In the ashes of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, amid the bloat and pretense of the games industry, always must there be a presentation... always must there be game trailers... and always must there be those who commentate. So it is that we find ourselves in the aftermath of this year's collected summer showcases, a cavalcade of announcements and information to parse in its wake. For my part, I set forth to note the games that stood out among the pack. Today, we go over the high points of the Future Games Show , the Xbox Games Showcase , the PC Gaming Show and, yes , even the Ubisoft Forward . Heaven help us all... Future Games Show The High Point: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami The premise of “riffing on the hardboiled detective story with talking cartoon animals” would be a fine selling point for a game in itself. The choice to also lean into a sticker book aesthetic, complete with characters hobbling around as barely moving objects in a scene? Now that's a fun time ...
As of February the twentieth, it will have been thirty-five years since the release of Konami’s popular run-and-gun title Contra to arcades. The action genre in gaming did not emerge with Contra , but it was helped along by that property as the medium inched ever closer to the new millennium. Though games about muscle-bound soldiers and plentiful gunfire had existed before, the Contra series leaned into the absurdity of the setup while refining and building upon the basics of the side-scrolling action template. So, in honor of this anniversary and the property's significance to gaming, let’s take a look back and see how that beloved title fares now… The Experience One’s experience of the original game’s aesthetic leanings absolutely depends on the version chosen. There’s the initial arcade release from 1987, which sports the more detailed backgrounds and character sprites, and the later edition for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or Famicom, for Japanese players) that simpli...