Originally published on Pixelitis.net on June 17, 2014.

The star of Nintendo’s booth at E3 2014 was undoubtedly Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. And by its sheer presence, you could tell that Nintendo was ready to devote their time to have fans take part in all things Smash.

An enormous portion of the show floor was devoted to Super Smash Bros. with Wii U demo stations equipped with four Gamecube controllers. It was readily apparent that Nintendo pushed all they had into these stations. After all, this game is the sole reason we’re even getting our sweaty palms on a Gamecube controller adapter for the Wii U in the first place.

While there were a whole bunch of fantastically promising games that I delved into throughout the course of the expo, I found myself getting lured back to Super Smash Bros. for repeated attempts at trying to kick everyone’s asses with newcomers like Mega Man, Little Mac and Greninja.

While I’ll admit that the ass-kicking wasn’t always done by me (I seemed to excel more in that regard in the 3DS version), I’d like to think that I still left the booth with a ton of enjoyment.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net June 15, 2014.

I imagine that getting E3 attendees to play a game they’ve already played years ago must have been difficult for the Capcom representatives manning the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy demo area, but doggone it, it’s a Phoenix Wright compilation, so I just had to try it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy aims to be the quintessential version of the first three Phoenix Wright games, sporting Ace Attorney, Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations in a single download from the 3DS eShop. As an added bonus, the game will sport the original Japanese version of the game, Gyakuten Saiban 123 Naruhodo Selection, so you can switch between Japanese and English in-game to brush up on your kanji.

I felt it imperative that I dissect the 3DS compilation and compare it to the previous DS and iOS iterations, having objected to the font choice for the iOS version.

Read on to find that out and more, like just how much better the resolution is on the Judge’s gray, glistening beard.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on February 16, 2014.

Roguelikes may be somewhat commonplace as indie game developers continue to grow in numbers, but when’s the last time you saw one that played like a space shoot-em-up? GALAK-Z: The Dimensional looks to fill that void.

Conceived by an eight-man team behind indie developer 17-BIT, GALAK-Z is a PC/PlayStation 4 space shooter that has you in complete control of the physics of your ship in order to dodge asteroids, fire your blasters and shoot homing missiles at enemy combatants. And in the style of most roguelikes, levels are procedurally generated and death is permanent.

The permanent death won’t be so bad if players uncover a bunch of secret weapon upgrade blueprints throughout the game, however. These unlockables can carry over to subsequent playthroughs that will give players new approaches when replaying levels.

While my time with GALAK-Z was brief it also happened to be very intense. Did I succeed?

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on January 17, 2014.

The term “Metroidvania” may be loathed in some gaming circles, but the indie developers over at Discord Games embrace it warmly when referring to their upcoming PC, Mac and Linux title, Chasm.

The game amassed $191,897 on the indie team’s Kickstarter page last May, and some of them took some time off from production to show it off at the Indie Showcase at MAGFest 12. So what sets this one apart from the Super Metroids, Castlevania: Symphony of the Nights and Shadow Complexes of the world?

I should probably preface this preview by saying that I have yet to play any of the classic Thief games, although they do sit all on their lonesome in my Steam library.

Nevertheless, I do recognize them as pioneers of the stealth genre that weave steampunk into a dark environment filled with precious loot ripe for swiping.

Given the ten-year dearth of anything Thief-related, Eidos Montreal is not considering this newest entry as a sequel or remake of the previous games. This current and next-gen title is more of a reimagining, taking parts of the older titles and mixing it in with new mechanics.

You still play as a master thief named Garrett, and you’re still craftily sneaking about a damp and decrepit environment, swiping any valuables you can find while fulfilling certain quests.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on June 21, 2013

Judging by my time watching an early build of The Witcher 3 at E3 last week, to say that CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is ambitious is an understatement.

One of the reasons why I’ve always preferred WRPGs like The Witcher series over more mainstream, open-world franchises like The Elder Scrolls is because of their more memorable stories, characters and more realistic approach to the morally gray.

I think it’s safe to say that The Witcher 3 will carry on with all of that, but with one new, crucial element: it’s going the route of its competition with a full-blown open world. While it’s still too early to tell if CD Projekt RED can deliver on the promise of an engaging central plotline mixed in with varying sidequests within a gigantic world, I will say that what I’ve seen of the pre-alpha build shows something that has the potential to be gargantuan in its execution.

While we currently don’t have any E3 awards system established just yet at Pixelitis, you can bet all your orens that The Witcher 3 was my game of the show, even if what I witnessed was a hands-off experience.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on June 15, 2013.

If you dug through Sony’s E3 booth, you’d eventually discover a PS4 indie section tucked away in the far corner. Titles like Outlast, Ray’s the Dead, Transistor, and Secret Ponchos were fully playable, but the one that caught my eye first was the Kickstarted side-scrolling shooter Mercenary Kings.

The crispy, pseudo 16-bit art style should be familiar to fans of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game, and it’s certainly no coincidence given that developer Tribute Games’ members include ex-Ubisoft and Eidos employees Jonathan Lavigne, Jean-Francois Major and Justin Cyr.

Mercenary Kings is like a hodgepodge of Contra, Metal Slug, Metroid and Monster Hunter, with a dash of Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. The game is comprised of variously large, interconnected levels not unlike Metroid or Castlevania in which up to four players, offline (via four-way splitscreen) or online co-op run, gun and collect items in order to fulfill specific objectives.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on June 15, 2013.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of zombie-related games. And yet every so often I come across one that does something new with the infected that doesn’t involve brutally decimating them. Add Ray’s the Dead to that list of exceptions.

Located in the indie PS4 corner of Sony’s booth at E3, Ragtag Studio’s Ray’s the Dead can be summarized as a cartoony, dark-humored “action-stealth puzzler.”

I take pride in being the first E3 goer to successfully complete the demo, which had me emerging from a graveyard, gathering up a zombie posse, shambling into an unsuspecting town, pet cemetery and ultimately a final showdown with a band of cops.

But before we get into that, let’s talk game mechanics.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on June 15, 2013.

“What is a man, but a miserable, little pile of secrets?” utters Dracula near the beginning of my Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 demo as he looks out into the distance to the throes and throes of human enemy combatants that begin their assault on his domain.

Fans of Symphony of the Night are sure to get a kick out of that throwback to one of the series’ greatest entries, meanwhile I’m left wondering what was going through voice actor Robert Carlyle’s mind as he was asked to recite that gloriously cheesy line.

Spanish-based developer MercurySteam is back with a sequel to 2010’s Lords of Shadow, a game that breathed new life into the series with a capable 3D action adventure that changed things up by adhering to a new timeline and setting that incorporates aspects of Spanish mythology with some of the usual tropes found in Castlevania.

Originally published on Pixelitis.net on October 17, 2012.

At this year’s E3, I watched along with everyone else when Rayman Legends wowed with its gameplay. It looked smooth and beautiful like its predecessor, with a nice twist to its gameplay thanks to the Wii U Gamepad. Fast forward to this past weekend in New York City and I finally got my itching hands on the follow up to Rayman Origins.

Afforded the chance to test out both the classic platforming gameplay as Rayman using the Wii U’s Xbox 360 knockoff Pro controller and the swipe-mania that the GamePad entails when using the green fairy-esque Murphy, I finally got to validate my preorder of a Wii U.