Chebucto Regional Softball Club

IDK where this logic is coming from. PS2, Xbox 360, and older Nintendo consoles are filled with weird games by big companies. Like, yes, they unfortunately moved on from weirdness when gaming became too profitable and that sucks, but falsely glorifying indies like that is just weird.

Ah, man. Capcom bringing back Onimusha and Okami gives me hope we may actually see Viewtiful Joe and God Hand ports one day… unbelievable the pinnacle of beat'em up action is stuck on 2-decade-old hardware.

SMTV selling +2m is big. I would've loved to see P4AU numbers after the botched PC port. I bet it still sold OK.

This reads like a crutch though and reflects part of the problem: games are being treated like products and not carefully curated, cohesive experiences, which's why its consistent inclusion everywhere is being criticized. If everyone is using the same crutch, no one should be surprised if people start complaining they're seeing the same crutch everywhere instead of interesting new ideas.

Didn't Furi do this in 2016? I'd be surprised if it was the first game to tie parrying to health gain either. In the slew of action games that came out in the PS2 era, someone must've done it.

That's not it though. No one complained about parrying in Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden II because this is where the mechanic belongs. But when you start seeing it in Resident Evil or Doom, or even new IPs like Slitterhead, you have to start questioning if combat designers are being pushed to ride a trend or if they're being lazy and using parrying as a crutch.