Month: January 2018

RPGs are like toy boxes stuffed with a million different interesting things. I grew up playing them and they’re part of the reason I wanted to get into game development. Almost all of the fun I’ve had gaming was playing an RPG so it’s safe to say that it’s a special genre for me.

RPGs have been a big part of my professional life, too. After I graduated high school, I went to a specialist games development school and then got a job in the industry, where I was lucky enough to work on games like Final Fantasy Legend II and Final Fantasy Explorers. It has been an honour to contribute to a genre that means so much to me.

Hashimoto

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As the Göta river winds into Gothenburg, it slows and widens, opening its mouth to spit triumphantly into the North Sea after a 470 mile journey. It’s a geographical feature co-opted to keep people apart for hundreds of years.

Stone Age settlements sprung up by its side, using it as natural protection from rivals and predators alike. Frightened Medieval Swedes met on its Eastern bank to discuss how to stop the Black Death moving in their Norwegian neighbours to the west (it didn’t work). And today, two of Europe’s most exciting developers take up residence, one on each side, like two little armies of warring nerd Vikings, waiting for a low tide so they can wade out and bash each other to death with mechanical keyboards.

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Game subtitles so rarely tell us anything about what’s inside the box. How can warfare be infinite, who was actually doing the reckoning in Kingdoms of Amalur, and what the hell is a ‘Breath of the Wild’ anyway? It’s almost a shock, then, to discover how perfectly “World” sums up Capcom’s achievements with the newest Monster Hunter.

Its hunting grounds feel expansive, each a separate ecosystem that would tick along nicely by itself without your involvement. It presents a near-overwhelming world of possibilities for customisation and specialisation. Most importantly, it’s somewhere in which you could end up spending so much time you might as well be living there.

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This romantic drama landed four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor.

Director Jordan Peele’s horror-thriller landed four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

In Avengers: Infinity War Prelude #1 by writer and artist Tigh Walker, we find out more about why Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier was put on ice. We also see where the Avengers went to after the events of Captain America: Civil War and what they’re up to leading into Avengers: Infinity War.

Warning: full spoilers ahead!

Cover by Ryan Meinerding. (Marvel Comics)

Most of the comic is dedicated to explaining how Bucky wound up on ice and what those in Wakanda are doing to help him.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Paramount Network – formerly Spike TV – kicked off its new sheen/skin/sleeve (while other “Peak TV” upstart networks curbed their original scripted content over the past year) with a new miniseries about the two-month standoff between the FBI, ATF and an ostensibly peaceful religious cult known as the Branch Davidians back in 1993. Sufficed to say, it was a tragedy, and media spectacle, so impactful that ever since it’s been referred to simply by the Texas city it happened in the vicinity of – Waco.

The premiere episode of the six-part Waco – featuring a transformed Taylor Kitsch spreading his thespian wings as compound guru David Koresh, along with an all-star cast that can largely resemble a big Boardwalk Empire reunion at times – competently set up the oncoming doom and gloom with a “Let’s start things with a brief glimpse of where we’re headed” approach, opening with the FBI already on Koresh’s doorstep and everyone in a panic about the possibility of violence. From there, the rest was flashbacks to months previous.

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