It’s E3 time. The time for games.  Or the time when games are announced, at least.  The good folks over at Waypoint call it “Gamer’s Christmas.”  Their E3 coverage podcasts start with Christmas music and everything.  It’s wonderful, you should listen.  However, I prefer to think of E3 as Gamer’s Christmas Eve.

Perhaps this is not the way that people people with actualized lives approach whatever their big holiday for the year is (assuming they have one).  But for me, Christmas Eve is when hope is at its highest; the moment when it’s most easy to believe that I will awake in the morning to family around the tree,  snow on the ground and peace on the Earth.  That’s E3: the moment that games are presented as their platonic ideal that will bring the fun to me that will warms my cold, dead heart.  Christmas Eve is when you forget that you’re a recluse who lives in Arizona on a dying planet; much like how you forget the bad frame rate reporters report in the demo, the problematic things in the trailers, the weird Nintendo Being Weird and just the general rational understanding that what the game developers are promising is unlikely to be realized on the current hardware on the market.

I’m fine with that.  Christmas Eve is what gets me through the year, not Christmas.  Humans are engines that run on the tiniest droplets of hope, and for those of us who love games, E3 is that roadside service station.

These are the games that are my fuel for the year, in no particular order:

• Animal Crossing New Horizons – Did you hear that story of the grandmother who has 3500 hours on her New Leaf save?  I ain’t quite got it like that.  Still, I have been playing roughly a half hour or so every other day (with of course multi hour play-throughs here and there for holidays and fishing tournaments and the like) since the week of release.  This actually makes me slightly ambivalent about the future Switch game, as I am unsure that I’m ready to leave my village behind.  What they showed in the video, though, was certainly promising and looks to be a massive quality of life improvement on many fronts.  My life dream is that will be able to bring my previous villagers with me into this world, or at the very least, my very best friend, Chief.  If I die before the game is released I would like to be buried with my 3DS.  Well so much for keeping each of these game entries short and light.  That was something I was going to try to do for my writing on this site henceforth but it looks like that’s at least not happening in this article.  Sorry.
• Final Fantasy VII – I’ll never be able to view Final Fantasy VII unobscured by nostalgia.  The trailer of the remake looks like my imagination imagined the game looked.  I am a bit nervous about things that don’t need to be changed being changed, as well as things that need to be changed not being changed, but for now I’m all in.
• Death Stranding – The game looks to be a bunch of unfiltered Kojima Bullshit, which is something I need as much of as possible in my life.  Bridge Babies?  Are they serious?  Apparently.
• Pokémon Sword and Shield – My yearly Pokémon game awaits.
• Ghostwire – Things I love: Tokyo, ghosts, empty public spaces.
• The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening – I had some terrible Gamer Trauma over this game, but I am telling myself that it was mostly the Game Boy’s fault.   Hopefully this game proves that true.
• Way to the Woods – I fucking love deer.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps – No, I’m not going to wait two years to play this game again like I did with the first one.
• Atomicrops – I’m not 100% sold on the aesthetic, but the gameplay loop they’ve shown on various outlets looks fun.
• Watchdogs Legion – This could be good, this could be terrible.  I don’t think it will fall in between.
• Doom Eternal – Doom 2016 was pretty cool.  But I honestly felt like I was done by the time I was over.  The extreme excitement of games people who I respect though has me willing to dip my toe back in to the bloody hell puddles of the Doomerverse.
• El Hijo – I don’t necessarily like stealth games but I like to see hispanic culture represented.
• Microsoft Flight Simulator – Only through this game may I properly attach a metaphor to the arc of my existence by barely taking off at the end of the runway, only to immediately crash to the ground
• One Night Stand – Only through this game may I properly attach a metaphor to the arc of my existence by barely taking off at the end of the runway, only to immediately crash to the ground.
• Rusthart –  I wish I was a friend of a robot, I wish I was a tagger, I think this game looks good so I’ll call her.
• Cyberpunk – I like the genre so much and the gameplay displayed in the trailer so much that I can’t help but be curious.  I just fucking wish that the developers didn’t immediately decide to be as shitty as cyber punk can sometimes be.

It surprised me how many things I’m looking forward to.  Yes, truly it is E3 if any bit of optimism can penetrate my barren soul.

Spider-Man is probably one of the comic characters most commonly adapted to video games.  And it makes sense.  His powers and gadgets are easily-understood and grounded (at least if you don’t think about them too hard) enough, and he’s a character who can ultimately be killed (albeit with some difficulty) by means that already exist in the world.  This means that converting these things into video games isn’t that outlandish.  It’s so in general common place that rather than the recreation of Spider-Man’s powers or combat, the enjoyability of the web-swinging seems to be what is often most pointed to for whether or not a Spider-Man game is good or not.  What’s rarely ever discussed is how good of a story these games tell, which is mainly because they often tend to be rather bland in that area.

The fact that the latest Spider-Man game tells a really good story is why it stands out as one of the best Spider-Man games ever.

Most of the time, these games either stick too closely to the source material, or throw it out all together.  Neither extreme is good; either you’re going through something that you already know too well to really enjoy, or you’re playing Spider-Man: Web of Fire and don’t know who anyone is.

The 2018 version strides a thin line of presenting characters you’re familiar with and giving you just enough divergence to still be surprised.  Sure, if you’ve read the comics, you can probably pretty quickly guess who the main villain is going to be.  But the writers successfully gave this villain–and most of the other villains of the game–somewhat logical reasons for making why they do what they do so ultimately tragic and relatable.   And what makes the game such a damn rollercoaster between defeat and triumph.

These are the swings that really matter, at least to me, and this is why Spider-Man is easily one of my favorite games this year.  Don’t trip, though:  if you’re sticking to the classic Spider-Man game quality assessor, then yes, the web-swinging in this game is pretty damn fun.

Every other year or so David Cage comes on stage and promises an emotional experience that will both innovate the way that stories are told in games, while giving them cinematic gravitas.  While I do actually tend to enjoy his games, they tend to fall short of the promise, sometimes by quite a lot.  For a long time I forgave Cage, and other video game storytelling auteurs, and simply blamed the medium of video games.  Life is Strange, though, proves that the sort of games that these people promise are in fact possible to create, it’s just took the people over at Dontnod Entertainment to do it.

The elevator pitch of the story of Life is Strange is easy enough to understand.  A freshman photography college student finds herself with the ability to influence time; doing so entangles her in the muck of drama that is affecting everyone at the school, as well as the very town she lives in itself.   Does that sound interesting?  Are you not some weirdo who can’t relate to a female protagonist?  Are you okay with a game that’s story oriented?

Cool, go play the game.

It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s intense, it’s heartbreaking.  It’s also really easy to spoil, so I’m keeping plot discussion at a minimum.  I will say that I did manage to enjoy the game despite having a pretty central event in the game spoiled for me (that to be fair, is probably what ultimately influenced me to play the game anyway), but the game is just so good at gut punches that I wish I would not have been ready for that.  Perhaps it is good that I was ready for it, though, since it did not send me to an early grave in a Harry Houdiniesque fashion, and spoiled or not, the scene is super intense and leads to one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make in a game.  One I’m still not certain I made correctly.

The game is full of hard decisions like that, and many points where I don’t know if I did the right thing.  But it’s not all teardrops and tough times.  The game is also full of classic teen hijinks that are fun to participate in, and some cool photography stuff that wannabe photogs will enjoy.  This helps to keep things from getting overwhelming despite all the tense situations.

The characters for the most part are great, and are generally multifaceted individuals whom I enjoyed getting to know.  Good people do bad things for good reasons, bad people do good things for bad reasons.  The game isn’t afraid of this fact.  The game player must decide if and what they’re willing to compromise on.

If I am critical of anything, the few characters who are not as well developed do stick out because everyone else is so good.  But also perhaps that’s a bit of realism in a way; the opportunity to meet and deeply interact with everyone in your high school class is not reality.  I also won’t say the game is free of cliché, and you might see where the storyline is headed from time to time but I guess I’m not bothered by this since it supplies so much originality, and doesn’t detract from the overall plot.  Another final caution, is that some of the game’s episodes are unevenly paced (which ultimately doesn’t matter in 2017 since most ways of purchasing the game at this point are going to include all the episodes in one package).  Playing the game piecemeal (if you’re somehow able to find a way to do that now) may lead to some individual episodes that don’t have a ton of new content and don’t deliver a self-contained product very well.  I’d suggest against playing the game in this fashion.

Storytelling in games is really hard.  Surrounding it with gameplay tools that help it actually be a game and not just a visual novel is even harder.   Dontnod really nails it here, where other, more famous and bombastic people have fallen short, and Life is Strange is awesome.

Persona 5 is not perfect.  Yet I feel that despite some rough features, it is still an excellent video game.

I have some friends who have never played Persona and I found describing it to them to be difficult.  My reductive description of the game to them was “Japan: The Video Game” and that seemed to be enough for them, but I regret my classification.  It is true, that Persona games are unapologetic about being Japanese, something that many games brought over to the USA cannot claim (note: I’m not arguing that they should be, I do not think that every game needs to be about USA Town, USA).  You are a Japanese teenager, going to a Japanese school, in a Japanese town, doing Japanese things.  The game is translated into mostly-competent English, but it isn’t truly “localized.”   I think, though, that the Persona series at its best manages to be something that’s relatable to someone from any background and any country, so I hate to sell it so short by focusing on where the game comes from, and anyway, the games in the series usually go out of their way to explain make things that may be culturally unfamiliar to gamers from other regions, which makes the games have a pleasant, welcoming feel.

Persona 5 still manages to tell that universal story that is relatable to a teen who has struggled under difficult adults.  However, I do think, compared to other Persona games, at least, Persona 5 falls a bit short in being as inviting to people unfamiliar with Japan.  This is in large part due to the translation not being as solid as some previous games in the series, especially early and late in the game which makes these sorts of mistakes are more noticeable and distracting.  There also is less “here’s an explanation of something that everyone in Japan would know already” of previous games.  Maybe this is a good thing.  It is after all, 2017, and the internet exists and I can easily learn about these festivals that the characters are attending, and the food that they are eating and the parties that they are having.  Maybe, like super hero origin stories, this cultural handholding just isn’t necessary anymore.   And I definitely don’t feel that games should have to bend over backwards to make sure my poor little USA Guy feelings are considered.  The only reason it is noticeable to me, though, is that previous Persona games managed to so brilliantly remain Japanese while still being extremely accessible that it is noticeable that this is not the case in Persona 5.

I also would’ve liked to see the game–which is boldly non-conservative in many of its stances–be more risky with the types of relationships it allows you to pursue.  The game does walk the line of the protagonist forming a relationship with another boy in the game, but runs away from it, which just felt awkward in 2017.  Also, with a previous game including the ability to choose gender, it just was strange that they didn’t include this feature in Persona 5, and having played through the entire game, I didn’t encounter anything that seemed to absolutely required you to be a male character (as the game director stated) .  I am not the person who normally stands upon the soapbox for these things, but in a game that’s so relationship based, and so based on dealing with issues that teens deal with, and that so vocally rejects adherence to the traditional, it just feels out of touch to not have these options available.

The block on streaming of the game was also disappointing to me.  I’m not totally sure I would’ve streamed it anyway, simply because so much of what I do in the game feels so personal, but not even being allowed to do it (they updated the game to allow more streaming at some point, but I was already past the allowed juncture) felt like an unfair, out of touch restriction.

Cultural consideration is not the only area where Persona 5 just doesn’t quite meet high bars set by other Persona games, but still manages to do better than most other games in general.  The characters you interact with and form bonds with feel complete and have believable motivations, for the most part, and socializing with characters in the game can be more fun to do than actually playing the “game” part of of the game.  I don’t think the relationships were as compelling as previous entries in the series (or in some cases that distinct from them), but they still were much more interesting than your typical game.  I don’t typically enter into relationships in games anymore (unless the game forces you to do so or you have a severe gameplay penalty for not doing it), but by the end I did legitimately care about several of the characters and choosing one to have a relationship was a tough choice (although perhaps it’s a knock on this game that there wasn’t one person who stuck out to me as THE ONE to be with as in other Persona games?  I dunno).

There are areas though where Persona 5 excels where other Persona games did not.  The combat is the best the series has ever had, and unlocking features of the combat through socialization is smart; I never felt forming relationships was a waste of time in previous games, but it’s inarguably important for gameplay reasons in Persona 5.  There really wasn’t a reason in some of the earlier persona games to not just hold one button down throughout all of the combat.   Persona 5’s combat had much more variety (without losing some of the rock-paper-scisors elemental fun).   I found myself enjoying battles more, and having more fun consistently controlling my entire party, instead of just letting the game play itself as in some of the earlier games in the series.  At its core, though, It’s still turn based combat (which I realize is a deal breaker for some people) but it’s done in a smart way, perhaps the smartest in a non-Final Fantasy game.

Further, The new system of individualized, static Palaces coexisting with Momentos (this game’s name for the procedurally generated dungeon area of previous games) is an excellent change.  While not every Palace is perfect, they now are story relevant, which is just not something that previous games had.  In previous games, I always did find something relaxing about grinding through the procedurally generated dungeons and I’m glad they still are there as an option in this game.

As I said earlier, I do think the story has some universal relevance.  The protagonist and his friends increase their impact from a local, high school level to the highest political levels in Japan in what felt like a very realistic fashion.  And the mistrust of adults and their institutions was relatable, and I thought the political commentary was very relevant, especially to what is happening globally at the moment.  I did enjoy the sort of small-stakes nature of previous Persona games, but thought 5 did a nice job of increasing the level of character impact without losing the fact that you’re still living through a high schooler’s story.

Ultimately, despite any criticism I have for the game, I still did play it for 140 hours, and came pretty close to diving right back in after I finished it.  As my attention span for games decreases every year I age, it’s rare that something could hold my attention so long, especially with all the other great games out there right now.  I think it comes down to the fact that most games just aren’t able to to deftly handle relationships the way that Persona games do, and even if Persona 5 falls short of some of its predecessors, it still achieves more than most games manage to do.  I wouldn’t recommend someone play it who hates turn based RPGs, but I think just about everyone else could have some fun with this game.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a cute little trick of a game with a fast pace and a charming story. I call it a “trick” because it stylishly disguises its actually fundamentally traditional point-and-click gameplay by way of its attractive visual style, which gives the impression of being a classic 2D action game, and a few features such as freezing time.

This game gets by on the strength of its plot and characters, both of which are first rate. It truly feels like a story someone wanted to tell, and a labour of love. Every character has life and feels unique and real. There is a central mystery at the heart of the story that continues to grow in scope and complexity, and continues to develop in satisfying ways. It keeps one hooked like an old fashioned serial.

The story begins with your character’s death. You quickly learn that the dead have special powers with which they can go back in time and save others recently departed. In the one night that your character will have in this world before he moves on to the next, he will hop from death to death, undoing them in the hope of learning his own identity and how and why he died this night. His story becomes tied in with the stories of others, and a bigger picture slowly emerges through many many twists and turns. The story rushes at breakneck speed, and is a lot of fun all the way through. It ends at just about the right time to keep us enchanted all the while, such that we did not even notice that the gameplay was not actually as innovative as it seemed (maybe just a little bit shorter would have helped with this).

Strongly recommended to adventure game fans. A gem.

I think the Ace Attorney series is dead. The first three were great, the third being the high point, and the fourth (Apollo Justice) managed to squeak by with the help of a lot of innovation, but the 3DS entries are shambling corpses. This review will focus specifically on Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I’ll also be reviewing this game as a Phoenix Wright game rather than as a Professor Layton game, as I contend that this is what it truly is.

The Good

This title takes innovation to new heights, with new puzzle-solving gameplay and a bizarre fantasy setting. The setting is so weird and unprecedented in a Phoenix Wright game that it buys a little bit of interest with it. The story drags and doesn’t really start developing until right near the end, but when it finally does, it’s fairly interesting, and it actually left me with stuff to think about. Even the ending itself drags on for two or three twists longer than necessary though — one of which was so meaningless and superfluous it almost feels like a joke twist, if such a thing could be. (I’ll spoil it because it’s so stupid and unimportant — “A character has cancer!” and five minutes later, “Oh, it’s cured!” Just end your story, guys.)

The Bad

Sometimes you have to present evidence in court that does not contradict the witness’s testimony, but merely relates to it. This is also a problem I noted in Dual Destinies, and to me it destroys the fabric of the game. It’s like… what are we doing here. In Phoenix Wright, we present evidence that exposes contradictions. That’s what holds the whole game together. This is how you have to design your courtroom puzzles, else they’re not really puzzles, just guesses.

The Professor Layton-y non-courtroom puzzles are all very easy, with a few exceptions.

The Ugly

The characters. This is the deathblow. It’s the quirky characters that make these games memorable, and in this game they are all beyond terrible. This is especially the case with our central character, whose totally uninspired name “Espella Cantabella” pretty much tells you the story. Everything in the game hinges around her, and she has less than zero personality. I cannot think of a single character trait with which she could be described. The same holds true for the prosecutors and even Layton himself.  It just makes the game lifeless. None of these people are interesting in the least.

Also, the game oddly glorifies suicide. It occurs twice in the game and is invariably presented as something noble. Very strange and uncomfortable.

The Verdict

I can’t recommend this game to anyone. For a Phoenix Wright fan, it’s just too long, takes too long to get to the point, and isn’t entertaining enough along the way. For a Professor Layton fan, these puzzles won’t challenge you. I’d say give it a miss, but you might enjoy it for the story if you can tolerate very bland characters.

Why has “Beyond Good and Evil” remained in the memories of many a gamer? Almost certainly not for its gameplay, which tended to be serviceable and forgettable. There was a reasonable diversity of things to do: racing, combat, picture-taking, stealth; but none of these would really get one’s blood pumping. They gave us stuff to do, but they were not the reason why we played.

Was it the story? I want to say: certainly not. The story, too, was fairly paint-by-numbers and predictable. This story lacked a memorable villain — I don’t even remember whether or not there was a visible villain for most of the game, and the Big Bad revealed in the end was also entirely forgettable. Worst of all was our main character, Jade, who was totally lacking in personality and in flaws. The side characters, Uncle Pej and Double H (or whatever his name was) provide a glimmer of hope, but even they were pretty flat, though amusing. We did develop a connection with them. We did feel for them. So that’s a start, but it does not tell the tale.

I think where this game really won was the universe and the atmosphere. A cartoony world under a totalitarian government being menaced by a Cthulu-like entity was weird and amusing enough to sustain interest over its short length. The denizens of the world seemed to have personality and history; the world felt “lived in”. Moreover, there was unspoken history between our main character and the other characters about the world. They would greet her as a friend, and maybe swap stories or refer to something unknown to us. This must’ve felt real, as I remember it.

The music added to the feeling of a real culture, especially the catchy faux-“European” songs that played during racing and gambling minigames.

Giving the gamer a world to live in was the big key to this game’s success.

Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (2012) is a sequel to 999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors (2009) — a beautifully titled game. Its title is haunting, mysterious, memorable, and intriguing.  Its sequel’s title is unfortunately a much poorer effort. Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward sound clunky, and neither tantalizes nor teases. It does not ignite the imagination.

Forgive me for putting so much stock in a title, but I believe that titles tell the tale. The title is the lens through which the whole work is viewed.  Is it fair to judge a translated work so heavily on a single sentence? I say it is, for these games are visual novels and must be judged as literature. They stand or fall on the strength of their writing, and in translation they must stand on the strength of their translation. In this department I was also disappointed by Virtue’s Last Reward (henceforth referred to as VLR). The English was perfect of course, but the translation was awkward at times and sometimes even inaccurate.

Lest my complaints seem too nitpicky in nature*, I shall dive into the meat of the game. Like its predecessor it is an interactive mystery horror story, and it plays largely the same as 999, but it feels different due to one crucial missing element, that is: gore. I am far from a carnage fiend. I believe that few games appreciate how to use it effectively and most would be better with far less. In 999, the rare moments of brutal violence haunted every moment of the rest of the game and provided a real sense of tension and stakes and discomfort. Though VLR is ostensibly a darker story, it feels much lighter. Everything about the game in relation to its predecessor feels expanded, but thinner. The cast has grown from eight to nine, but the characters are shallower and their stories less interesting. The story is much bigger, but its twists and turns are less satisfying, and its ultimate ending was frankly disappointing even on first viewing — a stark contrast with 999‘s ending, which managed to be both satisfying and utterly unforeseeable.

VLR is also less subtle than its predecessor.  999 dealt with themes of identity, memory, and the “collective unconscious”. This game brought up the same themes, but much more superficially and obviously.

I liked playing VLR, I was swept away by it and enjoyed the ride. The puzzles are probably as good as in the original, so it will feel mostly the same. It fails to live up to its predecessor in mood and in effect. I was less connected to these characters, and less moved by their stories. When the game was over, it did not linger in my thoughts like its predecessor, but was quickly forgotten.

*I do not apologize for this tendency in my writing. The big is in the small. The whole is in the details. This is true of a life as well as of a work of literature.