Kena: Bridge of Spirits is the debut game from Ember Lab, and man, what a debut it is.

With some excellent visuals that rival some larger budget games, Ember Lab's animation experience comes in handy to elevate Kena from a typical indie debut. Environments are lush, characters are well detailed and well animated, and various effects sprinkled throughout bring the world to life. It runs mostly at 60fps in Performance Mode on PS5 as well, lending to a very smooth experience. Only major gripe here is a lot of the environments feel very samey, but it's a style the devs execute well.

Sound is also well done, aside from some ho-hum voice acting performances. Cues are well placed and distinct to help with puzzle solving and exploration while the soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous.

Alongside a solid if unextraordinary narrative, the presentation really makes this an attractive game, but luckily the gameplay holds its end as well. Level design is excellent, encouraging exploration, especially in larger areas, but never leaving you confused as to where you're supposed to go next. Each of the many different collectibles and activities found throughout are a joy to participate, so I found myself frequently going off the beaten path. It helps that even if the types of things you find are the same, the switchup in specific puzzles and combat scenarios between areas is varied enough to keep the fun rolling. This is something I don't see newer developers nail as often, so it's impressive to see it here. It helps too that collecting the little Rot buddies and using them Pikmin style is just so darn cute and satisfying!

The combat is also very good, especially when playing on Hard difficulty like I did. Do be warned, on Hard the game won't pull its punches, and it unfortunately brings out some of the holes here. There are only a handful of mechanics here (some used for exploration as well) but they're excellently blended to make a dynamic combat system that at times can test your ability to swap strategies between a solid variety of enemies. And then most other battles you'll just R1 spam until the little guys are dead.

Where it falls short though can easily be seen in the boss battles. The boss designs themselves are pretty noteworthy, with only a couple that had some wonky mechanics. However, I found myself frustrated with many and not always for the right reasons. Lock on is easily the combat system's biggest offender. Getting the game to lock on or turn it off is finicky at best and usually takes a few clicks of the button to pull off. Not to mention it really has a hard time or flat out refuses to do anything while you're in the air or attacking. This is unbelievably frustrating and can really mess up the flow of battle. Not to mention, if you're locked on to an enemy that teleports, the game will move the camera with them so you know where they'll come in... sometimes. There were quite a few instances where instead of following the boss or enemy, it just got stuck in position, and I had to fiddle with it while the boss warped in and did damage to me. The deaths from that were not fun.

Otherwise, my only other complaint in combat is the overall input lag. It's not too bad through most of the game, but the later bosses are pretty damn fast. There were times where I felt like I nailed the timing on a dodge roll or parry, only for me to be late because of how much time Kena took to actually perform said actions. It was quite annoying, but I was able to adjust my timing after a few times banging my head against some of the later bosses.

At the end of the day though, I ended up really enjoying my time with Kena. The world and story were charming, the visuals beautiful, and the gameplay overall very fun despite a couple gripes. It's at a lower price point too, so if you like action/adventure games, I highly recommend you pick this one up!

I've been trying to work out what the target market for PD Remake is. And I've come to the conclusion it's literally just the people who have heard of Panzer Dragoon but never played it and are mildly curious when they see it on a deep sale on steam or the eshop.

Because I feel for literally everyone else, it's kinda... pointless? And it's not really that it's accidentally pointless, it almost feels by design that there's very little here to appeal to both the Dragoon die hards or the people who don't know what the fuck it is.

The core problem is the premise - not so much a panzer dragoon remake on it's own, but remaking it whilst keeping the content almost identical, and putting it in the hands of an indie studio who don't have the budget to make it look truly current gen.

And when the game you're building your remake on is frankly a glorified Saturn tech demo and the apotheosis of "boneless Launch Title" - as much as I like it - not building content on top of it really leaves it as something only for the die-hards - when the stylistic changes are something that's liable to put them off.

Frankly though, I think the artistic direction kinda works? It's quite comparable to the Demons souls remake in the changes it makes, but i prefer it to that frankly, despite the lower production values. The new look is reminiscent of the FMV cutscenes of Panzer Dragoon past, mixed with a bit of Orta's look. It's not quite right, and I do prefer the original look, but it's quite neat in it's own right.

The remake does, however, have one absolute ace up it's sleeve - a brand new arrangement of the OST by composer of Saga and Orta Saori Kobayashi. It's predictably fantastic and is worth the price of admission alone when the game is on sale.

But still, the game remains this weird chimera. Divorcing PD from being the saturn tech demo thing it is takes something away from it, and to new players, they're gonna experience a stupidly short game with very little to it, frankly.

So I kinda like it, and I definetly reccomend it on the frequent sales it gets put on where you grab it for like $5. But it's a missed oppurtunity for it to only be that.

This is way less of an ethically focus tested mental illness empathy simulator GAME 4 CHANGE than the (offputtingly self righteous) marketing might lead you to believe. I think this is both a good and bad thing. The way Senua experiences mental illness / hallucinations is hyperstylized and painted with both ridiculous elements of gameification (FOLLOW THE PUZZLE RUNES IN UR MINDZ EYE 4 NEXT OBJECTIVE) and nu-metal woad raider mythological window dressing. It's all just a tad TOO self-seriously morose and hellish and obsessed with exaggerated primeval suffering, and this God of Trauma vibe makes Senua's experiences of mental illness like, totally unrelatable and unaligned with the primary needs and struggles of people dealing with psychosis today. These real-life concerns are usually way more mundane and demoralizing; low decibel but high impact social and material struggles concerning healthcare availability, getting hired/making rent, and functioning in a a hostile individualist world of bootstrap productivity designed for neurotypical people but empathetic to nobody! I really dont understand how, aside from "ending stigma/spreading awareness" this game offers any real calls to action for the lifting up of mentally ill people. Ninja Theory framing their games marketing so high-mindedly but not engaging with any ideas of real material advocacy is laughable, and imo people are completely justified in their disgust and divestment from the entire project based on that alone.

BUT BUT BUT

As a survival horror / walking sim tonal experiment with a unique setting and bold audiovisual design? There are some very interesting choices here. The 3d sound design and fully narrated internal greek chorus is moody, genuinely disturbing, and almost totally unique in popular gaming. The FMV/CGI composite memory sequences have a singular, scuzzy visual texture I just love. IMO Melina Juergens delivers a really absurd performance of almost universally one-note agonized wailing, but her naive (and probably badly directed) commitment to the "heightened intensity equals good acting" bit is equal parts camp and actually kind of cool and transporting if you can meet it where it's at??? The game lags and fails in many ways (redundant, tepid puzzles, kind of awful combat that truly feels there for no reason) but there are a lot of laudable aesthetic choices that give it a much more entrancing and horrific atmosphere than it would have without them. I think this is FAR less of a "mental illness empathy sim" than it is an unrelentingly bleak tone poem about celtic death mythology/ripoff chris cunningham music video using stylized trappings about mental illness to reinforce its oppressive atmosphere, without being 100% hostile and stigmatizing to people with mental health conditions in real life. Personally? I think it's okay for media to explore stylized (even grandiose, mythologized, lurid, "unhelpful") renditions of neuroatypical characters in all kinds of settings, especially when it does make an effort to not make you hate or fear schizophrenic people by its end. I DONT think its okay for work like this to advertise itself as groundbreaking or progressive, especially with so little material centering the lives of neurodivergent people out there.

That's maybe a weird line to draw, and I completely understand (but dont fully agree with) anyone feeling like it's 100% not okay to use such a sensitive topic as window dressing for your grimdark survival horror game under any circumstances. I COMPLETELY agree that the marketing of this game is maybe the most ableist and grotesque thing about it and that just calling it an exploitation horror game would be way more honest. It's like if fromsoftware came out saying that bloodborne is ACTUALLY about ENDING MENTAL ILLNESS STIGMA with FULLY RESEARCHED DEPICTIONS OF BREAKS FROM REALITY. like i dont care if you parade footage from some sensitivity focus group in your making of featurette who the fuck are you guys kidding

fyi I am not someone who deals with hallucinations or any of the symptoms Senua (and millions of irl people) experience, so I am by no means any authority on this--plz dont listen to me i have no power or sway 0:). I'm a big dumb idiot writing about a middling videogame with aesthetics i only sometimes really clicked with!

also the credits song is one of the most embarrassing and maudlin things of all time

also its SO stupid they're making a sequel to this and it totally reveals the insincerity behind all their high-minded promotion of the first game :)

I played this game while I was at home suffering from a mental cocktail of anxiety and depression because I was furloughed from my job and forced to quarantine because of the 2020 global pandemic, and co-oping with a friendly stranger who helped me no matter how many times I fell down that tower with the lights moved me so much that it made me ugly cry during the credits.

Part of me wants to be cynical and say that the game wouldn't have been as impactful to me if I played it at a different time when I wasn't so emotionally vulnerable, but that part of me also realizes that bringing cynicism to the table when talking about Journey feels like missing the overall message of the game. A big thanks to the developers of this game for giving me just a tiniest drop of hope in an otherwise bleak time. I'd apologize for not playing this game sooner but I realize now that I played it at the perfect time.