Jumping in Headfirst

"If I told you I killed a nigga at 16, would you believe me? Or see me to be, the innocent Kendrick you seen in the street With a basketball and some Now-and-Laters to eat, If I mentioned all of my skeletons, would you jump in the seat? Would you say my intelligence now is great relief? And its safe to say our next generation maybe could sleep With dreams of being a lawyer or doctor,  Instead of a boy with a chopper, that hold the cul-de-sac hostage?" That verse from Kendrick Lamar's "mAAd city" shows off the inescapable duality of the black youth--the one that allows us to be viewed through one set of eyes as the "good" or "safe" kind of black through our personalities or manner of speech, while an entirely different pair could see us as merely gangsters or thugs just for our clothing choices, even though more often than not we all have similar backgrounds, and any of us could be forced at any time to do less than savory things ...

If Sony hadn't taken it, these guys would've gotten the best in show.  Easy. Rating: A- Sometime last year, I did this enormous post on NeoGAF talking about all the games we could see during that E3.   I did a ton of research for that, and during that time I realized how easy it would be for Square to do their own conference if they wanted to. Well, lo and behold here we are a year later and Square has popped up with the strongest conference from a non-console developer.   (They topped Nintendo too, but I’ll get to that in a second.)    Square’s probably the most well-rounded developer making video games right now.   No other developer could’ve offered you as many big budget titles from so many different genres and settings.    Barely two weeks ago, I was calling Square the equivalent of a significant other that’s a jerk—they ignore you for weeks, refuse to do anything around the house, but then just when you’re...

I definitely wanted this one to be better.

Uh-oh.  The "big dog" has arrived... Rating : HOLY F- (A++) If you paid attention to the internet scuttlebutt the night before, you knew there was a possibility of what happened.    I said: “Sony can only disappoint, or break the internet” roughly two hours before their conference started.   Fortunately, Sony decided to go for the latter. We should’ve known they weren’t fucking around when they started on time for once.   They wasted absolutely ZERO time and kicked things off by re-introducing The Last Guardian.    Though I didn’t care about it when they revealed it in 2009 (and care even less now), it was a beautiful reveal and a great way to start things off. But they weren’t done.   Horizon, the game I’ve been talking about for ages , was next and it looked jaw-droppingly beautiful.   Boasting a unique setting, hauntingly beautiful music, and a bad-ass female protagonist hunting down ROBOT DINOSAURS, Guerilla Games m...

LANA!!!!!

The second conference of Day 1.  This isn't quite as....light as it should be.

Back with the official "Day One" of E3's conference.  Let's go.