PixlBit

Friend of the site, Greg Meyer, had a chance to go hands on with the Switch at one of the exclusive events. In anticipation of tomorrow's release, he's put together a bunch of impressions to get you excited for what's coming next for Nintendo.

On Friday, February 17^th, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago and check out Nintendo’s upcoming new system—The Switch, as well as fifteen different titles releasing within the Switch’s first year. As a longtime fan of video games, I’d read about events like E3 and press preview events and dream about going to one of these one day. Since I’m not involved in games journalism and live in the Midwest, I never imagined I’d have a chance to attend a preview event. The only time I went to something of this level was Nintendo’s E3 Best Buy event in 2013, where I spent three hours in line so I could play one Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze level. When Nintendo emailed me an invitation to preview the Switch, I immediately snagged two tickets. When I left for the event with my friend Marcus, I expected something similar to that Best Buy preview.

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The key to the future of Mass Effect is in its past.

We are fast approaching November 7, which in recent years has been marked as “N7 Day” by EA and BioWare, and is usually a celebration of all thing Mass Effect. We’ve done things for N7 Day in the past, and I’m sure we will this year, as BioWare is set to finally show off the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda in a big way. Considering that the game is expected early next year it’s a little worrisome that we have seen so little of it by now. With that being the case, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at my favorite game in the series: the first Mass Effect. That game had some serious issues, but instead of fixing those issues for Mass Effect 2, BioWare’s solution was to throw most of them right out the window. So let’s take a look at some of those problems with the original Mass Effect. I will identify the major issues, explain what BioWare’s solution was, and provide an alternative fix that I hope makes its way into Andromeda.

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The staff sounds off on their favorite Halloween games - what's your go-to Halloween gaming experience?

Halloween is here! A time of all kinds of scary things like werewolves, zombies, and diabetes! Not to mention plenty of great games. Whether you want something fun and lighthearted, something that will scare the pants off you*, or something in the middle, the Pixlbit staff has you covered as we talk about our favorite Halloween video games! 

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"…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin

We’re all familiar with this famous quote from one of our founding fathers, but what would you add to it if given the chance? As gamers, we thrive on a certain level of consistency from our favorite standbys, whether that be a gaming franchise, system, or company as a whole. For me, it would be this: "…death, taxes, and the fact that I will purchase any handheld system that Nintendo puts on the market."

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With the console servers shutting down, Julian says goodbye to his first MMORPG.

Now that we are firmly entrenched in the 8^th console generation and PC gaming is back on the rise, you would be forgiven for not hearing about the server shut down of the final game from the 6^th generation: Final Fantasy XI. Even though the PC version released first and remains active to this day, the game began as an ambitious project for the PlayStation 2, and finally closed its PS2 and Xbox 360 doors on March 31, 2016. While it wasn’t the first massively multiplayer online role playing game to make its way to consoles (Everquest Adventures on the PS2 has that distinction), it was the entry point for many gamers into the world of the MMORPG. I was there for the final days of Final Fantasy XI on the console (I had been playing it on the Xbox 360 in recent years), and it was a bittersweet farewell, indeed.

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