The Starlight Express rolls back into the station after a long ride away. Don’t worry, the Starlight Car is still open and Scott B is still manning the bar. Scott is joined in the parlor by John Michonski to talk to Food4Dogs about getting into Youtube much later than everyone else, embracing imperfection in your own work, and, of course, the Playstation Vita. You can find her channel at youtube.com/smillasmum and on Twitter @Food4Dogs.

The theme for Starlight Car is a “Super Chill Remix” of Aquamarine by Magic Circuit, which is available off their newest self-titled album, Magic Circuit. You can follow them at @magic_circuit on twitter for more details.

You can subscribe to the Starlight Car on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Pocket Casts.

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Playstation says they will now focus all those resources on the PS4 and PC versions of PS Now, which is probably why the service is being closed in the first place. I can’t imagine too many users were accessing their favorite games via their TV. Why keep spending time and money on a service so few people are using? Luckily there is plenty of time to finish up whatever PS Now game you’re currently working on, and the PS Plus cloud saves do carry over to the PC and PS4 versions of PS Now.

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Garou has been ported before, but this will be its first appearance on modern consoles. No word on how this will effect the after market for original Garou cartridges.

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While the move seems to be specifically Japan-focused right now, it’s probably safe to assume that it won’t be long before the North American, European, and Australian storefront also closes. The move effectively ends the life-cycle of the PSP, and the PSP Go – which still enjoys substantial popularity in Japan. With the Vita having never reached the highs that it’s older brother did, it’s fair to wonder if this signals the beginning of the end for Sony in the mobile market.

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Out here in the west, most people know Steins;Gate and it’s fellow SA franchises best for their anime adaptations, with Steins probably being regarded as the strongest of the bunch. This praise isn’t entirely unearned either, the anime adaptation featuring some sharp writing, likeable characters, and some unique visual flair. Much like the anime however, the visual novel version of Steins;Gate suffers from an incredibly slow opening, and has a tendency for it’s plot to pointlessly meander at times.

The slow opening aside, though, there is one major difference between the visual novel and the anime – and that’s the characters. While the game does an impeccable job of characterizing it’s cast – you immediately know what kind of person everyone is, and they feel true to these initial impressions throughout – they’re also, by and large, an incredibly obnoxious and unpleasant bunch to interact with. There’s no better example of this than Okabe Rintarou – that’s Hououin Kyouma, Mad Scientist, to you and me – the game’s protagonist. In the animated series, Okabe is pompous, brash and arrogant, but as the show progresses, an underlying softness to his character shines through, as cracks appear in his façade. It takes a lot longer to warm up to Okabe in the game – as reading his inner monologue only serves to paint him as entirely delusional, especially in the early going.

Okarin’s kind of a dick.

I do appreciate that Okabe is more of a character than your typical player-surrogate visual novel MC, but god he’s hard to like, and things don’t get any better for the rest of the cast. Right hand man Daru is about as one-note a character as you’re ever likely to find, local cat-maid Faris NyanNyan is just the worst, while Lukako is about as offensive as a portrayal of someone struggling to come to terms with their gender identity could be. Moeka is insufferable from the minute you meet her, and Kurisu, the game’s “main girl”, is a generic cut-and-paste tsundere stereotype (who also happens to be a genius). The only two characters you’ll meet and not immediately hate are Suzuha – the girl working part-time at the CRT repair shop downstairs – and Mayushii, Okabe’s childhood best friend.

It’s a shame, too, because buried underneath it all there is some charm and complexity to the story. Things get bogged down early on under scientific terms spewed out by the grandiose lead and uppity foil, but once things get going, the story takes some really cool twists and turns, that are worth seeing, even if the characters never quite win you around. One major twist is telegraphed from pretty early on in the game, and even if you haven’t seen the series, you’ll see it coming the moment the game starts building toward it. Otherwise, things play out pretty naturally, and it’s fun to rediscover major plot points I’d forgotten over the past few years.

The story isn’t entirely linear either, so it is possible to have things play out in a way that differs from the “true” canon of the game and series. Being a visual novel, there isn’t a ton of interactivity to the game, and what there is mostly consists of answering (or not answering) various text messages received from the various members of your harem.

Get used to this joke. You’ll be seeing it a lot.

Steins;Gate is a game that desperately wants you to think it’s funny; but it’s sadly not. It reuses the same jokes over and over and over again until you’re sick of seeing them – and a lot of the time they aren’t even very good to begin with. It’s got that awkward problem of trying to translate Japanese humor for the West; this is never easy, but given the majority of jokes are wordplay (for example Okarin’s constant calling Kurisu “Christina”) they don’t quite play in English, even if you understand the basic context.

I can see how these would be funny if I was a native Japanese speaker, but even if you get a chuckle from them once, it’s difficult to imagine them still being funny the 500th time the game throws them at you. One gag I do admittedly like involves Okabe reacting to situations that put him in a bind by pulling out his cellphone and having a manic conversation with a blank screen; nobody on the other end of the call. All the same, this one joke that kinda works doesn’t make up for the rest – and especially not the constant jokes made regarding Lukako.

Lukako is a young boy, who has the features, “mannerisms”, voice and overall appearance of a teenage girl. The game loves to remind you of this at every chance it gets; and while they do try to present Lukako in a better light as the game goes on, it never feels like it’s being particularly well done either, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a huge sore spot with a lot of players.

The search never ends.

The game looks gorgeous – with some of the nicest and most distinct character art I’ve seen in any VN, and it all fits the tone of the game perfectly. There’s also references aplenty, in the first hour or two alone you’ll run into some pretty on the nose nods to Golgo 13, Back to the Future, Mad Max, Ghost in the Shell, and, most frequently, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Heck, there’s even an early scene where Okabe, feeling like time is at a standstill, starts hooting and hollering about “The World” being activated. Little touches like that give the game a really great sense of grounding in reality – despite the bonkers storyline – as does its use of real life people and organizations; the plot essentially revolving around CERN (SERN here), the IBM 5100 (or IBN 5100 in S;G) and John Titor, who set forums alight in 2000 by claiming to have come from the future. When the game is in full swing and at it’s best, the writing can sparkle, but it gets bogged down in forcing it too frequently to truly shine.

It really is a shame that Steins;Gate both struggles to grab you out of the gate, and misses with so much of it’s humor, given that there’s clear potential for this to be a great visual novel. Stick with it long enough, and you’ll find yourself wrapped up in Okarin and Co.’s wild ride – though it’d be hard to fault essentially anyone from packing it in after an hour or two. Steins;Gate is a visual novel purely for fans of the genre, that lacks the bells and whistles to keep outsiders entertained for the majority of it’s roughly eighteen hour story. If you aren’t already a fan of VNs, then do yourself a favor and watch the anime instead. If you are, you can probably add a star or two to this score.

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Lost Dimension is very clearly taking cues from Danganronpa. Anyone familiar with those games will recognize the parallels within minutes of booting up the game; but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – after all, Danganronpa is responsible for some of the craziest, most fun and downright mind-blowing writing in games – so much so that Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair won Chooch’s Game of the Year in 2014. Like in Danganronpa, you’re faced with a difficult dilemma; one of the characters in your group has turned on you, and in order to stay alive and advance any further, everyone must decide on who to punish. However, whereas in Danganronpa someone turned on the group by murdering a classmate, here the betrayal is more subtle.

The traitors in your group of elite military psychics have been placed amongst you by The End, a mysterious being hell-bent on destroying the world, and stopping the UN’s SEALED taskforce from carrying out their mission to stop him. It’s only by examining their words, noticing their inner voices betraying them, that the player, in the role of Sho – a character who ticks all the boxes of your typical anime protag – begins to put together the pieces as to who the traitor might be. There’s no set order though, and this is where Lost Dimension really shines. The traitors among your group of eleven are randomly determined at the beginning of each strata of The Pillar, where The End is holed up, meaning that it is very unlikely two players will ever have the same gameplay experience.

Never leave me, Nagi.

Not being able to simply look up spoilers to see who was going to turn on me only forced me to question myself more, and perform various mental gymnastics as I asked the question of what I’d do should certain characters turn on me. There was Nagi – the levelheaded, rational solider with the power of levitation – by far my strongest combatant, and also the character whom I enjoyed interacting with the most. What was I going to do if I suspected her of being the traitor? Sure, I could use my Vision Points – earned through the completion of story missions, and therefore finite – to determine well in advance whether she was the traitor on each stratum. These Vision Points are used to trigger dream-like sequences, as Sho peers directly into the suspect’s soul to uncover their true intentions. It’s neat stuff initially, but they’re all essentially the same, and a little more variety wouldn’t have hurt.

These sequences do throw up some interesting possibilities, of course. What if my suspect wasn’t really even in the mix, and I’d wasted one? What if Nagi was the traitor? Do I sacrifice a character I don’t like – Zenji- brash, loud, standoffish and possessing an initially useless synchronization ability, Marco – a young, cowardly boy with the gift of telekinesis, or Himeno, the tsundere pyromaniac – and deal with the consequences later? Do I bite the bullet and lose her? And if I decide to lose Nagi, how do I manage to turn everyone else against her? After all, everyone in my group trusts her with their lives – she’s the most effective fighter, has the best range and is nigh on impossible to hit – and as one of the top three, she gets two votes come judgement.

Keeping an eye on trust levels is vital to your success.

It was a situation that left me on edge throughout my playthrough, but, thankfully Nagi never turned on me. Two of my other go-to’s in battle, however, Mana – the cutness obsessed powerhouse with the affected English accent – and Agito – a deadly close-quarters fighter whose teleportation skills make him second only to Nagi in terms of versatility, did. Luckily, when a character (or two, if there’s a tie) is “Judged”, they drop an item – Fate Materia – which allows you to keep their abilities. Sure, you lose a member, and if that member happens to have base stats that you rely on – Nagi’s movement and agility, Mana’s power – you lose those.

That’s the thing about Lost Dimension – your group won’t come to consensus via debate – it’s an entirely democratic process within the game that hinges on trust. If two characters never team up together in combat, they develop an inherent distrust towards one another, and thus become more and more likely to vote for one another when the time comes to pass Judgement. On the second stratum, while I was still figuring out this mechanic, the relationship between Toya, the generic soldier, and Zenji the dick; two characters I had little time for, got to the point where, following each mission, they’d pull me aside and try to convince me the other was the traitor. It took significant work for me to get them to come around on my theory that Marco – probably the least likeable character in the game – was the traitor, and thankfully, I was right. It took forcing Toya and Zenji to work as a team on the battlefield multiple times to do it, but eventually they, like everyone else, came to distrust Marco.

You won’t miss some characters – others you won’t want to lose.

In battle, however, the game is much less interesting. All the internal strife and intrigue that’s built up through the visual novel style cutscenes has a tendency to disappear in missions, which tend to feel a little lifeless and bland, though they’re functionally competent. You take five of Sho’s squadmates with you on each mission, taking turns controlling them – in any order you choose – with those acting later able to “defer” their turns to those who’ve already acted. Characters who trust one another work much better together on the battlefield, following up with assist attacks, allowing you to quickly wipe out multiple enemies. By acting with your stronger characters first, you can potentially finish mission in just a couple of turns – I would generally act with Nagi, Sho and Agito or Mana (before they turned), and then have the other three defer their turns to allow my three frontline fighters to go again. This of course made it difficult to phase Mana, and later Agito out of my main squads in order to reduce their number of votes come Judgement, but again, it all plays into what makes Lost Dimension great – the drama within your squad, and your own internal struggle with having to lose characters you like.

Lost Dimension is ultimately an experience that’s hard to forget. If you can look past some fairly average combat and the very obvious parallels with Danganronpa, you’ll find an emotionally engaging experience that by the end separates itself from the pack. The game runs as smooth as butter on the Vita, too, with some of the fastest load times I’ve seen on the console (though, admittedly, that’s a pretty low bar to hurdle). The writing is solid, the characters are a mixture of likeable fighters who you pray don’t turn on you, mean-spirited assholes you actively root against (looking at you Zenji), and over the top anime loons like George, a self-proclaimed “defender of justice” and comic relief character, and the emotional stakes high enough to keep you gripped that it’s more than a solid recommendation. That each play-through is unique doesn’t hurt either, nor does the great localization job. Lost Dimension forced me to think deeply about the choices I made, the potential consequences thereof, and whether I could stand to lose characters I cared about in a way that games rarely have. For that alone, it’s worth the price of admission.

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The point I’m trying to make here is that OlliOlli 2 scratches an itch for me that hasn’t been scratched since, well, OlliOlli. We’ve long since passed the heyday of the extreme sports genre, and in many ways OlliOlli 2 feels like a throwback to the days of Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra more than it feels like it’s grinding along with contemporaries like Skate or Stoked. That’s not to say that realistic simulations of extreme sports don’t have their place, they certainly do, but it does mean that OlliOlli 2 eschews that in favor of serving up some heart-pounding old-school fun, and as a man with a history of basing work holidays around X-Games events that’s everything I could ask for in an era where these games simply don’t come out of the big studios anymore. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

The original OlliOlli was one of the first games I picked up last year when I got my Vita, and one of the few games for that system to kept me coming back, day after day, and it’s sequel gives no indication that it’ll be any different. Much like it’s predecessor, OlliOlli 2 is a perfect game to play while listening to a podcast, traveling to work on the train, or even just when you’ve got ten minutes to kill between other, more time-consuming duties. It’s a simple game in concept, and remarkably easy to pick-up-and-play with a control system that only uses the left stick, X button and bumpers.

The left stick controls your tricks. You can pre-load them by holding it down and then flicking to jump into a trick, or just flick it to do your basic ollie, kickflip and heelflip, while correctly following up with a press of the X button lands the trick. You can also use the bumpers to spin in the air for extra points, but the game never actually explains this mechanic to you until near the very end. The addition of manuals and reverts to the tried and true OlliOlli formula allows you to chain together longer, higher-scoring combos, and while the reverts are easy to learn, it took me a little while to perfect the manuals. Once I did though, they became second nature, and I was pulling them off without even thinking. A less thrilling addition are switch grinds, which allow you to switch from one grind to another seamlessly (in theory). Unfortunately, the system the game uses for these is a little finicky, and there’s times when it simply doesn’t work. It’s not overly frustrating or anything, but it’s something that could’ve been tightened up a little bit. That said, the rush you get when you successful land a combo spanning an entire level is nothing short of being blissful. When OlliOlli 2 is at it’s best, it’s pure adrenaline in much the same way a perfect run from the summit of Big Mountain to it’s base in SSX 3 was.

The crisp controls are complemented by excellent level design, with movie sets, wild west towns, zombie roller-coaster parks, Aztec ruins and robot themed levels offering great variety, and a ton of nice little touches to give each of them their own little flavor, especially when combined with the game’s awesome 2D graphics and a joyful electronic soundtrack that never overshadows anything, but offers the perfect complement of the on-screen action. Guns and fireworks go off, a biohazard crew watches you bust out some sick grinds, and celebrity-obsessed movie fans wait to catch a glimpse of you as you bail, and bail, and bail some more.

That’s the thing about OlliOlli 2: you’re going to bail, and you’re going to do so often. The game’s extremely challenging, and punishes every mistake you make. It may seem like a strange comparison to make, but in many ways OlliOlli 2 is the extreme sports version of something like Dark Souls: every little mistake is punished, but it never feels cheap or unfair. When you crash, you know why you crashed, you know what mistake you made, and you know how to correct it next time. You crash, you hit the triangle button, and you’re right back on your board instantaneously. The game’s load times are phenomenally quick save for one very long load screen at the start of the game, and this ensures that the flow is never broken, which is important because, like I said, you’re gonna bail. A lot.

OlliOlli 2 moves fast. Each run might take you maybe 45 seconds, but they’ll be some of the best 45 seconds of your gaming life. It’s as addictive as a video game comes, and whether you need to simply kill time on the way to work or you want an hour to disappear in the blink of an eye, OlliOlli 2 is a killer app for the Vita. Extreme sports afficionados probably didn’t need the encouragement to begin with, but if for some reason you do, then OlliOlli 2 is mandatory; no exceptions. And hey, if you’ve got PS Plus, it’s free. What the heck are you waiting for?

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And a trailer!

Another Episode is a pre-sequel in the Danganronpa series, bridging the gap between Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair. You play as Komaru Naegi, the sister of Makoto, the original game’s protag. You fight Monokuma robots by shooting them in third person. It’s a unique game, and I’ve been anticipating it for months since it came out in Japan. Let’s hope it’s good!

Disgaea 5 was also confirmed for a fall release date in the US. The game is a standard sequel to the beloved strategy game, but it’s the first game in the series to come out on PS4. A trailer was shown, and here it is!

Other games were also detailed, including hotL#NiQ The Firefly Diary (Vita, Feburary 24th), The Awakened Fate: Ultimatum (March 17th), Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy (Vita, June 9th), and Rodea: The Sky Warrior(Wii, Wii U, 3DS, also this fall). Not much new info about those, but DR and Disgaea are NIS’ moneymakers, so it’s understandable. Either way, get hype!

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Demon Gaze is a first person dungeon crawler with some extremely basic RPG fare. Buy stuff from the weapons and items salesmen, accept some quests, hire new allies or equip your old ones, then go into the world to kill some monsters and complete said objectives. The main objectives in this game are defeating demons, which are in the most basic sense the bosses of each dungeon. Once you defeat a demon, things get a bit more interesting. You can equip a demon during battle as an extra party member, thanks to the titular Demon Gaze ability you possesses. The demons can heal you or damage foes, making combat move far more quickly. Without this system, fighting would be a chore. You can also hold down the triangle button to re-enter the same commands as the last turn, allowing you to breeze through grinding. The game is friendly to people who aren’t super into it, but it allows depth for those who want it.

Grinding is an immense part of Demon Gaze. You grind enemies for EXP and you grind demon rings — areas where you place summoning gems — for items. Demon rings also summon the dungeon’s boss. Each demon boss is immensely powerful, but the monsters you encounter are so easy you could roll your eyes and knock a couple into submission with the shockwave. The vast difference between the strength of the boss vs the minions makes sense in theory, but it makes leveling up a chore and the bosses can crush you even after five hours of grind.

Grinding also levels up your weaponry, but you can also craft same-type weapons into your current weapon (staff to staff, bow to bow, etc.) to boost its strength. This is a neat idea that allows you to get a good amount of use out of the items you get from defeating so many weaklings. Demon Gaze would probably be a six hour long game without the grind, but the boss fights are fun enough that I was able to slog through the grinding and get to the goods. It felt rewarding to beat a boss by the skin of my teeth, and using the demons to assist me made it even more fun. The slog is demanding, but overall satisfying.

Even though the gameplay is pretty good, the writing is not. Don’t worry, it’s not The Witch and the Hundred Knight levels of shameful, but it’s pretty shameless. There’s multiple scenes of “HAHA, DONGS!” and at one point the game forced me to grab a girl’s boobs even though I was picking dialogue options that would lead me not to. It was like the game thought I was trying not to look bad. I’m all for a few dick and butt jokes here and there, but this is the extent of Demon Gaze’s comedy. The characters are all pretty bland but there’s moments where they butt heads in semi-interesting ways. There’s also an eyepatch lady with a huge scar across her gazonga. It’s pretty male-gazey, but it’s nothing ultra offensive. Quests mostly involve doing small favors for these characters, such as defeating a specific enemy or finding an item. You must also pay rent to the innkeeper, Fran, which goes up every time you return from a mission.

A weird part of Demon Gaze is the character creation, or lack thereof. At the start of the game, you can choose from forty-odd character designs to stand for yourself in combat. They vary from human, elf, catgirl, and more. However, the game makes a point to state that it will only ever refer to you as a human male. This is one of the oddest ways I have ever seen a game flop in attempting diversity. Why even give me the option? You can choose from the same cast of characters to customize other party members, but they can be any race and gender you prefer. It’s such an absolutely baffling move, one I’ll never understand.

Overall Demon Gaze is a pretty forgettable yet pretty forgivable romp. I had an enjoyable time with it, but I don’t think I’d ever pick up a sequel without some vast adjustments. It’s cliche to say “fans of the genre will enjoy this”, but games like Demon Gaze are why that cliche exists in the first place. This will not turn you into a dungeon crawler fanatic, but if you’re on that path already, it’ll keep your feet straight on that trail.

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