So, today Nintendo announced their new console slated to release March 2017. There is a lot to go over including its portable Nvidia-powered display, charging dock, detachable controllers, etc. 

             ​The Witness is a game that challenges what a game is and should be. Its noteworthiness has inspired me to write my thoughts on it. By right I probably shouldn’t even consider writing about it. I don’t own The Witness. I don’t think I fully understand The Witness. I have never played The Witness. In fact I don’t even plan to play The Witness. What I do have though is a studied interpretation of the game as a viewer (a witness if you will). My judgement on the topic comes through a full (more or less) playthrough of the game by the great Day9 and an analysis of the game by Joseph Anderson befittingly titled The Witness – A Great Game That You Shouldn’t Play. I say befitting because I wouldn’t say, and many would agree, that the game is not very player friendly unless you morbidly enjoy solving puzzles for the sake of solving puzzles. However, in the grand scheme of brilliant game design The Witness truly shines. For this my opinion is that The Witness is a controversial, bizarre, but truly remarkable game to say the least. I highly recommend watching Anderson’s 41 minute account on the profound subtleties of the game even if you never plan to play it. 
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​PAX West is now finally over and after some time composing my thoughts on all of the cool experiences at the convention I thought I would talk about some of the games I’m most excited for. So, let’s dive right into it.

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​1.  Final Fantasy XV

Konami recently published a new trailer for the Metal Gear Solid franchise today and it's a spinoff of the main Metal Gear Solid franchise that features crystalized zombies. It's the first game Konami has made without creator Hideo Kojima. Deviating from the main story of MGSV, it is a co-op survival game that takes place in an alternate universe. The trailer can be seen below:

To be honest, I'm disappointed that they did not come up with a more original idea than zombies or try to focus on remastering previous MGS titles to get a refresher on the series direction while earning some income. Not to mention, Konami recently disappointed some of its fans by teasing a remastered MGS only for it to be a pachinko machine. Focusing development efforts on remastering the previous titles would have been safe and an excellent fan service that reassured gamers that Konami did care about the series and them. However, I'm not completely upset with this new title because it is still early in the development stage and I'm just happy that they didn't really drag the main series through the mud....yet. It's too early to say if this change in direction is good or not, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see. 

No Man’s Sky came out recently and depending on who you ask, it was either a success or an enormous disappointment. Was this the game that was supposed to revolutionize all indie games forever? No. Was No Man’s Sky going to keep us glued to our computer screens for hours and hours on end? No. Is it going to make us appreciate every single curve, ridge, and intricate detail placed in this procedurally generated universe? No. In my opinion, is it a bad game? No, but it isn’t really phenomenal either.
 
No Man’s Sky is a $60 game that managed to demonstrate some of the things that are wrong with how we psychologically approach buying games.

Hey guys,

I made my first ever video review about the game Hyper Light Drifter. The audio is a little low. I'm working to fix that for the future and improving over time. Anyway, here it is posted below. Also, don't forget to check out my steam library which is a new addition to my site. I look forward to making better videos in the future and hearing what you have to say!

Sincerely,
​Data J

 
Hello guys!

I am giving away Steam keys to people who are actively engaged with either this website or my twitter account. If you're a follower on twitter, then that's awesome and I appreciate it. If not, I recommend that you potentially consider it. 

So, here are the games I have keys for:

TowerFall Ascension
Mushroom 11
A Boy and His Blob
Human Resource Machine
Jumpjet Rex
Mini Metro
Shantae: Risky's Revenge
​1993 Space Machine

How to get any of the games above:

Since this is geared for people who currently look at my stuff and not just people who search twitter for Steam keys, I am giving this away to people who comment on this post with the game they want and are already followers of mine on Twitter. So, leave your Twitter username so I can DM you the steam key on Twitter. New followers are nice, but this is primarily just to say thank you to the people who already do. Thank you. Have a nice day, guys!

As the title mentioned above, Supergiant games released a new trailer for Pyre. Now, I'm somewhat a fan of Supergiant Games because of their game Transistor. However I also played Bastion and loved the environment/character design, it just wasn't really a game I really could get into. (But hey, we all have some games that are probably amazing but we just couldn't really get immersed into them.) Anyway, Pyre looks to be an interesting new addition to their collection. I couldn't get much of a new read on what the gameplay will actually be like or what the story is, but I feel that with the current art style and animation it has potential. To be honest, the most exciting thing to me was the combat and I wish the trailer displayed more of that. Why am I talking about it though when you can just watch it yourself? Check it out below: 

Game: Nidhogg
​Genre: Indie, Fighting
Platforms: PS4, PC, Vita
​Price: $14.99 (Steam and PSN)

By TheDataJ
 
God, I hope not. I really hope it isn’t. However, it has become evident in recent times that more games are being released without local multiplayer capability and to me that trend is a little alarming. Although I am extremely thankful for the ease and convenience of connecting with far away friends using services such as PSN and Xbox Live, I still have very fond memories of my past split-screen and local co-op adventures. In fact, I’m going to ask you to humor me as I describe why I believe that local co-op games can provide a pretty incredible experience.

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