ahead]

"Wait, isn't this Milo?" No, but close enough.

You know how NPCs love asking you t??o stay put, but progressi??on is impossible unless you disobey them? Not this time.

After the game's brief intro, you'll find yourself in Pagan Min's abode. Yes, he is the game's villain, but stay calm. When it comes to speedrunning this game, he will be your best (and only) friend. At some point he will tell you to wait. DO WHAT HE SAYS. DO NOT ROAM AROUND. SHOW SOME DAMN RESPECT. Just sit there and wait. You may find yourself thinking that that I am pulling your leg, but he will come back. When he does ret?urn, he does what he said he would and takes you straight to the end sequence. Isn't that nice of him?

Congrats, you just speedran Far Cry 4!

Super Smash Bros. 4

This one is pretty straightforward, just like Far Cry 4. What do you need to do? Absolutely nothing. Except choosing Luigi is REQUIRED. Don't as??k me why, I didn't make this game.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have not tested this myself, ??but here's a nice video showing you how it's done.

Note that the technique employed in the above video is very strict. You can't move Luigi whatsoever. In fact, DON'T touch that controller. The best way for you? to maintain your composure and keep Luigi THAT still is probably if you take your controller and place it somewhere out of reach. Personally, I recommend that you shut off your controller or lock it a??way if you are too tempted to pick it up and save Luigi. I have heard of some people burying their controller in a sealed box to some success. However, that is unnecessary. Have faith in him, he'll be okay.

Just don't move.

Downwell

Where do you go? Well...down!

Keep going down. You'll reac??h the end eventually. I think.

My Ultimate Tip

Still struggling with that backlog? Of course you are. I would be, too, if it weren't for my secret trick to completing a ton of games. Last month, I was inspired by the World of Warcraft farming prisons of China. These folks wanted to make a profit. How did they do it? They had other people do the work for them! Now that's what I call playing with power. Nintendo Power would be so proud. Hearing about? t?hose prison farms had me thinking, "How can I adapt this to completing games?" And then it hit me: Create a master list, make it into a monthly/annual contest, and have people complete games for me! Absolutely brilliant, isn't it? As I speak, over 300 games have now been completed for me.

By the way, please do submit to me any games you've completed here. And if you want to b?e entered into the current month's l??eaderboards be sure to let me know what you completed that month. Any help completing games would be appreciated - I can't afford them! 

Hopefully these pro tips will help you get started on completing some games for me and put a dent in that backlog of mine yours.

The post Faking it: Finishing games appeared first on Destructoid.

Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Giant Squid

[Kerrik52 embarked on a herculean effort to condense thirty-seven books' and ninety-four video games' worth of lore into an easy-to-read blog - all in an effort to give you, the plebeian soul you are, a basic knowledge of the Legacy of Kain series. Did it work? I read it, and the series can quite easily be summed up as, 'Giant Squid is rarely pleased.' Great work, Kerrik! This is part of our Bloggers Wanted series from August. Get your work featured by Destructoid by writing a kickass blog like this one! - Wes]

The Legacy of Kain series is widely regarded as one of the greatest stories ever told in video games - and for good re?ason. The writing and acting is outstanding. But that story is somewhat complicated, being centered around time-traveling vampires and all. The timelines that bind the story together are awfully complex and makes it really hard to understand the plot in full.

But fear not, for a??fter extensive research, that may or may not h?ave been fueled by the finest third-grade narcotics that $5.67 can buy, I have managed to compile and explain the whole thing. Enjoy.

The Origins

A thing about the series that people might find surprising is that it actually originates with a book series from the 1850s called Vampirium non Grata, written by Richard Olmar, hi??s son, his grandson, and his e??stranged aunt over the course of 37 years.

The 37 books serve to introduce the land of Nosgoth and? details the 300-year history of the Thergothon family. It's chock full of political intrigue, sexual misadventures, and the odd vampire every now and then to make sure the title isn't some sort of elaborate metaphor designed to draw eyes.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I only ever bothered to glance at the Cliff's No??tes, which was enough of an ordeal, I'll have you know. It's not really important to the overall plot anyway; the most important thing they do is give Nosgoth a name and imply that there might be vampires. But hey, gotta start somewhere.

40 years after the book series' conclusion, some random asshole writer stole the rights to the property and tried to compile it into a screenplay. It was a fool's errand, as the material is just too massive to make any semblance of a decent script out of. It was also the 1930s, so independent cinema wasn't the biggest thing anyway. The writer threw it into the trash, where a desperate Broadway producer sat poised to get?? his fill.

Only 12% of the pages endured the contact with some arcane goop smelling distinctly of raspberries and tears, leaving very few details to make up the new stageplay. Nosgoth, vampires, and nobles being jackasses were the major points of focus in the new production. It was dubbed My Bloody Solstice Date and failed miserably to meet any sort of expectations. But it w??as taped shoddily and thus found its way onto late-night television. It's the law of the universe.

That takes us closer to present day, as the lead writer of the first game, Denis Dyack, saw this recording while suffering through a killer cold whilst horribly inebriated. As you know, such a combination leads to either death or a killer script. He endured and was thus inspired to write the script for a game titled Pillars of Nosgoth. After securing cooperation with Silicon Knights, production began on the renamed game Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

The game introduces us to a more interesting side of Nosgoth, far awa?y from the setting's pompous beginnings. The vampire Vorador is seen slaughtering the keepers of Nosgoth, the Circle of Nine. He slays a majority of them, including their protector, Malek. The only survivors are the Time, Mind, and Death guardians Moebius, Nupraptor, and Mortanius, respectively. Malek gets his soul fused to his armor as punishment for his failure. The rest are soon replaced to guard their individual pillar, as Nosgoth cannot survive without its guardians.

Some 500 years later, Nupraptor's girlfriend, Ariel, the Balance guardian, is murdered, which corrupts the pillars. Some years even later, a nobleman named Kain is trying his damnedest to get hammered and failing miserably. He then gets stabbed by an army of assassins. We all have bad days. He then gets resurrected by Mortanius as a vampire for some reason and decides to kill his assassins. It's done rather quickly and the game would be over if Mortanius hadn't convin??ced him to go after whoever hired them.

Kain finds the ghost of Ariel at the?? pillars and she tells him that Nupraptor went mad when she died and infected the other guardians with his madness due to his Mind Guardian powers. She wants Kain to kill the guardians so that new ones can be born and Nosgoth can prosper.

Kain doesn't care about any of that and instead convinces himself that killing the guardians will cure him of vampirism. Where there's a will, there's a way, you know? He then goes into a disc?-long soliloquy where he contemplates what he has lost when Mortanius liberated him from his humanity. It's good stuff, but a bit tedious after the first few times.

Kain goes and slays Nupraptor, growing more fond of his vampirism along the way. But it all goes to shit when Malek shows up. Driven to cowardice, Kain goes in search of the elder vampire Vorador for help. After? trekking through Vorador's bondage dungeon, he ?finds Vorador and is offered a ring to summon the old vampire.

With the means to defeat Malik in hand, Kain goes after more guardians, including Dejoule the Energist, Bane the Druid, and Cray the Ballonist, ending up with their belongings, which he uses to restore the pillars. This goes on for a while and he finally gets hold of the Soul Reaver, a soul-sucking bastard of a sword that holds great importance to the series. After gouging out ??Azimuth's fourth eye with it, Kain finds a time streaming device. We in f??or some weird shit soon, I assure you.

But before that, some asshole named the Nemesis is? trying to conquer Nosgoth and Kain needs to get the help of the puppet king of Willendorf in order to defeat him. After a good poetry slam, the king agrees to help fight the nemesis. T?hat goes horribly, leaving Kain with no choice but to use the time streaming device.

And here is where the timeline shenanigans begin. Keep the timeline where Kain stays and gets ??captured by the Nemesis in mind for later. For now, Kain is stuck 50 years in the past. He decides to go and kill the Nemesis when he is young in order to stop his reign. Funnily enough, the young Nemesis, King William, also has the Soul Reaver. They fight and William's blade shatters. Kain finds a convenient time streaming device and goes forward in time. The Nemesis is no more, but he accidentally incited a vampire crusade that led to the execution of Vorador. Oops.

It was all the work of the Time guardian Moebius, which is rather obvious in retrospect. Time streaming devices do not come cheap. He sends a bunch of stuff from across time to fight Kain, including himself. This is a future Kain from the "captured by the Nemesis" timeline. More on? that later. He dies like a bitch anyway and so do??es Moebius.

M?ortanius calls and says that Kain should return to the pillars to?? get his revenge.As they are about to begin to fight, Mortanius mutates into some sort of demon who takes responsibility for both Ariel's and Kain's murders. It's some crap about using the weakened pillars to rule Nosgoth. Kain remains undeterred and stabs the fucker.

But the pillar of balance remains corrupted and Kain realizes that he is the new Guardian of Balance. This leaves him with the choice to kill himself to save Nosgoth, or rule it with an iron fist as the last remaining vampire. Option 1 goes into the Dead Sun timeline, while the other leads into Soul ?Reaver.

But before all that, there's the matter of Kain getting captured by the Nemesis. The plan was for that to be explored in a TV serie??s, but it was not to be. Only the pilot episode was produced and according to legend, the CGI was so bad that test audiences resorted to stabbing each other with soda straws in search of release from?? this mortal coil. No big loss really, it's a pretty boring story to explore. But there are rumors that Kain would have teamed up with a talking monkey, which would have been amazing.

Dead Sun was never released, making a bit hard to get hold of. But have no fear, as it lies buried in the deepest reaches of the Dark Web, ready for any brave soul to claim. I may have lost a major partition of my immortal soul, but it was sort of worth it. The game jumps a few millennia into the future, just like Soul Reaver - the difference being that no one from Blood Omen ??is still alive and few aspects of it remain t??o set up the plot.

It concerns two clans of freshly-minted vampires born of Mortanius' old spellbook. The pillar guardians from a few centuries back have been sealed in their pillars, ensuring Nosgoth's prosperous future. This was?? mostly a move to pull focus away from them and instead let the Varmingnder and Uleath clans have central focus.

You play as a Varmingnder lord named Udon, having just accidentally slain their matriarch? with a chandelier. We all have bad days, even in the future. He goes on the run from his clansmen whilst avoiding Uleath forces and searching for allies amongst them both in his quest for peace and a nice house. I would deluge more details, but I had an "incident" with some people who claimed the game files turned into child pornography if you dumped them in reverse onto a rare Minion-them??ed USB drive.

It was of course just pretense to keep Dead Sun from the public eye, but the experience did at least teach me how nice it is to have cougars with a taste for human flesh at your disposal. Not that I have such cougars, they're just cats. Mutant, overgrown cats who love people very very much. But enough of that part of the franchise, on to Soul Reaver!

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

Many centuries have passed and Kain has conquered Nosgoth and revels in its decay. There are 18 audi?o dramas detailing the rise of his empire, as well as the McDonald's tie-in game Nosgoth. He has raised six vampire lieutenants by infusing them with his own soul, thus sharing both his powers and his cursed existence. This let them take part in Kain's powers after he gained them. But one of them, Raziel, managed to grow wings an??d surpass his master. This earned him a wing-clipping and a dunk the great dankness of the abyss. Vampires are weak to green-tinted water in this franchise, so he burns to death.

But not even the dead know peace in Nosgoth and Raziel is no different. A giant squid on a wall tells him that Nosgoth has decayed further and that Kain?? must be killed to save it. Raziel is stuck in the spectral realm, the realm of the dead, and so must sustain himself on souls in order to return to the material realm and kill his vampiric brethren.

He kills Melchiah with a chandelier trap and soon runs into Kain at the pillars. They fight and Kain's Soul Reaver shatters in the battle and its vampiric essence binds itself to Raziel, granting him a wraith blade. Thus armed, Raziel goes to slap Zephon and claim his soul. After that, he continu?es into an ancient Sarafan crypt and finds his own name etched on the wall. Raziel and his brothers were vampire hunters in their past lives. A legacy Kain deci??ded to twist for the lulz.

After killing two more of his brothers and leaving Turel behind, Raziel hunts down Kain in Moebius' old abode. He finds the Chronoplast, which offers insight into other moments in time. These momen?ts include Raziel perched on a cl?iff, Kain's stint as troubadour, and something about a cult. There are also images foretelling the events of the game, meaning that Kain knew everything in advance.

This enrages Raziel and he attacks Kain soon after finding him. A few quick-time events later, Kain is almost dead and escapes into a time portal. Raziel is determined to follow him into the past, in spite of the squid's warnings. And so ends Soul Reaver, with Raziel appearing before Moebius.

The original ending had Raziel kill Kain and use the intense sound of Zephon's cathedral to vanquish local vampires. This ending was explored in the card game, which I haven't played; I have an irrational fear of getting cut by booster pack packaging. It's a devastating ailment, worthy of immeasurable amounts of poetry. But that can wait, on to Soul Reaver 2.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2

Raziel arrives 30 years before Blood Omen and is welcomed by Moebius. He tries as much as he can to appear trustworthy but it's a lost cause. The dude is shifty as fuck. Raziel walks outside and finds William the Just's broken Soul Reaver and picks it up. His wraith blade gets aroused by the encounter (the game's wording, not mine) and repairs it. This makes it stronger and it almost devours Raziel. Moebius then sneaks up behind him and tells Raziel to seek Kain at the pillars an??d murder him.

Raziel is rather discombobulated by the whole experience and strikes at Moebius. But then the giant squid gets mentioned and Raziel realizes that he is a swag dude. Raziel sods?? off outside and takes in the pretty view, engaging in a fishing mini-game for a while. He soon remembers that Kain hates being stood up at a date and decides to stay a while longer.

At the pillars, Raziel fails a stealth check and gets stuck in an extended dialogue with Kain. They talk about a lot of crap, including revenge, Kain's ref??usal to kill himself like a hero, and their failed crépe boutique. Kain then teleports away, saving the player from yet another lame boss fight.

Inside of a cave, finds the squid again, who exists outside of linear time. Don't think about it. The squid is not a fan of? Raziel's rebellious phase and demands he complete his chores by killing Kain.

After clearing a dungeon and dodging some giant frogs, Razilel arrives at Vorador's summer home and speaks to the old vampire. He says that the ancient, Janus Cauldron, who died to the Sarafan 5?00 years prior, holds the answer to the weird graffiti Raziel has seen while dungeon crawling. In the next forge, it's revealed that the ancients used the pillars to banish their enemies to the Shadow Realm. Raziel returns to Moebius' crib and finds Kain there. Now it's time for yet another timeline split, as this is where Raziel is destined to kill Kain.

In the timeline where he does, he is soon filled with regret and sets out to resurrect him in the confines of the Ancient Treasury in the DLC of Laura Croft & The Guardian of Light. Once Ka?in has been revived, they go on an amazing adventure together, bu??ddy cop style.

But that's not how Soul Reaver 2 continues, as Kain has a plan to avoid being k??illed. He gives Raziel the Soul Reaver and watches as the distortion that let ?him change history increases. Raziel strikes the blade into the crotch of King William's tomb, sparing Kain, in spite of history wanting otherwise. This causes the future to shift in accordance with what has transpired. They part ways and Raziel goes back to the time streaming device.

Moebius is there and looks properly spooked. He is used to knowing what the future entails, so this event has him scared. Raziel forces him to set the device to before the Sarafan's raid on Janus. It goes rather poorly, as Moebius sends him to 100 years after the end of Blood Omen. Moebius' ghost me?ets him there and tries to scare him, to no avail. Ghosts pose little threat when you're a soul-sucking demon.

After fighting some Demons and Wizards, Raziel makes his ways to the pillars and speaks to the gian?t squid situated beneath them. It bitches at Raziel for not killing Kain and they part ways. After trying his best to use the Soul Reaver a?s a lockpick to get to another time streaming device, Kain appears yet again. He must have been bored these last 130 years. They talk about who is really in control of their fates and whatever can be done to untangle this messy storyline.

Afterwards, Raziel goes through another dungeon and gets the thingie needed to get to the time streaming device. He realizes that he has no idea how to operate it and just prays that it will ?take him back in time to Janus. Not the brightest one, our protagonist. It works, conveniently enough, taking him to the age of the Sarafan. He stabs his way to Janus' place, solving a plethora of puzzles along the way, including the mind-bender, "take tomato juice from one cup to the next." Janus turns out to be a pretty nice guy, having waited for the Reaver messiah for thousands of years.

He explains that the ancients were the original keepers of the pillars, before mankind took over. The ancients died out and used humans as replacement guardians. Janus is the forger of the Reaver and intends to follow their prophecy by giving it to Raziel so that he can save? Nosgoth with it. The ritual is cut short by the Sarafan and Janus then teleports Raziel into a filler dungeon.

When Raziel escapes Janus' blood bath, he fin?ds a familiar sight. He sees himself as a Sarafan slicing up Janus' chest and laying claim to the Heart of Darkness within. The sheer force of the dramatic irony present in the scene is enough to leave Raziel stunned as the Sarafan run away from the collapsing retreat. Raziel is thoroughly miffed and intends to stop at nothing to kill himself, reclaim the Reaver and revive Janos. That's quest if I ever saw one. On the way there, the squid wishes him go?od luck.

The Reaver has bee??n left in the open for Raziel to claim and so he does. This activates the invincibility cheat and lets him stab his way through his Sarafan brothers on his way to himself. They "enjoy" a drawn-out 3??5 minute battle before Raziel manages to stab Raziel in the chest.

Finally alone, the wraith blade and the Reaver gang up on Raziel and start to suck him into the blade. For you see, he was the real Soul Reaver all along. Kain walks in on this debacle and decides to help the poor boy from harming himself. He pulls out the blade, thereby changing history yet again. And he recoils in horror as he experiences all of Blood Omen 2 in a single m?oment. I would not wish such a fate on my ??worst enemy.

Raziel fades away and the game ends. Next up is the mobile game that's a prelude to Blood Omen 2, detailing young Kain's rise to power in the new timeline resulting from the changes done in Soul Reaver 2. Since it's a Clash of Clans clone, the room for storytelling is rather limited. But it does manage to give some character to Kain's lieutenants from Blood Omen 2, which is mo??re than the proper game ma?naged to do.

Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2

Blood Omen 2 opens with Kain awakening with amnesia next to a female vampire dressed in somewhat lewd clothing named Umah 400 years after the end of the first game. It r?eally sets the stage for what is to come. She tells him that he lo??st to the Sarafan lord some 200 years ago and that Nosgoth is now under his rule. She wants him to ally him self with the Cabal, a resistance movement consisting of vampires, ents, and dwarves.

Kain somewhat agrees and goes on a crusade against the Sarafan, slaying a bunch of hi?s old lieutenants who have joined them. It's a rather boring campaign, in spite of what is at stake. The only thing of interest in the first part of the game is Vorador showing up again, despite being killed centuries ago.

The true nature of his revival has been lost to time, as the comic book series meant to explain it got cancelled after two issues. Might be for the best, as I hear it was supposed to be a crossover with Tomb Raider where Lara becomes a half-vampi?re. Comics are stupid.

Umah gets kidnapped and Kain goes after more traitors. After rescuing Umah, she tells Kain that the Sarafan are using a plot device to open portals around Nosgoth. It's known as the Nexus Stone and it somehow make?s you immune to the Soul Reaver. Just accept it so we can move on.

The Sarafan lord is planning so?mething with a thing known ?only as the Device. Great name there, guys. Kain goes to it and finds the Beast sealed within. Again, great name guys. The Beast powers the Device and can only be freed if Kain finds the Builder. No comment.

The Builder is kept in the Eternal ?Prison, a place outside of time and full of skeleto?ns. It's weird.

Kain finds the Builder and drinks his blood so that he can destroy the Device with it and free the Beast. The Beast warns him of the Hylden, who are the ones controlling nosgoth, with the Sarafan Lord as their leader. Kain must then go to the Mass to offer the blood of the Builder and destroy the Device. Enough, I beg you Blood Omen 2, no more lame names!

When Kain returns to the Beast, he has regained his true form, that of Janos Cauldron. He explains that the Hylden were the foes of the ancients who were banished by the pillars. But thanks to Kain, the pillars have weakened and a few managed ??to slip out. They teleport back to base and formulate a plan to strike at the Hylden city and take out the gate within that allows Hy?lden to roam the land.

The city is across the sea, so Kain and Umah go to the Wharves looking for a row boat. Umah knicks the Nexus Stone in order to keep Kain from getting the Soul Reaver, thinking he'll eliminate the other vampires. She gets herself mortally wounded and tries to suck up to Kain so that he'll save her life. It doesn't work and he slits her throat. Roma?nce subplot vanquished!

Following a hearty rowing minigame, Kain arrives at the Hylden city and goes to turn off the shield generator ??so that Vorador and Janos can teleport in. Vorador is miffed over Umah's death but the Sarafan lord arrives before he can start anything.

Kain and the? lord fight for a while and Kain throws the Nexus Stone into the Hylden gate in order to force it to collapse. As it does, Janos flies in and pile drives the lord so that Kain can get the Soul Reaver. Janos gets thrown into a hole and Kain stabs t?he lord, finally ending the game.

Kain vows to rebuild Nosgoth and rule it with an iron fist. Yaaaaaaay??.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance

With that out of the way, it's time for the last game in the series, Defiance. It begins where Soul Reaver 2 ended, with ??Kain in the Sarafan age and Raziel lost in the Spectral re??alm. Kain goes to find Moebius and finds nothing but vague hints. Raziel, on the other hand, is stuck with the giant squid.

He manages to escape during a cook-off and arrives in a cemetery before we swap back to Kain. He? runs around the Sarafan stronghold looking to talk more with Moebius. He s??ays that Raziel's fate is to kill Kain and to be sealed in the Reaver. Kain doesn't believe it, but it told that there's proof west of the pillars.

Raziel is still stuck in the Spectral realm, but finds escape by stuffing his soul into the anuses of buried corpses, as you do.? He deduces that he stayed in the Spectral realm for 500 years and now has to fight a few of Moebius' vampire hunters. There's also some demon bastards who possess corpses as well, cramping Raziel's style. They must be destroyed.

Both Raziel and Kain engage in some puzzle??-solving, taking Raziel to the pillars and Kain to a vampire citadel west of them. They are still 500 years apart however. At the pillars, Raziel asks Ariel for directions to Vorador. It's a lovely trek through some temples, forests,?? and amusement parks.

Inside the citadel, Kain finds a mural depicting a prophecy. It involves the champions of the Ancients and the ??Hylden doing battle. The vampire hero armed with the Reaver and the Hyl??den hero using a flaming sword. According to the prophecy, the Hylden hero wins, impaling the vampire.

In Vorador's cri??b, Raziel rummages around for a bunch of artifacts, keys, and filler content. He soon gets teleported to the Water temple too, which is about as fun as it sounds. But after a bit more exploring, ??he finally finds Vorador.

They discuss?? whatever the hell the purpose of the Reaver is. They get nowhere and Vorador thinks they should revive Janos by retrieving his heart. It's in Avernus Cathe??dral, so Raziel packs his bags.

Kain is still stuck in the citadel and finds another mural. This one is the opposite of the las??t, saying t??he vampire hero impales the Hylden hero. It's not a proper prophecy if you double dip, guys.

He stumbles upon the chamber of the Ancient Squid Oracle of the Vampires, who offers him a shortcut 500 years into the future. Since Kain can only sustain his sanity playing Twister for so long, he bets on the gate. He does indeed land exactly when he n??eeds to and also packs his bags for Avernus.

Raziel does some dungeon-crawling in the cathedral and finds himself some mad loot. But beyond that, he finds some weird sh??it in the basement, as one does. There is a creepy, and surprisingly sex-less, ritual going on.

Mortanius the Death guardian praises the god he's keeping in a pit down here and drops it a blood sacrifice. The god senses Raziel and pulls him down into ??the pit. Raziel recognizes the god as his brother Turel, who has come back from the future. He is host to a cubic fuckton of Hylden and none too happy about it.

Raziel beats him over the head with some novelty belfries and climbs up from the pit, where Mortanius awaits. He says that he used Janos' heart to revive Kain and creates the vampire hero. The same heart Raziel needs to revive Janos. Quite the conundrum, one only solv?ed by bloodshed.

Kain arrives at the cathedral and engages with Raziel in an epic ??two-hour dialog??ue. Once they have had a healthy discussion about life, death, fate, and chilidogs, they fight. Raziel pulls out the heart from Kain and dropkicks him into another dimension.

Heart in hand, Raziel returns to Vorador's crib and finds Moebius there. The old coot is very happy that Kain is dead and is ready to accept his death at the hands of Kain. Raziel goes and manages to revive Janos, who realises that Raziel is both the Hylden? and vampire hero, sin??ce he wields both a flaming sword and the Reaver.

They warp to the vampire citadel and talk about how if the p??illars remain in human hands, the binding will fail, and the Hylden will escape the demon dimension. In search of answers, Raziel fi??ghts his way past the giant squid and activates the Spirit Forge, summoning all of the old Balance Guardians.

Raziel stabs them and gets the Spirit Reaver. Back topside, the pillars explode and the lord? of the Hylden takes over Janos. He kills Raziel, returning him to the Spectral realm. This leaves him stuck with the squid and quite miffed.

Somehow, Kain wakes up in hell and fights his way out of it like a badass. He goes ??to the citadel as well and finds Moebius there. You can probably guess what happens next. Hint: It involves stabbing. And it goes even further than that, since Raziel is there t?o stab his soul and consume it.

Raziel undergoes some major revelations and rea?lizes his destiny. He uses Moebi??us' corpse to do a jig in order to trick Kain into impaling him. He gets turned into the Soul Reaver and manages to purify Kain from Nupraptor's madness and reveal the squid to him. Kain fights off the squid and looks out into the distance, full of hope that he can fix this mess.

And that's it! No more Legacy of Kain! You now know just about everything there is to know (until the inevitable reboot in 22 years, of course.) about the series. I mean, this is the bare minimum you need to know in order to have a conversation with a proper fan, but it's a good start. You might even be able to understand this simplified illustration of al??l the timelines:

VAE VICTIS

The post Faking it: Under??standing the Legacy of Kain timeline appeared first on Destructoid.

This could get ugly

[Kerrik52 greatly underestimates our collective power. Think you have a situation to stump his image folder? Do your best, Dtoid! This challenge came from Qtoid, our very own shitposting/social media platform. Make the site your own - Kerrik sure has! - Wes]

Two things. Suddenly getting only 4 1/2 hours of of sleep in the middle of the week sucks and will haunt you for days. My shitpost collection of 3000 images is now properly named and sorted. I can share some if you name a situation. Challenge me!

The post A Quickpost challenge from Kerrik52 appeared first on Destructoid.

First one to make a Lazy Town joke gets shot

[Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, readers of all ages - welcome to yet another edition of Dtoid Draws! This is a tradition near and dear to my heart, so without further ado, let's let the community's hands do the talking! - Wes]

Good morning, everyone! Destructoid Draws' usual host, Bass, fell p??rey to a very sudden and terminal illness. Thankfully, I was able to t??ake over for him, so the show will go on as usual! Plus, if we're being totally honest, I am better than he is anyway.

Don't you just love memorable villains? An entertaining rascal can make even the most mediocre game worth playing to the end. And the villains that are truly worth hating, oh they are something else! How satisfying it feels to finally punch their face in the face, and bring justice to the land. They can often be the most fleshed-out characters in a game because their motivation ?goes beyond simply wanting to help people.

So this one goes out to all of you world dominators, revenge s??eekers, social manipulators, or insane characters out there. All of these drawings are of our favorite villains. This is their darkness' time to shine, for it has made our gaming days brighter. 

BarnacleBritches

Joker from Bam Ham

"One could be forgiven for thinking that is Willem Dafoe from Beyond: Two Souls. However, it is actually The Joker from the Batman: Arkham series! While not the best video game antagonist out there, the Joker himself is my favorite villain of all time. One of my favorite characters ever, he is a villain who, even when written poorly, has moments greater than most bad guys. Particularly, the Arkham City Joker has some of the best dialogue ever written. He even comes across as somewhat sympathetic in the end...somewhat. Of course this is all reinforced by Mark Hamill's amazing voice performance, making him the most interesting character in the game. Make no mistake, The Joker is a bad guy. He is extremely likable, funny, and even badass in his own way. But he is also an abusive, manipulative murderer. One of the rare villains that allows you to like him, while still rooting for the good guy to take him down. You never WANT Joker to win. He never has good, reasonable mo??tives for his actions, and always he will acknowledge what a piece of shit he really is."

TheBlondeBass

Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog

"To say the Sonic the Hedgehog series has its ups and downs is being particularly gentle. It's a series that goes from Sonic 3 to Sonic 4, from Sonic Adventure 2 to Sonic 06, from Sonic Generations to Sonic Boom. One could call it irony considering the series' trademark loop-the-loops. But there's one particular thing that has stayed stable all the way. Dr. Eggman, the genius that can never learn not to mess with forces beyond his control, is just?? such a funny character. And you know what they say, the more the merrier! Generations has both his older and newer designs, and their banter is great. 

He's also the best part of the Archie comics." 

Larxinostic

SHODAN from System Shock

"Most chilling ch??aracter I've encountered. There's a cold feeling in my gut even now!"

MeeGhoulz

Ghaleon from LUNAR

"Ghaleon's voice (John Truitt) was one of the first time I noticed how the Sega CD added a crucial element of gaming immersion: Real voices. Taking it for granted today is understandable, but as one of the first games I played on this brand new system, I can tell it made a whole lot of difference. LUNAR fans of the original will know exactly what I'm talking about. Ghaleon's voice acting was perfect. His voice actor returning for the the next three iterations of the character should be proof enough. As the games depicted mild violence, you can blam??e the terror, insanity, and hunger for revenge portrayed by Truitt's acting for the inspiration resulting on my fanart homage."

vxxy

Teisel Bonne from Mega Man

"Teisel Bonne is like the perfect Saturday morning cartoon villain. He and the Bonne family are technically evil, but sympathetic foils for the hero. Teisel is the?? brash but lovable older brother and leader with a killer laugh. And even though he's a pirate, he still seems like a nice guy just trying to get by. You can't help but find yourself kind of rooting for him and his family."

Inquisitive Ravenclaw

Tron Bonne from Mega Man

"Tron Bonne is a favorite Villain of mine, mostly because of her particular brand of villainy. While I still haven't had the chance to play either Mega Man Legends game, I have had the pleasure of playing the spinoff, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne.

In it, she's the goofiest yet most effective evil doer ever. Her Servbots would do all the dirty work and petty thefts, while the lady herself took charge in her mini-mech, Gustaff, blowing up anything that even remotely resembled a threat. She never kills anyone, only going so far as to wreck their stuff, steal their money, and get while the gettin's good! Back at her base, she micromanages her mass-produced army, who surprisingly have a number of interests, personalities, and talents, not unlike Ghost in the Shell's Tachi?koma. She clearly cares for them all, while still showing them who's the ??boss.

It's the consistency of keeping Tron Bonne and family goofy while still being evil throughout her appearances that I appreciate. Nowadays there are too many Villains out there who are either tormented and broody, or misunderstood and/or unstable. Tron Bonne harkens back to a simpler time when a villain was just doing it "for the evulz," much like Team Rocket's portrayal in the Pokemon anime (well, Jessie, James, and Meowth's team a?t least). And that's why she's awesome!

Also, she's a qt 3.14159."

Weslikestacos... Wait, just Wes now?

Boulder from Resident Evil

"Resident Evil is a series where you use guns and rockets launchers and shit to shoot varying degrees of the crap out of zombies. Sometimes, animals and bugs and closet doors get infected, too, and holy shit it's magnificent. Through seven numbered iterations and thousands of spin-offs, the series has seen some pretty wacky shit. I mean, hell, you fought a giant mecha-midget in RE 4, which is amazing and silly. However, throughout the entire ?series, no foe has been as ??formidable, ferocious, and fucking stupid as Boulder.

Boulder made its appearance in the critically-challenged Resident Evil 5, a game where you canoe through Africa and shoot what white people thought all Africans looked like up until the year 1979. In the title, you chase series villain Wesker as he does some stuff that doesn't really make any sense, culminating in one of the most epic and? laugh-out-loud stupid setpieces in the history of gaming - the notorious volc??ano scene. Wesker goes into a volcano for reasons even he doesn't know, and for some reason you, as Chris Redfield, chase him down through the molten corridors. At some point a fucking boulder gets in your way. And you punch the fucking fuck out of it. And if you just read that and didn't pop a hard-on so turgid that you burst a vessel in your dick, you've lost all feeling. You're not human anymore. Get some help, your mother and I are worried about you.

Seriously, in one Resident Evil title you get chased through a hallway by a giant snake, and in another you spend the entire game running away from Atomic Sloth from The Goonies - and TH?IS IS PART OF THE FINAL BOSS SEQUENCE. A boulder that you ?have to punch is basically the penultimate boss of the game. Wow.

People complain about this game, and in many ways it deserves a lot of its criticism. But if punching a boulder in an active volcano to stop a zombie-man with a ?flat-top wearing sunglasses doesn't have a place in gaming, then I suppose neither do I."

Scrustle

Skull Kid from The Legend of Zelda

"He has a really cool look and comes across as dangerous and unpredictable, mad with power. But at the same time he's quite sympathetic, and a great example of the sad personal stories Majora's Mask is full of."

TriggerPigking

Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda

"What I ?really enjoy about the Dorf is how each game with him has managed to add to the overall lore of the character and that d?epending on the timeline he has evolved into 3 very different characters.

It's Wind Waker Ganondorf that I love most since we get to see him at his most human. In WW he is calmer than in his previous game (OoT), being humbled by his former defeats. However, he's also crippled with guilt over what he did and is desperately trying to figure out a way to undo the damage. This perfectly links him into WW's themes which are of regret and living for the future; despite how much he's learned Ganondorf simply cannot let go of what happened, which makes all the other versions more tragic because in WW we see the possibility of him being redeemed.

Also it's because Ganondorf is mad disrespect in Smash Bros. yo."

Vadicta

Dr. Neo Cortex from Crash Bandicoot

"What I love most about Neo Cortex comes down to him being my first. Crash Bandicoot was the f??irst game I beat on my own, and by extension Dr. Neo Cortex was the first v?illain I beat up.

And that excitement, that rush, the power of it all. It was be??autiful. I, an animalistic beast running on slapstick bloodlust, destroyed this man, this doctor. I brutalized him. For that moment, my eyes glazed and drool sliding across my controller, Neo Cortex was my mother, my teachers. All these people who thought they were bigger and smarter than me, people who tried to push me around just like Neo did with fun-loving Crash. He embodied everything I hated, and I let that rage fall through him. I felt the violence crash over me in just the same way that my grandmother and the TV politicians warned me I would. And that was like a drug. There was no going back. And so I've been a hardcore gamer ever since.

Also, he has an N on his forehead, wh??ich is cool, and I want to get a matching tattoo of it."

ZombieC0RPS

Dragon from Adventure

"In Atari Adventure, there was only one enemy type - the dragon. With the super futuristic graphics of the Atari 2600, the dragon sprites looked like duck-sna??ke creatures with a massive hole in their stomachs. Needless to say, the graphical capabilities of the 2600 left much of your gaming experience to the imagination. This indomitable force was the thing of nightmare??s until you were able to obtain the "sword" (read: arrow), from which the gentlest poke would be its undoing."

ZombZ

King Bohan from Heavenly Sword

"Heavenly Blade isn't re??ally a good game to recommend, but it had some charm. King Bohan is one of the most entertaining villains ever, in large pa?rts thanks to Andy Serkis.

Also, since this is a vi??llain blog, I'd like y??ou to know that both characters I featured are absolute dicks."

Greenhornet214

Electrode from Pokémon

[Electrode used Self-Destruct]

Fuzunga

Wario from Mario

"I feel like most people have forgotten these days that before he was a garlic-chomping, explosive-farting, motorcycle-riding, indie game developer, Wario debuted as the villain of Super Mario Land 2. That was one of the fir?st games I owned as a kid, and one of my favorite Mario games to this day. I tried to capture the weird derpiness of Wario's early design here."

EtosiGiR

High Priest from Beyond Good and Evil

"Why is he taking people and putting them in crystalisk husks to make soldiers? Why is his power in Jade? Did he have a hand in the disappearance of Jade's parents? How many planets has he done this to, and what is The High Priest's end game? Does it even have one? None of these questions are answered by Beyond Good and Evil.

To me The High Priest is a good villain because it has a plan that doesn't seem to revolve around you and yet still manages to control where you end up, making Jade and the player question whether or not everything you had done up until that point was in some way part of its grand design. Although it's tough to believe he wanted a 5 ft stick run through his eye, but who knows? The point is unless his motivations turn out to be total weak sauce, he was great at hindering and haunting you every step of the way through Beyond Good and Evil and that is decent villain material in my book."

Strider

Akuma from Marvel vs. Capcom

"Halfway through drawing what I thought was Akuma's defining t??rait, his edgy hair, I realized I was just doing a crude Bart Simpson, so I ran with it!

His hair may be more of a mane now in SFV but I've always known Akuma for having angry hair. I also will always reference Akuma together with the line, 'I am violence,' particularly from that, 'That's? not?? honey you're eating!' meme."

GetNekKid

Tom Nook from Animal Crossing

"First off, the name Tom Nook is a play on the word Tanuki. Secondly he's insanely smart with his business dealings! He w?ent from Nook's Cranny to Nookingtons solely from the profits he gained from 1-4 unassuming villagers.

Finally, he's fair. Although he takes your money, it's not without reason; you get sweet upgrades to your house every time you pay off one of your loans (even if you didn't really want it). He's a necessary evil in the world of Animal Crossing, and without him, we would still be homeless villagers, drifting through towns, stealing fruit where we can, digging throug?h the dumps for furn?iture we can't even use, and sending letters back to our moms that think we're successful, when in fact you just gave Joan a blumpkin for her last bit of turnip soup."

Agent9

Providence from Risk of Rain

"Providence - the meaning of the word is the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power. What a fitting name to the final boss of Risk of Rain. His Monster Log states three things of importance to me. He m??oves with more purpose than anything on the planet, he can possibly control everyone on the planet, and the writer of the log finishes it off by saying, “Why do I feel like I have made a terrible mistake?"

A fairly unique “villain” as it were. Once you get? to this point you start to think about who th?e real villain of this game is. Is he really a murderer or is he just protecting what’s his? So much left unanswered and up to speculation at this time, I really hope they expand upon Providence in the sequel."

Sr. Churros

Ghirahim from The Legend of Zelda

"??I like him because he is very sadistic and sounded very menacing. Also he is totally FABULOUS!!! I'm also a big fan of his androgynous character design. And the first fight was very memorable to me, as? I almost lost and it was there that the motion controls clicked to me.

But I'm not a fan of hey woops now he is just a sword and here's the final boss with zero character development, not-Ganon."

Dango

Gnasty Gnorc from Spyro the Dragon

"Check out? those gnasty gnipples! Truly the most complex villai??n of all time."

Hypno Coffin

Louie from Pikmin

"Picture says it all."

Perro

Heihachi from Tekken

"I like Heihachi beca??use he didn't let ba??ldness stop him from doing his hair in style."

MeanderBot

Porky from Mother

"Besides featuring in my favorite game, I really liked how he started off as just your shitty neighbor, and progressed in nefariousness and power along with you in the story, instead of being some nebulous threat as most villains are. Also, he sent a good message to youngsters everywhere: You too could be a henchman to ultimate evil if you real?ly? tried!"

Go-go that's a wrap! If ??you also want to share with us some o??f your favorite video game villains, feel free to share drawings and stories in the comment section below.

The post Destructoid Draws: Our Number One Villains appeared first on Destructoid.

Now! Fight your rival!

Do you guys remember EVO? You know, EVO? Big fighting game tour??nament?

KaneBlueRiver was the first Chilean to take home an EVO title with his low-tier hero team of?? Hulk/Haggar/Sentinel. It speaks a lot of the player's skill to win with a set of characters that goes against so many expectations.

But character loyalty isn't unique to fighting games, especially now. In anything competitive, you will inevitably develop a favorite of sorts, whether it's a fighting game, a MOBA, a choice in an RTS game, or?? even a puzzle game.

For this month's bloggers wanted theme, we were wondering if you have character loyalty that you'd love to describe to us. For fighting games, I ruined Nic Rowen on Persona 4 Arena with Kanji Tatsumi. On Injustice, I pestered Chilly Billy and SuperMonk4Ever with Green Arrow (also, hype pig). I've played Jigglypuff in all iterations of Super Smash Bros. much to Corduroy Turtle's dismay.

_{I'm calling you out CT}

In fact, keep that in mind when you put your idea out there. This isn't about fighting games, even though all my examples are fighting games. Whether you identify as ?Terran, Janna, Medic, or Faceless Void, as long as you stick by your character through thick and thin, buffs and nerfs, we want to hear your stories of attachment, your stories of victory, your stories?? of trials and tribulations. We want to hear about the character you're passionate about when it comes down to you against everyone else.

So start a blog about your favorite character in a competitive mode. Title your blog "Challengers wanted: [your title here]" and tag your communit?y blog with bloggers wanted before publishing, an??d maybe you'll see your stuff on the front page!

The post Bloggers wanted: Challengers wanted appeared first on Destructoid.

Mixed emotions!

So, Metroid Prime: Federation Force, guys! It was announced, and it?? was quickly banished into the corner of E3 hours later -- the corner that no one wanted to talk about. But there were a lot of people who had strong? opinions on the matter, so talk we shall. I read through every comment, and picked out all sides of the argument as best I could.

Here's a selection of what everyone had to say about the announcement and the prospect of another spinoff Metroid game before a proper series entry.

Crooks kicked things off, explaining why people might hate it??:

I don't care about Metroid, but that game just looks like some cheap shitty looking robots with the Metroid name slapped on. These could be any kind of robots, only the form of the head looks a bit like metroid. I can understand that people hate it.

FlanxLycanth is already done with Federation Force:

Why is this even a question. It's shit, we can all see that. Let's talk a??bout something more important like Lemonade or bra? sizes.

Electric Reaper says it shouldn't be called "Metroid":

Speaking for myself, I was looking for another main entry in the Metroid series, like another 2D sidescroller adventure platformer shooter, or a 3D adventure shooter with puzzle elements. Federation Force just doesn't really fit with the Metroid games with Samus Aran as the player character, like Fusion, Zero Mission, or Corruption.

I'm honestly thinking the "Metroid" part of Metroid Prime: Federation Force should be removed, since even though it takes place in the Metroid universe, it doesn't seem to involve Samus Aran in any way, or the traditional elements of a Metroid game. The game might still be fun on its own, but it's not a true Metroid game.

NinjaBlaze is not happy with any aspect of it:

I don't like ??the notion that being disappointed with the game is associated with being a rabid Metroid fan or a Nintendo fan that doesn't like change.

I have no problems with games goin??g in different directions and trying new things, and I'm not the biggest?? Metroid fan by any stretch

I just think the game will be shitty because it, well, looks like shit, in general. Everything down to the aesthetics to the gameplay design choices. It's not that it looks like a bad Metroid game, it just looks like a bad game in ge??neral imo.

Nathan D says this is indicat?ive of a bigger problem at Ninte?ndo:

The problem with the "don't buy it" argument is that if it bombs, knowing Nintendo they'll take it as no one being interested in the ?series and shelf it for longer. As of now it looks like even if this doesn't bomb that another core game is at least 3 years away regardless.

Applying simple business properties to Nintendo is like trying to use calculus to unpl??ug a toilet, not compatible.

JohnSmith123 had a lighter view, but was still disapp??oin?ted:

After Other M, I hoped that Nintendo would make a good Metroid game that'd bring fans back to franchise. This was their answer. A co-op dudebro shooter that takes Samus out the game? entirely with Metroid tacked on the front. Oh and soccer.

I'm kind of bummed out by that.

Pedrovay2003 weighs in on this, and Other M, and it doesn't sound hopeful:

Honestly, from what I've seen right now, it looks like Generic Space Shooter: The Game. I haven't even seen a hint of what makes Metroid Prime what it is other than the camera angles, and graphically, I think Hunters on the original DS looked better.

I'm one of the very few people I know (at least on the Internet) who truly liked Other M. It wasn't without its flaws, sure, but I thought it was a fine entry into the Metroid series. This new game doesn't even remind me of Metroid; if it wasn't in the title, I wouldn't know what series it belonged to, if any. Seeing as how it's more of a spinoff than a main title,?? though, I really can't complain too much; I just probably won't buy it, bec??ause it doesn't look like it offers anything over co-op first-person shooters I can get on consoles or the PC.

Fenriff has a pretty middle of the road view on it:

Whether or not it will be a fun game is anyone's guess at this point. It might very well turn out to be good. The problem is the slapping of the Metroid name on it seemingly just to help it sell. It's not even the fact that Samus isn't in it. Metroid, at least for me, isn't about Samus, it's about that sense of wonder and exploration. Fighting your way through alien hordes on an alien world alone. This seems like a mission based co-op shooter with Metroid Prime paint.

Who knows though.

Warruz is more hopeful:

I am generally ok with this game, I wish the style was more....Hunters looking and personally I think they should drop Prime from the title (Metroid: Federation Force), but generally the concept I am for. Its a chance to actually expand the Metroid universe outside of just Samus which simply put hasn't happened and if the franchise is to?? grow then its a must.

Nintendo know's its fans in that they don't take to new IP's well(see Code Name Steam, even though its a good game), so if Nintendo wants to provide different games like an FPS game that involves co-op then they need to take an existing universe and do it there. Simply put, Metroid is the universe to build FPS games in, and Metroid Prime is more of an adventure game then it was a shooter(first two games didn't even really have aiming, it was just lock on). So whats the way to get a more traditional FPS game for Nintendo? Expand the Metroid Universe.

Just drop prime from the t?itle and reconsider the look.

Zen Grenadier will wait until launch to decide:

Honestly I don't care much for the ti??tle. I only want to know two things.

Is it fun? And? will it keep me invested in playing it after the first day? Answers I won't? know until I get to try it. These are the only things I care about in a video game.

And Waifus. I REALLY care if it was Waifus.

Evergreen doesn't seem to mind at all:

Would I rather have a more traditional Metroid? Of course!

At the same time, I'm glad to see?? Nintendo taking a risk with one of their IPs and doing something new with it.

chiptoon is another righteous individual who liked Other M, and weighs in on Federation:

I loved Other M. Its such a blast to play. Its like arcade Metroid.

I'm also quite keen on Federation Force. I think they could have sidestepped alot of the negativity by not adding Metroid Prime to the name. Just ??let it be in the universe without hea?dlining that fact.

Vectorman12345 says this situation is familiar:

Honesty, I'm willing to give it a chance. I remember when the original Metroid Prime came out, people complained about the first person view and how it wasn't true to the nature of the Metroid series.

As a group, we gamers have e?ntitlement problems, I admit it. But when it comes to situations like this, I'll choose to judge the game for what it is and not for what it isn't. Doing that sort of thing can deprive you of potential enjoyment.

Seriously though, someone should write an article about the vitriol for the original Metroid Prime before it came out.

Isay Isay gave us some valuable insight into the decision:

The post Here’s what you thought of Metroid Prime: Federation Force appeared first on Destructoid.

Get your bodies ready

It's that time of year again! When your news feed gets clogged with exciting announcements, disappointing news, and those head scra??tchers that leave you wondering what was the point of all that.

This year though, the community is gearing up to watch E3 together in preparation of all the fun (and probable Assassin's Creed trailers). You guys are going to blog about E3 anyways, whether we ask you to or not. So for this month's monthly musing, we're goi??????????????????????????ng to open the scope up a little ?bit to encompass E3 and everyone's favorite unlisted emotion: hype.

Hype, to me, is the highest degree of excitement one can achieve before spontaneous human combustion. For this month's musing, what are you hyped for? Not just about what you?? want to hear from E3 before it arrives or what E3 just announced after it passes. Whatever excites you because you are huge fan of whatever it is, go right ahead and blog about it!

For example, remember Tatsunoko vs. Capcom? That game has no business existing but it does, even if it's out of print. A crossover between two unexpected properties in a fighting game! That was an amazing sight to behold! Imagine the possibilities for a future project thanks to this precedent. Or what about hype for the newest Monster Hunter X? I'm ready after sinking 300 hours into Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.? So you see, those are examples from the past i??nspiring future games and also what's on the horizon already. Are you hyped yet?

To join in, just start a blog and title it Hype: [your blog title here], and tag it with the (newly returned) Bloggers Wanted tag. Talk about what excites you, whether it's your dream game or something that already exists and is on the way. You like Last Guardian don't you?

Ou??ch, actually?, I'm sorry about that one, I take it back.

The post Bloggers Wanted: Hype appeared first on Destructoid.

'90s kids remember paper

Did you hear the news? Destructoid is making a digital magazine with GameFan. I've never owned a dig??ital magazine before. But I also didn't own a tablet device or smartphone until three years a??go, so it's prime time I gave it a whirl. Sliding my finger across a touch pad is certainly one sensation to experience but do you know another sensation I miss asides from electroshock therapy? Turning actual paper pages.

This month, to coincide with the announcement of a new digital magazine, we want to look back on all our favorite print media. My story actually started as a six-year-old kid with a subscription to GamePro. My parents probably thought I was reading something academically challenging when in reality it was Dan Electro or D-Pad Destroyer talking about Street Fighter with plenty of screenshots of Chun-Li. But we're not just talking about magazines, either. Did you ever walk into a book store in order to skim a few pages of the strategy guides they had there so you could prepare yourself for the challenges ahead? I sure did. And can you think of something we miss more than print magazines? Instruction booklets. In fact, I still have my instruction booklets from my Game Boy Advance days. Those things can get surprisingly ?chunky but nowadays you're lucky to get a slip of paper that lists health disclaimers.

All through May, just start a community blog and talk about whatever you want with old-fashioned print. Then title it "Papers, Please: [your blog title ?here]" and tell us about your memorable times with analog media, before it became digital and strained your eyes. As always, tag your blog with the Bloggers Wanted tag so Occams and I can easily notice it and if it's good, you ??may see your blog on the front page! Just think, a blog on the Internet, talking about print media. What a time to be alive.

The post Bloggers Wanted: Papers, Please appeared first on Destructoid.

Believe nothing you hear

April Fools' Day has passed? and we've managed to survive. So Miles Morales isn't replacing Peter Parker wholesale but we do still believe in that Nintendo Direct a week into their charade??.

Every time April swings around I tell myself to believe in nothing unless it's scientific because I have yet to be deceived by a scientist. The deception of April stings me especially bad in videogames because the April Fools' gags in the print media used to be the stuff of legends. Gouken of Street Fighter IV started life as an April Fools' joke from EGM with the name Shen Long. Some games even use active trickery to mess with you, like Eternal Darkness.

This month, we want you to try writing about your experience in some good old fashion Tricky Dickery. Whether you were at the blunt end of a tricky stick or were the perpetrator of some dick trickery, we want to hear about your experiences and in a broad scope too. Remember when Nintendo revealed Nester for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS last year? Or how about when Psycho Mantis went and blew your mind by data mining your memory card for Konami titles? Or maybe that time you spent an entire match in Team Fortress 2 ninjaneering some buildings?

Throughout April, just start a community blog and title your blog "April Fools: [your blog title here]" and talk about your memories of deceiving others or being deceived. Bring back all that disappointment and rage you've long buried in your soul so that we may point and laugh at how you fell for it. And don't forget to use the tag Bloggers Wanted so Occams and I are ?especially guaranteed to see it. If your blog i??s a real gem, you'll see it promoted to the front page!

The post Bloggers Wanted: April Fools appeared first on Destructoid.

To help make their latest title the best Early Access game it can be

Back in September, I had the chance to check out Mighty Rabbit and Gun Media's latest title Breach & Clear: Deadline in person. If you'd like to read my thoughts on what I saw while there, this should get you back up to speed.

It really wouldn't be fair for me to have all the fun, though. Right? Here's where YOU come in! Devolver Digital, Might?y Rabbit, Gun Media and Gambitious need your help get this game ready to enter Steam Early Access. Wes Keltner from Gun Media explains things better, here:

"We've been working on Deadline for roughly eight months. We're at a point now where w??e need feedback from players that love games. This isn't a PR play, it's a genuine request."

According to Keltner, the team "got a lot of great feedback on the original B&C. Our fans helped us hone that experience," he says. "It could have been a better experience if we could have worked alongside the players earlier in the cycle. We knew when we started Deadline, t?hat we wanted to get to pre-alpha quickly, so we could?? work more hands-on with players."

With the title now in pre-alpha, "the best way to improve is to invite lifelong gamers in and listen to them. We're going to Early Access soon," explains Keltner, "but the worst thing we could do is to go there with indefinite time frames and a product that's unplayable. That reeks of the cash grabs that were going on leading up to Valve's announcements on the ru??les changing for Early Access. That's not us.

"We're a small indie team that wants community feedback so th?at the next few months of development are spent working towards a product that that not only ships, but was?? crafted by the players. That's why we need Destructoid's help!"

Getting involved is fast, easy, and free:

Step 1: Register for the Deadline pre-alpha on the Breach & Clear Forum.

Step 2: ?Check your email and click the link to activate your account.

Step 3: Once your account is activated, click the Member's tab and enter "ThePraetorian" in the sea??rch field.

Step 4: Pull up the mod's profile and s??end him a message telling him that you're here to help test out the game and he'll provide you with your Steam key.

What's the catch? Be opinionated! All the team wants in return for pre-a?lpha access to the game is that you come back to the forums and take part in the discussions.

I really hope you take this opportunity to get involved. I've put in a bit of time with the latest build and it works really well. If you're a fan of top-down shooters, tactical games, and loot-centric RPGs you'll probably find something to love in Breach & Clear: Deadline.

Good luck getting set up, and I hope to see yo??u in the forums!

The post Devolver, Gambitious and the Breach & Clear: Deadline teams WANT YOU appeared first on Destructoid.

We've shown you ours. Now you show us yours.

??The dust h??as barely settled on 2014, but we at Destructoid are already looking to the future! Why? Because the future is awesome. Duh.

The Dtoid staff have shared our personal picks for our most wanted games of 2015, and now it's your turn to share yours! To participate, just vote in the community poll below! It's just that easy. Did we miss your game? What idiots we are! Please do us a favor and write it in the "other"?? slot and then reply to my comment below so I can add it!

Once you've voted, be sure to tell us your choice in the comments so we can all hnnnnnggg over videogames together. Have fun!

The post What is your most anticipated game of 2015? appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

[Dtoid community blogger Dreamweaver shares with us all the ways he is thankful for video games. I think we can all relate in some fashion to his words. Want to see your own stuff appear on the front page? Go write something! --Occams Electric Toothbrush]

Now now, I'm sure you guys think that I'm being a little too, for a lack of a better word, materialistic. If my parents ever hear me saying this they would scoff and think exactly that but a lot I have to be thankful for has stemmed from video games.  Whether it's a mechanic that helps saves me so much grief and agony, to helping shape the kind of person I am, for better or worse. Video games are like mementos; sure, the trinket themselves may not be entirely valuable, like a disc in a plastic case, but it's the meaning behind them, the ?stories they tell and the characters you know, that makes them too valuable to me. So, without further delay, here's what I have to say about why I'm th??ankful for video games.

Streamlining/ Making Things Easier

Got shot in the face? No problem: "Tis only a flesh wound!"

This is something a lot of people actively hate, but hear me out: I'm not a very good gamer. So having things like regenerating health helps a lot in keeping me interested in games. One reason I wasn't too appreciative of games when I was younger, back on those NES/ SNES days, was because I didn't have the skills to make it very far. I still haven't been able to beat either the original Super Mario Brothers or its sequel Super Mario Brothers 3, with or without warp pipes and whistles, a??nd I don't think I've gotten any better as I got older.

Furthermore, my parent's financial pockets weren't very deep, so I was always afraid to buy a game in fear that I wouldn't be able to get past the opening levels which made a lot of games seemingly unavailable to me. I still kind of have that fear in me now, as I'm even afraid to buy The Evil Within for myself after getting frustrated with that bloody, multi-arme??d chick following you in Chapter 5 after my friend let me try it at his house.

Thankfully, lots of games have gotten so much easier, and because of that, I've been more willing to try games that I never would've otherwise. If Halo: Combat Evolved didn't revolutionize the genre with its regenerating shield, I would've never played it and fell in love with the series as I did. (I wrote something of a retrospective of it on Destructoid a while ago, but don't go digging that up, please!)

It isn't just regenerating health, either.  Mechanics like on-screen prompts, hint systems, checkpoints...all of these things make a bunch of games more accessible by not making me have to stress out over every little thing. Nothing would ruin a game like stressing over whether I will get lost navigating an area or get stumped on a puzzle. I understand that people like complexity in their games, and to an extent, I do agree; there's something about managing weight, stability, and power output (and heat, in the earlier games) that makes building a mech in Armored Core a pretty interesting simulator, and I couldn't imagine Dark Souls as a game that told you where to go.  However, for the most part,?? I'm ??quite okay with having my hand held if it means getting to the end of a game because I've played a lot of titles that were so well worth it.

Experiences I May Not Get Otherwise

One of the most adorable intro to a character ever!

I'm what you would call the video gaming equivalent of a bookworm who only reads in her (I say "her" because I always imagine bookworms to be female because it's so sexy) spare time.  Instead of sitting on a table with a pile of books at her side, I'm sitting on a comfy couch with cases of games I wanna tackle piled on top of my console. All I w?anna do is play video games, but it's not so much for getting the high score or top slot in the leader boards as it is to watch tales unravel before my eyes and get to know the characters as they travel on their journey.

This has caused me to have a bit of a spending problem, as I would literally think about my next purchase, bargain bin or otherwise, immediately after receiving the shopping bag from the Gamestop clerk but I can't help it!  I feel like Yomiko Readman from the ever-so-excellent Read or Die OVA when she buys all those books in the beginning of the series when she still has plenty at home, and the smile on her face when she's carrying them must've been mirrored on mine to a -T wheneve??r I hold a recently bought game in my hands.

Character Customization AND Integration

Let's be honest, who in their right mind didn't choose Morrigan?

You wanna know what's better than witnessing character in a video game going on an adventure? Participating in one yourself! Like Elsa once wrote about how she likes to create her own characters to put herself in the game (couldn't find a link, sorry!), I too get a huge kick out of being able to replicate myself into the world. The chance to fight alongside the characters and develo?ping a personal bond with them as though I was really in the struggle with them is something that I always appreciate. This experience is generally unique to the world of interactive me?dia that movies and books can't really reproduce.

Of course, it simply won't do if the game half-asses it though. As cool as it is to make myself in Soul Calibur IV and go head-to-head with the heavenly goddess-blessed Ivy and Taki or the awesomely badass Nightmare, Starkiller, and Darth Vader (say what you will about how Star Wars characters don't fit the universe, but including them was a huge a fanboy moment for me!), there's something to be said for the ??player being treated like a part of the storyline.

Being Commander Shepard in Mass Effect and the Grey Warden in Dragon Age: Origins were two memorable experiences for me. Not only did it feel like I was in the game after creating the character to look like me, but also because inquiring who my companions were and learning their backstories  made me feel like I myself was getting to know them, rather than controlling a proxy like, say, Jude Mathis in Tales of Xillia. This feeling of connectivity and immersion was cemented further when I got to make some of the big choices throughout the game. This made me feel like I mattered to the story rather than watching it unfold in front of me. Whether I saved or condemned an endangered alien race was my call, and if I wanted to bang Morrigan just because she offered, then damn it, I will because I wanted to and oh boy, did I want to!

Sure, many games do emphasize player choice, like Telltale's The Walking Dead, but to me, it doesn't feel like I personally am making the choices so much as it is that I'm choosing what I want that character to do. Throughout The Walking Dead: Season 2, I c?hose Clementine's di?alogue based on who I want her to be instead of what I would say if I were her.

Multiplayer in Games

The clowns in this game scares me, and I ain't talking 'bout the ones at the Carnival...

Yet, for as much as I love engaging in a cinematic,immersive experience with a video game, sometimes I simply want to play a game, and nothing says that like playing against other people! While I don't want multiplayer to be shoehorned into every game, there's nothing like getting to the top of the scoreboard based on your abilities. I love playing Call of Duty or Halo onl?ine where I can just focus on winning and killing with some finely-tuned shooting mechanics. Also, playing again?st other gamers online is such a hoot!

As some of you may know, I played a couple of heists with the awesome Scholarly Gamer a while back. Now this isn't a game where the success of a heist is based on what the narrative has to say. On not at all. If you aren't working together and plan out what needs to be done, then chances are none of you are going to be enjoying your riches. Other games such as Battlefield 4 has advertised itself for being known as the multiplayer game where "Battlefield Moments" are abundant. Moments like running across a field while avoiding the strafing gunfire of a helicopter before covering your ?engineer as they take it down.  These exciting and seemingly scripted moments are something that can happen compl?etely unprompted and on the go.

It also brings another element of the unique abilities of video games as well. As we all know from the shining example that is the Souls series, players can either leave messages to alert others of the dangers ahead or help them find a hidden secret. This is extremely useful when you're running into an unknown location, especially in a game where death can happen quickly and with little warning. The other more intense way of interaction, however, is that players who are feeling particularly malicious can invade your world and try to assassinate you.  If you're connected online (which, in my opinion, is the only way to play a Souls game, and I refuse to play without it) and meet certain conditio??ns, another player could be stalking you, waiting for the perfect time to stick a blade in your back!

Of course, on the positive side, you can also summon them to help you, and celebrating victory after taking down a boss is something that really helps make the fight, however easier it was, all the more rewarding. I especially like how you ca??n see "ghosts" of other players as they play in the same area as you. This little touch really helps to break the feeling of isolation and loneliness when you see others having to trek the same land as you.

What other medium could evoke the same thing? Sure, when you see other survivors in AMC's The Walking Dead, you know they've been through some tough times but when it's you and another player, it feels more personal.

Talking about games

Pictured: not me. :(

You know, I can talk about the genius behind the multiplayer aspect of the Souls series for paragraphs on paragraphs and that leads me to another thing I'm thankful for: being a gamer has given me a chance to talk to others. Let me be extremely honest right now: I don't have many friends as I'm an extremely shy person and socially awkward. It doesn't help that I have limited interests. Not a lot of people I know are gamers, much less ones who don't play Call of Duty all day (like I said before, nothing wrong with that, but I can't really connect with them much) and I don't really have any other hobbies  Sure, I enjoy writing, though I haven't done so in a while, but it's not something you can really chat with others about, and I'm less invested in other mediums like anime, television programs, and mo??vies than I am with video games.

As I mentioned earlier, most of my money goes towards new games so I can't afford every DVD coming out, but there's also only so much time in a day which is, admittedly, funny coming from a half-time student with no job.  However, the point still stands that I can't do everything I want to. (how the fuck does Chris Carter do it?) S?till, I'm okay with being a gamer because I'm very passionate about the medium and I'm happy to talk about it with ??all of you guys!

Throughout my life, I've always turned to the internet for my social interactions ever since I joined the Nintendo Power forums way back when, and since it closed down, I've moved on to other forums like Gametrailers, Gaia, Escapist and even Gamefaqs (which I still frequent, actually). My wandering eventually led me here to Destructoid, where I was something of a drifter for a couple of years. I made an account around 2009 and posted some embarrassingly bad blogs here and there, but I never really involved myself with the community because I didn't really feel ??like?? I belonged. Of course, I guess you could say that I didn't really attempt to make an effort until last year in 2013, four years later, but hey, better late than never, right?

Nowadays, I consider this place to be something of a second home to me, the third being  Gamefaqs since I've been there since 2009 as well, and post there often enough, but we all know how it can ??get sometimes and I'm glad to have stumbled to this site. The staff members seem like genuinely good people and the community members even more so! I hope you guys feel the same way about each other and I hope you guys will w?rite blogs to let them know! It's always appreciated to hear something like that, so say it while you can.

Anyway, that's why I'm thankful for video games!

What are you thankful for?

The post Giving Thanks: What videogames have done for me appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

[Dtoid community blogger ooktar is thankful for video game music. I think most of us can agree that it has bettered our lives in some way or another. Want to see your own stuff appear on the front page? Go write something! --Occams Electric Toothbrush]

I've been a huge fan of music all my life. When I was little I was always listening and rocking out to all kinds of music my parents played for me. I grew older and my tastes grew with me. I remember when my friend turned me on to the crazy bands my parents didn't listen to like Megadeth, Primus, and the Melvins and fondly remember getting my first cassette tape (Papa Roach - Infest).

Music in video games has a certain resonance with me most othe?r music lacks, especially back in the NES and SNES days when the music was limited by technology. The basic NES sound chip was capable of four parts which were essentially four different?? instruments. A noise signal that was generally used to replicate drum sounds and three different sound oscillators that could be adjusted, most commonly two lead sounds and one bass sounds like a common rock band.

The Bionic Commando Theme is a good example of showing the individual sounds of the NES chip with a drum track, a bass line, and two harmonizing guitar like sounds.

As a result, video game composers took what few tools they had and used them to their maximum potential. That's why so much of the music created back then is so memorable today, because the composers used what limited tools they had at their disposal to their maximum potential. Classic video game tunes including the Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros. themes are embedded in people memories not just because of?? the games they were featured in, but because of how infectiously catchy they are.

I remember playing many games as a kid specifically for the music. One game in particular I used to play over and over again was called Solstice. I never actually figured out how to beat the game and even to this day the game is still very much a mystery to me. However, it has hands down the greatest intro music to any video game ever made. Seriously, with? just 4 sounds, this song has more depth and character than most regular progressive rock songs I've heard.

It's the heaviest Rush song that Rush never wrote.

The next generation brought with it 16-bit sound samples which resulted in video game music that was more in tune with more standard music of the time. Though there were still limits to the technology, this allowed composers to make pieces that could range from a si??mple four piece rock band to a full size orchestra.

While the classic NES sounds are a bit more memorable to me, the SNES ultimately has some of my favorite soundtracks in games to date. Super Mario World and Super Castlevania IV are embedded in my memories not just because they are awesome games, but because their music is so endearing and stands the test of time. I've maintained a number of times now that David Wise's work on Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. Songs like Stickerbrush Symphony and Mining Melancholy are good enough songs in their own right that I listen? to them often in? my free time.

I could listen to this on loop all day and never get tired of it.

Music is ?a very important element in making a memorable experience in video games. There's a saying that the music and sound in films are more important than the visuals themselves and I feel this applies to video games as well. I don't think I would h?ave as strong or as powerful memories of some of my favorite games if it wasn't for the music in them pulling me in and enhancing the overall experience. I shall sum this up one with of my favorite quotes:

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best… - Frank Zappa

The post Giving Thanks: Video Game Music appeared first on Destructoid.

Promoted from our Community Blogs

[Dtoid community blogger StriderHoang is thankful for his lady. Though distance may keep their bodies apart their love blooms in the world of Animal Crossing. Want to see your own stuff appear on the front page? Go write something! --Occams Electric Toothbrush]

Many of us have loved ones and we may envision sharing our passion of games with them. Many of us who have attempted may also be familiar with that feeling in your gut as you watch your loved one walk in circles trying to figure out the buttons. Years of playing games condition us to instinctively know the bottom-most button usually jumps and the left-most button performs a?n action. An instinct like this isn't something you just pick up quickly and no matter how much my girlfriend really does enjoy a game or two on her laptop or tablet, it's difficult to find a game we can both enjoy together. She feels comfortable on smaller mobile games and I want to try a co-op game that may be beyond her current spatial awareness.

I knew she liked puzzle games because she played a ton on a flash cartridge for her Korean DS while she taught English abroad. I remember being excited for Call of Duty: World at War, to the extent that I took my girlfriend with me to buy it at launch and binge through the entire campaign while she just watched the spectacle. The first game I intimately shared with her was Crashmo for the Nintendo 3DS and while it was an instant hit, it wasn't something we could both enjoy. Sure, we've played games together before but it was usually amongst mutual friends as well. By the time I had bought a Nintendo 3DS though, I knew I was excited for Animal Crossing: New Leaf and had a long history with it. So I took a $200 risk: buy her the special edition Animal Crossing 3DS that had New Leaf pre-installed knowing she might've hated this beloved franchise of mine that was already a niche within a nich??e.

In hindsight, the odds of her just playing it once and never playing it again were high.  I'd have forked over $200 for a 3DS with essentially pre-installed shovelware. But in a long distance relationship that you've made work, you look for every thing you can to shrink the distance a little: phone calls, texts, Skype, Facebook, and more but it's never enough. Until you figure out a practical solution to distance like a proper job or housing, you do what you have to. Playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf together over the internet was one more, albeit significant and expensive, op??tion to shrinking? that distance. Would she like playing it, let alone together?

It paid off though, and it paid off in spades.

Thanks to a dark pact with Nicolas Cage that is.

It wasn't as if I took a blind guess on it. Animal Crossing has cute, endearing animals to befriend and Animal Crossing isn't exactly a hard game to control. There's no hard failure state as you can live in a tiny house as long as you like with a loan that incurs no interest, never defaults, and will never lead adorable little animal thugs to find you and break your knees over a late payment. You're free to talk to animals and make friends or simply ignore them to further an agenda of cold hard cash bells. But just as there's no failure to get frustrated, there's no i?nherent goal. I couldn't predict whether or not she'd get tired of shaking her 20th fruit tree to earn money towards some sweet digital furniture. Of course the point isn't the intrinsic mechanics built into the game. The point is to play together!

We got to share stories and tips. I told her about selling native fruit in foreign towns and then we'd go to each others' towns to make bank. When Crazy Redd came into town with his stupid art, I'd help her figure out with painting was legit. Something I should've expected was just how deep into the game she'd get. Whenever she really likes something, she goes all in and its hard to pry her away. It happened with Tetris, it happened with Megopolis, and it certainly happened again. 

She started to plant her flowers and trees in methodical patterns. She'd complain that my flora was scattered around randomly and I replied that it was simply natural. She planted so many different fruit groves that that it'd put a Civil War era plantation to shame. She was definitely the hard working mayor who stumbled into town to my sort of hippie, surfer type mayor who just rolled into town and bums around wi??th a juice box and a joint. Don't get me wrong, I definitely took pride in some interior decorating with themed rooms such as a trophy room, a jungle cabana, and an arcade. But while I was sitting on a cool two million bells at most, she stocked up on an ice cold 25 million bells.

Meanwhile, I had all the style!

The job market is tough and we still live a long ways off from each other in our home towns. We've even both gone back to school to figure out better opportunities. While I have a BA in Journalism (for some reason) and she has one in Creative Writing, we're now pursuing Networking and a teaching credential respectively; two areas that aren't going to experience any shrinking of jobs anytime soon. In the meantime, we've competed in bug catching competitions, gone island fishing, traded outfits, listened to a dog hold concerts, harvested million bell yields, trick-or-treated together, and more through Animal Crossing.

In particular we swooned over Kapp'n remarks on us as he took us to and from the island especially ("You better treat that Kitty O. well Marcel. She'd make a fine wife!"). She even had her own head canons much like my own.

She believed Bill the duck and Filbert the squirrel both adored her. Bill was a jock and would work out to impress her while Filbert would just be a goof and charm her with his vacuity. When it came time to install her police station box, she dropped Booker right between them, as if to help sort out their competitions. Of course, Booker isn't as assertive as Copper, so all it did was leave a timid Booker in between the two rivals' competitions. She had her own stable of favorites like Pudge the goofy bear and "if-Fonzie-were-a-koala" Eugene. Our fair share of neighbors would move from one town to another thanks to our continued visits and whenever someone new moved in, we'd immediately sh?ow them off knowing full well they?? couldn't be persuaded to pack up and move to the other's town.

By the way, I wasn't kidding about the arcade room. I mean look at this piece of work.

These days both our time on New Leaf has cooled off considerably. I try to get on to pursue all the catchables I missed from last year but Super Smash Bros. 3DS came out and now I have a Wii U. Her schedule is pretty packed but I decided to get her Smash Bros. too. Last night she invited me to play Farmville 2, which is decidedly less scummy then the first Farmville and decent fun even as far as tablet games go. We still talk optimistically of our future together and someday soon I'll be too busy to play as much games as I'd wish but I'll still fondly remember those times when our mayors would just jump into a bed together and we'd just talk over the phone about our day before we get ready for bed. I wouldn't say Animal Crossing saved our relationship or anything but it does reconfirm my feelings that I have one hell of an awesome girlfriend and future wife when I come home from work, ready to play some games and the first thing she asks is, "What's your premi??um at Re-Tail?"

Two souls, bound by the red string of fate, now journey on to your uncertain futures, but together.

The post Giving Thanks: Turning over a New Leaf appeared first on Destructoid.