03 | December | 2016 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

Feh, who needs Final Fantasy and its overly complex kitchen sink boy band kettle-pot plot latest entry when Level-5 is simply making some of the best, if not THE best pure JRPGs out there today? Don’t get me wrong, folks. I don’t hate FF at all. It’s just moved so far into being too hip/ster and modern for my tastes with each installment. The first Ni no Kuni was fantastic, albeit a wee bit too epic in length if one wanted to see and do it all. Sadly, my PS3 was stolen before I got to complete the game (over 90 hours was put into those save files), but this sequel got me pumped to dive in for more and more stunning visuals now that it’s a PS4 game. Just ogle the hand-drawn and painted magnificence (oh, alright, it’s all digital, but still!) and hear that solid voice acting knowing you’re in good hands with this upcoming console exclusive. Lovely work here, just beautiful and I can’t wait to dive in.

-GW

So. I didn’t watch The Game Awards this year because these sorts of back-slapping shows are meaningless for the most part, but I did catch a few YouTube vids of cringe-worthy moments I won’t discuss here. That said, the best thing saw post-show on YouTube next to new Zelda footage was this bizarre update to Hideo Kojima’s new and still in development PS4 exclusive, Death Stranding. The first trailer was a total brain-masher that people spent too much time dissecting, so you know that second one above was even more disorienting.

If you didn’t catch it, the guy holding the odd baby looks a wee bit too much like director Guillermo del Toro and that’s definitely Mads Mikkelsen with the inky stuff on his face. I have no idea what this game is going to be about, but like a bunch of people in the same boat, I want it just to see how Kojima and his team can pull it all together into something somewhat cohesive yet still intentionally baffling. Okay, there’s really nothing “ugly” about this trailer at all – I just needed to get a catchy title and that popped into my head first.

-GW