To make a great adventure game in my eyes, you need two things: fantastic writing and and a beautiful setting.
I’ve played through and enjoyed games that lacked in other areas but had those two traits, and yesterday I played through a 15-minute demo of Supergiant Games’ Transistor. The game passed my preliminary requirements with flying colours – colours and shapes that constantly warped and animated around the games’ world.
Splash Damage’s objective-based shooter, the newly christened Extraction, evokes some of my favourite memories from 2011’s Brink, but a few key difference I noticed in the one multiplayer match I played have me a little worried about what the game is going to become.
Of the three shows that I’ve recommended this weekend, Godless Sunday is the one that I’m the most undecided on. That’s partially due to an extended narrative-frame that’s developing at the start of the show. But if the intrigue of heavenly Grave Keepers and forsaken immortal humans, can be maintained, I’m willing to buy-in to future story arcs.
There are five racoons in this shot. Believe it.
The Eccentric Family is a show that I can recommend to anyone at this point in the season. Whether you’re a harsh anime critic, or you’re a Western-culture centred person looking for a step out of your comfort zone, it’s sure to engage you with its unique appeal.
Great comedy-dramas are works that really get me going. There’s always something there to make you chuckle and keep you hooked, but in each joke there’s an iota of character development that – over time – weaves a slightly bitter narrative that becomes more powerful as your investment in the happenings increases.
The Eccentric Family looks like it’s going to be a great comedy-drama that oozes originality, and that’s what has me jazzed.
Stella Women’s Academy (or Stella), on its most basic level, is a show about high school girls that are part of a club, but it has got one hell of a conceit.
It sounds like the description of every slice-of-life safe-bet anime that’s aired every season since K-On! took Japan by storm in 2009. Actually, I also just described the core of three other original series that started airing along side Stella. The proliferation of the setup is getting a little ridiculous.
But Stella is a lighthearted show all about airsoft, not traditional athletics, music or supernatural shenanigans. It’s about oddballs in a private girl’s boarding school shooting at each other with plastic pellets. If there was even the slightest hint of a joke in the show’s execution, I would have stopped watching it in an instant. But while Stella may be lighthearted, it’s lacing it’s combat boots as straight as a show about replica firearms possibly can.
Kevin Pennyfeather 