Semantic Nonsense: Last Man Moving

Mega Man goes to 11, cuts demo

I played the Mega Man 11 not long after it was released last week. Normally, this would get a full impressions post, but the demo is a major tease. While only being able to play through Block Man’s stage successfully leaves me wanting more, it doesn’t leave me with enough material to do a full post on, really.

What matters is that a single stage (that, thank goodness, wasn’t a perfunctory introduction stage) was enough to show three things that the first Mega Man game from a long-uncaring Capcom could do three things:

1. Use widescreen real estate without breaking the pacing of traditional Mega Man level design or being overly zoomed-in like the Game Boy series (or, arguably, Mega Man VII).
2. Get the core premise of the control and feel of a Mega Man game correct (unlike, for example, fellow late-sequel’s Sonic the Hedgehog 4’s frustratingly off physics) while making any improvements feel as though they were always there (it’s somehow easy to miss that Mega Man unquestionably walks faster than he used to).
3. Make the new gimmick, the sual-gear system, look both useable and useful.

The goals are simple, yes, but certainly necessary. Much like Bloodstained before it, this demo was a necessary step to prove that the foundation of the game was solid. Mega Man 11had my curiosity before. Now it has my attention.

The Last Last Last Last We Mean It This Time Remnant

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s news that a remake of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was headed to PS4 and Switch, comes this bomb drop.

SquareEnix, who may have another surprise for us tomorrow at this rate, announced that former and present (for like a week) Xbox 360 exclusive The Last Remnant will finally land on a console that can handle a limit-pushing Unreal Engine 3 game.

(How typical of SquareEnix; a PS3 game takes so long to arrive it becomes a PS4 game.)

You may remember The Last Remnant as the game that was suddenly pulled from Steam earlier this month with no explanation. I think we have a guess as to why that happened now. Still, $10 wasn’t too much money wasted for those who rushed to scoop it up before it vanished, especially for buyers who don’t have a PS4. It’s not really a steal of a deal, though, as the PS4 remake will go for $20.

A brief hiatus

I’m going to be off the blog for at least the next two weeks (it might be more, but I know I’ll need the next two) to prepare for a big move. Blogging will probably come back well before streaming does, as that’s much more of a time investment.

This, of course, is a fantastic opportunity for any of the other writers to hop on the Twitch channel and try their luck. Who knows? You might have a lot of fun with it. I probably won’t be back to doing the streams until damn near November, so don’t be shy, people.

When I do start streaming again, though, we’ll be getting around to some Unfinished Business.

KitKat flavor of the week: Red Velvet

Once you bite through the white chocolate exterior of the Red Velvet Kit Kat, you’re greeted with the sweet interior, though it struggles to appear even remotely red or even pink. The red velvet flavor is good and strong, but the design makes it obvious there’s just chemical trickery afoot here. Tasty, but disappointing if you let yourself think about it too much.