PixlBit

More than any other developer, Telltale Games is responsible for the popular resurgence of graphic adventures. (They also validated the episodic model, but that’s a blog for another day.) They made their name and indeed their business from licenses of popular properties like Sam & Max, Back to the Future, and The Walking Dead. But given their episodic business model and tendency for humor, I think Telltale has overlooked the property best suited to their strengths: Dr. Who.

Running from Evil Horde

Another month down! Finally finished a couple of long-running games and moving on to new things.

Okay, so I intended to post this yesterday (Wednesday) but I completely spaced it. I blame that on BioShock Infinite, frankly, which I haven't had that much time to play yet but so far it's really good. And writing this at all is cutting into my playing time, lol, so let's make this quick!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one of my favorite games of this generation, and Square Enix is bringing a Director's Cut version to the Wii U sometime soon. Normally that wouldn't elicit much of a response from me. I think it's great when a great game becomes available to a wider audience but I've already played it, so it doesn't affect me, right. Not in this case. Eidos Montreal is fixing the game's weakest and most frustrating part: the boss fights. While at PAX East, one of the game's designer's told Joystiq (read the whole story here) that the level layouts have been completely redone to allow multiple ways to take down each boss, like stealth and hacking, instead of just pouring as many bullets into them as possible. As he said, "The boss fights are now as they should have been."

That's What You Get

March of 2003 saw some big name games released, like Pokémon Ruby and Saphire and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The game that interests me today for this blog, though, is Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner for the PS2, a superb take on the old Japanese trope of mechs in space. An action masterpiece by Hideo Kojima, The 2nd Runner was the only game to stand toe-to-toe with Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden reboot on the Xbox, or so I've heard. I've never had a chance to play any ZOE game, let alone The 2nd Runner. Its fluid controls, intense action, and (at the time) astounding graphics cemented The 2nd Runner into gamers' hearts and, as a result, its fans have been bugging Kojima for 10 years now for ZOE3 (which, supposedly, is in development now). Fans were thrown a bone last year with the release of an HD collection containing the two PS2 games but we're still waiting for ZOE3.

[This blog, originally posted on October 10, 2011, was the greatest exposure I ever got on 1UP. I can't tell you how excited I was when my wife pointed out that it was the "Featured Blog" on 1UP's homepage. This was also the first time I had comments from people that obviously had not read the entire post. So if the title alone gets your fanboy ire up, read through to the end before you rant. We might agree more than you think. Thanks for reading and enjoy!]

Hopefully you're all familiar with OCRemix, the internet's premiere source (in my opinion) of fan arrangements of game music. Back at 1UP I posted a brief blog each week highlighting one of the remixes and with a short hiatus behind me I want to continue doing that here on PixlBit. So, without further ado...