"Half-Life: Alyx is Valve’s VR return to the Half-Life series. It’s the story of an impossible fight against a vicious alien race known as the Combine, set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Playing as Alyx Vance, you are humanity’s only chance for survival."

The new Half-Life game trailer dropped today and if I was underwhelmed by the announcement of a VR Half-Life game that dissipated somewhat as this game does look good. The chances I buy a PC VR set for this are low but if I ever were to get one this is the first game i'd buy for it.

It makes sense that Valve would make a new Half-Life game in VR but when asked about if a Half-Life 3 would be VR only they said no. Since this isn't Half-Life 3 that's not wrong but this does look to be VR only. I wonder if they will release a traditional keyboard & mouse or controller version of this game? That said, if you have a VR setup on PC this seems to be something worth checking out.

Oh and the graphics in Half-Life: Alyx are incredible. Half-Life 2 looks good but these graphics are incredibly beautiful.

I picked up The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap in box on Game Boy Advance a year ago and it's in my backlog of games to play. Right now i'm playing Final Fantasy IV on GBA and plan to get to Minish Cap afterward. That said, I recently enjoyed this video review of Minish Cap by Hungry Goriya and if you haven't played the game or want to relive some of the magic you should clickly clack that video play button.

Now that the Link's Awakening remake is solidly out to quite high reviews i'm curious what game Nintendo might remake? I think a Minish Cap remake would be incredible and if that's off the table then a best-of collection of Gameboy and Advance games might be in order.

"The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a lovely new take on Hyrule. The story and gameplay are excellent, but with too many things to do and a very linear plot that wasn't always intuitive to advance in, this game didn't come close to topping anything at the top of my Zelda favourites. 🍖"

Luigi's Mansion 3 is out on Switch and Digital Foundry has a compelling tech breakdown of the game graphics to film-like CG. Luigi's Mansion on GameCube is a classic and so far, Luigi's Mansion 3 looks to be just as good. Curious if anyone has picked it up what they think of it?

"One of the best looking exclusives to hit Switch yet, Luigi's Mansion 3's visuals have a CG film-like quality. The push for world physics and dynamic shadows is a highlight here too, taking it far beyond what the first two games could achieve on GameCube and 3DS."

Dragon Quest XI is one of the finest modern Dragon Quest games of late and recently came to the Nintendo Switch. They added a few really great Switch features over the PC, XBox One and PS4 versions including a pixel art mode and new score. One unique benefit of the Switch version is that it comes with a 10 hour free demo you can download! I don't play a lot of modern single player RPG's but Dragon Quest XI is one i've really enjoyed on the Switch. If you are still deciding on if you want to play it check out the attached Digital Foundry review.

Here comes the shame.

Recently Travis and I worked on a large update for Tale of the White Wyvern to bring Paragon levels to the game and add more late game progression beyond the 5th Wyvern fight. We never thought people would be able to make it to the 5th Wyvern kill so quickly even after massively increasing the difficulty of that fight. Personally, I’m also impressed with how people play the game, finding strategies I never had in mind when I created it. Some of those are still in the game, and we’ve had to nerf some and buff some to make the game more fun. Tale of the White Wyvern is one of the best things I've ever worked on in my life and I want to thank everyone for playing it. It’s an incredible feeling to realize that people love something you made just as much as you do. Even though we have Paragon levels that can take you all the way to the 15th Wyvern fight we don’t consider this the end for Tale of the White Wyvern at all. In fact, we haven’t even added all the features to the game for our 1.0 launch yet! While we are not entirely sure when we will launch Wyvern 1.0, based on your feedback we are going to be doing something very soon that I think everyone is going to love.

Tale of the White Wyvern Season 1 starts January 1st

From the first lines of code I wrote for Tale of the White Wyvern, I built the tech to support multiple independent and separate Wyvern games. Currently our main game is the only one we have in operation as we felt it was important to keep everyone “in one house” while our player base grew and we marched closer to Wyvern 1.0. On January 1st we are creating our first Season Race game that is entirely separate from our main game that anyone can play! While normal games stick around, Season Races are temporary. When the game is over, we note the winners and then another Season Race game starts fresh afterward.

Each Season Race will have slightly different rules that govern how you will play it that makes each race unique. Our starting Season will feature differences from the main game but later Seasons will feature even bigger changes to keep things feeling fresh and new.

We’re going to talk even more about Season Races later on but we wanted to let everyone know to mark January 1st on your calendar to start the race fresh so you can be the winner of our FIRST EVER SEASON RACE!

New World Events Are Coming!

We’ve been working on two new seasonal world events that are coming to Tale of the White Wyvern soon. If you loved the Pumpkin Festival you will love our upcoming Winter event! Tales tell of a traveling Gnome Village and the Mythical Presents Elf that runs it. What treasure and magic lurks in the Gnome Village and how many laps will this strange creature make you sit on?

We Need Your Support

Travis and I put our time and efforts into making Tale of the White Wyvern the best text game we can. Cheerful Ghost is working in a very unique space creating text games you can play with friends that are entirely free to play without the pay to win bullshit. As such, we are entirely user supported and independent, and would love to stay that way as we make Wyvern even better and write code for our next text based game you can play with your friends.

I encourage you to join us as a Cheerful Ghost Member today! We have options on the table depending on what works best for you. You can subscribe to us on Patreon for a monthly donation, or buy a yearly Membership via Paypal.

You can find all the information about our membership options and benefits here: https://cheerfulghost.com/membership

You can also support us by checking out our Tale of the White Wyvern themed merch here: https://thewhitewyvern.com/merch

Doom is a legendary game series that started the shooter genre that continues quite strong into 2019. Doom 2 was the glorious follow up that added a bunch of new levels, the double barreled shotgun and a ton of other new features. Doom 2 became my go to shooter in the mid 90's and one I still come back to and play now. Doom 2 is still being ported to any system where it might sell and this year iD Software brought it to the Switch alongside Doom and Doom 3. LGR recently released a Doom 2 retrospective that's an incredible overview of the game as well as its importance in video game history. If you are looking to murder a few minutes with a nostalgia blast to the face this is well worth the time.

"Doom 2: Hell on Earth. Released by id Software and GT Interactive on October 10th, 1994! Looking back at the history of its release, its new monsters, and that fantastically super shotgun."

I've always wondered what would happen if I took a classic game I love and erased all my memory of it and played it fresh. Would I relive the love for the game all over again or would my older personality look at the game in an entirely different way? Recently I've subscribed to YouTuber Lady Pelvic and watched handful of her videos and wanted to share her review of The Secret of Mana. I appreciate her take quite a bit, even if I don't share it because she brings up great points on why The Secret of Mana might not be a very good game. She does find a few things to enjoy about Mana but ultimately doesn't think it's a good game and should stay back in the 90's. Again, i'm not sure I disagree with her, I just don't mind hanging out in the pixel fueled games of the 90's. In fact, I love Secret of Mana so much I bought the collection again on the Switch because, you know, why not?

At the end of the day some classic games might not hold up as much as we remember but that doesn't mean they are all bad or that we don't always need a new fresh take on them.

I never thought we'd get an Aladdin retro remake much less see it included with The Lion King in one premium package. Sega Genesis Aladdin is considered by many to be superior to the Super Nintendo game and was the only version included in this package. Frankly I don't find the exclusion of the Super Nintendo Game to be a non-starter as I have the game cart but some, including the linked review above by Cygnus Destroyer, are giving the collection negative reviews because it's not included. Media rights are a mess and some games are simply impossible to bring back and Super Nintendo Aladdin might be such a game.

Personally I've only played Super Nintendo Aladdin and haven't yet touched The Lion King so i'm excited to pick up this collection.

I've been following the news that The Witcher show is coming to Netflix and have seen some pictures of Henry Cavill as everyone's favorite white headed monster hunter but haven't thought much about it. Live action adaptations of video games don't always work out well and Henry's white hair didn't settle well with me. That said, after seeing the new trailer I'm excited for the show. It's no secret Netflix wants a fantasy show that can top the popularity of Game of Thrones and i'm glad they seem to have given The Witcher show the budget and time to make it look pretty darn good, or at least the trailer. The Witcher show drops on Netflix on December 20th giving us all a fun horror present to open around the holidays!