Last year was like this.
*Squeaks* This-
Hey!
This year is like...
*Race cars*
Bam! Bam! Bam!
I just finished this Furi game.
It's like a big boss rush
with bullet hell and swordfighting.
It's a huge amount of fun.
And then not two seconds later,
I discovered this classic called Symphony of the Night.
Instead of playing as the dude who slays Dracula,
like in the NES games,
you play as Dracula's son, Alucard.
So you hunt down the good guy, and kill him instead.
But then, you realize that your guy's name is just Dracula
BACKWARDS.
Are you fuckin' serious?
So then you go and kill Dracula too.
"What is a man?"
"A miserable little pile of secrets."
"But enough talk... Have at you!"
Hey, hey... where you goin'?
Get over here, imma beat yo ass Dracula.
It really is a Symphony.
You have piece after piece of Haunting magnificence.
♪ [ ''Dance of Pales" by Michiru Yamane ] ♪
But then, they hit you with that:
♪ [ ''Marble Gallery" by Michiru Yamane ] ♪
Then Dracula comes in with some smooth jazz and shit.
♪ [ Dunkey singing along to "Wandering Ghosts" by Michiru Yamane ] ♪
Dracula on bass ladies and gentleman.
But then it gets too scary.
♪ [ ''Abandoned Pit" by Michiru You Get The Idea ] ♪
Guys...
This is too scary now.
Thi— OH, MY GOD!
Oh, okay that's a frog.
Okay.
But then, it's—
*Dunkey metal screams*
Finally,
after a long and arduous journey
You're rewarded with video gaming's finest end credits song
ever recorded.
♪ [ ''I Am The Wind'' by Cynthia Harrell ] ♪
"Just like the wind..."
"I've always been..."
"Drifting high up in the sky that never ends..."
Then we played Aladdin,
a licensed movie game.
I don't get why this is so good,
but it is,
and it's also a testament,
to how wrong a developer can be
about his own work.
I mean the Genesis one
is surprisingly good, too
and a completely different game, mind you.
But come on.
Come on.
The Super Nintendo one?
Mastahpeece.
You could blow through this whole game in an hour.
But that's because there's no filler. It is back to back quality.
Except for this part, I hate this.
Do yourself a favor, and make getting Aladdin one of your three wishes.
And then for the other wishes, get two pizzas.
Then- *Explosion*
Breath of the Wild comes near and wipes the fucking floor with every single other open world game.
Goodbye chicken.
You were the best partna' a guy could ever ha- wait whoa whoa whoa!
What?
Chicken? No!
Get outta here!
There! Now he's gone forever.
Aaaand he's ba- aaand he's-
If we can expect this kind of ambition from that new Mario, it's a done deal.
*stutters*
*CLAP*
But then, from the darkness, anotha masterpeece emerges.
Hollow Knight.
Which has raised the bar for metroidvanias, to infinity!
I mean you just gotta feel bad for anyone tryin' to file this shit up.
Good luck, for real, good luck.
This game is drenched in a gloomy, derelict vibe.
But it's tone never overwhelms the player.
There's cracks of light-hearted playfulness scattered beneath the surface.
Like these little caterpillars,
This funny map guy.
There's this huge sense of progression, pushing you forward.
You wanna keep exploring, keep finding new moves.
The combat is fine tuned to perfection,
there's an enormous catalog of enemies,
the bosses are incredible,
and this game is 15 dollars.
That's what we call a mastahpeece
for yo wallet.
And there's even more stuff on the horizon.
Now I wanna hold off talking about the big games untill E3,
because there was a lot of indie games that caught my eye.
Like Donut County,
where you play as a little hole in the ground, who eats the level up.
And, uh,
Pepper Grinder.
Which was tucked away in PAX,
in a corner,
on this little tiny screen.
Instead of walking and jumping,
you're steering and drilling your way through the level.
Then you pop out of the dirt...
into the air, and dive back in.
The demo had this great sense of flow,
and I hope they can flesh this out into something special.
Then we got another game with an unconventional method of movement.
Dandara.
You play as PBat,
who is glued to the floor, so he has to teleport and bounce of the wall to get around.
It'll take some getting used to,
but it's strangely gratifying.
And then we got my most anticipated indie game this year:
Sonic Mania.
Instead of being fucking pussies,
like every other company,
SEGA actually brought guys in,
who've been working on Sonic fan games,
and gave them the resources to really make something special.
"Sonic Mania Collectors Edition handles stubborn stains!"
Now...
Sonic fans...
These guys are...are weird, man.
They're... They are legitimately insane.
They have just been beaten down,
and exploited,
and just when you think you got a good thing going...
*laughs*
Damn.
But Sonic Mania,
could very well be the light at the end of this long-ass tunnel.
I'm less excited about revisiting old levels,
but I played one of the new ones,
Studiopolis,
at PAX,
and it's obvious these dudes have a very real appreciation
for what made the Genesis game so fun.
You got the graphics,
you got the sound,
you got the mechanics.
But let me just say one thing to the developers...
If you fuck this up...
I will fuck you up.
Thanks for watching everybody.
♪ [ ''Wandering Ghosts" by Michiru Yamane ] ♪