36) A.I.: The Somnium Files(PS4) 7/7-7/15 PLATNIUM TROPHY
Just platinumed
A.I.: The Somnium Files and wow what a journey. I heard some praise for the game and only knew of it to be a visual novel with a little bit of detective work attached to it so given that I've played all of the Danganronpa entries, and Ace Attorney trilogy, I sort of knew this game would be up my alley. What got me to bite on the game was the announcement of the game's sequel, which is on track to be released in Mid 2022(A.I.: The Somnium Files nirVANA or something like that).
Just wow. What a game. I am still a relative noobie when it comes to visual novels themselves. These are the following visual novels(Or to some purists of the genre, adventure visual novels, it's important to note that!) that I have experienced & finished off the top:
Steins;Gate
Ace Attorney Trilogy
All 4 Danganronpa games(Well Ultra Despair Girls is a dungeon crawler bullet gun game that is meshed with heavy story)
1 of the endings of 999
Doki Doki Literature Club
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim(It does have RTS though but game is mostly story)
Paradise Killer
Student Transfer
So by no means am I an expert when it comes to this genre but I have some similar games in my history enough to hold this one to high enough standards, and I gotta say the game is as good as those if not better than some. I still think Danganronpa 1 & 2 hold a special place in my heart given it was my first true dive into the genre but this game gives both a pure run for it's money with the twists, characters and gameplay(Neither are the best part of these games btw).
The main protagonist in this game is hilarious. Probably along side Phoenix Wright for my favorite protagonist in this genre. This game is hilarious just in general. Be forewarned, there are so many perverted puns and jokes and tons of ridiculousness in this game as more times than not, the game does not take itself seriously if at all. But the game does a great balance of being jokeish vs being serious where the game doesn't fall into being a pure cesspool in itself. The main character is just that, he is enough of a weeb/clown but is still a good hearted detective who is trying to make a difference and solve the multiple murders throughout the game. Date(Pronounced Dah-Tay) is so good, absolutely loved the character but what good is a main character without his side characters?
A.I. nails that too! You've got great female characters, you've got some LGBTQ+ ones who have some relevance to the major plot, you have even very side characters who may not mean much to the overall story but are great nevertheless with the wacky and funny dialogue that they're in. One major credit to this game is the 30+ hour journey you go on, this game is almost fully dubbed with voice acting which is absolutely insane! Means the budget for this game is not your typical visual novel! And the voice acting(Well in English!) was very good, really enjoyed the job that was done by a lot of the actors and actresses here. I didn't expect that at all, I expected what you get in Danganronpa, only the important parts had voice acting in it with the rest of the game being read only. This just threw that book out the window and set the standard for a mid-high budget visual novel now for me.
Much like with Ace Attorney series or Danganronpa, a visual novel is as good as it's cast of characters and they are easily the selling point of the game. What else sells the game? The story of course, the backbone of any game from this genre. Full of twists & turns, the game really hit me and connected to me as a gamer with so many different areas discussed such as a loss of parent or stillness of someone feeling despaired with their career or seeing a character die in a different route/branch. So many gut punches, so many discoveries. The branch/route system breaks off into about 5 or 6 different endings, all get locked or stop until you uncover a hidden plot twist or introduction of character from a different one so the game tells you as the player that you have to go really explore through all of it to truly advance the story to the absolute climax of the game. It leaves you salivating a little to want to finish that said route but you also "get it" when you go to play that route after wrapping up some others because the concept and theory of why this character did this is fully explained. So many in's and out's get tied up by playing through each little branch and I feel the game really takes you on a pure rollercoaster ride, which is as complimentary as I can be for a visual novel.
Along with the characters, you know what else makes a great visual novel? The story, duh! Which this game is crazy, without giving away much, basically your playing a detective who is tasked to find out why random people are getting murdered throughout town and you need to try and put a stop to it with absolutely little to no information provided. You have to puzzle together what is going on. We are talking very gruesome murders like body parts dismembered, the antagonist is no joke! It's a simple story just reading what I said but really it's not! That's where this game does it so well that it takes you for a ride. You think you got everything solved but the game throws a curveball straight at you and tells you "Now what?". Easily the best thing this game does.
What I appreciate about the story is how digestible it is for a gamer. Unlike Steins;Gate which I liked...............the final 1/3 of it, A.I.: The Somnium Files does not get too deep into science and thus it is a real refreshing experience with how much it recaps the content being discussed and the way the game break downs these different theories & dialogue by making examples out of everyday things like breaking an egg and discussing the yolk, egg shell & egg white and how it is the equivalent to what is going on during a scene. Every time you resume after stopping, the game gives you picture by picture quick recap so you feel like you remember what's going on, so it really hits it on home that the game does not want you to get fully lost towards it's plot which is appreciated. Not to say the game is dumbing anything down, because it certainly isn't...........but it's just really digestible and you get a great picture of who is who and doing what when this could have gone south at so many points. The game offers up a fast forward prompt that the game got from 999(Made by the same creator, that's going to be a revisit in the near future which how great this game was for me) where if your trophy hunting, like I was, you can skip through everything and get to where you want to go to wrap it all up. I would have never got the platinum trophy without this godsend of a feature so please keep this up visual novels! In addition you can rest your game whenever, wherever which plenty of these visual novels do and you can go to whatever branch you want that isn't locked out so you have a lot of control on what you want to do in this game, which is fantastic.
Outside of the game crashing twice on me and the game for the final 5 hours suffering from slowdown and FPS dip where dialogue boxes aren't popping up as quick as they were(Played this on PS4), the only drawback outside of the pervert & sexual stuff(Which isn't much and is done in gest more than anything honestly but it's there but nothing too vulgar like nudity) is the gameplay. It's just ehhhhhhhhhhh, I used a guide at some points, especially for trophy hunting as there is a six minute timer in these SYNCs that you do during the story that you have to get inside the mind of someone who is hiding a truth or might be the killer or is being uncooperative in your investigation. In this, you interact with various items throughout the brain memory and again you have a 360 second(six minutes Date!) timer that can go down as you interact with items, as you want to avoid getting to 0 seconds all the while clearing the path to fully understand why the character is doing what they're doing to stop you from finding out the true killer. Throughout the game, you find little items called TIMIEs which can save your clock from going down(30 second for a hole drop can become 10 seconds or 3 seconds or even 1 second by using one of these) so you can stock these up if you get them after an interaction and save them when you need them, because you will need them or else it's death via timeout. In addition, sadly there are death TIMIEs that 2x or 3x the time drop, so that 30 second hole drop becomes 60 or even 90(gasp!) second drop off from your 360 second timer which we don't like. It's not bad gameplay wise but to me, I just personally more of that story.
But it's like 85% visual novel and like 15% gameplay so it's totally worth going through it to get to the true climax of the game. The fact that I platinumed the game should tell you how much I really enjoyed myself with this one and the sequel is definitely going to be Day 1 now for me. I knew I would like this game but I didn't think it would take over my nightly sessions for like a week. The game has a nice art style too and the files and items you find lead to more lure content that you can read as well as early designs on a character which plenty of games do these days which is always appreciated.
It's just a really well done game altogether, it really got me thinking and feeling emotions for some parts of the game in addition to absolutely laughing out loud. For someone looking to get into this sort of genre, this is one of the games with an easy recommend. It even has easter eggs to some of the aforementioned games from Spike Chunsoft during one part! But yeah, what a great game.
37) Space Jam: A New Legacy(XB1) 7/17
Yes the space jam sequel that supposedly has bombed that stars LeBron James, Bugs Bunny, Lola Bunny etc. has a game out on XBL(Not sure if it's Game Pass or Live) but it's free, it is supposedly quick to beat so I said "Why not?".
And thank god it was free because the game took 28 minutes to beat. Yes. 28 minutes.....to beat. The game even totaled that and I was stunned
. I read this game runs maybe an hour..........well not even a half hour for me.
The game is a simple as heck beat em up so I won't go too crazy on discussing the game. Very simple 2D beat em up that plays similar to plenty of 90's beat em ups except no item throwing or pickups(That's the next game I discuss). You get to play as 3 characters, LeBron James(Yes the megastar NBA player), Lola Bunny or Bugs Bunny. Didn't try Bugs but I tried Lola first and then after I had to exit the game(Which I get to in a quick second as a negative of the game), I figured "How bad are they going to cater to LeBron in this game?" so I chose LBJ next. And no that's not Lyndon B. Johnson.
Both the characters I played with outside of catchphrases, and this random health draining power move that wipes out multiple enemies surrounding you, they play the same. What a surprise. The amount of times I heard LeBron say "OOOOOH WEEEEEEEE" would drive a man to pure insanity. I wish you could configure buttons around as I am still not too sure what I was pressing to active this power draining animation attack that takes down enemies all around you. Lola had a giant ACME anvil drop down on her and the enemies around her, LeBron had some sort of wizardry magic thing that I have absolutely zero clue what that is, maybe something to do with the new movie? No real combo moves, you press one button to attack, one button to jump/double jump and the ever important other button for a card/assist from a chosen Looney toons character. Think of these cards as powerups, from Granny being health drops(Which is great) to Wile E. Coyote being this smokescreen thing(That I never tried) to Yosemite Sam being item drops(Which I never tried) because honestly, why would you not want the health drop card to be chosen? It's free health! These card regenerate with enough damage put on enemies so it's practically a crutch for this game to use these cards that you start off with or are earned through story progression.
Very simple mechanics, again it's a free game, so I am not going into this expecting something wowing. The bosses are THE BROW(LeBron James teammate Anthony Davis who is never mentioned by name but cmon it looks like him but with wings), THE WHITE MAMBA(Play off of the late Kobe Bryant, LeBron's idol and friend and fellow Laker great) and the final boss which is a giant A.I. that Don Cheadle in the movie is. I am sure if the game was even a half hour longer, you'd have The Flash(Dwayne Wade) as a boss too.
Story is simple that your trying to stop the giant A.I. from taking over the world as he throws the same 3-4 enemies after you in this game, and yeah there were like 4-5 enemies that can be counted on one hand so the enemies feel very similar over time. You fight robotic frogs, robotic flamethrower dudes, generic robot enemies, generic robot enemies with arms and these robots who can catch your basketball(Which is the lone weapon you have as all 3 characters, a basketball that you can throw and charge throw shots at that outside of maybe long distance, doesn't serve much of a purpose). The jump kick attack basically wipes out enemies with low powered damage but the frame invincibility where it can wipe out enemies that try and swarm you. You come to learn the jump kick in beat em up games is OP, no different here.
You cannot save your game which I found out after turning the game off after going 15 minutes into the game to take a nap, so I get it..........the game isn't even a half hour long and is based off a retro beat em up style but still it's 2021! Not a big deal, it took me a whopping 15 minutes to get back to where I was with LeBron James character, maybe a little less given I knew what was going on. There's very few stage hazards, game is real bare bones.
This writeup took me longer to do than to beating the game so I end here. Game is free on the XBOX maybe via game pass, if you want to kill a half hour on this game, why not. Very basic beat em up.
38) Streets of Rage 4 DLC: Mr X's Nightmare(XB1) 7/18-7/19, 7/22, 7/24
Played the vanilla version of SOR4 last year, will more so talk about what this DLC has that separates itself from the vanilla SOR4. SOR4 is fantastic and must play either way but what comes in this DLC is:
4(Yes 4, the 4th is hidden we will get to that shortly) new characters, Shiva, Max(Two characters from the SOR trilogy) along with the newly introduced SOR4 character Estel Aguirre and the hidden character, Roo, the kickboxing Kangaroo from Streets of Rage 3 which can be unlocked by holding START+ATTACK BUTTON+UP for a couple of seconds on the selection screen(Had to look that up).
I will briefly explain each character, I finished campaign mode for all 3 characters on HARD mode(I tried so bad on Hardest got stuck on like Stage 4 with Max)
Shiva: Very fast, lone character of the 3 to have a double dash. His gimmick in SOR3 is that he doesn't need weapons because he is a weapon(He even paraphases saying that) so he doesn't pick up weapons due to his discipline of using his fists & feet only BUT he uses said weapon as a projectile by lifting and kicking them at enemies. This is both good and bad. Good that the items don't ever break but bad that the weapons don't ever break because enemies can pick them up and can overwhelm you when in packs. This happened in the Chinatown level, by far it was hardest due to this. He can triple jump with an up attack which is very dope and clutch in getting in and out of AOE attacks from bosses, he doesn't do insane amounts of damage but he compensates it with his speed. What sucks with him is a lack of juggling so I don't think he is perfect for trying to rack up combos like say Estelle is. His health draining attacks are really cool, he uses chi attacks which are concentrated energy in his kicks so he can do controlled somersault kicks among other cool features. Really cool stuff. His ultimate attack in the regular story when facing him as a boss is he summons duplicate copies of himself to try and kick your ass, surprisingly you don't get that. Instead you get a Geese Howard RISING A STORM finisher which if your familiar with King of Fighters/Fatal Fury it's basically a giant storm strike that covers your left and right. Except the storm looks like a phoenix attack in itself and nowhere near as insane looking!
Max: The wrestler of the series that everyone knows from Streets of Rage 2, Max is brainwashed in the campaign and is forced to fight you as a boss in the regular campaign but in this DLC, he is at your leisure and boy he hits like a truck. Seriously, he does like 3-4 shots and takes down regular enemies who have full health. To compensate this, he lacks speed and has a giant inability to get out of danger if you commit too much. His dropkicks in air are very necessary as it's his lone air attack but to also get you to enemies. You will often find when playing as Max as trying so hard to go after enemies who easily can outpace you when backing up or moving up and down the screen. Gets frustrating but when you get those hands on them, you need to may them pay because he is viscious. He has a catch slam where he picks up an enemies and throws him pretty friggin far. He also does thunder claps/BLUE KNUCKLE BOMB as his health draining attacks, along side some nasty lariats. He has a sick backwards suplex which causes lightning to crash on down upon impact. He is slow as all hell but the trade off is the damage output is insane and he can juggle you decently off the wall. His ultimate is a giant lightning strike to the ground that god help the enemies in front of that thing because it drives you high into the sky. I completely destroyed the Stage 11 boss in a combo that the enemy only got out of like twice, was hilarious. Easy S rank on that.
Estel: The new character, she was a bad guy turned good. She is police all the way and came to her senses after you beat her up twice and understands who the true villain is. She reminds me of Adam Hunter with some insanely fun juggles and combos, I had the most fun with her of the 3 characters. Max is the strongest, Shiva is the fastest and gives you leeway to get in and out of danger, Estel is pure juggling. I racked up a 100+ combo with her, her moves are very good for crowd control. In addition, she can chuck grenades and do flash bangs in addition to some of her aerial launch attacks. Her health draining attacks are basically grab shots where she runs at enemies, gets em down, and beats the shit out of them. I think there are different variations but it's basically grappling goodness. Her ultimate attack which she also did quite a lot in the story is a homage to Streets of Rage 1 and it's calling the SWAT team to fire salvo bazooka shots that can juggle and stop combos.
Roo: The secret character from Streets of Rage 3, I only played him in Survival Mode(Which is exclusive to the DLC) but he is insanely fun. He has some really fun attacks like the typical jabs and a spin attack he can do but his fun comes from his ultra attacks where he summons circus puppet henchman to help attack with him for a long duration until they die off or until you beat the level. Can get in a load of those minions, basically co-op without co-op. He is a sprite from SOR3 so he isn't redone like the other 3 but free character is free.
The other perk in this DLC is Survival Mode which is what the name states, you go through rounds and rounds of different levels that you have to survive and move on. You get different powerups such as a summoned minion or double jump or speed boost or lightning comes out of your attacks but also get decisions in which powerups to take and see different trade offs like combos do more damage but stand alone attacks do less due to a said powerup. I got to level 17 I believe before I succumbed. Each level throws off a gauntlet of enemies, nothing too obnoxious but it can get pretty tough. You do get a certain amount of health pickups but you need to use them wisely because the HP you have left you carry over to the next level. Each level takes 2-3 minutes most of the time so you go in and out of different scenarios with different enemies scattered. I got my taste with Roo and said it's cool with me. I can def. see how addictive that can get though.
For the 7 or so bucks I paid for the DLC, I found it to be pretty fun and the new characters are really good. The campaign being played 3x got a little redundant admittedly but to get achievements for finishing each is appreciated. I found playing through the campaign with all 3 that each character excels at a spot and each character makes life more difficult in a spot vs another character. Like Shiva not picking up items in a level that is littered with them made life hard, Max was tough catching Miss Y because she bounces all over the level in her boss fight and Estel due to lack of damage was a difficult fight when facing Boubon or Max who can tank or do super armor moves which ruins her juggling.
39) Sonic Generations(PC) 7/25-7/28
Beat Sonic Generations, a game that came out about 10 or so years ago but something I finally got to play. To be honest, the Sonic series is something I have neglected quite a bit ever since adoring the 4 2D games that came out for the Sega Genesis ages ago. I blame my inability to play the Sega Saturn/Sega CD for why I fell off but I did end up replaying Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 a couple of years ago, which were both hit and miss for me. The 3D Sonics after that I have never touched but the last new Sonic I did play was the really good Sonic Mania 2D revival in addition to the revisits of Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles prior to. So while not a uber diehard Sonic fan, still a series I cherished really well as a kid. So how does a game like Sonic Generations which consists of gameplay of both 2D Sonic as well as 3D Sonic hold up? Rather well.
The 2D Sonic will always have a special place in my heart that the 3D one won't touch, the simplicity of the retro styled games was absolutely perfect for me. I always found 3D Sonic goes too fast and I found myself often clipping through segments to instant death, particularly the intro stage of Sonic Adventure 1 was a major culprit for that. All the levels of this game have two acts, one that features a 2D version of a stage and 3D version of a stage. For infamous stages like Green Hill Zone & Chemical Plant Zone for the 2D side, the game very much plays the same as it's stages origins. Same would go for City Escape for the 3D side in addition to other levels from various 3D games that I never played but surely diehard Sonic fans would recognize full and well. What this game does well is it offers different paths that ultimately lead you to the final goal. I do think that is really important to change it up a little bit so it encourages multiple runs in a said level to collect the red star collectibles which are used for optional music or art if you really want every little bit this game has to offer.
Story is simple enough, your friends get sucked into a vortex and it is on your to complete all stages to recover them. It was cool to see the two different versions of Sonic or Tails or even Robotnik/Eggman, both the 3D modern one and the 2D retro version. Music and remixes were really cool for the most part and the overall feel of the game really made this a pure delight for Sonic fans of new and old to play, still this game plays well, but it takes a whole lot to mess up Sonic(Which Sega to their credit, were on a roll of doing so). You get mini bosses with Silver The Hedgehog(ITS NO USE), Shadow the Hedgehog & Metal Sonic, so again this game is a pure smorgasbord of Sonic goodness.
The game has a skill set system that allows you to buy available skills that range from a higher speed boost which is vital to play fast in 3D mode to automatically getting an extra life to start a level among other goodies that reward you to getting those superb S's and A ranks per stage. This game also after beating a full act/level both times has optional side content of different objectives that range from racing your doppelganger to getting ____ rings before crossing the finish to facing your friends in a friendly contest around a stage. I can definitely see the appeal to doing all of this and I assume this will add on to the couple of hours the main story gives you.
Sadly, I didn't do a full completionist run of this game primarily not to the fault of the game but more so my experience of playing this game on Steam. I am not much of a PC gamer but this game was on sale for under 2 bucks so it was something that I just had to have! My issue often with this game was despite having a USB drive hookup with my XBOX ONE controller, that often Sonic would just stop and I have no control of him, which at certain points when it was happening, it would kill a run, which made certain long levels of the game nail biting to say the least. Often, the game would pause in itself and I would have to remove the USB and insert it back on, the problem though is the game randomly configures the buttons where jump is another button, spin dash is another button etc. When the game is heavily reliant on prompts needing to be hit, this became infuriating so often I would have to exit out of the game(Thank goodness for autosave) and reboot it. This wasn't the game's fault per say but it was def. something that soured my experience of the game. I looked online to see if this was reoccurring for others and yes it was indeed, sucks. Think there is a fix to it but to me, the game really isn't that long or demanding enough to go through all of that to do so.
This was the real breaker to me and it is a shame too because that's not on Sonic Generations, it was more so on Steam and my USB drive with XB1 controller not cooperating with me. It was fine with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 but I can't say I am much of a PC gamer so it's still uncharted waters overall for me here. If you can play this on a console or if you can get this working, this is a fantastic Sonic game. It isn't overwhelmingly hard and will be a trip down memory lane for the diehard fans yet still be a solid entry point because the gameplay is fast paced adrenaline, what you come to know from Sonic.
