If you’re like me, you think Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin series is an absolute triumph of classic RPG design and execution. If you are like me, you’ll also be pretty jazzed about this news: Bandai Namco is bringing D:OS2 – DE to Xbox One early! As of the 16th of May, players can access the first three hours of the game for free through Xbox Game Preview. Additionally, if you know you’re going to be buying the game anyway, you can preorder it and get access to Act 1 of the game immediately.

Now, I was a huge fan of the game when I first played it while it was in early access on Steam. As such, I am absolutely thrilled that the game is continuing to be supported, especially on consoles. Larian’s founder Swen Vincke claims the change log to the Definitive Edition is 45 pages long, which is staggering and just entrenches Larian in my high regard. Remember, this is on top of an already incredibly long and deep experience.

Pokemon Go Fest, last year’s premier real-world event for Pokemon Go, is coming back this July. Like last year, players of the hit mobile game will converge upon Chicago, but there are going to be some major changes from last year. That’s probably just as well, as last year’s event didn’t exactly go according to plan. Still, as we wrote at the time, we were ultimately very happy with how developer Niantic responded to the troubles, and it does seem like the changes will help.

For one, this year’s event will take place over two days, July 14th and July 15th. Participants were able to choose which day they wanted to attend. Instead of a single park downtown, the event will be held along a 1.8-mile stretch in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. There have also been safety measures put into place to stop resellers from scooping up all of the tickets. You now need to tie an in-game account to your ticket, and can only buy 6 tickets at a time. Even with these precautions in place, the tickets sold out in under half an hour. As it’s illegal to resell these tickets under Illinois law, it remains to be seen what will happen when second-hand purchasers try to enter the event; no doubt there will be a fair few.

So far Niantic hasn’t released too many details about the event, but we do at least have some idea of what to expect. They’ve hinted that the otherwise India-exclusive Pokemon Torkoal will be found, much like Heracross was last year, and Unown will make a return. There will be special research missions and Pokemon “habitats” which will likely help players get their hands on rare Pokemon, as well as currently undefined challenges that will no doubt be tied to a big reveal like last year. Also like last year, Niantic has announced that players worldwide will be able to participate in some way. Given how quickly tickets sold out, and how many trainers just can’t make it to Chicago for the event, I’m sure this will be welcome news.

We’ll keep sharing new information that comes up from the event as it comes. As an avid player of Pokemon Go ever since it launched, I’m as excited as anyone to see what’s in store. In the meantime, feel free to check out my and Joel’s coverage of last year’s festivities. Oh, and go Team Valor!

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The Dragon of Dojima is back and he’s ready to put a foot in the ass of anyone who steps to him wrong, especially if they are threatening his family. Built with a new physics engine called the Dragon Engine, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life takes some bold first steps for the franchise while giving fans more of what they love about the game. Billed as the final adventure for the games signature character, Kazuma Kiryu will face many difficult decisions as he makes his way through the story. Featuring a visual makeover that will surprise and delight you, this game will transport you to a new location, the port town of Onomichi Jingaicho in Hiroshima Prefecture, and take you to familiar old haunts like Tokyo’s biggest red light district, the city of Kamurocho. You’ll need to make sure Kiryu is in the best physical condition possible because this game is the penultimate melding of the franchises Japanese gangster theme featuring intense CQC fighting and tops it off with fun activities that every location in the game has to offer.

As is true of every Yakuza game before it, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is very heavily story-driven and does a great job of keeping the player riveted to the screen as the events in Onomichi play out. The story goes that after the events of the last game, Haruka, one of Kiryu’s charges from the orphanage and now a huge pop star, reveals on stage at one of her concerts that he is considered family to her. Her fans abandon her forcing her to end her career and return to the orphanage that has been the only real home that she has ever known.

Meanwhile, Kiryu decides to turn himself in and face the music and earns a 3 year bid in a maximum security prison for his involvement in last games shenanigans. Once back at the orphanage, the press swarm the facility frightening Haruka and she begins to wonder if she is not putting everyone else in danger because of her decision. She decides to leave and disappears without any contact for over two years leaving Kiryu, once he is released from prison, and the other kids to wonder what has happened to her.

If you have played a game in the Yakuza series before then you will feel right at home as you navigate the mean streets of Tokyo in 2016. You can walk or run to your destination, talk to people on the street looking for help with this or that, or stop in at a local eatery and enjoy a fresh plate of steamed rice and vegetables with slices of baked pork. You will often find items laying on the street like a key, an item of clothing or a piece of jewelry that will no doubt at some point come to good use so be sure to pick those up.

Streets in Tokyo are narrow after all, so bumping into thugs as you make your way across town will cause them to want to fight you. Once you are done giving a group of young disrespectful punks a lesson in humility and liberating their funds and other items, you can head over to the local Internet cafe and chat it up online, join an intense, action-packed game of baseball at the local park or head on over to the neighborhood bar and grab a drink between songs in karaoke or rounds of darts.

The fighting system in the Yakuza series is where the franchise makes its bones as no self-respecting member of the Yakuza would ever be caught without knowledge of at least a cursory understanding of the martial arts. Punches and kicks are mapped to the square and triangle buttons on the PS4 controller. Button press combinations unleash devastating attack combos that are sure to leave your attackers wishing they had gone down another street.

You can press the R2 button to unleash your Heat Attacks once your Heat Gauge has filled allowing you to pick up extremely heavy items that you normally wouldn’t be able to lift or level your opponents with super-cool hyper-violent attacks called Heat Actions. If a thug decides to bring a nodachi or a pipe to a fist fight, just take it from him and use it to your advantage. And if worse comes to worse, just grab a chair, or a bicycle, a potted plant, or a store sign and beat them about the head and face with it; that will teach them to mess with you.

As you navigate your way through the game, you can access the town map by pressing the touch pad on the controller. This will allow you to see where you are, the locations of convenience stores, bars and other locations as well as the location of your current destination. You can set a pin that will make a navigation point on the map if you want to remember to go someplace or so you don’t forget an important location in the city.

The game is broken up into Main Missions and Sub Missions of which you can do any that you want at any time once they become available. Often, you can tackle a Sub Mission when you are in the middle of a Main Mission, which upon completion, awards you with an item or even some cold, hard cash. Additionally, you will earn EXP points to bolster your stats a little so that you are ready for the next Main Mission event which almost always involves Kiryu having to put his hands on some loud-mouthed gangster boss type character.

Yakuza 6 features a cool way to access all of the pertinent information and places it right at your fingertips so that you can make adjustments to your character or to gameplay on the fly. To access the options in the game, you simply press the “options” button on the controller and it will bring up Kiryu’s Sony Xperia phone which will allow you to use items, adjust your stats, use apps, check your email, or receive and send text messages, just to name a few. Sega isn’t new to having the character use a cellphone as a way to allow the player to access the “Pause Menu” (if you remember, GTA 4 did this as well years ago) but it fits well here and makes this thirteen-year-old franchise feel like it’s making an effort to stand with the times.

The game features an all new skills system that breaks Kiryu’s stats down into five main areas: health, attack, defense, evasion and heat gauge. Each of those stats are composed of five other skill categories that I think are strength, speed, heart, knowledge and maybe luck. The reason that I say “I think” is because I couldn’t find a written explanation for these pictorial representations anywhere in the game or on the official Yakuza 6 website.

In order to level Kiryu up so that he is strong enough to face off with anything or anyone that crosses his path, you need to interact with the people of the towns and cities that you meet as well as taking part in the may activities that are available. Experience, or EXP, is earned in the game by completing Main or Sub Missions, finding missing cats, enjoying some of the finest cuisine that Japan has to offer or just spending time visiting the many shrines located throughout the game.

The restaurants that are found in the game feature actual Japanese dishes that not only keep your hunger pangs at bay and renew your health, but will add points to your skill categories a little at a time. Individually, many of the dishes will give you a certain amount of points but there are certain restaurants that will allow you to create combo plates that will give even larger points boosts, but will cost you quite a few thousand Yen. The options for earning EXP are huge and figuring out how to gain as much as possible from different activities is really entertaining.

While the story-lines in the Yakuza games have always been fantastic, sometimes the visuals seemed primitive in comparison to other hit titles that would launch around the same time as those particular games. What I mean to say is that they just didn’t look as visually pleasing as other games on the market but this entry is definitely not one of those times. Yakuza 6 has to be the best looking game in the franchise ever to come to consoles.

The visual fidelity in the character designs are meticulous from the stitching in an overcoat to the individual pores on their skin. Kamurocho is alive with people walking the streets and brightly lit signs adorn just about every building while in Onomichi the buildings are weathered and the streets are wet and narrow. I was simply amazed as I watched an older gentleman as he was slowing walking down the street in a wet overcoat that was glistening under the streetlights as the smoke from the cigarette he was smoking wafted up into the air behind him as he continued on his way.

I mentioned in the intro that the Yakuza series is typically very story-heavy and this may be a turn-off for those gamers that like all action, all the time. There are some pretty long cut-scenes in this game and they are not always action-packed affairs but they are very necessary to telling a great story and giving the player a deep understanding of the characters motivations. That fact alone is probably going to be a deal-breaker for some but to those of use who have been fans for the last thirteen years, that’s just par for the course. If this game ends up being the end for Kazuma Kiryu, then this will be a very fitting farewell for one of gaming’s most beloved characters. There is so much packed into this game to do and to see that it is absolutely astounding. As a long-time fan of the series, I can’t recommend picking this one up enough if you are looking for something a little off of the beaten path for sure.

This review is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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Computer RPGs were once thought of as a fading genre. With computer graphic technology increasing at what seemed like an exponential rate, it was hard to think that we’d ever go back to games like Baldur’s Gate with hand-drawn levels. As the recently released Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire proves, we were wrong.

Before we dive into Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire I wanted to share an anecdote from my yesteryear. Stay tuned for the anecdote or scroll past to get to the review.

When I worked at Electronics Boutique back in the early 2000s, we had boxes of PC games that riddled the back wall of the store. My computer at the time was not very good and could only run games at low specs. I mainly played Everquest and The Sims on the PC and didn’t really experiment outside of those games unless a friend had an install disc. I was too into PlayStation 2 and Gamecube to bother to test out anything else. I will always remember walking by those shelves and stocking Icewind Dale. The box art was beautiful and always caught my eye.

On slow nights, I would tidy up the PC game area and pull down some boxes to read and admire. Co-workers always commented on how great the Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate games were, but I never tried them. My teenage brain didn’t want to think about managing multiple characters on screen, each with their own unique sets of abilities, in real-time. Give me Final Fantasy X or EQ over these games anyday, I childishly thought, these games are from a bygone era and won’t return. Why start playing them now?

10+ years later, here I am playing the remaster/enhanced edition of Baldur’s Gate and loving it, kicking myself for not playing it before. After that I jumped immediately onto Pillars of Eternity and loved it. Now we are greeted with the sequel to PoE that we’ve all been anxiously waiting for. Does it carry the torch of the total CRPG experience?

What is dead may never die

CRPGs are known for their story. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is no exception. Picking up where its predecessor left off, the Watcher is charged with another task to save the very souls of the people who inhabit the world of Eora. I don’t want to spoil this game for you at all, because it’s too rich and should be enjoyed by the player. What I can say is that it is very, very good.

Okay I have to spoil it and PoE I a smidge. Caed Nua is destroyed by the revival of Eothas, the god responsible for all the misfortunes of the first game. He takes on a giant form that not only destroys Caed Nua, but you, too. You’ll traverse the ethereal plane to pick up your story where your soul has been left off, but don’t count on being able to import your save game files from PoE I. You will answer a couple of questions to figure out how you played the last game and will then re-roll your Watcher. After spending many hours in the PoE I, it was all too easy to resurrect my character from the character creation screen, but I did appreciate the new details Deadfire offered.

With that out of the way, you start your journey back to the land of the living. You are hot on Eothas’ trail but your ship runs into some trouble with the storms. Thus begins your journey to save the people of the Deadfire Archipelago from not only the destruction by Eothas, but also from themselves. You’ll reunite with some familiar faces and meet some new ones, which I can appreciate in a sequel. Mixing old and new is safe, but how you decide to use these characters can still open up to the unexpected with regards to the story and player development.

Also, Obsidian is invested in their stories with this being one of the few sequels to one of their own games. I’ve seen some mixed feelings on the re-use of party members, but in no way does it detract from the story. It also offers some familiarity to returning players while they navigate the other new features of the game.

Pillars gameplay with a good mix of old and new

If you’ve played PoE before, there isn’t much that’s changed here in terms of how the game plays. You have one less party member to manage, which I was totally cool with when I previewed the game back in early 2018. AI has improved for the party, so you can be a little less hand-holdey in battle, which is also cool. Combat still functions the same as in PoE I but can be streamlined more with the improved character AI and less party to manage. There is still plenty of strategy, but it’s now more forgiving to forget about a party member’s actions for a short bit of time. The inventory management looks exactly the same, but the character skill tree has some subtle differences. Multiclass is also a new addition to Deadfire that I was too timid to try. Not only can your created character multiclass, but your party members can, too. Again, there is already a ton to learn for each character’s skill tree and progression, so I’d recommend this for more experienced players (which the game also advises). I’ve detailed a lot of this in my preview and nothing has really changed since, so let’s move on.

Dialogue has some new interesting twists due to your ability to reference past events based on your character’s background from PoE I. It’s fun to explore these branches of dialogue when speaking with NPCs. You’ll also have the skill-based dialogue selections like in the previous installment. However, it felt like there were more dialogue options in my review playthrough than I remember experiencing in PoE I. This may have something to do with the immediate gain of party members with certain sets of skills, although I have no way of testing this. The flip-side is that my character and party members were still low level, so having multi-dialogue arches this early left me wishing I had one party member who dumped all of their skill points into only one or two components in order to unlock these.

Choices still matter and situations can be handled diplomatically as well as by force. The writing is still very strong, but can be extremely dense at times. Playing PoE I really helped ground myself in the story and all the players involved, but I can imagine someone picking this up for the first time would have difficulty keeping track of past events and the gods responsible for them. Obsidian does allow you to hover your mouse over names and terms that you may not be familiar with and defines them for you, which beats writing everything down. The voice-over work was being finalized in the review copies of the game, so I won’t touch that in this review. I do know that there will be an additional voice pack featuring the cast of Critical Role, which should be an awesome addition.

Navigation is a huge improvement, partially due to the new ship element. Moving around the map is so much better in Deadfire! Wandering around the islands, looking for points of interest or hidden areas adds a whole new layer of fun. I know this will be adding to the hours that I will be dumping into the game. The areas you discover may only be a quick “looks like you found some item while searching” to a strategic encounter with NPCs or enemies. These play out initially like reading a storybook (similar to ship navigation – we’ll explain later) where you “choose your own adventure” on how you want to approach these areas or interact with characters. These encounters add a nice mix to the gameplay and gives these islands more character instead of simply navigating from city to village to quest locations. However, only having one location to discover on a decent sized island can be kind of lame. You’ll waste time looking around on foot, so it’s helpful to sail around the island to chart it out before spending a day’s worth of resources to find only one village.

Sailing the high seas

Core Pillars gameplay aside, let’s dive into the biggest addition here – ship combat and management. Sailing the high seas will open you up to meet up with some unpleasant pirates looking to plunder your ship. Instead of handling this like Sid Meier’s Pirates with real-time combat, you’ll be taking ships on through the choose your own adventure style gameplay that I referenced earlier. You’ll be charging, maneuvering, and firing your cannons in turns, which you are able to perform one action per turn. Your first encounter may seem daunting because there is really no way to learn what to do other than to get into a fight. There are tutorials, but they are only so helpful, so save early and often. I ended up taking down some low level ships with relative ease, but I know that there are bigger fish out there waiting for me.

In order to do any of those actions, you’ll need crew members to help. As you float around the Deadfire Archipelago, you’ll run into NPCs who you can recruit to help man your ship. You can also hire members by speaking to local tavernkeeps. There are a variety of positions aboard the ship, including helmsmen, navigators, and deckhands. You’ll also need to service the needs of your crew with cooks and surgeons. Moving around the map uses up food and drink, along with wages. Managing your crew and resources adds another layer to the game kind of like Caed Nua did in PoE I. Personally, I like getting in the weeds with stuff like this, so I was constantly keeping tabs on my ship and crew.

Ship battles and management are another welcome addition to the game, but I can see the storyboard style of fighting becoming tedious if battles are drawn out. Real-time display of your selections would be helpful, but from what I understand, this is a limitation of the engine, not of Obsidian’s imagination. We’ll just have to see how it goes after another 15-20 hours!

I’m likely going to keep coming back to this game as future DLC hits over the next coming months. Obsidian has crafted another excellent tale and taken it to an epic. The mix of story, combat, and management all play together nicely in the hand drawn world of Eora. If you are in the mood for a rich and rewarding RPG experience, then you don’t want to miss out on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

This review is based on a beta-release copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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As someone who had never played a God of War game before, I felt like I had a good idea of what to expect from what I had seen of God of War in the past. I came in expecting a lot of gory kills and over the top action and not much else. What I ended up getting was that great action and kill sequences, but Santa Monica Studios also threw in a side of an interesting story and characters, and the feels. Kratos has jumped from the Greek mythologies he was born in and has made a new, very promising future in Norse mythology going forward.

The game begins with Kratos gathering wood to burn the body of his recently deceased wife Faye, with help from their son Atreus. Here at the beginning of the game the story nails down the loss both characters are carrying. Atreus is more vocal and acts a lot like you would expect a child to, while Kratos holds it in, but you can tell from his face the pain he is facing. Facial expressions are one of the things I think the devs nailed down the best in this game. Every time something happens the characters do not have to tell me what they are feeling. It seems like this is something that in 2018 you would see all the time, but I think that still too often we see blank expressions from our characters and it makes their feelings harder for us to relate with. Whether it is anger, sadness, or any other emotion, the character’s face in God of War tells you the whole story upfront.

Faye’s final wish was for her ashes to be spread from the tallest point in the nine realms by her husband and son. In the beginning, you can tell that Atreus had spent much more time with his mother this far into his life. Kratos would leave a lot and never take his son with, being a very shut off father who has never told his son of their god lineage or his past in Greece. This adventure being Kratos and Atreus’ first true time together, you see them start bonding. From Kratos being hesitant to show any emotion or support to Atreus at the beginning, to the two being a true father-son duo to be reckoned with at the end, this game focuses on the transformation of two truly interesting character arcs going off at the same time.

As a father myself, I was able to put myself in Kratos’ position of not being sure what was the best parenting move, but as a son, I also felt with Atreus just trying to grow up and make his father proud of him. The evolving relationship between the two is the real heart and soul of the game. What helps with the emotion is the camera work. In gameplay, the camera is always behind Kratos, but during cutscenes, it expertly zooms in on the things you need to see. A characters emotion-filled face, something happening in the environment, or some other things. Combine that with a chorus that pitches in with the right tune at the perfect time, and this is a great cinematic experience on top of an excellent gameplay experience.

While waiting for Faye’s ashes to be ready for travel, Kratos decides it is time for some father-son hunting. During this tutorial, we get our first experience with my favorite weapon of the game, the Leviathon Axe. Think of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir from the Marvel movies, but in axe form. Kratos can throw the axe and no matter where it is thrown, a simple press of the button brings it flying back to him. The very first time I did this I was in awe of just how good it felt. The sound of the axe flying through the air and the slight rumble the controller gives made it believable that I was the one that threw the axe. The way it perfectly comes back to his hand and is ready to continue your fighting combo is one of the best experiences in gaming this year so far.

Speaking of fighting, Kratos has some new moves he can pull off when he is holding his axe. These come in the form of runic attacks, which need to be attached to the weapon and can be upgraded by spending XP. There is a limit of two that can be attached at a time, one heavy, and one light runic attack. These come in handy for disrupting enemy attacks or hitting multiple enemies at once. I mostly stuck with my favorites, but there is a large enough variety that I believe everyone can find something for them.

Throughout the game, new armors and enchantments can be bought and sometimes found to upgrade Kratos’ stats. In the beginning, I felt pretty even with my enemies, but towards the end of the game, after you have been upgrading for a while, there were some enemies I felt were just nuisances. That’s not to say that I think the game gets easy, I am just saying as you build Kratos and Atreus and get used to using your abilities, the game gets quite a bit more manageable as you would imagine.

Atreus, while not as customizable as Kratos, can be a great help in combat. He uses his bow and arrow to stun and damage enemies, but can also summon animals to do a lot of damage, or jump on a foe leaving them open for attack from Kratos. At the beginning of the game, he seems to have very niche assistance, but as he trains and upgrades, he truly becomes a reliable source. His upgrades largely revolve around his bow, but he can also get armor that lets him assist in other ways. I stuck with using armor that allowed him to pick up health stones for me in combat when I got low, much like Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite which I loved then too.

There are quite a few enemies in God of War. You are first introduced to the zombies of the world who are pretty simple slow enemies that are never too hard to handle. As you battle your way through the game, you face dark elves, trolls, and not as many bosses as I had expected. Besides facing a certain god multiple times, you only get into an altercation with a god-like force one other time. The rest of the bosses are mythical creatures that stand in your way. Of course, this makes sense because Kratos is not on his path of vengeance anymore, but I expected to be fighting many Norse gods throughout my journey.

What you do see of the other characters in God of War is very well done. Every character in this game has a personality to them and the voice acting associated with that character helps you feel for them and makes them relatable. Two brothers that are opposites of each other so they don’t get along? Been there. A man who just wants to feel anything? I could empathize with that. Every character in the game is believable and has a real-world element to them that if they were human and walked down the street, I could believe they were a real person.

If you have watched or listened to mine and Joel Campos’ “Pixel Street Podcast” (Facebook page HERE), you will have heard me say that I think this is the most beautiful game I have ever played. I already went over the character detail, but the environment in this game is second to none. The mix of shadows and bright colors in every setting of the game is truly expertly done. I am just playing on a slim PS4, so I can only imagine just how divine the game looks on a Pro.

In the end, God of War is a truly special video game. You get that brutality that the series is famous for, but there is so much more to this game that makes it stand out. The story is the best example of a father-son adventure that I have ever seen in the medium with great side characters that provide everything you could want from a side character. The story never feels like it gets too long, and the end will leave you wanting so much more.

The post REVIEW / God of War (PS4) appeared first on That VideoGame Blog.

I have a shameful secret I need to divulge to all of you: I’m a dating sim fanatic. Whenever I see a trending dating simulator, from Hatoful Boyfriend, to Hustle Cat, to Speed Dating for Ghosts, I snap that shit up like it’s a limited edition Too Faced palette. It doesn’t matter what it’s about – if its racy or cute, if you’re romancing school girls or pigeons – once I have a dating sim in my sights, I just need to have it. So, you can imagine my excitement when I heard tell of Monster Prom, a dating simulator that would allow me to woo all my favorite supernatural beings in the curiously under-supervised halls of Spooky High.

Monster Prom, from Beautiful Glitch and Those Awesome Guys, looked great, had rave reviews and upon seeing the line up of fictional characters I could romance, all in the hopes of taking them to prom, I was already picking out my favorites. I decided the Rebel Without a Cause-looking demon with an anger problem was the first monster on the docket (because of course he was), and with that in mind, I booted it up, a fire for digital dating burning in my heart.

Surprise, surprise! I hated it.

Now, you might be thinking, “Hold the phone, Liz—I can see you’ve given this game a 9.7 rating. How can you praise it so highly, yet claim to hate it three paragraphs in?” I promise you though, I’m not being disingenuous. I honestly couldn’t stand this game on my first playthrough; it’s part of why this review took so long to write. I played it once and was so soured on it that I needed to step away from it for weeks.

I ended up scouring the press packages, website and Kickstarter page for some inclination that I’d maybe missed the point of Monster Prom. I was scrolling through negative reviews on Steam with all the irrationality of a venomous troll reveling in a shared hatred of something popular and innocuous. I just didn’t get it, and like a petulant five-year-old, I despise feeling left out. So, I decided this game was nothing but mindless drivel that was far too difficult for anyone to enjoy, didn’t take itself seriously enough and tried to play off its laziness as “you’re just not cool enough to understand, bro” humor.

Surprise, surprise again! I was dead wrong.

Monster Prom takes everything a dating sim has come to encompass and subverts it so seamlessly that I, a self-professed narrative dissector, completely missed it. Combining all the facets of a traditional dating sim (attractive bachelors/bachelorettes, text options to help you build a rapport and the goal of ultimately scoring with one of them), gameplay reminiscent of the board game Sorry! and a quirky, intelligent sense of humor, Monster Prom turns the genre on it’s head and points out the inherent silliness of a video game about dating a bunch of imaginary people.

And yes, judging by my initial reaction, that is something that needed pointing out.

After choosing one of four player characters, you are thrust into a game world very reminiscent of other dating simulators, but wholly different. Measuring your starting stats through what the game itself refers to as the “stupidest pop quiz ever,” you begin your first day at Spooky High with an assortment of numbers scattered between six different traits. Throughout the game, these traits will determine whether you pass or fail skill checks, and whether you gain bonuses to the skills or not depends on what you do during the cyclical school days you play through.

There is an option to play a short or long game, running either 45 or 60 minutes respectively, making Monster Prom an easy game to pick up and play. A standard school day begins with a morning free period, a lunch period and an evening free period. You can only choose which part of the school you’d like to frequent during the morning and evening periods, and where you hang out provides bonuses to your base stats that are integral to scoring the date of your choice.

Lunch period finds your character in the cafeteria, nervously clutching their plastic tray and trembling past the cool kid’s like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, and you’ll need to choose whether to sit with one of the six datable characters, or one of their less important schoolmates. Side characters grant you bonuses, or they will offer to sell you objects to increase your stats and unlock secret events (the corpse, for instance, becomes a talking point in all encounters from the point of purchase onwards). On the other hand, sitting with the dateable characters gives you a chance to get into their good graces and win their favour, which is the goal of the game… right?

Make no mistake, Monster Prom is hard. Just one wrong answer somewhere along the line can end up being completely irredeemable, and you will need to play through the game many, many times just to figure out what skills apply to which monsters (extremely) particular likes and dislikes. And while the game is balanced and beatable, it can come across as almost impossible for someone who is expecting Monster Prom to follow the same formula as every other dating sim they’ve played.

Which is why I hesitate to call Monster Prom a dating simulator at all. Sure, one of the key functions of the game is to find someone to go to prom with, but you don’t need to take anyone to complete the game. You can choose to go to prom yourself, you can ask one of the monsters out and get rejected or you can succeed, but either way, the game still ends once prom is over. Add to that the plethora of bonus content and secret events (seriously guys, how in the hell did you find the time?) that do not always appear in your dogged pursuit to date the hipster vampire, and I think calling it a board-game simulator with a visual novel slapped on top would be a more apt description.

I feel like this is one of the reasons I failed to see how good a game this is on my first playthrough. I went into it with high expectations, my manic dating sim fanaticism telling me I knew how a dating simulator is supposed to run, and it defied that expectation. For some reason that pissed me off, which is such an ugly reaction I was almost ashamed to admit it in this review. But I need to address it to get to the heart of my original criticism, which is that dating simulators have become so formulaic, so expectable that even the slightest divergence can throw a hard-core fan of the genre for a loop, sending them into a Twitter fueled tailspin and negatively colouring their perception of an admittedly great game.

Monster Prom isn’t afraid to poke fun at an oversaturated, niche genre in a way that is self-deprecative, self-referential and so bitingly witty that it goes over people’s heads. I was quick to dismiss its humor and writing as lazy, if only because I thought it was so entrenched in not giving a shit that it doubled back on itself and seemed boringly pretentious. It wasn’t until I rationalized it was a silly game about dating monsters in high school, that I understood I needed to climb down off my high horse and stop taking it so literally. It doesn’t take itself seriously, in point of fact it does the exact opposite, so why the hell was I bending over backwards to quantify it in a way it didn’t want to be quantified?

Because I wanted it to fit into the very genre it was rebelling against, that’s why.

The people you meet in the game, specifically the datable characters, are less fully fleshed out individuals and more caricatures of the kinds of stereotypical folks you’d find in a dating simulator. You have the bonehead jock, the spoiled rich girl, the too-cool-for-this-planet hipster, the bitch with a heart of gold, the party animal and the bad boy. They’re one dimensional, aggravating and completely unlikable people because they were meant to be, not because of some design flaw. They are all deeply horrible, but that’s the point… they’re monsters!

And it’s through this play on expectations that the game highlights the inherent futility of other dating simulators, and how silly it is to take them so seriously: it doesn’t matter how much time and effort you put into getting with this character, at the end of the day, they’re a bunch of two dimensional ones and zeros. For gods sake, the vampire says exactly that during the normal course of the game. Monster Prom delights in playing with your expectations. It wants you to enter the halls of Spooky High with every preconception imaginable, so it can smack them out of your hands like Corey Taylor does with cell phones.

I usually balk when a game (or anything, really) professes itself to be post-modern, or that it contains post-modern humor. I find that recently, creators across all mediums will use this moniker to excuse why an audience didn’t laugh at their joke or like their finished product: they just didn’t get it. It went over their head. It’s supposed to be subversive. This isn’t to say that everyone does this, or that post-modernism isn’t a thing, because it most certainly is. I just have a problem when it is called upon as defense for a poorly espoused idea. Art, particularly comedy in this case, needs to be self-aware, needs to contain a level of thoughtfulness and most importantly, needs to be conveyable. Meaning exists only in the minds of the audience, and it does not matter what you take away from your own game if it is not adequately communicated to your players.

While Monster Prom gave me pause when it touted itself as a post-modern slice-of-life, now that I’ve reached the end of my experience with it, I’m convinced that it is. It’s incredibly mindful, it has a statement to make, and it executes it brilliantly, through such cutting application of satire that it went completely over my head. Bra-freaking-vo.

Single player is a ton of fun on its own, but local multiplayer is where Monster Prom truly shines. There isn’t a game I’ve played in recent memory that took a simple premise and made it into such an enjoyable couch multiplayer, facilitating arguments, partnerships and co-operation galore. My husband and I played together, and while he’s not a fan of dating simulators or visual novels at all, he had an absolute blast. We’ve played multiple games since, and it’s become our favorite go-to multiplayer when we’re looking for something quick to play.

Giving you the option to work together or against one another, to compete for the affections of one monster or spread yourself out across the herd, Monster Prom’s local multiplayer forces you to actively communicate with other players through little minigames, and fosters debates to keep you engaged with other players. There’s a fair bit of strategy involved, and though my husband and I took a very diplomatic approach to wooing these B-movie baddies, should we have wanted to screw each other over we could have done so easily.

The soundtrack is top notch and super catchy, a delightful mix of the Monster Mash, surfer punk and that ambient, spooky sounds CD you keep on hand for Halloween parties. The character art needs no introduction, as you can see through the press images it’s absolutely amazing. Each character has a plethora of different outfits, expressions and poses, and they’re dynamic and constantly changing. Even the settings and backgrounds are extremely polished, with Arthur Tien really knocking it out of the park on this one.

To everyone still on the fence about Monster Prom, don’t be. This is an excellent game that is so much fun to play either alone or with a friend or three, and the replayability is just insane (seriously guys, where did you find the time!?). Please remember though, if you are going to take the plunge into the slime-addled pool of Spooky High, take it with a grain of salt. Don’t take the game so seriously, let your hair down and have fun with it, because at the end of the day, Monster Prom’s not pulling any punches, and you don’t want to let your preconceptions sour you on what is a truly funny and enjoyable game.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW / Monster Prom (PC) appeared first on That VideoGame Blog.

Sporting a shiny new logo, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate has been announced for the Nintendo Switch. Owners of Nintendo’s hugely popular console/handheld will get a taste of hunting monsters firsthand when the game launches on August 28, 2018 for digital and physical retail purchase across North America and Europe. The follow-up to Monster Hunter Generations, this edition to the franchise marks the series debut exclusively on the Nintendo Switch. For the first time, gamers have the flexibility to play both local wireless and online multiplayer with up to three other hunters – whether playing at home on the big screen or on the go in handheld or tabletop mode.

Taking a nostalgic look back at the series’ beginnings and evolution’s, players will have the opportunity to hunt the series’ largest roster of unique monsters ever. You take on the challenge of facing off against challenging larger-than-life beasts as you embark on an adrenaline-fueled adventure. Completing quests will yield valuable resources for crafting countless distinct weapons and equipment fashioned after players’ defeated foes. Along your journey, you must defend each of the game’s four villages from major threats known as the Fated Four, plus an even more dangerous new Elder Dragon.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate features a blend of classic gameplay and unique new twists, brand new areas to explore, new monsters, plus returning fan-favorites like the lightning fast Zinogre and the stealthy long-tailed Nargacuga. In addition, this new release introduces a new quest level called “G” rank that features even more formidable versions of familiar foes, truly testing experienced hunters’ battle tactics now with different moves and abilities never seen in the wild.

If you have never played a Monster Hunters game from Capcom and are thinking about picking up this new addition, don’t fret because the game will feature a little something to level the hunting grounds. The game features tons of powerful new super moves called Hunter Arts that can be executed with a quick tap on the touch screen. You can experiment to your heart’s content while choosing from six different Hunting Styles including two new ones called Brave Style, which rewards players with new moves for landing successive attacks; and Alchemy Style, a support style that grants the ability to create useful items on the fly during combat.

As a bonus for being a loyal Monster Hunter fan and playing the original Monster Hunter Generation, Capcom has included a feature in the game that will allow for the transfer of save data from the previous title to the new title in order to continue your journey in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate.

Imagine, if you will, a land where you could find everything you’ve ever lost or forgotten. That very place is the setting, and central theme, of Forgotton Anne, a 2.5D adventure game developed by Throughline Games and published by Square Enix Collective. Forgotton Anne is predominantly a cinematic adventure game with frequent platforming sections and light puzzle elements. It is also stunningly hand-drawn.

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You play as Anne, and Enforcer in the Forgotten Lands, a magical world inhabited by Forgotlings – creatures composed of mislaid objects who long to be remembered again. In a world where most sentient beings are forgotten items from the human world (the “Ether”), such as odd socks, lost letters and missing toys, Anne and her elderly guardian Master Bonku are the only humans. As Anne, you set out to stop a Forgotling rebellion that threatens the chance for everyone – Forgotlings and humans alike – to return to the human world and be remembered.

When I booted up the game, I was met with a title screen devoid of music and filled with natural, ambient noise and a beautiful landscape. I instantly knew that this was going to be a pretty game, and I was not disappointed. Once you start the game, you are immediately dropped into Anne’s living space – The Tower. The power, called “Anima” in Forgotton Anne as a catch-all for the energy they use for basically everything, has gone out and from the balcony she can see that the station is on fire.

You are quickly introduced to some of the main mechanics used for puzzling and traversing – using Anima and the Arca. The Arca is a fingerless glove/gauntlet device that Anne wears at all times. By going into Animavision, your surroundings are covered in a blue filter, highlighting any sources of Anima. If your Arca is empty (its capacity is indicated in the symbol at the bottom right of the screen), you can select Anima sources to suck the Anima into the Arca. From there you can carry it around with you for as long as you like, until you wish to fill something else with your stored Anima, such as an empty Anima canister or a power cell for a switch or lever.

Not long after, you receive your wings, which allow you to jump incredible distances. I really enjoyed the platforming in Forgotton Anne because you really get a sense of Anne’s weight and strength as you hang from platforms, pull yourself up, jump, land, and fall. That said, deploying the wings can feel a bit stiff at times. If you try to hold onto the wing activation button and the run button while readying yourself for a running leap, the wings briefly pop out to activate, then pop back in again while staying activated. It delays you for a few seconds and makes you wonder whether you still have everything set up for your next movement.

Your wings are powered by the Arca, which must be fully charged if you want to use them. A lot of the puzzles you encounter require you to think carefully about how to use the Arca, the Anima stored within, and the Anima in the environment. Other sections simply involve careful timing and deciding whether to run, jump, or used an improved version of either by employing the wings. Transferring Anima into other objects is the only way to deplete your Arca’s supply, while the wings simply draw on the power but don’t actually consume it. Additionally, your Arca holds exactly one unit of Anima, and when you use it or obtain more, you always use and receive the same amount (i.e. the Arca can only ever be full or empty).

Anne was given the Arca by Master Bonku, who rules over the Forgotten Lands with the promise of a return home to the human world. Master Bonku found her as a baby on the shores of the Forgotten Lands and has since raised her as his own. Bonku has promised a return home to “validated” Forgotlings – basically those with valid identification papers – who have been lucky enough to receive tickets to the Ether Bridge following its completion. Non-validated Forgotlings who disagree with Bonku’s idea that everyone wishes to return home to the human world make up the rebellion. These Forgotlings try to sabotage the construction of the Ether Bridge at every turn and release propaganda to poison other Forgotlings’ view of Bonku.

At the start of the game, after restoring Anima power to her home, a Forgotling breaches the Tower’s security and enters Anne’s home. In Animavision, Anne can choose to distill Forgotlings, which means draining their Anima lifeforce and leaving them inanimate and, for all intents and purposes, dead. Here you are faced with your first choice of many choices in the game – do you distill him or not?

Forgotton Anne provides the player with constant choices. A lot of these boil down to what kind of character you wish to give Anne – abrasive, cold, and mercenary, or warm, naive and unsure. Other choices, such as the first choice to distill the intruder, have real weight in the game later on, which pleased me to no end. So many games that prompt the player to make definite A vs B choices like these often have no plan for how it will later develop the story or character. I also appreciated how the game wastes no time in introducing you to its core mechanics in a simple, easy-to-understand way, as well as throwing you into the deep end of making tough choices. I also really enjoyed the fact that the puzzles were suitably challenging, but not hard enough to make you frustrated. There was at least one time where I thought I would get stuck, but there were few enough options to try that I was able to easily deduce where I was going wrong and finally succeed.

Your choices, as well as general story events, are chronicled in your diary. This helps you keep track of the decisions you have made and the way you have interacted with certain Forgotlings. It’s also useful for remembering what your next move is, should you take a lengthy break while playing the game. Around Forgotten Lands you can also find mementos, which can be anything from rebel propaganda to sentimental items from Anne’s childhood. Mementos give you a bit of extra flavor regarding the world and the characters, but there are also other small bonuses and trophies relevant to this collectable, if you care about that sort of thing.

Now, let’s talk about the big one – audiovisual. Pheeeeeew. This game is, undoubtedly, one of the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen. Still, it’s not without its flaws, so let’s start with those. The animation and art for the more mobile characters sometimes feel clunky and disjointed, and not as high quality as the rest of the artwork. When Anne crawls through small spaces, the way the animation repeats is painfully stop-start and not smooth at all. It also makes the whole movement feel a million times slower.

Likewise, in later segments where Anne is in a terribly stressful situation, her repetitive motions used to free herself are accompanied with a bored, neutral face, and don’t ramp up in intensity with the music. It really detracts from the seriousness and intensity of the situation. It would also be nice if the infrequent profile picture that comes up when Anne muses on something would actually change depending on the situation. At one point she observes the body of an acquaintance and it still uses the same inquisitive face as always.

However, every single area of the game absolutely oozes character, which is helped by the accompanying music at every turn. The environments are absolutely beautiful, and more often than once I had to call over my boyfriend to gawp at some of the beautiful scenery that I had just discovered. The careful use of light and shadow and frequent use of silhouette in revealing and hiding things in the foreground and background is masterful. The lighting changes not only on the environments, but noticeably on Anne and the other characters as they move throughout the scenery. This careful attention to detail really adds to the game’s charm and gives Forgotton Anne its own unique style while still clinging to that lovely Studio Ghibli aesthetic. I honestly couldn’t get over how nice the art was, to the point that I’m struggling to find more creative ways of saying that it was gorgeous.

The entire score was performed by the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. Remember how I said this game felt like something from the Ghibli workshop? This was one of the main contributing factors in that assessment. It’s incredible that an indie game was able to manage such an impressive score, performed by a group with such renown. Not only is the soundtrack breathtaking, it’s also varied and perfectly crafted to fit every scene. Not only that, but there are multiple variations on the same theme for different areas of the same building as you swap between planes or move up and down between floors.

If I had only one critique, it would be that there is no way to adjust anything but the master volume, as the voice acting was regularly drowned out by the music during key cutscenes. Thankfully, the subtitles are large and in charge and don’t distract from the visuals. In fact, I was even more amenable to the subtitling than usual because of the lovely yellow color that reminded me of watching subbed foreign movies and television shows on SBS.

The story progresses at an even clip and doesn’t have any slow sections, although if you get a little stuck on the puzzle you may find that you linger a little in some areas. The writing for each of the characters, down to the smallest and most forgettable (hah) Forgotling, is excellent. Even if a passing NPC is only afforded a few lines of dialogue, they are injected with plenty of character and are often quite entertaining. The voice acting is also varied and full of character. I think I only heard a few repeat voices across all the Forgotlings I encountered, and the voices for Anne and Master Bonku are fairly good, although not anything particularly dazzling. The voice of Fig, a Forgotling you meet later in the game, has such a magnificent and dramatic voice (helped by his magnificent and dramatic character) that I could have sworn he had stepped out of a Ghibli movie.

Forgotton Anne was actually way longer than I expected to be, and yet somehow it never, ever once felt slow, or like I could take a good break from it. I always wanted to keep going, although life and the need for sleep will always try to get in the way. You could probably finish Forgotton Anne in a single day if you really wanted, but I think two days would be a better estimate.

While I was able to guess quite a few of the story beats ahead of time, that may be down to being genre savvy. In truth, I don’t think Forgotton Anne is breaking any new ground story-wise on a very basic level, but the world built around the story makes up for it ten times over. Forgotton Anne is the kind of game you want to snuggle up with under a blanket with some hot chocolate while listening to the rain. I should know, because that’s how I had the pleasure of playing it.

After you complete Forgotton Anne, you are also given a space to return to past important decisions and play them out without affecting your current save. From this point you can also go back and pick up mementos that you missed to add to your collection. I have seen both endings (that I know of) and can say that while only one of them ever seemed like the right choice to me, the opposite choice completely fell flat and had little to no payoff. This is about the only area in the game where I felt the story was really lacking, because everything else from start to finish was handled very well.

Forgotton Anne is charming, delightful, and breathtakingly beautiful. While it does have audio balance issues, some clunky gameplay and some weird and unattractive animation and character design at times, I can happily give it an overwhelmingly positive review. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’ll charm the pants right off you. Forgotton Anne is released on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC on 15 May 2018 – go get it, because you won’t regret it.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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I think it can be said fairly safely that quite often the simplest ideas are the best. I remember when games generally weren’t all about awesome graphics, intricate mechanics or expansive plots. A lot of the reason for this is the consoles of yesterday, especially those of the 8 bit era and it’s predecessors couldn’t do anywhere near what we can now. Quite obviously every game pre-1992 didn’t suck balls and the reason for this is that instead of going for bells and whistles devs went for one simple thing. This was pure addictive re-playability. You could have been playing with a cluster of coloured blobs, (and frankly quite often you were,) but it didn’t matter because the game was fun. One concept that fits what I’m getting at here is any breakout related game. You have a paddle, a ball or two and some blocks. That’s it and you know what? That’s all that was needed for a really addictive experience. One of my favourite games back then was Arkanoid, and although it came a tad later in the 16 bit era it was just brilliant for it’s replayability. With this in mind a new game has erupted onto Steam called Doughlings: Arcade and assuming they haven’t mucked about with the concept too much it could well be a lot of fun.

If you’re a fan of the FPS genre, but can’t stand the grit and boots-on-the-ground realism of the Call of Duty or Battlefield franchises, then you’ll love Sky Noon. Like its contemporaries Overwatch and Paladins, Sky Noon is a chaotic, fast-paced adrenaline rush of a shooter. Unlike its contemporaries, however, Sky Noon is set in an alternate Wild West, complete with floating saloons, steam-punk Big Irons, and no shortage of squinting.

Sound intriguing? Then check out this brand new trailer and take a close look at the various Abilities (more on that later):