Friday, April 3, 2015

News & Views
3/28/15-4/3/15

Bloodborne. That’s been my life since my last News & Views, and takes up a lion’s share of the stories here this week. What a game. Look forward to a review here on TIF in the coming weeks. This week I found some stories about Bloodborne being completed in less than an hour, how Bloodborne’s combat is exciting and refreshing, and how its repetitive nature may allow some among us to reach a state of Zen. It’s not all Bloodborne this week, and I also have some stories for you guys about fighting games, the tremendous ‘Kirkman Effect’ and what that might mean for the future of entertainment, and more. Enjoy!

Spotlight
Simon Parkin, The Guardian

Worth Reading
John Learned, US Gamer

Matthew Handrahan, Gamesindustry.biz

Ben Kuchera, Polygon

Ben Kuchera, Polygon

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku

And the rest!
Brian Albert, IGN
Just like Uncharted 4: A Theif’s End before it, nearly everyone predicted that the new Legend of Zelda game would miss its anticipated 2015 release. This puts Nintendo in a tough place for the holiday season—is Star Fox really enough to move Wii U units? I would guess not. Microsoft seems to have the holiday locked up with Halo 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider. We’ll have to see what everyone has in store for E3.

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku
Speed running is a huge part of the Souls community and I am glad to see the latest installment, Bloodborne, joining the fray. I would not have expected a sub 60 minute run within the first week, but I was proven wrong. Of course, this run exploits an item duplication glitch, but it is an impressive feat nonetheless.

Joshua Yehl, IGN
I like comics but almost never get a chance to read them. The line-up Marvel has slated for its new Avengers looks great, though! Really like the direction Marvel has been taking recently with a bunch of its properties.

Steven Messner, Pixel Attack
Combat in Bloodborne is perhaps the best of any of the Souls games. It is quick, brutal and highly skill intensive. It perfectly blends the careful, measured approach offered by the previous games with a more action brawler style. Messner hits on just how great it feels.

Maddy Myers, Offworld
The fighting game genre is perhaps the most impenetrable in the entire industry (aside from maybe MOBAs/RTS’s). The insane time commitment and inherent skills required to get ‘good’ at any single fighting game dissuades so many people from jumping in. I love the genre, and recently invested the time to get quite good at Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. I was not a pro or anything, but had an online ranking just shy of the pro players. But that required hundreds of hours of play. To this day, I avoid picking up so many different fighting games—not for a lack of interest, but because I know I don’t have the time to get to an acceptable level of competence. Myers writes about this beautifully in her piece.

Brian Crecente, Polygon
It’s crazy just how big The Walking Dead has gotten. Crecente goes into great detail describing the phenomenon and speculating about the future of entertainment in a post-Kirkman world.

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