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0 CommentsWatch us color in some Assassins, ASMR-style
By Simone de Rochefort on Nov 17, 2016 11.17.16
We received a copy of Assassin's Creed: The Official Coloring Book, and promptly hung up our controllers to become professional colorers. Today, Pat McGill (Polygon video producer and creator of ASMArby's) contributed some color commentary to my time with the book. Please laugh at that joke. We worked really hard on it.
With Pat's dulcet tones and the soft sounds of the Assassin's Creed 2 soundtrack, this Facebook livestream is sure to be the chillest part of your day. Please ignore the part where I thought Jacob Frye's hand was a glove.
Assassin's Creed: The Official Coloring Book has character portraits as well as bigger setpieces that you'll recognize from the Assassin's Creed games. I chose to color a line art version of this picture:
There are lots of others...
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4 CommentsLearn the new tricks of the trade in Monster Hunter Generations
By Griffin McElroy on Jul 12, 2016 07.12.16
Monster Hunter Generations is a tough game to get a handle on — as my review from earlier today points out, it's a terrific game that can be challenging to break into. To help get your bearings, check out the video above. It shows two fledgling hunters — Phil and myself — trying our hand at a couple of online hunts, showcasing a couple of the game's new features off as we go. If Monster Hunter Generations seems like your cup of tea, you can pick it up on Nintendo 3DS when it launches July 15.
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4 CommentsWe staged a reading of cyberpunk bartending game VA-11 HALL-A
By Justin McElroy on Jun 23, 2016 06.23.16
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"Cyberpunk bartending action" VA-11 HALL-A is a perfectly fine visual novel/bartending sim hybrid without us trampling all over it with our commentary. So, we decided to contribute the only way we could think of: Adding voice overs.
Frankly, the story is well-written and presented enough by Sukeban Games without us contributing to it at all, but we've got to justify our paychecks somehow, right? Besides, if we can lure in just a few reading-averse folks to playing this fascinating title, we'll consider that a job well done.
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3 CommentsDeath Road to Canada is FTL + Zombies
By Russ Frushtick on May 19, 2016 05.19.16
So it seems a zombie outbreak has taken over. The only solution? Drive the Death Road to Canada. Nick Robinson and Russ Frushtick from the Polygon video team hit the road and try to make it to Quebec before their brains get nommed. Mind the bears.
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1 CommentSee how Shadow of the Beast's remake stacks up to the classic
By Justin McElroy on May 16, 2016 05.16.16
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First announced in 2013, Heavy Spectrum's remake of Shadow of the Beast will finally be released tomorrow. If you aren't familiar with the original, it's something of a cult classic, first released for the Amiga in 1989 by Reflections and Psygnosis. We weren't terribly fond of the new version, but fortunately the original is packed right in with the download.
Above you'll find footage from the new version as well as a taste of the original, to give you an idea of just how far The Beast has come.
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6 CommentsWhy Uncharted 4 is the finale this franchise deserves
By Griffin McElroy and Justin McElroy on May 06, 2016 05.06.16
If Uncharted 4: A Thief's End truly is the end of Nathan Drake's treasure-hunting career, it's a pretty spectacular way to go out. The game offers some of the best character work and storytelling the franchise has ever seen, adds some much-needed variety to climbing and exploration and, best of all, it's got apples. Big, red, delicious-looking apples that, when you eat them, you get better at shooting.
You can learn all about those exciting features, but especially those apples, in the Overview posted above.
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12 CommentsI can't stop playing Pocket Card Jockey, the 3DS Solitaire horse-racing game
By Griffin McElroy on May 04, 2016 05.04.16
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Pocket Card Jockey is a game about playing Solitaire to make race horses go fast, a cocktail which is absolutely inscrutable, punishing and potentially even more difficult than actual horse racing. Also, I absolutely cannot stop playing it. It's got some sticky hooks — which you'd expect, considering it was made by Pokémon series developer Game Freak — and a surprising amount of skill and strategy to it as well. Also, you can adopt a horse named Fire Boy, which Nick and I do in the video posted above. Godspeed, Fire Boy.
IKEA VR Experience makes you a sad and lonely ghost
By Simone de Rochefort and Griffin McElroy on Apr 22, 2016 04.22.16
In early April, IKEA launched the IKEA VR Experience, and the internet veritably exploded. What gift had IKEA given us? Would we be able to browse the IKEA catalog? Decorate our own virtual homes? Or perhaps, as Griffin masochistically suggests, build IKEA furniture in virtual reality?
The answer is, of course, that you can put meatballs in a pan, or in the recycling.
IKEA VR Experience is as minimalist as IKEA's aesthetics. It's a free app that sets you down in a fully furnished IKEA kitchen. The best part of the app is actually that you can change your height. There's an option to be 6'7", and an option to be your regular height. Best of all, you can make yourself into a 3-foot child and feel like you're in a giant's kitchen.
You can also change the colors of the cabinets, from tan...
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2 CommentsHow Star Fox Guard blends Night Trap, tower defense and robot frogs
By Griffin McElroy on Apr 20, 2016 04.20.16
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Star Fox Guard is certainly the lesser-known of the two Star Fox games launching this Friday, but it's worth paying attention to. It is, at its core, a tower defense game charging you with protecting a mining facility using gun-toting CCTV cameras, which you'll use to keep an eye on your perimeter and blast any encroaching robots therein. Some of those robots are real jerks, though, using shields to block your shots or smoke bombs to conceal their entry into your base. Some of those robots are tanks that want to shoot down your cameras, which is just rude.
You can watch me and Justin play through a few levels — and create our own robot army — in Star Fox Guard in the video posted above. The game drops this Friday on eShop for $14.99,...
Watch us try — and fail at — the deliciously brutal puzzles of Stephen's Sausage Roll
By Allegra Frank, Simone de Rochefort, and Jeff Ramos on Apr 19, 2016 04.19.16
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Allegra and Jeff have been talking about Stephen's Sausage Roll nonstop for the past two weeks. They're not alone — the immensely cruel sausage-grilling puzzle game has longtime fans in designers like Jonathan Blow (The Witness) and Bennett Foddy (QWOP) — and yet others remained skeptical as they sang the praises of this odd-looking, odd-sounding game.
In the video above, watch us play some of Stephen's Sausage Roll's brain-busting puzzles to get a sense of what makes this seemingly simple game so vexing. Jeff and Allegra talk up how its game design and sometimes infuriating difficulty is never annoying; the challenge is what keeps them rolling sausage after sausage in search of that perfectly cooked meat.
Stories: The Path of Destinies is way more fun than its boring name suggests
By Simone de Rochefort and Griffin McElroy on Apr 18, 2016 04.18.16
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I know poking fun at this game's name is barely fair, but we have to call out the elephant in the room.
Stories: The Path of Destinies is a really fun game with the most generic name in the world. It's an action-RPG with a cool Choose Your Own Adventure-style storytelling mechanic.
See, the name of the game is pretty literal. Reynardo the fox fights for the Rebellion against the evil Emperor. At the beginning of the game, he picks up a magic book that lets him see the outcomes of the many choices he can make. For the player, this means playing through the many branches of the story and making awful, awful mistakes that end in death.
But each time you restart, you retain your weapons, customizations, and the knowledge of what you...
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3 CommentsHere’s what you need to know about The Division’s free update
By Charlie Hall on Apr 13, 2016 04.13.16
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Tom Clancy's The Division has dropped its first free update, called Incursions. We already know how it changes crafting, but there's so much more to talk about.
"Falcon Lost" is a new kind of mission, called an Incursion, and I've got a sample of what's in store for you and your high-level team of Agents. Justin McElroy and I talk a bit about the Dark Zone, gear scores, high-end loot drops and more.
For more on The Division check out Polygon's review here, as well as our discussion of tweaks being made to the crafting system and the new gear trading features.
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60 CommentsIs Destiny's April update enough to bring back a couple of lapsed players?
By Griffin McElroy and Justin McElroy on Apr 13, 2016 04.13.16
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I fell off of Destiny around the launch of the higher-difficulty version of the King's Fall raid last November, stopping in to check in on the few in-game events that unfolded since then. Earlier this week, the game's April 2.2.0 update went live, introducing a bunch of long-overdue quality-of-life changes (better endgame gear drops and simplified Infusions chief among them) as well as a smattering of new content for your Guardian to play through — but is it enough to get a lapsed player like myself back on the Destiny train?
You can watch me and Justin, a fellow quitter, in the Overview video posted above. Just, like, go easy on how sloppy I'm playing — I'm a little out of practice.
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4 CommentsThe most beautiful typing game ever made
By Justin McElroy on Apr 07, 2016 04.07.16
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Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing meets Bastion is probably the most unlikely elevator pitch you'll hear for a game this year, but it's a pretty dead-on descriptor of Epistory. This beautiful, faux-papercraft world is brought to life by a girl, her three-tailed fox and your typing skills.
Simone de Rochefort and I took a quick tour of Fishing Cactus' new game while brushing up on our keyboard prowess.
Blarp is the weirdest game for the HTC Vive
By Simone de Rochefort and Ben Kuchera on Apr 07, 2016 04.07.16
Who's in the mood for some sensory overload?
That's what you get with Blarp, a weird little physics game for the HTC Vive.
This video explains a fraction of how bizarre Blarp is. In the game you shepherd an ever-expanding number of blarps. Pressing the trigger on your controller will bring the blarps zooming toward it. If they hit the controller, you lose. To the end, you need to swing the blarps around like horrible yo-yos, using the shield to deflect if they get too close.
And why?
To get more blarps, of course. Each round will give you one more blarp, until you're standing in the middle of a swirling cloud of eyeballs with tails. It's weird as hell, and oddly compelling.
Ben and I discuss the intricacies of Blarp, and how weird it feels to be in the middle of a swirling...
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4 CommentsWatch us build a terrible robot named 'Party Man' in VR with Fantastic Contraption
By Griffin McElroy and Justin McElroy on Apr 07, 2016 04.07.16
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God rest your weary soul, Party Man. You were too beautiful for this world, by which I mean the colorful, virtual world of Fantastic Contraption, a puzzle game for the HTC Vive. Using the VR headset's two controllers, Fantastic Contraption allows you to stretch and connect different pieces of machinery to create a device that will get a small pink ball into a goal. Or, if you find that too taxing, it allows you to create a being of infinite dance, one incapable of supporting its own long, beautiful limbs.
You can watch Justin and I explore Fantastic Contraption and try out a few puzzles in the video posted above. We don't do a particularly good job, but that's okay! That's what the furnace is for.