I play fighting games for the story.

I say, “I play fighting games for the story,” and then, I usually follow up with the joke, “which is like saying that I read Playboy for the articles.”

But it’s true… or, it’s at least, partially true. I could say, rather, that I play fighting games for the characters. After all, colorful characters are the core of fighting games, and central to their appeal. But that’s not quite it, either.

It’s been a very long time since I wrote about Dungeons & Dragons. I was once editorializing in a time when what is now D&D 5th Edition was still an uncertain series of playtests. This year, however, I’ve started up a new campaign in that edition. As I mentioned in my last article, I’ve been streaming live on Twitch, with a focus now on our Dungeons & Dragons game happening here in Philadelphia. We generally play every other week, on Sunday afternoons Eastern Standard Time.

We are not playing this week, however, because I’m at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, starting this Thursday and going through Sunday, June 18! While I’m there, I’m going to be helping out with the D&D Adventurer’s League events happening throughout the show. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast, I got a sneak preview of some of the new Dungeons & Dragons material coming out this fall. At Origins – and hopefully soon in our campaign, too – we’ll be playing through material in the adventure series, the Tomb of Annihilation. 

Ukrainian developer 4A Games took advantage of E3 to pre-pimp their work in Metro: Exodus, the third interactive installment and member of the growing cross-media phenomenon that began with Dmitry Glukhovksy’s brilliant novel Metro 2033. Let’s recap before the news.

I wanted people from my group to also play the game, to the point where I promised them a free game of equal value if they picked up Nier:Automata, played through the whole thing, and said they didn’t feel it was worth full price. I REALLY wanted them to play it.

The Nordic Games Conference is going on right now in Skyrim Sweden. There’s a vibrant Scandinavian developer ecosystem out there, and interesting stuff often comes out of this event, which I imagine to be rife with Viking-related imagery such as mead and hats with horns.

GamesIndustry.biz reports on a fireside chat (possibly in a longhall!) between Massive Entertainment’s Managing Director David Polfeldt and Fumito Ueda, the legendary artiste behind Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and (ZOMG) The Last Guardian.

Among other things, Ueda sort of reveals that he’s working on a new game, which is kind of a surprise. I at least had assumed he’d lost interest in game design, but his remarks seem to indicate the opposite. Which is exciting.

Last week Joel posted up our latest episode of Side by Side where we discuss Powerhoof’s Crawl, a competitive (sorta) co-op dungeon crawling arcade hack and slasher.

Episode 6 of Side by Side is now up! (Well, it was up a couple of weeks ago but I sacrificed Magicka 2 for some Disney and Orlando ‘magic’.)

I’ve dabbled with Magicka 2 since Joel and I played it last year, both on my own and with friends who I played through the original with. I was very surprised to find that they didn’t click with it. Like, at all. They gave it just shy of a couple of hours and got a refund. Though they were unsure what felt ‘off’ about it, I attributed it to a few things.

I can’t always find time to write long essays about games. I’m often busy playing them!

I figured I’d go ahead and share that gameplay with all of you, so I re-invigorated my Twitch stream. I haven’t streamed since Extra Life several years ago, so I’m shaking off the dust.

Check my channel out at http://twitch.tv/litagemini

I’m going to be live tonight. A few details under the jump…

Games, games, games! Everybody’s got some games! Games, games, games! Games for you and I to play!

As always, there’s a lot I didn’t play this year, mostly because of games from previous years. One in particular from a very previous year. Like, 2001. But that’s okay! Here on Tap we don’t let that kind of thing spoil a good list. A good wordy list.