#PS4
#PS4
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Curly returns to help me take a look at Lethal League Blaze, a fighting game where you bounce a ball around the stage until it builds up time distorting levels of speed through your volleys.
It’s a hell of a sequel with a hype soundtrack to boot.
by Amr @siegarettes
Arca’s Path is straightforward. It’s a game about rolling a ball through abstract spaces, framed in a basic sci-fi plot. It never struck me as something with any big ideas, about its worldview or its mechanics. What it does have is a wonderful sense of tangibility.
The environments are basic but are rendered in chunky shapes and textured with visible brush strokes. Objects fade into view, with a gentle fog revealing the path and objects unfolding into full detail. Paired with VR’s 3D display it gives spaces a diorama-like appeal, where the materials themselves catch your attention. This works even better within its story scenes, where its comic style presentation lays panels in impressionistic spaces and uses the panel borders as windows into multi-layered scenes.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
To Leave feels like a game out of 2008. So much of its design philosophy reflects the aesthetics of the Xbox Live Arcade generation, and the indie game trends that rounded out the end of the previous decade. There’s a story that tries to add a sense of importance by tackling subjects like depression and mental health, and the promise that each moment of gameplay, each written word, is a meaningful and intentional delivery device for metaphor. What this means is a game that mixes elements of cinematic platformers, adventure games, and uh, Flappy Bird? It’s an uneven mix, one that’s often beautiful, though just as often archaic in the way it delivers its points.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Originally designed for the Dreamcast and Neo Geo MVS, Fast Striker is a straightforward, almost routine example of a shoot-em-up. At the same time, it displays all the competences of the genre, providing examples of what makes the genre feel good. It works with its limitations to provide good visual feedback and varied styles.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
With a focus on momentum and aerial combat, Speed Brawl brings one of the best feeling combat systems of modern memory. It combines elements from popular time trial platformers alongside mechanics of tag based fighting games like Marvel Vs. Capcom to create a brawler with a wide range of expressive tools to master. It brings together the need to shave off seconds to get that gold ranking, and the desire to build even more elaborate combos in training mode. All of this is wrapped up in fantastic and varied character designs, each with their own distinct playstyle and synergies.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
With the sheer volume of entries in the Yakuza series, sometimes it becomes hard to talk about just what it is that separates an exceptional entry from a great one. Thankfully the rapid releases of Zero, Kiwami and Yakuza 6 have all put on display different facets of Yakuza’s appeal. Zero remains the peak, with well integrated side stories and strong characterization, Kiwami’s core drama and combat held the game together despite a choppier narrative arc, and Yakuza 6 showed off the series’ incredible ability to capture local flavor. Yakuza Kiwami 2 then, is a synthesis of the work done in these previous entries, collecting the best elements and using them in its return to one of the series’ strongest stories.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
I was totally wrong about SNK Heroines. It’s not the followup to SNK Gals’ Fighter nor the girly themed KOF14 style game I got on first impression. In fact, it completely ditches the familiar mechanics of King of Fighters or any other SNK fighters and goes for a pared down approach to tag style battles.
It’s astounding how many genre conventions SNK Heroines has stripped away. For instance, you can’t even crouch. You won’t deal with any high low mixups, or even any jumping cross ups, since blocking has now been moved to a Smash Bros style block button. Blocking can even be used in the air to do an air dodge, or combined with a direction to perform a dodge roll. Dodge rolls can even be done during blockstun for a small amount of meter.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
If Shape of the World was an, open chill out session, then Anamorphine is its tonal complement. Taking place in a series of intimate, even claustrophobic spaces, it explores the emotional world of Tyler and Elena, a couple dealing with trauma and depression.
Anamorphine makes clear from the go it takes its subject matter very seriously. It opens with a content warning, giving players not only the option to skip the most upsetting scene, but also the option for a more detailed content warning containing spoilers for it. It’s an admirable approach that seems almost obvious in hindsight, and allows people to engage with the game on their own terms.
Which is good, since Anamorphine is a confident study in using space to communicate emotional states. There’s not a single spoken word in its entire run time. Instead it mixes the familiar with abstract, distorting otherwise everyday spaces into reflections of the characters’ mental worlds.
