I doubt that will actually happen. i can't see VR being much more than a niche myself. I've seen a lot of gimmicks come and go in gaming, and it seems like people always return to flat screens and standard controllers. I think you're safe for some time to come.
Congratulations on 20 years in video game journalism, and making it this long at a time when journalism as a whole is getting hollowed out. You probably understand pretty well that it's not just gaming media that's getting its collective lunch eaten. :) I think you were one of my first friends on 1UP. And it's been almost 10 years now. Time flies, eh?
That game is brutal and punishing as hell, but I still loved it anyway, and still do. It singlehandedly turned me onto tactical RPGs.
Oh, not to jump too far ahead, but in Chapter 3, in a location called Yuguo Woods on PS1 (not sure what it's called on PSP, with the better translation, but I think it's probably something to do with Yggdrasil), make sure you do two or three separate save files before you move on. That's a good idea before going into any castle in this game, BTW, because it is entirely possible to get stuck in an unwinnable situation in this game.
Wow, your Gamestop has already stopped selling PS3 and 360 games? My local stores still sell them.
Current games: Valkyria Chronicles HD and I am Setsuna, both PS4.
Bioware strives to be all-inclusive in its player romance mechanics, and while it's great that they want players to be welcome regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, they've basically reduced the romanceable characters to sex dolls in a well-meaning but ham-handed process. People have their own personal preferences, and so should the characters. Fallout 4 kind of did that as well, and that was a step back from the way New Vegas did things.
And that's just another symptom of the fact that video games have traditionally been geared towards action and adventure, and we can't seem to make other aspects of human interaction translate into the video game format in such a way where we might as well just watch a good movie.
Undertale, a recent indie darling, did try to make a statement on the separation between gameplay and story, and the seeming pointlessness of killing RPG monsters on your way from point A to point B who don't have any real quarrel with you other than to be repositories of experience points and gold.
I'd like to see an official announcement from Nintendo, but I would definitely like it to be cross-platform between portable and home console. There are all too many games on 3DS and Vita that I wish were available for the Wii U and the PS4 as well, and I wouldn't mind taking some PS4 and Wii U games on the go when I'm not home.
Part of it is the fact that we've translated fighting and violence to gaming fairly well. but other aspects of human behavior, not so much. But then, how do you do that? I can't think of any way to simulate sexual activity in a video game without it coming off as puerile or creepy. I used to make jokes about "Wii Strap-On" accessories with regards to pornographic video games back in my 1UP days. That's for more creative heads to contemplate than mine, I guess, and if we want to move away from standard video game plot devices, that's a problem that's going to have to be tackled. In a lot of ways, gameplay has never made sense in the context of game stories. In the gameplay department, it seems like Monolithsoft decided to refine the well-received battle system and gear it more towards fans of games like World of Warcraft, Monster Hunter, or God Eater.
As far as what you want, back in the 1980s, Electronic Arts made a series of space RPGs, Starflight and Starflight II. These games were more Star Trek than Star Wars. You piloted an exploration ship and explored planets, picked up life forms, and collected relics that filled in the game's backstory and its conflict. It turns out your homeworld was a colony designed to save humanity after solar flares killed all life on Earth (you can even visit a lifeless, barren Earth in this game, and find relics that describe humanity's final days on Earth). There's some combat, but with the exception of one or two alien races, you can choose to talk to the aliens rather than fight them. But there's a conflict there, too: your current world is headed toward the same fate as the Earth, and you have to stop it by collecting clues. And as you piece together the story, the morality of the whole game becomes incredibly gray as you discover who is causing the solar flares and why theyre doing it.
Greatest box art of all time. FACT!
Seriously, though, FFVII and the original Zelda are two of my favorites of all time. I also loved the cover art for the Lunar games (Sega CD/PS1)
I got Tales of Hearts R and Persona 4 Golden when I finally decided to spring for a Vita TV (they were only 80 bucks at the time). The big thing on it for me, though, are Falcom titles like Ys and Trails of Cold Steel. I also like running PSP and PS1 games on the thing, so I can actually play Valkyria Chronicles II and Lunar: Silver Star Harmony on my big TV screen. :)
My history with Dragon Quest is only slightly less short than my history with Zelda, and for that matter is only slightly shorter than my existence in this world. :) I started with the NES original, played a bit of the next couple of games, then Dragon Quest disappeared until Dragon Quest Monsters came out on GBC. The next time I actually played a DQ game was in 2000, with DQ I + II on Game Boy Color.
DQVIII and DQV are true masterpieces, but the rest of the series is great as well.
One of my favorite games of last year was Dragon Quest Heroes, which was made by Omega Force, the people who do the (fill in the blank) Warriors games. It has the same defeat hordes of enemies at the same time, but it plays a lot more like a RPG than these games usually do.
