I highlight this loss of a space I called home because it’s a similar kind of dread I felt when I first heard about NEO: The World Ends With You; Square Enix heads back to the streets of Shibuya for another round of the Reapers’ Game, a jam-packed week full of action, anguish, and a lot of bold fashion choices. The first game, released all the way back in 2007, was a sleeper hit on the Nintendo DS, lauded for its gripping story, flashy visuals and soundtrack, and a gameplay style that utilized nearly all the DS’s features. TWEWY was a game indicative of the metropolitan jungle it wanted to emulate, and for the longest time felt like such a flash in the pan experience that the mention of a sequel was equal parts concerning as it was exciting. Was there a way to bring the energy of the original onto current generation consoles? The Nintendo Switch got an enhanced port of the mobile version which, while good to have for the sake of accessibility, highlighted just how unique the original game was when all combat became mashed into one screen. Footage of NEO: TWEWY was equal parts mind blowing as it was nerve wracking, having to think of replicating that experience for a controller. Maybe this game had a good story, maybe the soundtrack would be enough to save the experience. Overall, that sensation reminded me of sitting in the train waiting for my stop, unsure of what I’d really find once I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

I can comfortably say that, despite all odds, Shibuya’s still the same after all these years. NEO:TWEWY manages to blend the essence of what people loved about the original with a new story, new characters, and an updated gameplay style. It’s unafraid in wanting to take its gameplay to a new direction, and its focus on bridging the gap between its predecessor and what it is now really drives home its overall ethos. 

In NEO: TWEWY, three years have passed since the events of the last Reapers’ Game in Shibuya. You play as Rindo Kanade, a high schooler whose fashion sense already showcases the passage of time from the last time Nomura had to design a hip and happening urban youth. Rindo and his friend Tosai “Fret” Furosawa, spend the day in Shibuya and in a matter of seconds wind up in the middle of a free-for-all between psychics and monsters. The Reapers’ Game is alive and well in Shibuya again. With a new smartphone update and a healthy dose of insults from cat hoodie clad Shoka Sakurane, one of several great new additions to the game when it comes to snappy dialogue and delivery, Rindo and Fret have one week to score points and win it all as the newest team in the Game trying to take down the ever-victorious Ruinbringers.

The most immediate change to recognize between this game and its predecessor comes from the shift to 3D. Shibuya on the DS was a larger than life experience thanks to a slanted perspective and cluttering of passersby in every nook and cranny, each with a mind to read based on whatever minutiae they had to worry about at the time. That spirit gets amplified tenfold thanks to the ability to really see the buildings and bridges that connect the city. The game starts at the Hachiko memorial, a section all its own in the original game, but expands out to reveal that the entire Scramble Crossing is in the same section too. The decision to keep Shibuya as a sectioned off map with a fixed camera in each locale rather than pivot to an open world with a mini map on the corner is one that really does a lot in preserving TWEWY’s energy. The background buildings warp to fix into the perspective, and even as more options in the game open the city up to you, most of it does so in a way to let you see the city in angles hitherto unknown when limited to 2D art assets alone. The achievements that you earn along the way also add some flair to your romps around Shibuya in the form of unlocking graffiti tags for a mural on Cat Street, a place that you run into along the way alongside the original piece Neku idolizes in the first game. There’s no hesitation in giving the old fans some indulgence with references and location updates, but it never does so in a way that keeps new players out of the loop.

One of the biggest helpers when it comes to providing new players some solid footing comes in the form of the new characters that make up the Wicked Twisters, the team Rindo and Fret start in their quest to take down the Ruinbringers. Rindo himself is a great start in showcasing just what this game wants to focus on thematically when compared to Neku. Rather than bring in yet another isolated preteen who wishes everyone around him could shut the hell up, Rindo’s introduction is through a series of annoyed texts to Fret about where exactly to meet up for the day (all done with some choice line stickers that I hope get released officially). For the most part Rindo’s not the kind of kid that needs a lesson specifically, but as the events of the Reapers’ Game carry on the pressure gets put on him to learn how exactly to work alongside others and sus out who he can consider not just on his side, but also willing to fight alongside him. The switch from Neku’s iconic headphones to Rindo’s facemask—which the game will gladly tell you is a fashion statement alongside a few jokes surrounding a group of sanitation-based idols that are in the city—is as much an indicator of what’s going on. If the first game was focused on outright yelling at you to go and meet new people even if it feels scary, NEO: TWEWY recognizes that progress and asks you to consider how tight those circles run. 

Another big help is the fact Rindo plays the straight man to a lot of colorful personalities. Fret is a certified fuckboy in appearance between his bleach job and light scarf, but makes up for it by being the resident Golden Retriever of the group. His Psych, the catchall term for the pin-based psychic abilities everyone has access to in battle, alongside some powers that help with overworld exploration, allows him to remind people of events based on a general theme (done through a quick minigame that reveals a crude drawing that could only be something he’d doodle in an effort to get through to people). For the most part he wins people over, but his lovable schtick stops cold when it comes to playing off the third full member of the party, Nagi Usui. Nagi, to put it bluntly, is a big fucking nerd and the best thing to happen to games writing in terms of navigating how to keep the core tenants of character’s eccentricities when mapping out permanent personality changes. When you first meet her she’s ready to raise hell for a promotional pin featuring the visage of her favorite gacha character who also happens to look like another unexpected member of your party, and this is partially the extra push for her to join up with the Twisters. Nagi calls back to the familiar themes of social awkwardness and needing to learn to reach out to others, but she does so in a way that doesn’t ask her to change who she is entirely. Initial impressions on her eccentricity aside, Rindo and Fret take kindly to her presence. Fret even takes the charge in nicknaming her “Boss” as she’s also the oldest of the three. In exchange, Nagi is constantly gracious about Rindo and Fret being some of the first people she’s been able to talk to since the new Game began. Yes, a lot of the jokes with Nagi revolve around her being cringe and maybe too eager to write doujinshi for the next Totally Not Fate chapter. However, at no point is she shamed for these interests and instead learns to bring that same enthusiasm for her passions into a desire to protect the people she can call her friends.

The gameplay, much like in TWEWY, is the final kicker when it comes to presenting the overall message for the game. In the original DS game, players controlled Neku using the touch screen while coordinating a second partner on the top screen via the D-pad or buttons. The proper know-how with which to coordinate button inputs and various actions on the touch screen is how you could initiate combo strings that filled a meter and let you unleash incredible super moves. NEO: TWEWY does something similarly but is fully aware of the scope of control in using a console controller scheme. Every pin that you acquire in the game is associated with a button: For the PS4, it’s Triangle, Square, and all four shoulder buttons, and in your party you basically assign one button for each character to use. Instead of passing the combo back and forth, the game incorporates a “drop the beat” system that has you coordinate follow-up moves with one another or lead big impact moves into quick hits that fill up the same type of meter. Your pins have some usual archetypes to them between energy blasts, sword-like shockwaves, and area-zoning trip wires and mines to name just a few, each also being acquirable throughout the game in various elements. 

As a resident Sword Liker, I’m a fiend for the shockwave pins and my deck usually has one alongside an energy round pin for an easy switch between blasts and slashes. Charge pins, specifically ones that lead into a MvC-Assist-style dropkick from long distances, also help so much in the early game with being able to add some extra damage and combo extensions. Alongside these classics come some fantastic additions like grenade launchers, homing rockets, full-on lasers, and the ability to just tackle a motherfucker. While these pins show their worth pretty quickly, I can’t say the same for stuff like the mines and time bombs. These are probably the most antithetical to TWEWY’s whole design of resource management given how a whole five seconds to wait for a bomb to blow up basically leads to you getting torn into by a wolf or bear or frog and cursing at the screen and your (read: my) need for completion percentages. I won’t knock a game for trying something new, but I definitely shudder at the idea of someone being able to make an effective deck from a trip wire, time bomb, minefield, and attack boost pin.

Brands also make a comeback, as would be expected in a game set in one of the fashion capitals of the world. Your stats are linked to your clothes, and in order to ball out in combat you gotta ball out in fashion choice. There are 13 brands to choose from, some returning from the original game’s zodiac-inspired lineup like hip hop brand Jupiter of the Monkey and the chic Natural Puppy, to some new additions like the Uniqlo-equivalent Shepherd House and Gatto Nero with its very familiar mascot. The more you shop, the higher your VIP level increases, and the more items you can pick up and eventually trade materials for. But of course, fashion comes at a price, which in this case is your style level. The main way to fill that up is by taking your gaggle of kids to the nearest place serving food to load up, raise stats, fight battles until you’re hungry again, and then load up once more.

The epicenter of all this back and forth is the Social Network feature. Folks, we’ve got a sphere grid here and the main way you fill up this bad boy is through completing side quests that you can uncover throughout each day and the Noise gauntlets that Nagi can access through her own unique Psych. Both offer the opportunity for you to earn Friendship Points that can be spent on unlocking various clothes, special food orders for restaurants, and even new mechanics to increase noise chains, game difficulty, and the ability to farm for higher rarity pins. Just as importantly, you get to learn about every shopkeep and named character and how exactly they know each other. As one of the two resident Trails fans here, these flourishes add so much to creating a game atmosphere where Fret hanging around the Hog Fang on Central Street and giving the nervous shopkeeper there tips on how to act around customers isn’t just cute, it’s literally in the descriptor for that character. Everyone matters in Shibuya and that rules!

In a time where everyone focuses on the difficulty of games in relation to accessibility, NEO: TWEWY proudly says, “Fuck outta here with that” and encourages you to try every difficulty on file if you want every pin possible. If you’re set on keeping to one difficulty, the game also provides a level slider to increase drop rates the more HP you sacrifice for battles. The difficulty is yours to play around with and the notion of the optimal NEO: TWEWY experience is less about how much the Noise kicks your ass as it is about getting really excited about giving the ever edgy Minamimoto enough style points to put on a maid outfit that boosts HP.

The fact that I had so much to say about this game prior to bringing up the soundtrack really says a lot about its overall quality because holy crap are the tunes here something else. TWEWY’s eclectic sound back in 2007 was cultivated by hip hop and J-pop, as heard on the title track “Twister” and “Calling”. NEO honors that tradition and throws in new songs to coincide with remixes of some Shibuya classics. “Bird in the Hand” and “Breaking Free” are easily some of the standouts in this new crop of songs, but each one has its place in the game both in the cue of cutscene BGM and in the general way the game will choose to switch songs out whenever you navigate in and out of menus. You never have just one favorite song in this game, and the fact the entire soundtrack is now available for streaming just makes it prime for replay. Seriously, go stream the soundtracks if you haven’t already.

Every bit of this game succeeds because of its focus on interconnectivity. There’s nuance in being able to not just retell a story built on learning to talk to people, but to really make the most of what that experience entails. In talking about the main story Psychs, Rindo’s basically got time travel, but the decision to have such a powerful ability work as a last resort to avoid certain doom helps to make this more than just a matter of having an immediate “win the story button”. To get to a positive outcome in these moments requires Rindo to actually clue in to the people around him, learn what’s going on and use that info to his own gain. Sometimes this helps him avoid last minute ambushes, other times this forces him to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is someone he can ally with. You can’t shut the world away from you, but you do need to discern the stuff that raises you up from the stuff that pulls you down. 

I think back to that ramen shop I visited in May, and that’s ultimately the core of what NEO: TWEWY is about. A city is as much the buildings and bridges that connect it from point A to B as it is the people who live in those buildings and walk down those bridges. While the game never fully addresses its primary threat as a form of gentrification, it does recognize how unwelcome changes harm the natural ebb and flow of city life. I can’t speak to how much of this game was written prior to the pandemic, but it ultimately ends up becoming something necessary in a social context, much like how its predecessor was deemed necessary by so many who needed to hear they should actually go and talk to people. I didn’t have a love for the crêpe place on 8th Street that closed down my sophomore year because of the food, but because that was where I took a photo with some of the first friends I’d make in a new city, some of which I still keep close to this day. Yeah, sometimes the camera can get difficult to deal with in battles and the melodrama that pushes the story into its final act may not hit for everyone, but I started playing this game on the week I had to leave the apartment I called home for two years, one of which I stayed in with barely a penny to my name aside from whenever I had to pay rent. There’s a lot to unpack there, but at the very least this game helped me remember the things that kept me going, the people both on my block and in my contact lists who were there in one way or another when I needed it most. The world does end with you, and as much as it’s necessary to know your limits, that horizon is ever expanding. 

The post NEO: The World Ends With You (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Balan Wonderworld is the first game developed by Balan Company, a studio with Yuji Naka at the helm, alongside artist Naoto Oshima, someone he hasn’t worked with since the days of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. When I think back to that game, I remember how fun and creative the level design was and the charming character designs. For many fans, this seemed like a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, Balan Wonderworld is not the game people were expecting.

The game puts you in the shoes of one of two protagonists, Leo Craig or Emma Cole, who are called to the Balan Theater by a being called Balan after their lives have taken a turn for the worse. The theater transports them to a magical place called Wonderworld, where the children traverse through twelve chapters to help people who have different misfortunes and are being attacked by the Negati, monsters born from their anxieties and fears. 

Balan Wonderworld’s story is pretty much non-existent. There is no dialog, and it is unclear what the goal of the narrative is. Balan looked like such a neat and interesting character, but we learn nothing about him and this really makes the entire experience feel worthless. Compare this to Nights into Dreams, which also had no dialog. The cutscenes get right to the point even without words. You really feel for the children and you want them to become more confident after one is humiliated by a group of older kids, and the other becomes stricken with stage fright. In Balan Wonderworld they attempted to show the problems that Leo and Emma faced in a similar way to Nights. Leo has isolated himself from society after a big argument with a friend years before, and Emma worries about what others might be saying behind her back. The game doesn’t make you care enough about these issues the kids are faced with, because the cutscene that introduces them doesn’t show the deep emotional trauma of their psyches much like Nights did before.

When it comes to the stories within each chapter, you are introduced to the character who needs saving through a short cutscene. In the first chapter, a farmer is afraid of a storm destroying his corn. We see them corrupted by the darkness and create the boss. With what little time they had to show the story of these characters it is acceptable. When you have 12 small stories to tell, it doesn’t really leave room to flesh them out.  After you save them, however, the main character and the person you just saved perform a dance number to a strange song in a fake language. If you cared about them before you will most certainly not after seeing this stupid display. And this happens many times throughout the game. Why not show more scenes with these characters instead of wasting time with the dance number? 

The main gameplay loop of Balan Wonderworld has you collecting Balan Statues throughout its levels to progress the story. To help you do that you’ll need to wear one of 80 “unique” costumes giving you the power to complete puzzles and reach hidden areas. Each stage has its own specific costumes based on the creatures that inhabit them, which can be obtained by finding various keys to open the gems containing them. The keys aren’t even hard to get, so you can basically pick up as many as you want to save for when you lose a costume or want to pick up a different one. 

The costumes in general are a mixed bag, ranging from good to downright terrible. Some of the good ones include the Tornado Wolf that lets you rapidly spin to destroy blocks and deflect tornado attacks, and the Dusk Butterfly that has a neat ability limiting its flying to the night by triggering timed switches. On the other hand, the Box Fox is one of the worst costumes. It changes you into a box, but you can’t control when it happens, causing your character to slide around and fall off the stage. Several costumes that are used for attacking disable your ability to jump, such as the Dainty Dragon and the Sickle Slinger. It quickly becomes apparent that 80 costumes is way too much, and so many of them end up being completely useless. The Lovely Lantern is a good example of this, with its pointless ability to light up dark areas, when the stages aren’t even that dark to begin with.

It isn’t much of a challenge to go through the levels either. You may find yourself going back through a level a few times to collect all of the statues needed to unlock new stages, but completing them multiple times feels like a chore, especially with their lackluster design providing very little challenge. Even after finding all of the statues in the level proper, you still have to locate a top hat and do a QTE mini game with Balan called a “Balan’s Bout”. Matching his pose perfectly on each attempt will nab you a statue. Get even one not so perfect match and you’ll have to come back and redo it. These sequences feel very whimsical, but the same-animation-every-time routine that plays out gets old quick.

The catch to collecting the statues comes with the fact that not every one of them can be reached with the costumes in that specific chapter. At each checkpoint you can change your set of three costumes from ones you have picked up in other chapters, but if you happen to lose said costume, you’ll need to go back to the chapter it’s originally from and grab it again. It would have been so much easier to have the costumes available from that menu without having to go pick them up again. 

Once you finish two levels of each chapter, there is a boss fight, which are best routed by using the costumes specific to that chapter (though they’re all easy regardless). Beat them three times using different costumes and strategies and you get Balan statues. At times it feels like there should be a second phase to the fight when the screen pauses for a moment. If that were the case there might have been room for more gameplay variety. Boss fights in other games produced by Yuji Naka like Sonic Adventure 2 have interesting mechanics that make many of them fun and challenging the first time you play them, such as adding in new attacks to the bosses after a few blows to their weak spot, or using items like a timer to activate a panel revealing the sunlight to help weaken them.

Similarly disappointing compared to Naka’s past works is the Isle of Tims. Upon completing a level you will return to this hub full of little bird/rabbit like creatures named Tims that can be fed drops that you collect during the game. Once one gets big enough, it will show a bubble with another Tim in it. You’ll need to throw a smaller Tim at the big one to make it breed a new one. This isn’t the only way to get new ones, as the Tims follow you around in the levels and bring you new eggs to hatch when you return to the Isle. The point of collecting so many Tims is so they can ride a mechanism on a tower so many times that it will grow higher. This unlocks secret costumes and new Tims with different looks.

On the surface it feels like they tried to make the Isle like the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure, but with less complexity. The Tims are certainly a cute addition to the game, but they don’t have that same effect as Chao did back in the day. If they wanted to do something similar, they could have added in some mini games similar to Chao Racing to do with the Tims, and made the system for them growing when eating drops more interesting, such as changing their color based on what color drop they ate the most of, or certain drops making them appear with new features like ears, a hat, or a tail. 

One of the only strong points for this game is its art direction. The designs of the bosses and the creatures in the game are quite creative and colorful. If you check out each specially made artwork for all of the creatures that the costumes are based on, they are actually really cute and look like something out of a children’s story book.

Unfortunately, nice art and colors do not save this game from being a bland waste of potential. Everything was there for a brand new fun experience with Yuji Naka on board to bring us a game in the spirit of those old SEGA games so many people loved in the 90s and early 2000s. Potentially, if the game was delayed, they could have fixed a lot of issues, such as removing a lot of the unneeded costumes and allowing the ones that can’t jump that ability, but as-is the game is a misguided mess.

Balan Wonderworld is a mediocre experience that failed to capture people like the classics it’s inspired by. It’s sad to see Yuji Naka attached to something that doesn’t live up to the hype it cultivated. It feels like most of the budget went into the opening cutscene and it shows. The standard price point of sixty dollars is downright ridiculous. Lately it got so much negative press that the demo was removed. If you are still curious about it, waiting for it to become dirt cheap would be best. However it’s clearly not something to write home about.

The post Balan Wonderworld Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Spelunky 2 largely plays the same as its predecessor. You navigate through four levels of various themed worlds, using all manner of tools and tactics to jump and whip your way through a slew of enemies and traps in hopes of reaching one of many ends. While there are a few major changes, like the addition of mounts or branching paths, pretty much everything has been expanded upon from Spelunky HD in new and exciting ways. Hidden zones have been overhauled, with most of them appearing in the form of “sub-worlds”, unique areas nestled behind doors on the interior of a level, and bosses are (for the most part), much more dynamic than they were previously. 

Nearly everything in Spelunky 2 has become more fluid, and that’s not just limited to the crazy physics on lava and water. Enemies have more wily patterns; bouncing, wiggling, and rolling all over the place in the most intimidating ways imaginable. The addition of branching paths has allowed you to accomplish the same goals and reach the same endings with different plans and procedures. There’s a new level of depth to everything you do in Spelunky 2 that just wasn’t present in the stringent and straightforward Spelunky HD, and while it can be a lot to take in, it’s incredibly rewarding to play around with.

One of the defining aspects of Spelunky has always been the series’ focus on exploration and discovery through gameplay. While Spelunky is assuredly a roguelike, unlike most modern staples of the genre that focus on gradually building up pools of items or gameplay bonuses over various runs, Spelunky drops you in the same areas with the same potential array of tools every single time. Even as someone who loves the sensation of building the perfect set of items in a game like The Binding of Isaac, the way that Spelunky nurtures that sense of filling out a mental journal as you learn how all of its moving parts and pathways intersect with one another is second to none. Unfortunately that’s exactly what can make some of the more questionable design decisions in this sequel utterly frustrating.

Spelunky HD was a difficult game. It was challenging, requiring precise platforming and execution on every enemy and trap you came across, but at the same time it was something that you very gradually were able to figure out and overcome. Everything in Spelunky HD operated off of a very strict ruleset, and very simplistic patterns that were easy to remember once you learned how they worked (i.e. vampires turn into bats when you’re above them, imps move back and forth). However, Spelunky 2 is a much more dynamic game, and while your character still operates under the same rules, much of what you deal with has taken on extra layers of complexity.

This is most apparent in Spelunky 2’s opening zone, The Dwelling, which is a series of caves in the pastiche of Spelunky HD’s first level. While it retains its cavemen and arrow traps, several other threats have been thrown into the mix to freshen things up. The tiki traps from Spelunky’s jungle, tunneling cave moles that dig through the level geometry, and horned lizards that will roll when you least expect it make up the biggest threats to your early game experience. On their own, none of these obstacles are particularly challenging, but the difficulty of Spelunky always comes from how everything interacts with each other, and oh my god, do they interact with each other way too much. 

I’ve had countless runs end in the first level, without a clear idea of exactly what happened, making me go and playback a video recording to try and see what actually killed me. I’ve watched the horned lizards roll in eight different ways from the same general spot, making it take some time to figure out a reasonable strategy, only to have a cave mole slam down from the ceiling on a second’s notice when I try to execute on it. Sometimes THIS HAPPENS:

and you just sort of sit there in disbelief, while considering a quick restart.

I appreciate a harsh opening to set the tone for the impending challenges you’ll come across over the course of your run, but oddly enough The Dwelling is far and beyond the most difficult level you’ll come across in Spelunky 2. While the other zones have more fearsome threats and dangerous environments, by the time you reach them you’re either warmed up enough to have a handle on what you need to do, or established with a good set of gear and items to turn the tide in your favor. The first level of a roguelike is often the deciding factor in what one’s first impression of a game can be, and should have just enough going on that it’s not too mindless or intensive when you’re thrown back into it after you lose a run. In its current state it would not be an exaggeration to say that, without a good deal of patience and dedication, The Dwelling’s difficulty can easily prevent someone from ever wanting to pick the game back up.

Which is a real shame, because when you get into the swing of Spelunky 2, nearly everything past the opening zones is fascinating and engaging far beyond what the original had. New areas are aesthetically interesting, ranging from coral reefs to futuristic cityscapes and eldritch infested wastes. Enemies in later zones utilize their enhanced capabilities in more interesting but parseable ways as well, with little dudes piloting mech-suits you can steal, or samurai crabs who will shoot out claws and poison bubbles being standouts. Unlike The Dwelling, overcoming these foes feels satisfying, and there are often clearcut ways you can use your tools or brain to circumvent fighting them all together. 

Bosses are a great improvement off of Spelunky HD as well, with even the original’s first boss Olmec feeling like a more compelling and intimidating foe. If there’s one good thing to be said about The Dwelling, it’s that you always exit it by fighting the same boss, and they can be overcome in all sorts of different challenging ways. The Olmec fight has similar benefits- while the first phase is identical to Spelunky HD, and you can leave immediately after that, you’re rewarded for pushing him further and further until a decisive end. The only boss I had a bit of frustration with was the neutral ending boss, who can pretty much only be destroyed if you have a weapon of some kind. That can often be hard to come by, especially as later levels require more and more things to be transported between them. 

Perhaps it is because of how good the design is across most of Spelunky 2, that these weird blemishes like The Dwelling standout so harshly. In a game where so much has been improved, and there’s such a degree of understanding and know-how from the developers, it makes these little things seemingly thrown in haphazardly so confusing. Outside of The Dwelling, there are a handful of strange decisions: status afflictions feel brutally harsh, with ways of removing them taking far too much time to acquire considering the quickness with which you contract them. Tools like the Jetpack, which were a hard-to-come-by reward in Spelunky HD that made you feel like anything was possible, now explode with incredible ease when exposed to a flame, feeling more like a liability than a treasure. Perhaps the most frustrating of all is the addition of complex lava physics, which can leave you sitting around waiting and hoping that perhaps you will eventually be able to exit through the door that is currently being covered with a constant flow of liquid fire.

There are other issues too, like shopkeepers becoming angry off-screen for reasons you can’t even begin to imagine, or the new insta-kill summoning “Ghost Jar” item being broken out of nowhere while you’re stranded in a sub-world, but I’ve somehow been able to push past all of them and just keep hammering away and honing my skills. Spelunky 2 is definitely not a game for everyone, and honestly if you’re someone who’s never played a Spelunky game before, I’d be half-inclined to direct you to its predecessor first and foremost. However if you’re like me, and you’re crazed and determined to get more of that Spelunky goodness, I think you’ll be happy with what you find.

The post Spelunky 2 (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

TLOU2 is, allegedly, a story about the cycle of revenge. As Ellie and later Abby, players stealthily make their way through all manner of neglected and naturally reclaimed cityscapes to achieve their goals of vengeance. Along the way, they’ll brutally dispatch dozens upon dozens of enemies in macabre fashion, with all the gorey details graphically realized in absurdly high fidelity. Whether it’s the slew of fungally infected zombies, or the various cults and factions that make up what’s left of society, there are plenty of traps and firearms to make sure they don’t stay in your way for long.

One of the weakest elements of 2013’s The Last of Us is its obsessive focus on shoehorning in combat at almost every turn. I often mused, upon later reflection of the game, that if it was purely about exploring abandoned cities and towns with the occasional puzzle or zombie encounter, it would have been a far more affecting experience. Unfortunately, TLOU2 doubles down on combat, giving the player more tools and explosive set pieces to use them in. I would go so far as to estimate that a good 80% of the gameplay experience is spent wandering through gated combat encounters, mostly against the same old humans with guns you’d find in any other game.

While I’m not too surprised at the focus on combat, given the game’s theming, I was under the impression that Naughty Dog would have tried to make this aspect of the game as uncomfortable as possible, rather than the epic and absurdly bombastic systems at play. You can craft all sorts of explosives and wild ammunition for your guns and navigate several skill trees to become better at killing. It would be one thing to use these sorts of systems in a meta sense, like how Undertale leveraged the abstract violence of JRPG battles as a commentary on video game violence, but that would have required a compromise on the “fun factor.” I don’t believe any AAA game is brave enough to even attempt to alienate the most casual and disinterested of gamers.

Instead of making combat painful, Naughty Dog opted to make all of the human enemies you fight scream in agony whenever you dispatch them. Every time you take someone out, someone nearby will bellow their name before resuming classic video game enemy behavior. This becomes increasingly ridiculous as you take out enemies one-by-one, with the audio of an encounter quickly becoming more of a name game than a moral dilemma. While it’s clear that this is an attempt at making the player feel bad about their actions and to humanize the antagonists, the game refuses to even begin characterizing its various factions in any way that actually makes them feel like people. 

No matter which group they belong to, the various people scattered across TLOU2 operate as little more than zombies who speak. Listening in on any given conversation will only ever yield canned phrases relating to the current story events rather than anything actual people would talk about with each other. It’s not like I’m asking for enemies to start talking about their kids back home or do a one week from retirement bit (though TLOU2 does lean on that trope during some cutscenes), but to have them only ever regurgitate things that matter to the player makes enemies come across as nothing more than unfeeling cogs in a machine. It makes it hard to empathize with the characters you’re fighting against, as Naughty Dog clearly intended, when the only thing they ever talk about is killing you.

This is all saying nothing of how characters behave in cutscenes and other important moments of the core narrative. Every faction in The Last of Us Part II operates like a cult from a television show, completely disconnected from reality and any sort of rational belief. Regardless of their origins, somehow every single group in this post-apocalyptic world has formed themselves around tribalistic worship and servitude to various individuals who, as the game introduces them, all may as well wear a sign that says “I’m fucked up and evil.” Whether it’s a religious group that’s gone back to basics, a territorial militia, or a bunch of slavers, each group acts like a barbaric hivemind working in fealty to whatever concept and individual rules over them.

It’s a depressingly limited world scope, one that, in my mind, displays the depth of experience that the writers have explored in their own lives. TLOU2 imagines a world where everyone huddles in groups and is ready to kill each other at a moment’s notice, but it doesn’t take into account any external factors that could possibly lead to communal post-apocalyptic societies. It proffers that people are, at their core, animalistic and brutal, ready to maim and kill in a primal manner just to survive, rather than examining the causes of why people might be led to those extremes. The society here has seemingly moved past some extreme prejudices in the span of twenty years, with the only cause of warfare being a difference of allegiance. 

Even slavers don’t operate under a sense of nationalism or racial superiority; they grab literally anyone they find and lock them up. It doesn’t appear that this group even uses the slaves for anything; they just leave them to starve in cages and occasionally torture them in some of the most comically evil ways imaginable. Once again, the writers don’t try to explore or explain any sort of reasoning as to why individuals would act like this, merely using them as simplistic stand-ins in lieu of narratively coherent characterization. That is, unless it’s time to examine one of the few groups Naughty Dog has deemed worthy to obtain social and progressive cache.

For some reason, despite the end of racism, sexism, and every other conceivable prejudice, transphobia and homophobia managed to survive at the end of the world. While there’s a few moments involving Ellie being called a “dyke”, or misunderstandings from Joel and others, the main issue Naughty Dog decided to showcase was the relationship between a transgender man and his community. Even if they had trans consultants on-board, why two cisgender writers decided it was their place to explore a topic like this, let alone in their big budget survival shooter game that’s about how everyone is a terrible person, is baffling. There’s not even much I can say about how nothing and obviously fishing for praise the transgender character’s arc is; it’s not particularly offensive, nor is it particularly meaningful. At most, it’s simply a reminder that, yeah, being a trans person sucks ass, cool. Glad to see that trans characters can only ever be in a game if we’re here to talk about how hard it is for them to be trans.

The failure to examine anything of meaning throughout The Last of Us Part II is ultimately the fault of the writers and managerial staff. When I say this is a game made by the privileged, I really mean it. There’s no possible way for this game to have brought anything affecting or meaningful to the table, because the people who made it share none of the lived experiences they’re leveraging in their work. They can’t make their writing about being transgender anything other than bog standard because they’ve only ever read about it. The core “cycle of revenge” narrative can’t actually be explored in a nuanced or considered way because the writers have never experienced anything that would have led them to feelings like those Ellie feels.

The most TLOU2 is able to provide is a power fantasy for well-off white people. It’s a nihilistic and detached work that reflects the only fears and topics that can occur in the minds of those who have never truly suffered, where suffering and desperate people are the scariest thing in the world. It’s the libertarian fantasy, where the peak of success a character can reach is owning a huge swathe of land away from everyone else, and they have every right to shoot down whoever they want.

One of the things that’s kept 2013’s The Last of Us in my mind after all these years was its ending, an ambitious and damning conclusion that you’d rarely expect from a AAA game. Rather than follow up on that ambiguity with a new set of characters to flesh out that same world, TLOU2 instead feels hellbent on bashing the player over the head with a barrage of scenes that feel like YouTube explanations of the original game. There are multiple flashbacks, and each serves to just really hammer into you that, damn, what happened in that game was fucked up huh? Much like the libertarian ideology that permeates much of the game, The Last of Us Part II has complete confidence in itself, but absolutely none in other people.

This becomes especially clear with the game’s structure, having you play as Ellie first and then Abby. Ellie’s story is pretty straight forward: she goes around killing people, has some mild relationship drama, and tries to quench her hatred for the evil antagonist Abby. Abby’s story on the other hand exists almost entirely to make sure you know that Ellie is really fucked up and twisted too, in some of the most brazenly amateurish ways possible. Rather than flesh Abby out in a compelling and dynamic way, her entire character is mirrored almost beat by beat with Ellie’s to the point where it’s almost comical. Both have pregnant women fighting with them for some godforsaken reason, both had a magical experience with a zoo animal in their youth, and both live their lives completely dominated by their father figures.

This back-to-back setup is done to make the players reflect on what Ellie has done through the eyes of the other side, but it rarely feels effective because of how hamfisted everything is delivered. To make sure you know how horrible it is that Abby’s friends were all killed by Ellie, they each deliver a “I’m just about to turn my life around and finally be happy :)” speech when she runs into them. In case you didn’t, for some reason, already feel bad about one of the dogs Ellie is forced to kill over the course of her journey, you have to pet and play fetch with that dog as Abby multiple times. At one point, just in case you forgot Abby was just as messed up in the last 10 hours, she threatens to kill a pregnant woman who, upon learning she was pregnant responds “Good.” It feels boorish and simpleminded, like the writers’ goal was to teach a five year old that the other kids on the playground have feelings too.

That lack of substantial characterization to the groups involved in either half of the game makes it hard to really feel as horrendous as it seems you’re supposed to. If it’s the role of Abby’s route to teach you that all the people you killed were just other people trying to live, why are those people just as overly antagonistic and villainous to Abby as well? If the lesson is to realize that everyone has their reasons, why are all of the religious cult members monstrous beyond forgiveness, aside from a couple “good ones?” The Last of Us Part II is more fixated on a barrage of transient “Gotcha!” moments, than it is actually giving you any meaningful scenes to ponder on long-term. 

Considering this message, and how it’s delivered, I struggle to imagine how anyone could excuse the working conditions Naughty Dog workers suffered while making The Last of Us Part II. Back in March, Kotaku published an interview with several developers at Naughty Dog, who talked about being trapped in a never-ending cycle of crunch since late 2018. Since 2016’s Uncharted 4, more than 70% of the staff working at the company had left because of crunch burnout, most of them referencing the months upon months of 12+ hour workdays with no rest in sight.

While there are plenty of games that have been made and praised despite a heavy use of crunch, it’s becoming harder and harder to separate their development from their existence as media. How can we properly criticize a work focused on extreme violence and trite messaging with that knowledge coloring our perception of how that message is being delivered? I find it almost impossible to reckon with the morality that the game is trying to impart on me, with the knowledge of what the people writing it forced upon others to express it. 

This isn’t a bold statement against the status quo or anything so powerful for so much toil, it’s a game moralizing about revenge, a concept as old as time itself. Ironically, it’s perhaps the never-ending cycle of crunch culture that Naughty Dog cultivates that has made The Last of Us Part II such a mindless and cowardly endeavor.  Many devs have talked about the constant restarts and redos of sequences they were tasked with throughout development, sometimes coming right after they had spent weeks and weeks on perfecting them. With most of their staff constantly at breaking point, it’s easy to understand why a fully realized and cohesive game could never have been made.

There are so many games, most of them with hardly a tenth of the budget of this one, that have inspired me or made me think in so many different ways. NieR: Automata, a game that feels like a clear inspiration for several aspects of this game, also managed to offer philosophical takes on the human condition in the same sort of societal aesthetic that TLOU2 has. The main difference being that while NieR provides similar depressing sentiments, it still believes ultimately that people can band together to help one another, and that at their core, a person wants to help more than they ever want to hurt. Even when its characters are driven by revenge, they still try to help people and understand more about what the world they live in; something Naughty Dog never even attempts to reconcile with Ellie or Abby.

Throughout the world of The Last of Us, there doesn’t really seem to be any sort of reconciliation with what it would mean to be in a post-apocalyptic world. Rather than a focus on what it would mean to rebuild society, even twenty-six years later people are scraping by, picking apart existing architecture and living in squalor and disrepair. While a few people have become somewhat self-sufficient (Ellie’s settlement has small farms and a few reasonably clean houses while Abby’s has wind turbines and PlayStation Vitas everywhere) mostly everything still looks like the military bombed the hell out of it yesterday. Rations and medical supplies are ever in short supply, and the only things that never seem to run out are firearms and ammunition.

Imagine. A world where guns come out of the ground like plants. And all the water is replaced by Bullet’s. This is Gun World. It’s real

— wint (@dril) February 8, 2011

If The Last of Us Part II were a braver game, perhaps it could have explored realistic challenges with reconstructing and adapting to life after a societal collapse. Rather than clinging to vestiges of the past, people could form new aesthetics based on the old, and new generations of architects could make beautiful things with what was left behind. It’d be fascinating to hear about what’s become of different parts of the world, how the outbreak affected them and how they adapted. Even just a glimpse at people trying to rebuild rather than scrape by in temporary bunkers would have been heartening to see, but TLOU2 has no time for heart.

There’s so much potential for many compelling ideas within this genre, but apocalyptic fiction seems to be completely married to using the same tired Cold War-era nuclear paranoia pastiche, rather than actually adapt with the issues and sensibilities of our times. This is apparent throughout most of the aesthetic decisions, but none more so than Ellie’s collection of vintage superhero trading cards. Rather than leverage something that would have been popular and widespread in 2013 like wretched Funko Pops or anything even remotely modern, this girl in 2039 is collecting items that went out of fashion in the 80’s at the latest. It’s a small thing, but it just continues to show how little thought and consideration actually went into the game.

While there are a few positive parts of The Last of Us Part II, it’s hard to push past the bad to appreciate them. The visuals are gorgeous and meticulously crafted, the ability to play an actual guitar is an impressive one-off feature, and the accessibility features offered to the player are easily the most robust of any game I think I’ve ever played. Unfortunately when I weigh all of those against what frustrated me, and the incalculable human cost it took to implement each of these features, I can’t bring myself to sing their praises. The Last of Us Part II didn’t need to be what it is, and perhaps it never should have been anything at all.

The post The Last of Us Part II Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Sakura Wars got its start on the Sega Saturn, where it was pitched as a “Drama Adventure,” an ambitious cross between a tactical RPG and a dating sim or visual novel. SEGA didn’t localize any entries in the long running series, save So Long, My Love in 2008, which was met with such universal critical disdain that it actually shuttered the franchise until this newest release. However since then the Fire Emblem series, and visual novels at large, have burst into the public consciousness and finally asserted the genre as a core pillar of western gaming, so it’s only natural that SEGA would bring the series that inspired so many others back into the forefront.

This new Sakura Wars takes place in a fantasized steampunk version of 1940’s Tokyo, where demons are always on the attack and Mech-based combat is kind of a big deal. You play as Seijurou Kamiyama, a military officer who’s been put in charge of the failing Flower Division, a brigade of stage actors/mecha pilots. As the new captain, it’s Seijurou’s job to get to know his crew, figure out what sort of problems each member is facing, and how they can overcome them while trying to make the world a better place. This is generally done through a standard visual-novel layout, with the occasional action sequence breaking things up every so often.

Though the older games used a traditional turn-based combat system, the newest entry features a spectacle based hack-and-slash approach reminiscent of the Dynasty Warriors series. There’s nothing too deep going on, and you can largely button mash your way through any encounter with relative ease. In most games I would look to this as a critical failure, and if you’re a Fire Emblem fan looking for a quick hit you might as well, but Sakura Wars actually manages to utilize these sequences for narrative consequences. Battles are a sentiment rather than a playground. Fights are never just happening for the sake of it, and the aesthetics and delivery of everything help make it feel more like you’re piloting an entire fight scene in an anime rather than just doing a simple set of quick time events. 

Presentation in general is Sakura Wars’ biggest strength. Anime-style eyecatches act as both save points and a means to check on how your relationships with various characters are progressing, breaking up the game into “right after the commercial” style cliffhangers. Each chapter ends with a “Coming Up Next” teaser for the next arc of the game, which are perfectly cut like a television anime’s sneak peek for next week. These small flourishes really help the new Sakura Wars connect to its roots, replicating the sensibilities of an era we remember in our minds, but has long since past. I’ve never been one big on nostalgia, but Sakura Wars’ delivery really had me pining for the days of watching whatever mecha series happened to be on the TV in my childhood.

The characters of Sakura Wars are equally charming. Though a large majority of the cast are women (this is a dating sim after all), each character is vibrant and distinct from one another. The main five heroines are the titular samurai Sakura, the bookish Claris, the rowdy Hatsuho, the mysterious actress Anastasia, and Azami who’s pretty much just a ninja. Bleach mangaka Tite Kubo was in charge of designing these five, and his specific style is a welcome change of pace in a genre that feels like it’s only ever given an option between two aesthetics. The rest of the cast was designed by a slew of guest artists as well, and the differences in all of their designs really help make the world pop. My favorite was Sakura’s sparring teacher- a cool knight woman named Hakushu who was designed by Persona character designer Shigenori Soejima- who alternates between suave sincerity and weird rants about omurice.

As someone who regularly chides the artistic sensibilities of steampunk, the world of Sakura Wars surprised me quite a bit. This is no gritty and dark Bioshock. Not another foggy and brown London imitation. This iteration on 1940’s Tokyo is vibrant and low-tech, with cherry blossoms and greenery all around. You’re afforded a pretty limited look at the world for sure, a few select areas that serve as hubs for the various story events and conversations that make up the core game, but each location is charming and simple in a way I could only be impressed by. The theater most of the game takes place around in particular is pleasant to look at, but not so ostentatious that it becomes difficult to explore the ins and outs as regularly as you end up doing.

The visual novel sequences of the game are delivered through the Live Interactive Picture System (or LIPS for short), which limits the time you have to make your dialogue choice to a few seconds. Normally this sort of system would frustrate me, but I actually found the time limit encouraging me to go with my gut in a lot of ways that made my playthrough feel less formulaic and guided. There are also several dialogue options that require you to set the level of intensity Seijurou is going to speak their lines at, which can either feel really cool or really silly depending on how high or low you go for any given line. One of my favorite missteps was near the climax of the game where I had Seijurou deliver a grand speech about the power of friendship and bonds, all in a sheepish and embarrassed whisper. 

Given the nature of a dating sim, arguably the most important component of Sakura Wars is the writing, and for the most part it delivers. There’s a clear intent to avoid any sort of deeper philosophical quandaries, and a much larger focus on comedic or emotional situations to enamour the player with the game’s cast. When it comes to the main narrative, this is done generally pretty well, albeit with tropes aplenty. Each character is quirky and cute, and their emotional arcs have satisfying conclusions that tie into the main plot in obvious, yet exciting ways. 

Though you end up picking one of the five main characters as your love interest for a special ending sequence, the game doesn’t limit you from interacting with any of the other girls in a romantic way. If you’re turned off by harem anime conceits this might be frustrating, but as someone who generally can stand that genre it was nice to be able to actually watch the game develop each individual character without making the player ignore some in favor of others, until another playthrough. This is a real boon to the anime format Sakura Wars is trying to nail, since each character gets their own arc over time, making it feel more like a complete series rather than several stories pushed into one. There’s still incentive to replay the game of course; while the core story doesn’t really change much, a lot of the choices completely change how the scenes will play out in all sorts of ways, so if you end up really liking the game, it can be funny to go through and do a “worst possible choices” run.

Unfortunately the romantic bits with each of the characters is probably one of the weakest points of the game. While the standard dates are cute, and figuring out each girl’s personality to know what answers make sense for them is entertaining, there are several Tête-à-Tête bonding events that just end up feeling sort of embarrassing more than anything. These sequences put you into each of the main girls’ rooms in a first person perspective as you try to figure out how to make them feel better and then…pet their hair or face? The initial conceit of navigating an environment and dialogue choices to try and make a character feel better is compelling, but the turn each event takes at the end where you’re practically instructed to look at the characters’ breasts or ass feels incredibly out of place. 

There’s other moments like this that are frustrating as well scattered throughout the game. Sakura Wars has very little in terms of “fanservice,” for lack of a better word, meaning that there’s not really many sequences where you end up seeing some anime titties or something, but it constantly cracks the worst kind of jokes like it actually does. Every chapter has one or two bits where uncharacteristically, and out of nowhere, Seijuro will all of a sudden do something like not knock before going into a dressing room, only to find a fully clothed Sakura who screams for like three minutes about how he’s a pervert freak and needs to die. While I mentioned before that I really appreciated how Sakura Wars feels like a lost 90’s anime, I kind of wish they didn’t feel the need to replicate every single aspect of one.

These scenes are all technically optional, but at a certain level I have to wonder why they even exist at all. I found myself avoiding the downstairs bath entirely for most of the game, only because I knew that everytime an objective marker was put down there, nothing good would come of it. By the end of the game I genuinely found the overreliance on these jokes to be an active thorn in the game’s side- whereas the rest of the game had the characters gradually warm up to you and change how they spoke with time, if you found yourself in the random horny room all of a sudden, that relationship was destroyed for the duration of the cutscene. One of the worst scenes in the game involved Seijurou going to take a bath, only to have three of the girls walk in on him, and call him a pervert and a freak for…taking a bath?

 I was just sort of floored at this scene because it really showcased the writers’ inability to fully conceive a woman as anything other than an ultra conservative concept when it comes to sexual topics of any kind. I’ve always found myself frustrated when it comes to the portrayal of women in media, and it’s this sort of mischaracterization that drags the entire game down with it. Though I was able to mostly ignore these bits and still fall in love with all of the girls, the fact that I even had to actively ignore something at all really sucks.

Despite that, Sakura Wars really managed to win me over, mainly because of just how many little things there were that I loved. There was the weird hanafuda game that every big budget VN seems obligated to have, where you can curse every character in the game out for getting a much better hand than you and smugly rubbing it in. Though the soundtrack for the game is pretty limited, the expert delivery of the Sakura Wars theme with its triumphant horns section never failed to get me psyched up, especially once those vocals kicked in. There are dozens of framed anime cels from the original Sakura Wars games lying around that you can collect, and whenever the original series’ Sakura shows up she’s drawn in that art style, which contrasted against Tite Kubo’s women ends up being extremely funny and charming.

Sakura Wars isn’t a particularly deep game, but it never really feels like it’s trying to be. I spend a lot of time playing a lot of games with deeper messages, or long engrossing metanarratives that require me to use a lot of my very frail brain at any given time, so it was nice to actually just fool around with cute anime girls and big cool mech moves for a while. This is a game that tries to serve that childish side of the player, the side that wants to see a drama unfold without thinking too much about it, the side that wants to hear about the power of bonds and friendship and how it can overcome anything. Sakura Wars is sort of like the video game equivalent of a nice dessert: it’s not very filling or substantial, and you know it’s not exactly the best for you, but damn if it isn’t sweet.

The post Sakura Wars Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Gameplay in UNICLR remains standard from past UNI games and consists of four buttons to control your character, referred to as ABCD: light attack, medium attack, heavy attack, and ~*special button*~. The game’s simplicity carries through from this button scheme to the actual fighting. Combos are performed simply by canceling a button from a lower strength attack into an equal or higher strength attack; this means that if you land a random A attack against an opponent and don’t have a combo prepared, a simple A>B>C will do and your opponent will think twice about getting hit by stray jabs. This is where the UNI series gets really elegant, a complete beginner won’t have to worry about any timing on their attacks and can pull off whatever combo they can happen to press, while an advanced player can really use all the freedom of this sort of combo structure to perform stuff you wouldn’t otherwise expect from a stray hit. I have always found UNI games to be great to introduce to new players for this reason; combined with a unique aesthetic, anyone playing the game for the first time can really feel the fluidity of gameplay, and when a game feels immediately good to a new player, there’s a strong chance they’ll stick with the game.

For players familiar with fighting games or wanting to learn how to play the UNI series beyond just the basics, don’t worry, notice when I described the gameplay earlier I mentioned it being “elegant”. The game is definitely NOT shallow and as soon as you look deeper into UNICLR this becomes more apparent. The beauty of the game is that you only really need to learn what you want to, so a beginner’s basic skills in this game will directly evolve into more advanced skills later because things like combos or spacing will never be fundamentally different unless you choose a character or playstyle that avoids certain elements of the game. While an autocombo is present (which isn’t really a bad thing), UNICLR differs from games like Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle where the main focus of combos falls on the autocombos available to a character; instead, it’s a quick substitute for A>B>C that has more advanced applications found by experienced players, so it has situational uses but doesn’t rule over your other combos. Everything in UNICLR can be taken advantage of by the player to the extent they want, so plenty of depth is present once you begin to critically look at mechanics like assault and the vorpal cycle, which are critical for high-level play.

In addition to learning the system for yourself, the tutorial in UNICLR is incredible and serves as both a useful mechanism to teach you the game as well as a meaningful chunk of content in the game itself. Beyond simply teaching you how all the mechanics of the game work (so you can forget them and start mashing buttons once you get into a game), UNICLR also teaches you theory on how to use them consistently from beginner to expert to make sure that players not only can do the inputs but understand when and where to use certain moves. If you’re a beginner, this is probably the best way to learn how to play any fighting game, as the tutorial will teach you about relative safety, how to use your attacks, and how to think effectively in-game. With over 100 missions teaching everything from basic movement to the various option selects present in UNICLR, I truly think this is the best tutorial to learn how fighting games generally work and how to play them. The tutorial also has extremely helpful tips for veteran fighting game players as well, and even though I know how to play the game, I will still find myself going through late missions in the tutorial to make sure I understand how to respond to a situation correctly. Character specific tutorials are also present and are as helpful as you would expect by providing tons of combos and strategy tips to explain how a character typically plays or when to use certain moves. At every step of the way playing UNICLR, the tutorial will be there to help.

Moving on from hard gameplay, let’s talk about the aesthetics of UNICLR: they’re great. UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH is an anime fighting game series, so if you’re averse to the sound of Japanese sung anime openings, look elsewhere (your loss!). Beyond the simple statement of UNICLR being an anime game, the game oozes a feeling of eeriness and coolness, making the more lively characters a welcome stirring of the pot when you get sick of seeing boys with dark jeans and trench coats on screen. The music in each UNI game has always been great, and this installment is no exception, with lots of soft synths and the occasional shredding guitar solo, like music to ride a motorcycle at night to. Continuing to where you fight, most of the game’s stages are like the gameplay; beautiful but streamlined. Based on the lore of the game which I am admittedly not an expert on, most of the stages take place in different locales at night, whether it’s a playground or a mall, the stages are exactly what you expect, and they greatly reinforce the mysterious mood. The character’s songs combined with the menus and stages really pull the game together into a cool and calm package when most fighting games try to make things as exciting and frenetic as possible. Also, with UNICLR being an anime game, you get no shortage of cool overly dramatic moments. Leaving the song selection on auto will cause certain character matchups to play a special song due to rivalry or adversarial conflict in the story. Along with the huge amounts of gibberish English text on the screen and the dramatic, mysterious anime soundtrack, UNICLR makes no point to hide its Type-Moon, Melty Blood origins.

Despite the unique aesthetics of UNICLR, my one complaint with the game may be others’ favorite part: the roster. Functionally, the roster leaves nothing to be desired; it provides many unique playstyles through each character and there’s no shortage of fun to be had playstyle-wise. My issue, however, is that most characters simply lack the extra oomph I crave when I look for characters in other games. With the overall chill and dark mood I described before, most of the character designs are also quite simple, much like something in the Melty Blood series, another game the developers previously worked on. Many characters’ outfits consist of pretty ho-hum getups, and while there certainly are some characters that break the mold like Gordeau and Waldstein, the fantasy of what each character should be doing in-game based on how they look isn’t always clear based on their designs. Characters like Linne and Seth have always fallen flat to me for this reason; even if I think they do super cool things in-game, it doesn’t feel like I’m picking a super cool character on the character select screen. This has been remedied with each subsequent version after UNI (the first in the series) as more unique and over the top characters have been brought in, and I feel that for most people UNICLR should not have this issue with the addition of the very cool Londrekia rounding out the roster. Obviously, this is a pretty minor issue, I’ve still found a character I enjoy playing in Gordeau, yet I never truly feel like my itch for a character has been completely scratched looking at the UNICLR roster.

In total, UNICLR is truly a great game and time will tell if it becomes one of the more memorable fighting games of this era. While we haven’t quite gotten enough time to see how all the balance changes have shaken out in the long term just yet, if it’s anything like past UNI games, no casual player should have to worry about picking a “useless tier” character unless they are really looking to optimize their gameplay (and transitioning beyond a casual mindset). Community support for UNI has always been great, with people looking to play this game pretty much throughout the fighting game community. With the game scoring another consecutive appearance at EVO 2020 for the series, it’s safe to say this is likely the best general representation of UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH so far and perhaps the best of anime fighting games as a whole.

The post Review: UNDER NIGHT IN BIRTH Exe:Late [cl-r] (PS4) appeared first on Gamesline.

During a time I was pessimistic about my career prospects, I was for some reason inspired to properly sit down and watch the original Dragon Ball anime series: all 153 episodes. I was immediately hooked and it was then I watched all 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z (not Kai, though). My third eye opened and I unlocked the Kaio-ken technique. Akira Toriyama may just be another human, but he is horny, reckless, and mad with power—and I fell right into His Plan.

Dragon Ball is a loose interpretation of Journey to the West, which is not only one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature but is one of the most important pieces of literature of all time. But unlike Journey to the West, Dragon Ball broke cultural barriers in ways that are near unfathomable. Not everyone may be able to tell you who Sun Wukong is, but Goku is one of the most recognizable icons anyone can discern no matter what country you step in. (He is up there with Superman and Jesus Christ!) It is hard to imagine how far-reaching something like Dragon Ball would end up producing countless pieces of media under its name since its conception as a silly manga series that serialized in the late 90s. And yet, with so much it has already offered, there’s still more to come.

There have been about 96 officially licensed Dragon Ball video games released thus far—not even counting other games where Goku is featured as a playable character! Over half of these have never been localized outside of Japan and many of these titles have been lost through obsolescence. So instead of thoroughly going through every single one of these 96 games, I will instead beg the question: what makes the latest installment in the eponymous long-running franchise, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, stand out specifically?

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is an action role-playing game developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game loosely follows the plot of the Dragon Ball Z anime series with a few new additions as you play across its cast of main characters.

You travel across familiar locations in third-person with flight as your main mode of transportation. As expected of a Dragon Ball game, there is a heavy emphasis on combat as you will encounter numerous enemies and scripted boss fights. You must fight your way to victory through a combination of punches, kicks, and ki-blasts, which can either be strategic or totally made up of button-bashing mindlessness.

Kakarot has elements of RPG progression, in which characters’ moves must be unlocked through a skill tree and via the story’s progression. Although you can climb your way up through light grinding, there are multiple ways to power up. You collect a token from some characters that you are introduced to for the first time. A system called Communities lets you link these character tokens across a series of nodes, which can help you gain certain stat bonuses or item benefits. In addition, hoarding Ki Orbs, differently colored types of orb collectibles that are scattered across the map and collected in flight, are spent to unlock more abilities in training modes at certain points in the game.

There is also a Cooking system, which concocts meals that yield higher benefits than regular items and produces effects like temporary stat boosts simultaneous to healing. For that reason, foraging items such as fruit, meat, or fish, is integral to fulfill recipe requirements. Fishing is a whole other mechanic, but it is also one of the simplest fishing systems I have ever experienced in a game. Your character simply has to find a fishing spot on the map and everything plays out via a quick-time mini-game where all you have to do is press the right buttons flashed at the right moment. It’s quick, quirky, and does the job. Goku’s version of it will see him pulling out and fishing with his tail, in blatant homage to the original anime series when he was often seen doing it as a child. (Why does he have his tail as an adult if it was cut off? Don’t worry, it’s explained.)

So with that all said and done—really, what makes Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot so special?

Other Dragon Ball games have focused on the original Dragon Ball in disregard to Z. Games like the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai games and FighterZ are just straightforward fighting games with new original stories for those respective titles. Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure, a game for the Game Boy Advance, only focuses on a loose interpretation of the events of young Goku’s life, with many omissions. The Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku games do attempt to center on the arcs of Dragon Ball Z, but they have been criticized for their choppiness, unnecessary new material, and easy difficulty. Some of these creative choices were probably in pressure to create a Dragon Ball game to reach out to a younger demographic.

The only exception to all of this is Dragon Ball Z: The Legend, a game released on the Playstation that never saw the light of day in the United States. It was the first Dragon Ball video game that attempted to adapt the entirety of Dragon Ball Z in one, contained game. In that regard, Kakarot is technically not doing anything new with its own reiteration, but it is the execution that makes it unique and distinguishable from The Legend.

In spite of what teasers initially led people to believe, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is not an open-world game proper. Instead, the game is divided into multiple sections with the aforementioned RPG elements that can only be freely explored until certain progress is made. These areas do have a semi-open world aspect due to the maps’ expanse with ample room to literally fly.

Despite this somewhat misleading description of the game, it truly does feel like you’re freely traveling across vast, familiar grounds that are unmistakably Dragon Ball—from Diablo Desert to the Southeast Mountains where Goku’s home is located. This is something The Legend lacked since it only used 2D sprites across a scrolling, pseudo-three dimensional map. It became so motivating to discover all the little things the game offers once I got into the momentum of flight. Other games like Xenoverse and the now-defunct Dragon Ball Online similarly evoked this same feeling, but they are centered on an original story through the outside perspective of an original character you create. In Kakarot, you are Goku and you are reliving the very events of Dragon Ball Z through his body and onto the next character.

Love and thought were clearly put into Kakarot, and it is clear that a game like this would not have existed had the franchise not withstood all the criticism and commentary from fans it has piled up over the years. Besides the obvious jokes being thrown out into the wind (Yamcha sucks, haha), numerous Easter eggs and gags are planted throughout the game for you to find, assuring you that the original Dragon Ball has not been forgotten. Roshi’s lecherous nature is certainly something Kakarot does not avoid and one particular subquest forces you to find his misplaced “dirty magazine”. After that, the dirty magazine becomes a recurring item you can find throughout the game. You can also examine specific glowing spots marked on the map that provides a little factoid in relation to the series’ past lore. For instance, when you first arrive at the Kame House, a tidbit can be read reiterating the time when a much younger Bulma and Goku first met Turtle.

Plot holes and narrative issues people have brought up over the years—especially in regards to the characters that have come and gone, thrown under the bus and forgotten—are addressed. Some subquests reintroduce you to these characters in a new light and force you to interact with the otherwise normal citizenry of the world from time to time. For instance, Kakarot now suggests that Yajirobe was actually pivotal to Gohan’s growth after Piccolo took him under his wing for training. In that segment, you play as the defenseless, young Gohan and must re-learn how to forage food. It is additions like these that are heartwarming and the sort of thing that I have always wanted to see in new Dragon Ball material. Familiar faces find a new purpose, invoking more dimensionality to the world that was always there but was carelessly ignored as the series transgressed into a more action-focused story with a tighter cast.

Shops and small towns are scattered far and wide, where NPCs can be interacted with. Kakarot reminds you of the normal, everyday ongoings of the planet if the series wasn’t so centered on the Z Fighters. There were still some missed opportunities (I regret to inform that there is no walking simulator segment for Snake Way, despite this iconic path having appeared as a genuine level in other Dragon Ball games), but additional dialogue, both humorous and serious, added during pivotal scenes and moments of idle time to further flesh out characters we thought we fully knew in subtle ways. It shows how far this series has come to finally reach self-awareness, and that just maybe, Goku is not that bad of a father after all. It is through here that Kakarot prospers in story and writing, but elsewhere it unfortunately falters.

There are times where Kakarot feels rushed and incomplete. Some of the RPG elements of the game feel a little lackluster, shallow, and don’t truly add a significant advantage to the playing experience. Most of the time, I felt as though I made my way through battles by sheer strategy and reflex like any other fighting game.

The aesthetics of the game is a highly subjective area, but I personally think the game’s color palette is too saturated and gaudy. I have to admit I am highly spoiled by how good a Dragon Ball game can look through what we have seen in FighterZ, but something about the 3D rendering of the objects in this game also feels lacking, unfinished, and untextured. This unfinished quality carries through, where at times where the map feels open, but at other times it can feel more empty instead, failing to the illusion of the spaciousness it wanted to convey.

Character models also sometimes awkwardly snap into their next pose or animation unintentionally if you run through dialogue too quickly. What’s most grating is that a particular bug exists where sometimes NPCs outright disappear from their location, making a quest completion impossible until you “refresh” them back in by doing something else first, like leaving the map.

Kakarot suffers the most from its unmappable controls and wonky camera. Combat actually feels great and looks excellent with its explosive visuals, so I am going to assume the rush of the fight masks issues I may have missed entirely. Walking on the ground is also fine most of the time, but occasionally, when you need to jump and run at hyper speeds, things can get a little out of hand with the whiplash of the camera.

Flying, though—which is what you do for 90% of the game—is the worst! Please visualize this to understand: the left analog stick is how you move left and right. To speed up, you press the left analog stick down. Strafing up and down is controlled through the right trigger buttons. At the same time, you must simultaneously keep your thumb on the right analog stick, because the camera sometimes does not know what to do with itself and needs to always be manually adjusted. If any of this was remappable at all, this would not be so frustrating. And yet, I am a forgiving person.

As much as I love Kakarot for all of its absurd qualities in spite of all its flaws, when will I get the Dragon Ball game that lets me be some wealthy dweller of West City? Kakarot showed the endless possibilities that can be explored in a more open world-ish Dragon Ball game. The little sprinkles of slice of life are the most endearing parts of the game, and I want more! How stressful would it be living right next door to Capsule Corp, constantly within radar of their experiments? It’d be funny if I was a farmer (sans shotgun) getting their crops constantly ruined on the daily to a group of stupid aliens constantly starting fights and flying about. How nightmarish would it be to live as a construction worker of this world when buildings keep getting destroyed on the daily?

Although I think Toriyama does not know what he is doing half the time (that, and I genuinely believe he has been detached from the franchise creative-wise save for the occasional new visuals once in a while), his strengths have always come through in comedy and worldbuilding. Things like the technology of Capsule Corp are genuinely interesting and it is disheartening to see new installments franchise undermine aspects like these that make the world so interesting. Kakarot taking some of these things into consideration is a refreshing move. Many people may enjoy Dragon Ball for its action and compelling characters akin to the zany universe of professional wrestling, but I have learned to really embrace it through its utter weirdness and ridiculousness. Dragon Ball’s origins coming out of one man’s obsession with automobiles and toilet humor should not be erased!

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is all in all one of the best love letters to Dragon Ball fans as of recent. For that reason, it is certainly not a game I would recommend for any newcomers to the series when its best qualities shine through . Although my personal gripe remains within Kakarot’s offering of a huge world that can still do so much more, and with so much more polish, I don’t doubt all the times where the jokes have landed and where the references were appropriate that I had a huge smile on my face. Kakarot is not a perfect game, but it is another strong entry that advances Dragon Ball in a positive direction that acknowledges the best qualities of what makes many adore the franchise so much. If something needs to exploit nostalgia more than ever, it definitely should be this series!

The post Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Support us on Patreon! Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, and @Solonface, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 234: Immersed in the ‘Ghetti appeared first on Gamesline.

Original Story: Following up the announcement of March’s PS+ lineup (which is solid, by the way. Bloodborne and the Ratchet and Clank remake are two fine games.), Sony also announced they will be focusing exclusively on making Playstation 4 games free with the subscription starting in 2019.

Both Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita will no longer recieve “free” games every month alongside PS4. Sony did stress that as long as you keep your subscription running for PS+, your previously received games “…will still be part of your PS Plus games library as long as you remain a member.”

Other PS+ benefits including cloud saving and any other small tidbits will still be available to all users after March 8th, 2019 when this kicks in. The only difference is that only PS4 games will be made free from then on. It is currently unknown if Sony will be raising the number of PS4 games given out every month once the other consoles are removed, or if the standard two-per month will stay true.

“Many of our fans are playing on the PS4 platform, with the increasingly vast number of PS4s in homes around the world. We’ll continue to prioritize the benefits you receive through your PS Plus membership, such as online multiplayer, online game save storage, PS4 monthly games, and exclusive PS Store discounts across content and network services,” said Sony in the PS Blog post.

Let’s hope that for the next few months, Sony will put a good variety of high quality games on the PS+ block until the service lapses, but if this month is anything to go by, with Mighty No. 9 on the PS3 list, maybe we will be better off with just PS4 games.

The post Playstation Plus to Drop PS3 and Vita Free Games Next Year appeared first on Gamesline.

Sonic Forces was announced alongside the recently released Sonic Mania at last year’s Sonic 25th Anniversary party. For many, Mania took the limelight: a brand new 2D Sonic game made by fan programmers who had already made a name for themselves with impressive modern ports of Sonic 2 and Sonic CD.  For me, however, as someone who prefers my Sonic with one extra dimension, my heart was set on this next game from the Generations team.

Sonic Forces is a game that feels aimed at people like myself, who enthusiastically prefer Sonic’s more modern iterations. Working off the boost style of gameplay pioneered by Sonic Rush and improved upon in Generations, Forces takes the game a step further by letting you create your own original character for the first time in series history. Your new character joins the ranks of Sonic and company (though Big the Cat is conspicuously absent) as they fight against a world completely overtaken by Dr. Eggman.

On the surface, the narrative of Sonic Forces sounds fairly trite. Though the game starts out strong, with standout moments like Knuckles the Echidna reading reports of Sonic being tortured, and Silver the Hedgehog musing poetically on the value of despair, the game quickly falls into the type of story you’d expect out of a Sonic game. Eggman has this buddy who’s super strong, Sonic has trouble fighting this new buddy, Sonic uses the power of friendship or raw strength, Sonic wins and saves the day.

The main draw of both the narrative and the game itself is that ability to make an original character. Players can choose from a handful of races like Dog, Cat, Bird, or, of course, Hedgehog, and make their own original Sonic-themed animal. When this feature was announced. I was actually kind of floored: the Sonic fandom has long been an infamous, near-infinite source of fanworks ranging from endearing to embarrassing, so to see that aspect of the game’s community brought into the game itself is really neat. When I started the game, I decided to pull out an old friend: a Sonic OC from my tweenage years, Roxanne Maria, who is Shadow the Hedgehog’s girlfriend. While I was initially disappointed by the lack of customization options (a few colors, a handful of clothes, and a single weapon), when I finally got a few missions into the game proper I found myself drowning in accessories. Forces constantly provides you with a stream of new unlockables, with four to five clothing items or weapons being unlocked any time you complete an in-game “Mission.” By the time the credits rolled on Sonic Forces, I found myself with over 300 different clothing options for my OC, and a lot of them felt too perfect for what I wanted.

Customizing my OC was absolutely the most fun I had in the game outside of seeing her in action with Sonic and friends. Going from a pretty basic black and pink hedgehog to a red-eyed gang leader with a hat that says “GAMER” was incredibly satisfying, and knowing that I could just as easily make ten more outfits that perfectly suited my desires was a big plus. From crocs to robot legs and bandanas, to full-on cosplay, the variety of options might seem overwhelming, but the way they’re trickled down to you means that your perfect outfit is gradually built over time, rather than intimidatingly dumped on you from the start.

The Mission system that unlocks all this is one of the best features of the game. While past Sonic titles have attempted to give incentive to replay, rewards of concept art and sound room bonuses only go so far. In Forces, every mission has a well-defined goal. You want to clear level 16 in under 60 seconds, not just because you have an itch to, but because you’ll get a shot at a whole bunch of new clothes for your OC. That’s why I really loved the system: it incentivized and rewarded behavior a lot of players might have already leant towards, and encourages further exploration of the game by those who previously mightn’t have. The way each mission’s reward is diverse and hidden might be frustrating for some, but for me the surprise of each reward encouraged me to keep on going to find out what crazy stuff I might get next.

When it comes to the gameplay structure of Sonic Forces, you’ll be playing through a 30 mission campaign with three different play-styles. There are the now-standard “Boost” style 3D levels with Modern Sonic, there’s 2D side-scrolling levels with Classic Sonic, and there’s the gadget themed/grapple hook heavy OC levels. While the Classic Sonic levels aren’t that bad, they pale in comparison to what the other two types have to offer, and are tough to get used to after how good Mania felt.

The Modern Sonic levels are fun and fast, averaging a playtime of around three minutes per level if you’re just rushing through, though a search for collectibles will bump that time right up. The OC levels are a fantastic change of pace that really let the game’s focus on speed translate into mediums other than just plain old running. It’s fun to swing from point to point, or enemy to enemy. It’s fun to just blaze through dozens of robots with a flamethrower, or slam them all apart with a big hammer. An unfortunate downfall of the OC levels is that because you can customize your character with a bunch of different weapons, with their own unique traversal modes, the levels’ attempts to cater to each weapon can end up feeling cluttered or disjointed.

While the level “Arsenal Pyramid” is incredibly fun when you use the lightning whip weapon that lets you dash along lines of rings and enemies, playing it with something like the hammer ends up making you feel like you just missed a huge chunk of the level. Ultimately this doesn’t matter, since the things hidden behind these paths are rarely more than fun distractions, but it still sucks to have no idea what weapon is helpful for a specific level until you’ve already finished it.

All three stage types feature the same three collectibles in the form of Red Star Rings, Number Rings, and Silver Moon Rings. Red Rings are easy: just find them hidden in each level and you’ll gradually unlock extra bonus stages for every few you get. Number Rings require you to gather them in numerical order counting down, and the game does a decent job of making these pretty fun puzzles to get, if not a little easy. At their simplest you’ll be running in a straight line on a hidden path, and at their hardest you’ll be haphazardly jumping across falling platforms back and forth to get the right order. The most annoying collectibles by far are the Silver Moon Rings. Gathering these rings in every level was a challenge that really, for the first time, laid how rough the game can control out in the open.

You have to gather all five of these rings within a short amount of time, or they completely disappear. For some rings this is fairly easy: just time some homing attacks right or boost fast enough that the time limit isn’t a concern. Unfortunately for most of these, they’re placed in gimmicky locations that make it tough not only to grab them fast, but to do so at all. The most infuriating are placed on things like water slides or rails, where your control is already loose enough that any sort of fancy movement risks either death or an agitating restart to try again. While I appreciate that these collectibles try to feed into the core focus on speed that Sonic is famous for, they felt more like a fight with the controls and blind luck than actual skill.

While the handling can be a struggle in parts, this is probably the most playable a 3D Sonic game has ever been. 2013’s Sonic Lost World wasn’t necessarily bad, but it felt more like a Mario game than a proper Sonic game, so I was thankful that Forces tried harder to match the style of 2011’s Generations. Blasting through levels with boost feels less like a risk and more like just part of the fun, and anytime the game expects more methodical platforming, the camera switches to a more comfortable side-scrolling perspective, regardless of the character. The only time I ran into any consistent issues with controls outside of the Silver Ring sequences was when I was expected to use the shoulder buttons to quickly push Sonic or my OC from left to right. When this happens you rarely go where you expect, and can sometimes push yourself too far, right into an enemy or environmental hazard.

In most Sonic games, these bad controls are often on full display in the boss fights. Sega has never been quite so good at designing bosses that are as fun to fight as they are to look at. Fights like the Biolizard in Sonic Adventure 2 are a fun spectacle, but often feel like a slog to play. Surprisingly, I enjoyed every single boss fight in the game, even if I ended up wishing they were a little longer. Each character fights bosses in their own style, and only the OC really struggles with their bosses, though that comes more from the same issues with weapon variety that I mentioned earlier.

Though you can just play through OC boss fights using only the homing attack, you can also weirdly use weapons like the flamethrower or lightning whip to deal more damage, albeit much more clunkily, and the game only vaguely tries to support you in this. For Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic, the fights follow a pretty simple jumping and racing style respectively. It feels slightly disappointing to say that the best fight in the game is probably actually the first boss fight against Lost World’s Zavok; a fight that has both interesting mechanics, and requires a tangible degree of skill. That’s not to say other boss fights aren’t good, but it does feel weird to go from a fight with actual depth, to what ends up feeling like a series of simple mini-games.

In terms of presentation, Sonic Forces has really nailed what one would expect out of a series so focused on speed. The visuals are vibrant and busy, levels are constantly filled with things in the background moving like flames, animals, or Eggman’s robots wreaking havoc. The music is punchy and fun, ranging from the standard Crush 40 guitars of Modern Sonic, the chiptuney Classic Sonic, and the weird, almost Persona-esque vocalized tracks of the OC levels. It feels really satisfying when you’re playing as Modern Sonic and you boost, only to have the music and world distort with you, or when you’re Classic Sonic and you pick up the speed shoes, and the music speeds up with you. The soundtrack isn’t what I’d necessarily call “good;” for example, the OC stages’ lyrics seem to just be a literal statement of what’s happening (e.g. “here comes the enemy mess them up” or “now’s the time of reckoning, the final battle has begun”), but they still feel just as fast and fun as the levels themselves. Also, hey! This is the first Sonic game where I can unabashedly say grinding on rails owns without a hint of reservation.

When Forces is at its best, you’re cruising along right there next to Sonic as he does his thing and it feels amazing. There’s always been this part of me that wanted this, but I never really knew it until I heard Hoobastank’s lead singer belt out the title track, “Fist Bump,” while Sonic and my OC raced through a level hand in hand. It’s hard to put into words how happy I was to have a character as invested and personal as a Sonic OC physically represented in a series that meant so much to me, and I hope that Sega brings back this option in future games. I S-ranked every mission in Sonic Forces, and if Sonic’s next outing keeps the pace, I could see myself doing it all over again.

This is the most wish fulfillment i’ve ever hadhttps://t.co/hAAnlMJTaq pic.twitter.com/aSYrpZMjG1

— Rosie the Rascal (@horngal) November 7, 2017

Sonic Mania was a love letter to the classic 2D Sonic of old, and Sonic Forces acts in a similar, if less overt way for 3D Sonic. Though it may not be as elaborate or cohesive as Mania was with features and aesthetics (bring back the Chao Garden, damn it!), it’s still neat to hear things like “All Hail Shadow,” or hell, to see characters like Shadow done right for the first time in years. Sonic Forces may not be a game on par with big hitters like Super Mario Odyssey, but it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be, either. Sonic Forces is what Sonic has always been for me, a feel-good experience, and this time around, it really does feel good.

The post Sonic Forces (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.