CountDrakeulah

It was great. I enjoyed it with my daughter for a few hours then went to bed because I had work in the morning. Fun game, Nintendo!

@Bass_X0 Inclusivity and representation is borderline experimental.

@NeonPizza Is there anything more excellent than score that sounds like rock music?

That quote doesn't even begin to touch upon why this and so many others of it's ilk fail.

@ZapNCrap I'll concede. Maybe not best, but pretty good.

Shiver is, indeed, best girl.

Hopefully it channels Ron Gilbert's gameplay.

Shinobi? Looks more like Power Blade or Strider to me.

As someone who grew up with the games it was desperately trying to be, Owlboy might be the most overrated game I've ever played. It fails at every single thing it attempts and, oddly enough, there is no indication in the NL review that the reviewer made it past the first level. For those of you who liked it, can you tell me why without mentioning the pixel art, the soundtrack, or the story? And don't say it took 12 years to make.

This cute devil stuff is incredibly lame and might've been subversive in the 90s. Today, however, this stuff is everywhere. Nothing this game is doing is new or risky.

@twztid13 No idea, I haven't played this because I bought Eastward based upon very similar reviews. I could go on in detail about it, but in a nutshell Eastward is a beautiful audio/visual experience shockingly polished for a studio's first game with a really great premise and a solid gameplay foundation that gets bogged down, grinding to a halt it never recovers from in it's third chapter. I would play several sessions in which absolutely no gameplay would happen, unless you define that as moving around the same five to eight screens talking to NPCs who all have several boxes of new dialogue to say with every minor story beat. The story develops really well while the gameplay never gets more nuanced than it's first handful of levels, something every review I ever read failed to either notice or care about. It's painfully obvious these critics have little experience with the games these indie games are desperate to emulate; a top down adventure game with real timr combat automatically equals Zelda to them when there are so many other games that are more appropriate comparisons. Eastward is nothing at all like any Zelda in it's structure or it's scope, it's just the easiest comparison to make by someone needs to come up with one quickly to an audience that has never played anything else. Eastward is definitely more like Illusion of Gaia in the way it balances it's story and gameplay and doles out it's abilities but doesn't even come close even then. You can't revisit areas once the story moves the characters on from them, dungeons are entirely linear, and boss battles are unrewarding and uneventful. Instead of bothering with it I'd suggest doing what I wish I had instead: play one of the many games of thd past it's trying to be instead that you never have before. I STILL haven't played Terranigma, Soul Blazer, or Crusader of Centy yet have wasted my time with more than a few disappointing indies desperate to be them. Of course this is the opinion of an old vet of the golden age of 2D gaming, one who doesn't believe video games are a narrative medium that need anything more than a good PREMISE to hang the gameplay on. I'm positive hundreds of younger people here in the comments would insist I'm wrong. If you'd rather play Oxenfree than Thimbleweed Park then by all means buy Eastward. You'll probably love it.

Great narrative, gameplay sucks, eight outta ten. Fool me once with Eastward... fool me twice... YAINT GONNA FOOL ME AGAIN.

@BloodNinja You can? Which chains? I seem to remember the idea of freedom fries being mostly a joke that fell out of favor almost instantly and was wholly ignored by major companies. It was akin to the renaming of sauerkraut and frankfurters during WWII.

A soapbox article singing the praises of something universally beloved from a past generation? Definitely not a Kate Gray article.

The finale has to be seen to be believed? What's so special about it? It's nothing that hasn't been done before. Why because it's subversive? You gotta stop being so impressed by that stuff. It's not anything special or nearly as cool as VVVVVV's final stretch. The path to the game's biggest secret is much more interesting. I dunno about these critics anymore, man.

Agreed. I really look forward to finally getting an HD remaster of this game on modern consoles then reading a Kate Gray article about how it doesn't hold up to modern wholesome standards.

Wrong. The "wholesome" movement is a direct result of a culture in complete fragmentation, a desperate desire for a harmony we are no longer allowed to admit we want. These games scream a deficiency for the natural world and a pining for a moment in time their patrons are nostalgic for despite never having lived through it. I find the whole thing deeply disturbing and quite sad.

Have you considered maybe video games aren't for you? There are several thousands years of literature you haven't read.

It's fine. I check the news channel every Friday or so where all the new releases are neatly displayed on a single screen. It could be better, alot better even, but you learn to deal with things like this that are ultimately not that important.

Yeah this is a real problem. Newcomers should definitely have special rights.

No need to check who wrote this one.

I naturally assumed he was more of an iQue player.

Yeah this doubly licensed game that barely requires any effort to complete is definitely better than the recent remaster of the greatest game of 1999.

Star Trek, huh? Will it be rated M?

Stock answers. What if Jim Carrey had said "La Mulana"?

Who knew middle schools were filled with so many industry analysts?

Trek got it even worse than Wars and that's saying something.

So much effort really went into ruining the surprise.

He used to make something now he makes nothing.

I absolutely love this new trend of fans homogenizing diverse visual styles into one.

Wasn't there a Chapelle's Show skit about this?

To the few people who stated they couldn't relate the the characters because of the mental health issues the game deals with: I've suffered from undiagnosed chronic depression and social anxiety since as long as I can remember, only to finally see a doctor and get treatment when in my 30s and even I hated these characters. As a sufferer of mental illness, I do NOT want, expect, or ask for special treatment and find it insufferable when others of my kind bring it up in coversation that didn't warrant it. It is my problem, no one l elses, and I despise the idea that people younger than me have been trained to drop the Mental Illness Bomb when looking for an excuse for their objectionable behavior. And trust me, as a middle school teacher, many most certainly are. I slammed through all the dialogue in Celeste, too, BTW. Truly awful stuff, dreadful writing raised up as an example of games being a legitimate medium for narrative is why people like me tell the kids to stick to film and literature.

@HeadPirate We should be friends.

@SwitchVogel That real leaders of several Arab nations actually did issue fatwas against Pokemon in the early 2000s in an attempt to ban everything associated with it is a lot funnier than your easy joke up there, Mitch. Gobless!