Persona 5 (2017, PS4) - How to Be a Heartbreaker

In spite of making my own turn-based RPGs and playtesting ones made by friends, my interest in the genre waned over the years. I'll pick up an occasional Pokemon game, but don't get excited for them. I've never played an Atelier or a Neptunia or any of the tens of thousands of similar looking games released every three months by Gust and Idea Factory. I enjoyed Final Fantasy XV, but even that series has moved on from turn-based combat. The last one I got excited about was Ubisoft's fantastic Child of Light, a small game that excelled stylishly.

I was a little unsure going into Persona 5. I've only played the original title in this series, released on the PS1 in 1996, and hearing that the latest installment was 80-100 hours long was honestly a turnoff for the modern me, while I would have eaten that up as a kid. With lots of flashy, graffiti style art, I knew it would win me over on style, but would I actually have fun? I'm happy to say that yes, this is indeed an excellent game, a high-water mark in its genre.

Yakuza Zero (2017, PS4) - Smooth Criminals

The release history of the Yakuza series outside of Japan has been a wild ride. Sega released the first two games on PS2 in 2006 and 2008 and I missed out on them, turned off by marketing which promoted them as Grand Theft Auto-style open world crime games, a genre I don't have much interest in. Two years later, a poorly-made demo for Yakuza 3, the first PS3 installment of the series, showed me a little more of what the game was about, but didn't sell me on it.

Yakuza 3 was largely doomed from the start: A bad demo, fan complaints over cut content in the English release, and a release date on the same day as the hugely anticipated Final Fantasy XIII. The series would struggle in the west for years, with an even worse, combat-only demo for Yakuza 4 and with Yakuza 5 coming out here a whole three years after its Japanese release, long after the PS3's lifecycle had waned, and without a physical release. I fell for the series after reading enough positive reviews of the third game, but there's no doubt it's been tough to be a western Yakuza fan, with long translation delays, questionable release strategies, and skipped spinoff titles.

Push Me Pull You (2016, PS4) - Glib Me Glob You

It's been a couple of months since I wrote a review! I've been busy with work, both at my day job and on my upcoming game, but it's time to get back to writing. Taking a deeper look into the games I play and movies I watch is personally rewarding, whether it's in finding a new appreciation for something I initially disliked or figuring out pitfalls to avoid in my own stories and games.

Kholat (2016, PS4) - Snow Day for Death Mountain

I've generally enjoyed the often maligned "walking simulator" brand of narrative game; Soma, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gone Home, these are all titles I've dug. These are games mostly devoid of action, where the focus is on wandering detailed environments, learning a story (often second hand by way of journals and audio logs) through observation, and just soaking in the atmosphere. Kholat, developed by Polish studio IMGN.PRO, sounded like something I'd be totally into: Stuck in a blizzard on top of a deadly mountain, players explore a hostile environment to find clues related to the Dyatlov Pass Incident of 1959, in which a group of Russian hikers mysteriously died.

Hyper Light Drifter (2016, PS4) - Deadly Drifter vs. Foul Frogs

With elements of both classic 16-bit and modern action games, Heart Machine's Hyper Light Drifter is a mixture of harsh combat, mysterious exploration, and minimalist storytelling. Designer Alex Preston made a big splash on Kickstarter, with the game raising over $600,000 on an initial goal of only $27,000. A few months after its PC release in March, the PS4 version is finally here, and I've been excited to see what it has to offer.

Salt and Sanctuary (2016, PS4) - Needs More Pepper

With Dark Souls being a hugely popular series, it's inevitable that elements of its game design would drift into other titles. You've got direct attempts at creating new games within the same genre, such as Lords of the Fallen and the long-delayed, often rebooted project Ni-Oh, games that attempt to mimic the challenge and loneliness such as Titan Souls, and you've got the 2D side-scrollers made in Souls' image, which includes the upcoming Death's Gambit. Ska Studios' Salt and Sanctuary falls into that final category.

Street Figther V (2016, PS4) - My Fight Money

It's never easy to review a fighting game. The genre is built on growth and learning, as communities both online and local develop new strategies, discover broken techniques, and figure out detailed match-ups, showing who's best in which situation. Developers release patches to boost or weaken characters, balance is often in flux, and new content, even a single character, can shake things up. Since its release in February, I've held off on writing about Street Fighter V. Six months out and with a major update released, now feels like the time to take a look at the game's issues.

Furi (2016, PS4) - Not so Fast and Furious

Team Ico's Shadow of the Colossus is a title which has remained popular with gamers and developers since its debut in 2005. A masterpiece of boss design, Colossus focuses entirely on large-scale, one on one fights with little filler in between. The bosses themselves are the puzzles, and the land between them is meant only for atmosphere and for optionally boosting your strength if you choose to.

The inspiration of Shadow of the Colossus can be felt in the climbing of giant enemies in Dragon's Dogma, the bosses only, 2D single-shot action title Titan Souls, and even the peaceful landscape exploration of games like Journey. It's also a title that's referenced a lot in independent development. Furi, by French developer The Game Bakers, is one such indie game, a sort of hybrid of the Boss Fights Only format of Colossus and the quick, reaction-based pattern recognition of a Punch-Out game, with some bullet hell-style shooting in between.

Gone Home: Console Edition (2016, PS4) - Kaitlin Greenbriar's Radical Rummage

Sometimes, I just feel like digging through my dressers looking at old stuff. I've got a habit of holding on to relics of my childhood, even total junk like a busted Game Boy covered in racing stripe stickers. It's less nostalgia for the items themselves (there are dozens of more convenient ways to play Game Boy games now, and most of them were pretty bad anyway) and more an emotional connection to where I was in my life at that time. It can be an old comic book I drew, the first CD I ever bought, or an old photo album. I sat with my friends reading this comic, I listened to this CD with my dad, I took these pictures with my first camera. An obsession with the past is often messy, but a night of reminiscence is always fun.

Doom (2016, PS4) - Keen Excitement Returns to Mars

I have to admit I wasn't too excited for id Software's 2016 remake/re-envisioning of Doom when I first heard about it. While I enjoyed the original Doom way back in 1993, I'm generally not a big first-person shooter fan, and I put very little time into 2004's Doom 3 before giving up on it. Once the new Doom launched, I was surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reviews, but didn't get a chance to check it out myself until publisher Bethesda launched a free demo at E3 2016. Demos are increasingly rare nowadays, but this one proved why they're so valuable: I downloaded it, played through, and immediately wanted to pick up the full game. I'm glad I did: This new version of Doom is the best shooter I've played in years.

Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (2016, PS4) - Kawaii War II

Eight years after its original release on PS3, Sega's cult-classic turn-based strategy game Valkyria Chronicles has been remastered and re-released on PC and PS4. While it spawned two smaller sequels on the PSP, this series has never been a breakout hit, but this new version has the potential to inject new life into it. I was a big fan when I first played this title in 2008, so how well has it held up?

Dark Souls III (2016, PS4) - Until We Meet Again

Along with much of the gaming world, I've been captivated by From Software's Souls series since its debut with Demon's Souls in 2009. This action-adventure series, with its focus on exploration, mystery, and punishing combat, has become one of my all-time favorites, and I'm certainly not alone in that regard. Everyone's got a favorite; just in my own circle of Dark Souls friends and acquaintances, I don't think there's anyone who would rank these five games (including Dark Souls 1-3, Demon's Souls, and Bloodborne) in the same order.

Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour (2016, PS4) - Phantasmic Tribute

The mainline Resident Evil series has gone through some interesting transitions, forming two pretty clear trilogies: Resident Evil 1-3 are horror-action games with a b-movie aesthetic, focused on tight inventory management and nutty puzzles. Resident Evil 4-6 keep some horror elements but shift the focus, and the camera angle, to a much more action-oriented one, with our heroes punching boulders and suplexing monsters instead of running around finding puzzle pieces. With Resident Evil 7, Capcom looks to once again shake things up in a major way, with a new, first-person view and a focus on exploration over combat. It also has the most cleverly designed title text of the series, and finally unites the series' western name with its Japanese origin, Biohazard.

Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus (2016, PS4) - Dirge of the Duck Knight

When I first saw Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus pop up on the PS4 store I passed over it without much of a thought. The cheap sounding title, the nonsense subtitle (I was half expecting the game to be a Castlevania parody; it's not), and the nice looking but typical indie game pixel graphics did nothing to help the game stand out and catch my attention. It was only after I heard positive reviews from people who mentioned that the game was heavily inspired by Zelda II that I decided to give it a shot, and I'm very glad I did.

Catlateral Damage (2016, PS4) - A Good Time That Leaves You Yarning For More

 
When Keita Takahashi directed Katamari Damacy in 2004, he introduced the world to a game which simultaneously reveled in complete destruction and peaceful innocence. Players rolled up giant balls of junk, demolishing everything in their path in order to build something new while accompanied by a positive soundtrack and adorable graphics. Catlateral Damage, an indie game by Chris Chung, follows a similar path with similarly simple, brightly colored graphics: Taking on the role of an everyday house cat, players must cause as much mischief and knock as many things off of shelves and counters as possible within a time limit.

Batman: Arkham Knight (2015, PS4) - Good Knight Clown Prince

Rocksteady Studios set a new bar with 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum, a title that showed that licensed superhero action games didn't have to feel like cheap cash-ins. With a small but expertly designed game world, bosses that functioned as puzzles, and rhythmic combat that flowed stylishly and felt like a genuine Batman simulator, Arkham Asylum was a great title that nailed what it was going for, up until an incredibly dumb final boss fight that's best ignored.

Two years later, Arkham City was released, giving us a larger, open world (at the expense of some of the first title's atmosphere), more great boss fights, more of the same satisfying combat, some awkward flying puzzles, and abysmally bad (and somehow award-winning) writing. While it improved as a game in many ways, Arkham City's genuinely bad dialogue left a bad taste in my mouth. I skipped the following game, Arkham Origins, a prequel that Rocksteady had no involvement with.
 

Ghost's Diners

With 2015's Arkham Knight, Rocksteady returns and does something genuinely unexpected: This game provides a conclusive, final chapter to the series, taking some narrative risks and separating itself from the worlds of the Batman comics/cartoons/movies. The previous games always struggled to find the right tone, teetering oddly from silly to macabre with little grace, and while this title takes some obvious cues from other Batman stories, it very much feels like its own, confident story.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2015, PS4) - Ghosts 'n Gumshoes

I've enjoyed the recent batch of slow, moody first-person exploration games that have become popular lately. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was a wonderful, quiet horror story with strong Twilight Zone vibes (and a frustratingly slow movement speed), Soma was an incredibly atmospheric aquatic horror (in spite of its sloppy dialogue) and The Witness is a perfect puzzle game that's fun to wander aimlessly through even when you're not solving puzzles. One of the high profile releases in this genre that I missed out on was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, a title by The Astronauts, a small Polish developer. I recently had a chance to run through it and was simultaneously impressed and a little let down.

A Boy and His Blob (2016, PS4) - Return of the Ooey Gooey

A Boy and His Blob, originally designed in six weeks in 1988 by David Crane and Gary Kitchen, was a mess of a game. When it debuted on the NES, it featured charming graphics, quirky music, and a relentless difficulty spawned almost entirely from awkward, rushed design decisions and slippery controls. It was the sort of game that deserved a second, more refined shot, but received only a largely forgotten Game Boy sequel. In 2009, Wayforward, known for their retro-revival games and cartoon licenses, revived the franchise with a remake on the Wii.

Seven years later, Wayforward's new take on the gooey hero has been ported as a budget, digital on PC, PS4, PSVita, and Xbox One. I'm a little sad that it didn't get a Wii U port, considering the game's origins. I was a big fan of the Wii version, so I was more than happy to revisit the game on PS4 to see how well it's held up.

The Witness (2016, PS4) - Some Kind of Wonderful

 

Jonathan Blow made a big splash when Braid, his debut indie game, released on the Xbox 360 in 2008. One of the first high-profile independent releases on the Xbox Live Arcade storefront, Braid received critical acclaim and Blow became a big name in the indie circuit. Some treat him as a visionary, others as a bogeyman. Personal feelings aside, his influence on the medium is evident, as a wave of artsy, independent platformers molded in Braid's image would follow in its wake.

Blow could have cheaply and easily cashed in on a dozen sequels (The Five Nights at Freddy's formula) that remixed his hit game's time-bending, platforming formula. Instead, he began work in 2009 on a very different sort of game, a first-person puzzle/adventure designed around solving mazes. After years of waiting, The Witness finally hit PCs and the Playstation 4 in early 2016, and after having spent hours in its world I'm convinced that it's one of the best puzzle games I've played in years.

Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below (2015, PS4) - Humanity's Fate Rests Apun Your Shoulders

The Dragon Quest franchise has had a bit of a rocky history outside of Japan, where it remains colossally successful. Dragon Quest X, a high-profile online RPG for the Wii, Wii U, and PC, never saw an international release, nor did the first or the third installments of the Rocket Slime spin-off series (the second installment get an international release on the Nintendo DS and was quite fun.) 3DS remakes of Dragon Quest VII and VIII have sat in translation limbo too.

Slime Time

With all of this history, I definitely wasn't expecting Square Enix to bother releasing Dragon Quest Heroes over here. While the Playstation 3 version of the game was left behind, SE did indeed choose to localize and release PS4 and PC versions, even if it took eight months from the Japanese release.