Silent Hill: Downpour is the worst kind of bad game: A game of missed potential.

As the last mainline entry in the Silent Hill series as of the time of writing, Vatra games certainly tried (and in some cases, succeeded) in trying to shake up the formula. The town itself is more open-ended in terms of level design, encouraging exploration that the series has been missing since the original Silent Hill, and this more open-ended design, alongside the addition of optional side quests gives the town a real purpose, aside from connecting one area to another. The limited inventory system actually gives weapons some purpose as both self-defense tools and puzzle solving items, with the environment having a surprising amount of interactivity, from picking up environmental decoration as weapons, to breaking padlocks & boarded-up doors, to shimmying down tight corridors around the town. The atmosphere is impeccable at times, with the weather system and the small touches that show a real level of care went into the game (I love how the traditional Silent Hill radio static is replaced in this entry with garbled police scanner audio, or the scene where a monster shows up on a security monitor in the background for a second before disappearing, all without any attention called to it). The Otherworld is the most visually interesting of the series, even counting the original Team Silent games, and it can be truly breathtaking at times. The plot (at first glance at least) is the first original story line in a non-Team Silent Silent Hill game so far, with a decent premise and delineable themes about revenge and loss.

Unfortunately, the positives end there. Even post-patch, the game is a technical nightmare. Textures pop in constantly and take seconds to fully load, making everything a blurry mess when entering a new area. The frame rate is atrocious, struggling to hit 30FPS at the best of times. I had the game seize up multiple times when entering new areas, and even had a full-blown system crash at one point. I notably couldn't even finish a side quest because playing the game on Normal means a necessary side quest item doesn't even spawn! The monster design, a usual standout in even the worse Silent Hill games is incredibly lackluster, and I struggle to think of a point at which I was actually scared while playing (and no, those jump scares don't count Downpour.) The side quests are only sometimes interesting, at times mostly being fetch quests and busywork to pad out the runtime. Hell, at the point of no return, you lose all your inventory items during the final area, meaning all those side quest items are useless in the end. The Otherworld is barely used to its full potential, only used for chase sequences featuring a Photoshop motion blur effect. The characterization of Silent Hill as a benevolent force that uses nightmare creatures as some kind of self-help therapy session is also at odds with the original hostile, sadistic nature of the towns in previous games. The biggest sin however is the ending, in which depending on your decisions (including pointless moral choices and an unexplained monster sparing mechanic), the main character's backstory can completely change, making all that symbolism and theming utterly pointless depending on your choices, which is a mortal sin for a psychological horror game.

It's a real shame this is where the series stopped for now, because beyond the flaws, this is the best non-Team Silent game. If Vatra Games didn't go under after release, I would've loved to see them improve on this formula, because the good in Downpour could've been great if they had a chance to polish and refine what they had. But we have to work with what we got, and what we got is nothing but "what if's" and "could have been's".

Morimiya Middle School Shooting is an arcade-style top-down shooter made in the RPG Maker MV engine. The plot plays out like a bizarre Japanese version of Hatred: A violent, misanthropic middle school student with a death wish arms herself with as many guns as she can take into her local middle school with the express purpose of killing as many as she can before getting arrested.

The standard game play loop is comparable to a rouge-like version of the original Postal. You have 5 minutes per run, and you have to rack up kills before either the time limit runs out or you get caught/killed. You get graded on the number of people killed/wounded on a 5 star scale, and depending on your score, you gain points to spend on permanent upgrades like new weapons and permanent perks.

The game is technically impressive, turning the standard RPG Maker engine into a admittedly decent top-down shooter, and it has a surprising amount of depth to the moment-by-moment game play. You have a base 50% accuracy and you have to go into an aim mode to raise it, at the cost of your movement speed. Running and gunning is a surefire way to get yourself caught, as it makes your aim absolutely atrocious. While most of the students are defenseless, the rare hero or two can catch you off guard and very quickly take you down if you get cornered. Teachers also roam the halls, the females alerting others of your presence and the males running to pin you down and end your run. Despite first impressions, the game is not the mindless "cathartic" murderfest I was expecting. There is a certain level of strategy and planning involved in each run, and from a certain point of view, it could even deconstruct the murder fantasy of its own premise, seeing as the murder fantasy is very quickly ended if you get too careless.

Let's address the elephant in the room though: It's a game about children murdering children. Even though the limited graphics and frankly cheesy sound design take the edge off somewhat, this is a pretty alienating premise for the vast majority of people (even the original Postal drew the line at child murder!) Plausible deniability isn't even a factor either, seeing as the game was developed by a guro artist, so the violence is definitely meant to get someone's rocks off. It's an abhorrent production all around, and the only reason to play it over other arcade shooters is if you're morbidly curious or if it's your kink.

(Full disclaimer: this game is untranslated and I bumbled through it using nothing but guesswork and Google Translate. It can be found here: https://neroringa.wixsite.com/moriawase-c/blank-2)

Pithorox Gear is an interesting game to say the least. A bullet hell/action RPG is a pretty neat combination of genres you don't see a lot. The main mechanic revolves around time manipulation: pressing 'A' will either slow down time (if you're near an enemy), or speed it up and give you invulnerability & increased maneuverability (if you activate it at a distance.) Vital use of this mechanic is key to surviving the harder combat encounters you'll encounter from the mid-game onward, as the screen will be filled with more projectiles and numbers than you can shake a stick at. There's also unlockable weapons that affect both your normal projectiles, your melee attack, and how you interact with the environment, which alongside the Sphere Grid-esque leveling system gives a surprising amount of customization. Every mechanic falls into place perfectly with each other, and it feels very cohesive and focused.

There are some niggles here as well however: the game can stutter a bit when things get a little too busy, and while it starts strong, Pithorox Gear becomes a real slog near the last act as enemy HP and damage values shoot through the roof (even when your level reaches the triple digits), alongside some baffling design decisions, like the dungeon that makes you rely on RNG for enemies to drop items vital to progression, or the fact healing items can only be bought if you go out of your way to do an unrelated sidequest.

The story, from what little I gathered, is a little all over the place. There's talks of an apocalyptic event, religious imagery, magitek, and even references to Dante's Inferno, before ending on a rather bittersweet note. It seemed fine enough, even if I was reading it through shoddy online translations, but the gameplay more than made up for the fact I had no clue what was going on.

I feel if this had a translation, it would've been as big as the other acclaimed games in the RPG Maker community. It seems like there's a lot to like here, even with the language barrier, and the general aesthetic of the UI and the environments give it a lot of charm and character. In the unlikely chance this ever gets a translation, I would definitely recommend this for a tight, well-constructed 8 hours of fun.

The best way to describe Devil May Cry 2 is "aggressively mediocre."

I knew about this game's reputation long before I got to it, which is why I took so long to eventually get around to playing it, but I had the HD Collection and I figured it was high time I play it, just for shits and giggles, see if it's really that bad. However, when Mission 1 started and I was messing around with the controls and saw that Stinger animation, I already knew just how the rest of the game was going to pan out. If you want the definitive DMC 2 experience, just play until that god awful Infested Chopper boss fight and exit, because it stops being funny after that point.

For a game with a 6 month development time held together with duct tape and spit, it's a miracle the game even functions, but that's the most charitable thing you could say about it. The enemy AI is brain dead, the guns are so powerful that they will single-handedly carry you throughout the entire game, and the plot is just a series of random events and non-sequiturs that happen while Dante performs his best Two-Face impression. Nothing is overtly broken or outlandishly terrible, but it rarely ever ascends past the stunning highs of "Okay, I guess". I eventually gave up around Mission 14 when I just got too annoyed and bored to bother finishing it.

But above all else, Devil May Cry 2 is a testament to Hideaki Itsuno's ability to find the best qualities in even the worst games. Dante's moveset is very free-flowing, since he not only starts off with Air Hike, there's now a dedicated dodge button that functions as a wallrun/dodge roll, which would later be implemented as the Trickster Style in DMC 3. There's also the Majin Devil Trigger, which acts like a prototype to the Sin Devil Trigger in DMC 5, as well as minor things, such as Rebellion being introduced in this entry or the first instance of a playable Trish.

In a way, I'm glad it exists, since Devil May Cry 3 wouldn't have been as great as it was without the failure of DMC 2, but outside of its historical context within the series, DMC 2 is not worth your time in the slightest.

Radirgy is a 2005 shmup about a schoolgirl flying a robot to save her dad from cyber-terrorists with a cel-shaded Y2K aesthetic and an absolutely bumpin' soundtrack. You push start, you choose your body (which determines movement speed), and your weapon (generic multi-shot, weak but continuous laser beam, and slow but damaging bubble shot) and off you go!

The main mechanic is the ABSNET Shield: You fill up a meter by killing enemies, which when filled, allows you to activate the ABSNET Shield, which renders you immune to projectiles, and temporarily removes all projectiles on the screen for a split-second after it deactivates. All the bullets absorbed/removed fill up the Signal meter at the top of the screen, which increases your score multiplier, up to a max of x16. The score multiplier fades with time, so aggressive use of the ASBNET Shield is encouraged to rack up those points and get that high score.

I don't play a lot of shmups (mostly because I'm god-awful at them), so I can't say how it fares compared to its contemporaries, but outside of the ABSNET Shield mechanic, Radirgy is fairly generic gameplay wise. You shoot, you dodge, you rack up points. It feels like a parody game you'd see in the background of an animated TV show. But the gameplay is tight and the vibes are rad, so if you have an hour to kill, there are worse things to do.

(Note: This is a review of the Community Version. Buy the official release to support French Bread, but use the Community Version if you wanna actually find a match online)

Now, I've never read Tsukihime. I know absolutely nothing about the Nasuverse or Fates or whatever the hell a TATARI is. What I do know is what makes a good fighting game, and Melty Blood is a damn good fighting game.

Melty Blood's allure lies in the options it provides the player. When you pick a character, you can choose between 3 moon types: Crescent, Half, and Full. Crescent is balanced with tons of control over your meter, Half is for a more aggressive playstyle with less meter control, and Full emphasizes big damage with less combo potential. With 3 Moon types per character and 31 playable characters, the roster effectively caps out at a whopping 93 characters, meaning you’re guaranteed to find someone with the playstyle just for you.

The other draw to Melty Blood is its focus on aerial combat. The amount of maneuverability options at any given moment is staggering. Regular jumps that can be ever so subtly influenced, super jumps that can bound across the stage, an air dash that can be inserted before or after your double jump and depending on your Moon type, a dedicated dodge that works both on the ground and midair. The gameplay really shines when you and the opponent stop flying around the screen and you've managed to launch them into the air and pull off that sick air combo you've been labbing in practice mode for the past few hours!

The online is phenomenal as well. I'm from the Southern US and I had a match with someone from Europe, and it was so smooth I almost forgot I was playing online! You're gonna have to join the community Discord if you wanna match up with randos online, but with netcode this smooth you'll have no problem finding a game.

On the downside, there's not a whole lot of single player content outside of Arcade and Training Mode, so if you're not looking to play online, you're shit outta luck. But overall, Melty Blood is just so much god damn fun, and I already know I'm still gonna be putting in hours after this review.

Neftelia is a 2009 RPG Maker exploration game about collecting 14 animations in a surreal and slightly unsettling world. I'd normally avoid such obvious statements like that but considering the obscure nature of Neftelia and its creator, it'd help to know what exactly this game is first and foremost. While this may sound similiar in structure and tone to other famous surreal-exploration RPG Maker game Yume Nikki, it's not really inspired by or derivative of Yume Nikki at all. It's more Yume Nikki-adjacent than anything else.

The main draw of exploration games like these are the environments and the tone, which is where Neftelia falters. The majority of environments aren't visually interesting, and the world is very small, meaning you'll be seeing the same boring places repeated ad nauseam. The tone is also underdeveloped, being only mildly unsettling or mildly interesting, without going strong enough on either extreme to be continually engaging. Compound this with the cryptic nature of the game and Neftelia very quickly becomes a slog to play through. The 14 animations are the saving grace here. They're very short, about 15 seconds max, but they're visually interesting enough that I wanted to see what the next one held, even if my enjoyment was hampered somewhat by the tedious nature of the experience.

Neftelia may seem interesting with its mysterious origins and somewhat unsettling tone, but there's nothing to really bite into here. The only feeling I had after finishing it was just mild dissatisfaction and boredom, and I can't really say I'd recommend it to anybody.

From the moment you boot up Type Dreams, it instantly tells you exactly what it wants to say through nothing but its UI and general aesthetic. There's no cursor visible, nor can you cycle through the gorgeous collage-styled menu options with the arrow keys; everything is centered around the keyboard, from the main gameplay loop to the menu itself. You create a profile, choose from one of many typists, choose the kind of writing instrument you'll be using (from the familiar yet OOP digital keyboard to an old-fashioned typewriter, complete with a lack of backspace functionality and manual carriage return!), and off you go.

While there are a few game modes available such as the unimplemented Story Mode or a Competition Mode, wherein you face off against AI opponents to see who can finish the writing assignment the fastest, the most fleshed out mode available is the Library option, where all the different kind of typing assignments lie.

The gameplay is very simple: You choose an assignment from one of many categories, ranging from simple typing exercises to original poetry to smut. Once you've chosen your option, you are immediately thrown into the gameplay, and the timer starts counting. Your task is to copy the words of your typing assignment exactly as they appear. It's very arcade-like in design: The only opponent is yourself, competing for higher WPM counts, less mistakes, faster completion time. I chose the Typewriter as my instrument of choice, and the adherence to it's archaic rules, from a lack of backspace to having to run your finger across the F1-F12 row of your keyboard to simulate carriage return for each line break is both unique and zen-like in it's continued execution. It's incredibly addicting, and the only reason I stopped playing was because my left hand physically cramped up after a lengthy typing assignment.

The real star of the show here is the presentation. Few games are as stylistically intense as Type Dreams. From the keyboard-only, Victorian-era collage UI, to the dynamic era-appropriate piano music that swells and falls in time to your typing, to the unique animations that play on some typing assignments, in-sync with each word completed, to the strict adherence to the archaic hardware of old, Type Dreams is incredibly unique and uncompromising in it's vibes. It's the perfect adaptation of the creative writing process, from the way the environment around your character shifts thematically with each word as you enter The Zone™ and the words fly off from your fingertips, to the hefty typing sounds and accompanying screen shake per letter as you draw your assignment to a close and the euphoria of completion washes over you.

Type Dreams is an anomaly now. Launched in Early Access and perpetually unfinished, seeing as how Hofmeier has scrubbed all traces of him off the internet, Type Dreams has no real ending. Ironically enough, it's like someone just stopped typing mid-paragraph. In a way, it almost feels appropriate: Little more than a ship passing in the night. But I hope that ship docks one day, and everyone will get the chance to try this game out again, because it's truly worth your time.

"You don't have to be insane to kill someone. You just have to think you're right." - Yoko Taro, Creative director of NieR and NieR Replicant Ver.1.22.

NieR (2010) was a very depressing game: It centered around the dusk of humanity, slowly dying out to an incurable disease as monsters roamed the countryside. More often than not, the quests our hero would embark on ended in tragedy, or in one extreme case, with the game itself seemingly mocking you for being the altruistic hero expected of the genre. The party is full of misfits, outcast from society, born into unfair circumstances beyond their control. Halfway through the game, the world itself began to feel bleak. Ugly. Cynical.

NieR (2010) was a game about compassion. The world was bleak, yes, but the people in it found the will to continue because of the people around them. Our hero, who's undying love for his family drives his every action, even when the world has kicked him while he was down, until every scrap of altruism and goodwill is used to justify his violent and self-destructive actions. Our party of misfits, who find true companionship in each other, even if they are all deeply flawed individuals. The people and townsfolk who still find it in them to look out for those closest to them, even in the roughest of times. The Shades you slaughter wholesale, who may be more like the party than any of them would ever like to believe. NieR was unique in that it's condemnation of violence did not start and end with the act itself, but rather the fact that everyone has something to fight for, whether you realize it or not. The horror comes from how easy it is to dehumanize, to dissociate from the slaughter, to kill, when you truly believe you are just in your every action.

Ver.1.22 at its core, is still the same game it was 11 years ago. I felt for the characters like I did with the original, every emotional beat hit just as hard as it hit in the 2010 original, and the new story content slotted into the existing story perfectly. But I worry what Ver.1.22 means for the franchise going forward.

The characters have been dolled up and made more accurate to the original illustrations, and yet the charm of uncanny people in an uncanny world (even if it was unintentional) was lost. The combat has been made silky-smooth like Automata, with fancy lock-on and big sweeping flourishes, and yet the heavy, brutal nature and weight of the original's combat that really sold the impact and viscera has been lost for the sake of flashy extravagance. The soundtrack has been souped up with more instruments, additional passages and a cinematic flair, and yet the original's sense of aggression, quiet and intimacy have been lost (looking at you "Shadowlord"). NieR was admittedly rough around the edges, and not every change was bad necessarily, but NieR has been made to conform to its much more successful younger sibling Automata, and in doing so, has lost some of it's original edge and feel. It's the Yakuza Kiwami to Automata's Yakuza Zero.

Ver.1.22 is no Demon Souls' (PS5), it's no Silent Hill HD Collection, it's no Conker Live & Reloaded. It's still a fantastic game, and a great way to enjoy the story of NieR and its characters. But in our era of re-releases and remasters, we're so blinded by the ideal of progress that we seem to be losing sight of what made our games unique in the first place.

In the opening of the first mission in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, the eponymous duo meet up on the streets of Shanghai. Lynch sticks his hand out for a handshake that Kane does not reciprocate, before Lynch puts his hand down without comment. Lynch offers surface level niceties and makes small talk with Kane, which he responds to with curt refusals and unnecessary aggression. This initially makes Kane look unlikable and selfish, until Lynch drags Kane along against his will for an unrelated personal vendetta, revealing that he's just as selfish and self-serving as Kane is, only dealing with the other because he needs him to get the job done. There is no compassion, there is no bond, there are only two unlikable, selfish men who drag each other down with every self-serving action they take until their shortsightedness destroys whatever they were fighting for in the first place.

Kane & Lynch 2, on paper, sounds like the kind of fun buddy-buddy crime thriller you'd see in a theater. Two down-on-their-luck career criminals with one humanizing aspect each (Lynch's new girlfriend and Kane's estranged daughter) join up for that "one last job", before things go south and our wacky leads are in over their heads in a foreign land, and epic shootouts and action set pieces occur henceforth. However, there is no joy here. The eponymous duo have no camaraderie like you'd expect, only dealing with each other for their own personal gain, but much like a toxic relationship, neither can fully live without the other. There are no rousing speeches, no begrudging acceptance of true friendship, only bitching and moaning about how much everything sucks and how much they despise each other, and yet they continue to fraternize, because who else do they have? They continue to escalate situations to unnecessary heights as they shoot thousands upon thousands of criminals and private military contractors in the concrete jungle of Shanghai. The endless stream of violence without pause or reprise is almost supernatural in a sense. Kane & Lynch are in a hell of their own creation: a drab, eternal labyrinth of urban architecture and endless gunfights in the hostile underbelly of China's criminal underworld. Just as suddenly as it starts, it ends without fanfare or conclusion. We were privy only to the vignette of time the game wanted us privy to, and in a way, maybe it's for the best. Kane & Lynch don't deserve closure.

What makes this plot work is the visual style in which it is presented. The camera is characterized as a perverse, unaddressed third-party observer to the action that unfolds. In cutscenes, the angles are often candid and much too close for comfort, as if the camera is trying to record the action without being seen by the characters in the story. Scenes often start suddenly and end just as abruptly, sometimes mid-dialogue, as if the battery had died before the scene could finish. In gameplay, it shakes as if in someone's hand when you run. Headshots are instantly pixelated out, blood and rain splatter on your shitty camcorder lens, bright lights create lens flare and loud noises such as shouting and explosions peak the audio and ruin the bit rate. When you die, the camera takes a tumble, the audio is suddenly cut-off without fade and the timestamp is presented without comment, before you are instantly thrown back into the action without any pause. We are neither Kane or Lynch, we are simply observers to their reckless and violent actions.

The gameplay is something I admittedly can't give too much comment on, because this is the first Third Person Shooter I've ever actually played, but I will say that it works incredibly well in-tandem with the visual presentation. The guns feel appropriately weighty and have a real OOMPH to them when you fire, alongside the recoil. You have to scramble across arenas scrounging for ammunition while making sure that you aren't getting riddled with bullets by the hundreds of gunmen you'll encounter, who are just as smart as any player, attempting to flank you and take you by surprise if you aren't careful. The cacophony of bullets whizzing by overhead, overpowering the character's speech and assaulting the player's senses makes every firefight intense. The admittedly tedious nature of it all syncs well with the duo's growing exacerbation at the sheer amount of people being thrown at them in the span of the story's 48-hour chronological window.

Kane & Lynch is an ugly, exhausting, visual anathema I had to walk away from constantly due to the sheer over-stimulation I was being bombarded by. But I think it's critical reception (in part due to it's predecessor's controversy), is largely unwarranted. It's a visually striking and unique experience that has yet to really receive the critical reevaluation other games in a similar vein from the 7th console generation received. It's a game very much worth the 4 hour commitment it asks of you.

Guilty Gear Strive was one of my more anticipated games of the year ever since it was revealed at EVO 2019, but as the Open Betas rolled out and we began to see the change in design philosophy that Strive was pushing, I began to temper my expectations somewhat. The traditional gatling system was gone, the damage was through the roof, and the focus shifted to a more neutral-heavy gameplay style, which was enough to give some long-time fans cause for concern. How would these changes pan out, and at the end of the day, would it still feel like Guilty Gear? But having put a decent amount of time into it over the past weeks, I can safely say that my worries were unfounded, and that this is the most fun I've had with a game all year!

It's certainly a different game from Xrd or Accent Core+R, but it still feels like Guilty Gear through and through. The stronger emphasis on the universal mechanics and the lower bar of entry in terms of skill level makes the game much more accessible to pick up and play, and it's gotten friends of mine who've never touched a fighting game in their life to pick it up and not only have fun, but be somewhat competent as well!

I've been running it on my shitty laptop at potato specs so the beautiful visuals aren't something I can really appreciate, but even running the game at it's bare essentials, I'm just having a good time in matches online, climbing up and down the Ranking Tower (mostly down), and playing friendlies with my buds. It's a new kind of Guilty Gear, and it's one I'm okay with, even if it is an admittedly drastic departure from it's predecessors.

I have my own problems with the game however. For one, it feels somewhat unfinished. While it's nothing game-breaking, there are no combo trials, there's a lack of new music (the character select theme is just an instrumental of the main theme, and there's no more unique themes for match-ups like Sol vs Ky, or Mirror Matches), and it feels somewhat lacking in single player content. The lobbies are also pretty abysmal, and even with a wired ethernet connection, I'm constantly disconnecting or being booted from the servers.

I may not be a professional player, or a hardcore fighting game historian, but all I know is that I'm having a good time, and there's a good chance you'll probably have one too.

"Kill the past."

SUDA51 is a well-renown figure in the gaming industry. A revolutionary auteur with a unique voice and interesting stories to tell, his games receive critical acclaim and recognition as masterful works of both art and gameplay. But until now, that's never been the case for me personally. For the longest time, I only knew of SUDA51 as some Japanese weirdo who made games about weeaboos with lightsabers or cheerleaders fighting zombies: games that struck me as shallow and obnoxiously quirky. It didn't help the only exposure I had to SUDA51's oeuvre was surface-level commentary by outlets and gamers that reduced his work to "Woah, so wacky!" and completely missed whatever messages his works tried to convey. So it was quite the culture shock to join this website and see SUDA51 not only be critically acclaimed, but revered by the user base, who sung the man's praises to high heaven. This served as the impetus for me to finally give the man a second chance with The Silver Case, and the only thing I have to say is I wish that I had done it sooner!

The Silver Case is a visual novel/adventure game hybrid following two protagonists: An unnamed Heinous Crimes Unit agent, and jaded chain-smoking journalist/carnivorous plant enthusiast Tokio Morishima, both of whom are investigating infamous serial killer Kamui Uehara, a recently escaped mental hospital patient and the man behind the titular Silver Case. Over the course of two parallel storylines, the plot soon reveals itself to be more complex than it initially seemed, and this is where The Silver Case's strengths come to the forefront. Covering themes of political intrigue, the internet and its effects in real life, the nature of crime and its relation to the media, the desire for change in society, and most importantly: what it means to kill the past, and move on from the chains that bind you to it. Everyone in the plot is chained in some way to the past, whether it be their own or the past of powers beyond their comprehension, and the heart of the story lies not in the conspiracies or exposition, but in seeing how the people involved in this metaphorical game of 4th dimensional chess either face, kill or succumb to their own history.

As a visual novel, your strengths are gonna be your aesthetics and your writing, and The Silver Case knocks it out of the ballpark on both accounts. The presentation is unique and visually striking: A multimedia mix of animation, live-action FMV and CGI, taking place in these bizarre yet intimate low-poly liminal spaces, all viewed through a Y2K-evocative UI framed much like a comic/manga, with varying screen sizes and orientations and unique illustrations for events in-game. The way each Chapter closes out like the end of a TV episode is just the cherry on top honestly. On the writing end, the way our protagonists are written as diametrically opposed opposites is interesting. The silent HCU agent; a borderline non-entity, an empty shell with no defined past or personality for the player to experience the story, and frequently commented on as being a ghoulish, silent weirdo, someone who's status in story mirrors that of the player: a mere vessel for events bigger and more intricate than him. Morishima in contrast, is a defined character, with a past, a goal, a strong personality and a much smaller scale plot-wise than our HCU Agent, and yet the two end up so intimately entwined with each other's stories that we realize how similar they are and how they move the plot along. It's very well done, even if the need to alternate stories isn't explained very well in-game.

The preconceived notions I had about SUDA51's work in the past have been shattered with naught but a single game, and in a way, it mirrors the message of The Silver Case: Kill the past, and free yourself from your burdens. By killing my prejudice by playing The Silver Case, I've opened myself to a whole new world of entertainment I'd've never given the light of day before. Maybe it's something you too should look into.

Sumio Mondo is staying in Room 402 of the Flower, Sun & Rain hotel on Lospass Island. He's been called here to investigate a bomb threat at the airport, and needs to arrive there before the plane taking off explodes mid-flight.

The plane explodes.

Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402 of the Flower, Sun & Rain hotel on Lospass Island. It's morning, and he needs to get to the airport before the plane explodes. But there's a sense of deja vu. He's been here before, and he's going to be here for quite a while. There's no past, no future, just an infinite present.

The Flower, Sun & Rain hotel, and by extension, Lospass Island is one of the more unsettling locations I've ever seen in a game. A lo-fi purgatorio, perfectly represented by a hotel on a tropical island resort. Hotels are naturally a place of transitions: a temporary abode between here and there, only called home in short bursts. Accommodating, but ultimately unfriendly and sterile. An island resort, beautiful in its view, yet also meant to be experienced in short bursts. It's beauty is only so because it is ultimately fleeting. A perfect combination for the infinite time loop Mondo is stuck in: an eternal transitional period, an infinite present, constantly resisting change and any possible futures that may be trying to take shape. The past is dead, but so is the future.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

The core gameplay loop involves two things: puzzle solving and walking. Lots of walking. Equipped with his handy briefcase Catherine and an extensive island Guidebook, Mondo must solve the various ills of the island residents who always seem to be in the way of his path to the truth. The interesting thing about Flower, Sun & Rain's (FSR's) puzzle design is how it gives you all the tools from the start. You always have the answer to every puzzle right at the tip of your stylus, but you must figure out what page in the Guidebook applies to the problem in front of you. Just like the time loop, it's constant: the answer will always be a number, and every problem will have a page in the Guidebook.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

The other standout aspect of FSR is how much contempt it seems to hold for the player. Every step that Mondo takes is impeded by another problem to solve, another riddle to answer, another resident who strong-arms Mondo into solving yet another predicament. It takes us half the game just to finally walk out the front doors of the hotel, and with every step closer to our goal, FSR resists us more and more fervently: the puzzles become more complex, the requests more insane, and the amount of walking the game expects you to do to get between each goal bordering on sadism. Every chapter is book-ended by a shot of the plane exploding, a constant reminder of our raison d'etre and our failure to fulfill.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

FSR is a trial-by-fire. A task from God. An exercise in insanity. Yet it's intensely compelling. It's a game that doesn't want to be played by anyone, but it invites you to defy it with its mysteries and charming cast of characters. It dangles answers in front of you like a carrot on a stick and asks you to jump through hoop upon hoop if you want to truly want to see them for yourself. It asks you if you have what it takes to discover the truth and grinds your patience to dust in the way only tedious gameplay can to truly test your resolve. In a way, it's the perfect sequel to the Silver Case: it shares the same punk attitude and desire for truth, asking you to once again test your resolve to "Kill the Past". Discover Sumio Mondo's past, kill it if you have to, and free the entirety of Lospass Island from it's infinite present.

"Tomorrow is calling me. Maybe you'll catch up with me there?"

"But will anything change? You expect some revolution? Well, a dog can't do shit. Has a dying country ever created anything worth its salt?"

You open the door and hear the telltale giggle of Heaven Smile off in the distance.

Take aim.

Shoot.

Reload.

Turn the corner.

Another Heaven Smile.

Take aim. Rinse. Repeat.

Killer7 is a 2005 railshooter/adventure game about the titular Killer7, a group of assassins hired by the U.S. Government to foil a plot by the UN to place the world under Japanese rule; while also dealing with a rouge terrorist faction of mutant suicide bombers known as the Heaven Smiles. What ensues is a political drama the likes of which defies all explanation honestly. In between discussions about Japan's lack of autonomy as a nation, the long-lasting ramifications American imperialism has had on it's allies, and the cyclical nature of conflict, there's shootouts with an anime girl cosplayer, bullet headbutting, and a chapter dedicated to a super sentai hitsquad. It's this delicate balancing act between the absurd and the profound that makes Killer7 so inherently compelling.

The on-rails control scheme is somewhat obtuse but once you can get used to it you will find one of the most audibly rewarding games you will ever play. The sound design in Killer7 is top-notch: guns sound incredible to fire, the ambient background noises in each level really sell the mood of each location, the telltale laugh of a Heaven Smile is masterfully mixed, letting you know exactly where and how close they are to your location. That little guitar lick that plays every time a puzzle is solved? It's better than sex! It's an utterly engrossing experience that must be played to be believed. Every single sound has been hand-crafted to feel incredibly satisfying to hear, it's insane!

Killer7 is a game that I know I'll still be thinking about for a while. It's a culturally relevant game that burns with indignant anger at the world and it's ways, at the constant empty promises of change, and at the lingering, faceless, agency-lacking shadow of a nation left behind due to the actions of men who do not know how to curb their excess.

"Harman, the world won't change. All it does is turn."