3DS

Upwards and Onwards

HIGH Using Deep Forest Lore the first time

LOW Getting stuck (twice) after falling for false in-game information.

WTF Four great games and this series is still largely unknown?

Fire Emblem: Awakening is easily one of my favorite games of the year so far, from a design perspective. No question. However, after rolling credits I noticed a couple of things which made me raise an eyebrow, and those were already on top of a problem I had with the game even earlier on—essentially, Awakening has quite a bit to say about female characters and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues, while never overtly saying anything at all.

This time, it's the ratio of depth vs complexity that Extra Credits seeks to explain.

Extra Credits has a response-episode to feedback for a recent episode about religion and games. As usual the guys do a great job challenging those that blindly worship science.

In this episode we bid a fond farewell to one of our own, plus everyone tries to talk Richard into buying a 3DS with completely meaningless results. With Richard Naik, Chi Kong Lui, Brad "Sweet Can" Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Dylan Collins.

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In a nutshell, I Am Alive's a post-apocalyptic story about a father who was trapped far from home when disaster struck, and is only just now returning to find his wife and daughter. There are a number of things that make this title unique, such as the extremely stark visuals, the dark, mature subject matter and the interesting combination of environmental traversal and highly non-standard combat which is more like lethal puzzle-solving than it is about punching dudes out.

The last week or so has been off-the-charts crazy here at GameCritics.com West—tons of stuff going on and all of it equally important, capped off with the left front tire of my car literally falling off as I was in the middle of a busy intersection in Seattle. I don't like to go so long between updates, but there you go.

With buzz building around "inevitable" new console announcements, I started thinking about it and came to a realization: For the first time in over thirty years of playing games, I'm honestly not excited about or even looking forward to the next generation of hardware.

If you're into strategy games or old-school role-playing games, the Nintendo 3DS is where the action is right now.

The Extra Credits guys and gals certainly aren't afraid to tackle the big topics, even though it can take them a while to get to them. There aren't too many other topics surrounded with more landmines than that of "Religion in Games." And in fairness to crew, a lot was covered in the 12 minutes of video, but it feels like they only brushed the surface (no Christian-based games?). Hopefully, there is another, deeper discussion in the works that covers more of this subject matter.