No Lives Left

There's a lot of talk about hype these days. A lot of gamers seem to really take trailers at face value these days and despite being let down time and time again, we still chomp at the bit at the latest trailers. We, as a community, never really learn our lesson. We swear off pre-orders and day one purchases. We balk at the term, "loot box" or "Season Pass." Yet they get more and more prevalent as time goes by. Heck, major developers also throw in mobile gaming tactics (gatcha gimmicks and buying in-game currency to speed up grinding) into their triple A titles because they the player base is so large, developers will find those so called "whales" to increase revenue. And while I can understand all of these things as ways to recoup costs of insanely expensive development costs, it sort of ruins the simplicity of gaming. When I was younger, there was a sense of finality in buying a game. A bad game would be completed, forgotten, and left in the ...

There's a certain inexplicable joy I get when I find games that take something I never would have found interesting and make it fun. I don't normally like golf as a sport; mostly because I am not very good at it or...in shape. But golf also is a very slow-paced game and a lot of  time players look like they are doing nothing . Or at least it seems that way. I get there is a lot of calculation, body control, and strength involved in every tee, stroke, and putt. But as an observer, there is just too much time between hits that it's just not fun  to watch. But then comes along the trailer for  Golf Story  and I immediately fell in love. An RPG that revolves around golf and has a sense of humor about it? Count me in.  It's one of the few games where the hype I had matched the quality of the game. The gameplay is fun enough for the length of the game, the story is simple but full of funny, well-written characters, and the sprite, 16-bit graphics fi...