Bit by Bit: Q1 2013

Freedom at last!  Finally my first year of university is over.  Now with a little more free time on my hands, I can dedicate much more time to blogging.  As the season transitions from winter to spring to eventually summer, the release of games slow significantly.  While game releases slow, game news starts to pick up with big announcements leading up to some huge conventions like E3, Comic Con and PAX Prime.  The slowing of game releases for the spring and summer help with working on the immense backlog that has been building since last Fall.  Along with a few new games I am looking forward to in the next four and a half months, there are quite a few I want to work on this summer break.  I will get to those games in my blog tomorrow.  Before we look to the future, it is time to look back at the best of the first quarter of 2013.

Game of the Quarter
Even with the busyness that is university, I did make some time to pick up and play a good amount of new releases.  The games I picked up this quarter were Tomb Raider, Lego City:  Undercover, Luigi's Mansion:  Dark Moon and BioShock Infinite.  All these games are great and deserve your time and money, but none of them could compete with the 3DS's masterful strategy epic that released this past February.  Yes, Fire Emblem Awakening is the best game of the first quarter of 2013 and quite possibly could go to be this writer's Game of the Year.  Intelligent Systems has produced many great games over the years be it strategy, role-playing or even puzzle games, but Fire Emblem Awakening stands as their crowning achievement in this medium.  The countless hours of content, great story and vastly improved support system are the stars of Awakening bar none.  Combining these elements with the excellent tactile battle system and challenging yet fair difficulty that this series is known for easily makes Fire Emblem Awakening the best game in Nintendo's venerable strategy series, on the 3DS and of this year.  Personally, I have put just over 100 hours into Fire Emblem:  Awakening and I still have a handful of sidequests and DLC levels to play and plenty SpotPass teams to fight with tons of more content being uploaded daily.  Fire Emblem Awakening is a game that no 3DS owner should pass.  It is the 3DS's killer app.

Video of the Quarter
One moment in the past three months captured the hearts and minds of gamers around the world and put Capcom in a much better light after the hellaciously bad 2012 they had.  That moment was the reveal of DuckTales Remastered at PAX East.  Nobody saw this reveal coming, but when it happened jaws dropped.  Gamers have been clamouring for another DuckTales game for years now and finally got their wish when Capcom showed this trailer.

Hump Day Video: Deadpool: The Game

In recent years, games have found a bigger home at the San Diego Comic-Con than in the past.  Taking up a lot of floor space, many video game related panels take place and a few announcements are made usually pertaining to comic book related video games.  Comic Con also is the first time the public can play a lot of demos for games showed off at last month's E3.

Out of all the video game announcements, the one that took the cake was the reveal of High Moon Studios' newest project, Deadpool: The Game.  Along with the announcement came an amazing teaser trailer for Deadpool: The Game that I will share you with you all today.  This trailer only shows a little tease of what the gameplay should be like, but from what has been shown so far it looks like a great mix of bloody violence with the humour of The Merc with a Mouth.  I personally believe Deadpool is in the fully capable hands of High Moon Studios, the team that brought us the great Transformers: War for Cybertron and its upcoming sequel Fall of Cybertron, as it looks like they fully respect the source material and want to do their best to translate it to this interactive media for all to enjoy.  So here is the teaser trailer from this past weekend from Comic Con for everybody's viewing pleasure.

Sonic & Mega Man: A Crossover of Epic Proportions

Sorry in advance that there will not be a Hump Day Music this week due to an announcement of epic proportions.  Crossovers are common in video games and comic books.  They answer tons of what if questions fans might have and offer an excellent chance to have the audience of one franchise be exposed to what makes another franchise so great.  Some of the most notable crossovers are Capcom's VS. Series, Super Smack Bros., Alien VS. Predator, the Mario & Sonic games and the recent Pokemon Conquest.  Just in time for the San Diego Comic Con, easily the biggest and most popular comic convention in the world, Archie Comics has announced a crossover that should get any gamer excited.  Across 12 comics, 3 series and 2 franchises, two gaming icons will join forces for the very first time next year.  Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man will team up in this 12 part comic event spanning Sonic, Sonic Universe and Mega Man comics.  This crossover will be handled by Ian Flynn, one of Archie's best writers, and feature the art of Patrick "SPAZ" Spaziante.  Right now, the finer details of this crossover are under lock and key, but more shall be revealed at Archie's Sonic & Mega Man panel at Comic Con this weekend.

As a big fan of both franchises, I am very excited.  I have been reading Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics for well over a decade and I did pick up the first seven issues of Archie's Mega Man series, so I do have a history with both series.  Personally, the Sonic comics are my favourite as they deviate from the story of the games and have it govern every story in the comics much like the Mega Man comics.  At the moment, I have not picked up a Sonic comic in months because the grocery store that I would buy my Sonic comics each and every month stopped selling them.  It is a bummer considering the series has really gotten good these last few arches.  I have not picked up a Mega Man comic because I do not like the direction Archie is taking it.  Like I mentioned before, the Mega Man comics followed the games too much with little to no deviation to create it's own identity much like the Sonic comics have.  With this crossover, I am really going to enjoy the new material for Mega Man as it will not be filler or another adaptation of a classic Mega Man game.  Also with Archie's top talents on this project, I know this crossover is in good hands.  While some might saw it is hard to this crossover working because there is not much similar between Sonic and Mega Man, some of the most unlikely crossovers are some of the best.  Just look at Pokemon Conquest for example.  Who would have thought Pokemon and Nobunaga's Ambition would ever work?  No one, but look at how great of a game it turned out to be.  We can speculate all we want, but we will not know for sure until we have the result in our hands.  Right now I just got to say,  great move Archie.  You got this fan excited.