HIGH Each level contains a different scenario.

LOW The pacing of each round can drag.

WTF Is that … Lo Wang from Shadow Warrior?

Sometimes I’m in the mood for an 80-hour epic across worlds, exploring untamed reaches of the universe with a squadron of rich characters. Other times, I admire a game that has a single idea and can get in and get out quickly enough to impart that idea without overstaying its welcome. Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator is the latter.

Originally developed during a 48-hour game jam, its humble scope is its greatest strength. Borrowing heavily from The Secret of Monkey Island’s iconic “insult swordfighting”, 2D fighting games, and the comedy of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Oh…Sir!! pits players against one another (or against the CPU) in an 8 Mile-like battle of insults.

The gameplay is so simple that it could probably work as a card game. Players go head to head with a list of words and sentence fragments between them. From this list, players draw subjects, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, and such like a reverse Mad Libs, piecing together the sickest of burns.

As players take turns choosing one word or fragment at a time, that selection is removed from the field of available choices. Players continue to pick until the selection is depleted or there are no more choices that would make grammatical sense. Each player also has two additional phrases in their hand, unseen by the other player. These can be shuffled out once-per-insult. These secret phrases can be the difference between winning or losing, and they add just enough unpredictability to matches to keep them interesting.

In the end, players end up constructing absurd insults that adhere to a very Monty Python-esque brand of humor, such as “Your mother / does not like / your math teacher / and / your cousin’s car / smells of / a hamster!”. Once an insult is played, it does damage to the opponent’s health bar proportional to the number of segments used.

This structure creates an interesting set of risk/reward balances throughout the battle. Players are rewarded for creating the longest insult possible, but the opponent may take the word needed to finish the sentence before it can be completed. If a sentence is left unfinished, it does no damage and forfeits a turn, which can be disastrous in neck-and-neck battles.

For even greater risk/reward, players are occasionally presented with the opportunity to forfeit the current round and carry their insult into the next for an opportunity to make an extremely long and high-scoring phrase. Of course, if that second set of words is a dead end, then the player just wasted two rounds.

Adding another twist, each player selects from one of several fully-voiced and lovingly animated characters. Each has an insecurity, be it their sense of style, their family, and so on. Insults that contain elements of those sensitive issues double the damage of the entire insult, leading to some devastating blows to the ego.  However, I felt like this mechanic could have been made a bit more interesting.

As it is, each character has a set vulnerability that remains constant, but it would be more interesting if the weaknesses were randomly assigned at the beginning of each bout. In such case, players would have to be observant of the other player’s actions. Do they always start their insults with a familial subject matter? That could be the type of card that they’re trying to get off of the playing field to protect themselves, and may serve as an indicator of what their weakness is – much like real life, bullies tend to insult others in areas that they’re insecure about.

The package comes with multiplayer (online and offline) single matches against the CPU, a traditional fighting-game arcade mode, and a thorough training mode. It’s surprisingly full-featured.

Overall, the game presents simple but compelling word strategy with just the right mix of predictability and random chance. One’s enjoyment of Oh…Sir!! may come down to whether or not the style of humor clicks, but it’s hard to deny that it delivers great value for its tiny $2 asking price.

Also, your face smells of a dead parrot’s farts. Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Vile Monarch and published by Gambitious Digital Entertainment. It is currently available on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 2 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 0.5 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Though rude and employing some very tame toilet humor, there is no profanity and little objectionable material.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game plays well without audio, but the voice acting does serve as one of the core appeals of the game.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH Some gems in the soundtrack’s large assortment of songs.

LOW Unpleasant visuals.

WTF The game-within-a-game about getting high and going to classes.

One Way Trip will either grip players or lose them completely within the first five minutes of gameplay. Structured like a visual novel with only the most rudimentary of possible interactions, it sells itself entirely on the story it tells.

The game begins with college students/brothers Gordon and Barry drinking and watching TV in their dorm room when an announcement comes on screen. Apparently, the nation’s water supply has been poisoned, and anyone who drank tap water that day has less than six hours left to live. Both boys infected, they determine that their story mustn’t end on their couch, so they choose to set off in pursuit of a cure. Before long, they get involved in sci-fi rebellions and cross hostile terrain on the backs of cockroaches with the heads of wolves.

Suffice it to say, things get a bit trippy.

From the very first moments, its presentation hits hard. I hardly know where to begin, but let’s start with the visuals. They are garish. Drenched in pastel colors, the backgrounds look like they’ve been drawn with crayon and colored pencil while the character sprites seem to be traced from photographs of real people.

These two styles don’t fit together at all, and the drawings each character has are inconsistent and often quite ugly. One Way Trip seems to be going for an avant-garde “so bad it’s good” aesthetic, but it never pulls it off.

Sound design, similarly, seems to be aiming for a very minimalist, postmodern, anti-art feeling as well. Throughout the experience there are few sound effects. In fact, the game is silent with the exception of music in the background.

The soundtrack has surprising variety, although my guess is that it was performed by the dev team, or friends of theirs. Offerings here range from alternative hip-hop to shoegazey electronic rock, to some accomplished post-rock compositions. It fit the adventure well and a few were rather enjoyable, but in general the audio gives One Way Trip a “cheap” feeling.

So what about the writing? The entirety of gameplay/storytelling takes place within a text box at the bottom of the screen, and while there’s an impressive amount of it, it’s tedious and meandering. The characters speak casually and in their manner of speaking (not their content) they come across as real people. Most of the conversations don’t end up going anywhere, though, and One Way Trip has terrible economy of language — it takes forever for anything to happen in the story. The unlikable cast spends far too much time just shooting the shit with repetitive, meaningless chatter.

The lackadaisical script could be forgiven if it delivered humor or a great story, but neither is the case. It seems to be aiming to deliver a stoner version of Earthbound in its tone and scope, but the narrative is only half-baked.

For instance, within minutes of starting, the main characters meet a professor at their school who was an assassin who’s killed over 1,000 people. That level of WTF could play well if it was a pure comedy or an absurd adventure like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the text drags too much to impart any sense of comedic timing, and it contradicts the ‘serious’ premise of the characters fighting for their lives against a strict time limit.

Even worse, for a game where the vast majority of time is spent thumbing through line after line of text, it’s presented in a font that can be difficult to read!

As a reviewer who relishes titles with artistic aspirations and uncompromising vision, it pains me to say that I wasn’t able to find anything to enjoy about One Way Trip. Nearly every aspect of its aesthetic was, paradoxically, both aggressively unpleasant and lazily innocuous. Its story switched between wild flights of hard-to-follow, drug-like fantasy and drudging resistance to do anything at all for long stretches of time. I’m certain that this work will connect with a very specific type of player, but it was like nails on a chalkboard to me.  Rating: 1.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Beret Applications LLC and published by Beret Applications LLC. It is currently available on PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately four hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Sexual Themes, Violence, Use of Drugs, Strong Language, and Blood. Drug use is a strong, reoccurring theme in the game. Even as someone who does not mind profanity, this game’s excessive use of profanity came across as juvenile.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game does not use audio cues in any meaningful way (and, in fact, playing it without audio may be preferable in some ways).

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH A musical scene in the first case had me laughing.

LOW Reloading a save still takes too long.

WTF The writers have outdone themselves with wacky witnesses this time!

It’s hard to believe that the Ace Attorney series has been around for 15 years. When it debuted, there wasn’t much like it on US shelves, but a lot has changed. Western audiences have since been introduced to several different Japanese text-based series, and the Visual Novel genre itself has experienced something of renaissance on the PC and Vita. Does the lovable lawyer still have what it takes now that he’s not the only game in town?

Like the previous Ace Attorney games, Spirit of Justice is an interactive courtroom/crime scene investigation drama. Wright and his protégé, Apollo Justice, serve as defense attorneys who defend the innocent. The team must poke around scenes, interview witnesses, and gather evidence to prepare for the courtroom. Once there, they prove their client’s innocence by cross-examining witnesses and shining light on their false accusations.

Narratively, the Ace Attorney series sits in a bit of a precarious position at this point. While each entry stands as singularly-consumable short story collections, they’re greatly enriched if players have familiarity with the previous games. While Capcom has done an admirable job preserving the core Phoenix Wright trilogy with convenient, loving remasters for iOS and 3DS in recent years, the growing number of spinoff entries (some rare, some never localized) can make staying abreast of Wright’s continuing adventures difficult and confusing.

This creates a problem for players who may have missed previous Ace Attorney games. Spirit of Justice does a good job of not relying on that knowledge, but it also doesn’t go far enough to properly introduce elements from previous entries. It’s entirely playable with no prior experience, but I wouldn’t recommend that new players start with this one unless they never plan on trying the others.

The structure of the game is both familiar and inventive, largely due to the fact that the game is split between two disparate locations. Phoenix Wright finds himself involved in the courts in an unfamiliar Eastern land known as Khura’in, while Apollo Justice and Athena participate in cases back home in Japa–er… I mean, “Los Angeles”…

The Khura’in cases involve new mechanics, the most prominent of which are divinations performed by the country’s high priestess, allowing the court to witness a victim’s last few moments of life. Interacting with this new mechanic isn’t always as intuitive as I would like it to be, but it does add an interesting new wrinkle to many of the cases.

Meanwhile, the cases led by Apollo’s team tend to be more in line with the established Ace Attorney tradition. These two settings add nice variety until the story, naturally, folds in on itself with interconnected complexities between cases.

Mechanically, Spirit of Justice remains similar to its predecessor Dual Destinies, but several minor changes have smoothed things over. My favorite addition is an automatically-updating “to-do list” during investigations. In the past, my progress would hit a brick wall if I ran out of ideas about what to investigate next, or to whom to show a piece of evidence. The to-do list alleviates much of this.

Some of the series’ features missing from Dual Destinies also make a welcome return, such as the ability to investigate areas other than crime scenes. Forensic investigations are also back. Players will again find themselves dusting for fingerprints with Ema Skye, which lends a pleasantly tactile approach to investigating, even if it can be a bit slow and cumbersome at times.

Being a story-based game, though, the writing is at the forefront of importance, and to avoid spoilers, I must speak in the vaguest of terms.

While the plot doesn’t reach the highs of previous entries, it remains clever and entertaining throughout. More than anything, the talent of the writers and localization team are on full display in Spirit of Justice. Each line, from the dialogue to the evidence description, pops with personality and energy. The new characters are almost uniformly some of the strongest in the series, and the incidental writing had me laughing at points. The game is chock-full of genuinely memorable and inventive moments, my favorite of which being a musical number that erupts in the courtroom during the first case.

Spirit Of Justice also takes some brave leaps forward by reintroducing Maya Fey (mostly absent from the series lately) while relationships among the main cast are recontextualized and drama erupts. It’s clear that the team has grown, matured, and changed over time — a level of long-term development rarely seen in games.

The biggest letdown, arguably, is the new prosecutor, Nahyuta Sahdmadhi. While I like his design and personality, he feels flatter and more one-note than previous prosecutors. He’s by no means a bad character, but he just has too many similarities to past prosecutor Godot to feel entirely original, and he’s playing against a cast of characters that have been built and refined over 15 years.

Overall, Spirit of Justice is a must-play for fans of Phoenix Wright’s continuing adventures. Though some minor mechanical quibbles remain, this is, by far, the most intuitive and visually engaging entry in the series. The amount of innovation and genuine humor found throughout paint a rosy picture for the future of the franchise and make Spirit of Justice the freshest courtroom since the first! Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Capcom and published by Capcom. It is currently available on 3DS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the 3DS. Approximately 24 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, and Violence. Much of the game revolves around investigating murders. While the game does not revel in its gore, it also does not shy away from showing or describing characters being killed in rather horrific ways.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game remains entirely playable without audio.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The bots all have appealing designs and personalities.

LOW I wish there was a bit more strategy to it.

WTF I still haven’t found an instance where teleportation would be helpful.

It makes me happy to pick up a game that has even half the amount of care and attention that Blade Ballet’s developers put into it. Everything about the presentation feels crisp, immediate, and appealing. Beauty is only skin deep, though.

In Blade Ballet, players control small robots outfitted with swords and shields. The bots can spin, lunge forward, and perform a number of other offensive actions to destroy their opponent. One direct sword hit is enough to destroy a bot, so players must carefully balance caution and recklessness.

There are a number of bots from which to choose, and each is outfitted with a different configuration of weapons and shields. Some have three blades surrounding their hull, making them spiked balls of destruction. Others have one extra-long sword and extra shields, giving that bot the advantage of range, but requiring more precision when going in for the kill.

The bots are fairly maneuverable, but the controls come off as a bit floaty. The floatiness seems intentional, though, almost as if the bots are pucks on an air hockey table.

The predominant form of attack is spinning around using R1 or L1, turning each bot into a whirlpool of blades. As much as I tried to play the patient, thrusting fencer, I found myself being repeatedly beaten by those who constantly spin – they’re like the Tasmanian Devil holding lightsabers.

Because of this dominance through spinning, it becomes, essentially, a game of luck. Whoever’s sword makes contact first wins. I would prefer that the swords instead pushed the opponent backwards when making contact, since all of the stages are peppered with obstacles and traps. As is, the one-hit kill mechanic demands precision, but the spinning and floaty controls favor blind aggression.

For these reasons, Blade Ballet feels a bit confused. On one hand, its quick death mechanics and wide selection of fighters imply that it aspires to be a more strategic game of positioning and spatial awareness, like Nidhogg or Furi. On the other hand, its floaty controls and reliance on unpredictable stage hazards seem to indicate that it wants to be a wacky party game, like Starwhal or Gang Beasts. As it is, it doesn’t dedicate itself to either and serves as a lesser approximation of both.

While the visuals are appealing and the bots are full of life, I find myself a bit let down by the gameplay. It’s not precise enough to be a true ballet of blades as the title implies, and really, it’s too bad since the market has room for a top-down Nidhogg. On the other hand, it’s too precise to be a wacky laugh-with-your-mates brawler like Gang Beasts, which it could have done equally well. As is, it is a decent game within reach (in either direction) of being something much greater. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by DreamSail Games and published by DreamSail Games. It is currently available on PS4 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 2 hours of play were devoted to the multiplayer-player mode. There is no single-player mode.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence and “Users Interact”. Though it is a game about blade-based combat, there is absolutely no gore or dismemberment of any kind.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game can be played without audio without any detriment to the experience.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Far away from the stadiums full of lights, roaring audiences, and sponsored teams of the ever-growing eSports spectacle are enthusiasts gathering amongst themselves for underground fight clubs. Gathered in whatever spaces they can secure for the afternoon, fighters step up to make a name and become local legends. The road to worldwide championship is long and arduous, but it begins with whispered tales of legendary fighting feats in the local halls.

Red Bull, a long time sponsor of eSports, has begun to turn their attention towards the underground tournaments of local competitive gamers with its Proving Ground series of tournaments across the United States and Canada. Instead of slapping their name on massive multimedia events that draw hundreds of thousands of audience members, they’re providing opportunities for the up-and-comers in the fighting game community. It’s exciting to see such a behemoth of a company giving back to the community in a way that has the potential to shape the future of competitive gaming.

As the name, Proving Ground, suggests, Red Bull has their eyes on the players that show promise in local fights. The Red Bull representatives that I spoke to unanimously voiced a strong desire to ultimately send many of the hometown heroes to the big leagues, so to speak.

But Red Bull is not creating these communities overnight. Rather, they are providing funding and personnel to fighting game communities that already exist. In that way, what I witnessed at the third of four Seattle Battle Operas wasn’t strictly a Red Bull-sponsored event in its infancy, but actually a culmination of many years’ work and dedication by the Seattle-based fighting game community.

Much of the blood, sweat, and tears belong to one Denniz Bengisoy, who spent most of the event with his clipboard and computer, making sure that the tournament of well over 100 competitive fighters was going smoothly. Though he and his team were constantly making adjustments to the tournament to account for last minute changes and additions, he was very friendly and gracious enough to sit down with me and explain how this event came to be.

Denniz, pronounced “Dennis”, started hosting fighting game tournaments in 2011, but his origins into the fighting scene couldn’t be any humbler. He recalled that the first tournament he hosted, a Mortal Kombat tournament at a local LAN center called GameClucks, was only attended by himself and his friend, whom he had collaborated with to set it up. Disappointed, the two of them sat amongst empty chairs waiting for anyone to show up, but no one came.

Finally, the owner, Chris Anderson, wandered over to their station, curious as to why the area was so quiet. Denniz explained their situation, and Chris smiled and refunded their money. He encouraged them to consistently keep coming back, week after week, and to not be discouraged by their lack of immediate success.

Over the following weeks, Denniz and Chris worked together to create an inviting environment for players to come and compete, and, slowly, players began to take notice. Before long, Denniz was managing tournaments made up of a healthy-sized group of players. They even managed to catch the attention of some of the Seattle “old guard”; local legends of the Seattle fighting game scene who had stopped or lessened their playing over the years.

In that time, Denniz has increased the visibility of his group by volunteering for Northwest Majors and Magic: The Gathering tournaments. These opportunities have also taught him about many important aspects of managing his own community and tournaments.  Denniz said that this was one of the best ways to grow the community. If he shows interest and takes part in other communities’ events, they are more likely to take an interest in his.

Over time, Denniz and his hard-working support team have created an active and diverse community that gives the Seattle fighting game elite a venue to test their meddle against one another and gives newcomers a place where they can be trained and mentored by more experienced players.

Denniz also decried the loss of local hubs of game activity. The decrease in arcades and the move from local to online multiplayer have made real-life meeting-places and gaming communities rare. This is compounded in the fighting game community by the globalization of EVO and other prestigious fighting game tournaments. The scale and scope of these events takes the attention away from West Coast/East Coast rivalries, and smaller rivalries between towns which, to a degree, anonymizes the actual, real-world locations each player represents.

Provided location, community, and consistency, though, Denniz has found that players are itching to get involved in local communities once again, and the developments in the fighting game genre are continuing to give his group a steady boost of new talent.

The release of Street Fighter V, which is in many ways more forgiving and kinder to beginners than Street Fighter IV before it, has brought with it many new players curious to learn the ropes from the “09ers” (those who’ve been playing Street Fighter IV since its launch in 2009). To a lesser extent, new Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, Skullgirls, and Killer Instinct releases also bring waves of new competitors. Even Super Smash Bros. games, Denniz says, bring new blood into tournaments about four or five years after their release, once those players start getting curious about more mainline fighting games.

That diversity in game preference was immediately visible when players started filtering into the room. Though the formal tournament consisted of Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- and Street Fighter V, practice screens across the room were alight with Skullgirls, Killer Instinct, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and more.

Though Denniz doesn’t play as much as he used to, his competitive nature makes him a great event manager. He states that he “wants to see [his] friends lose” because losing means learning. Losing means being challenged. Losing means being bested by the beginners that they trained months ago. And losing makes the victories even sweeter when the odds are overcome.

With the funding and support of Red Bull, Denniz Bengisoy and his community have turned their passion into something grander than they could have imagined on their own. Though Seattle hasn’t yet made a splash in the world-class competitive Street Fighter scene, Denniz hopes that his community, bolstered by each other’s support, will rise to that ultimate challenge.

HIGH The puzzle rooms generally find a near-perfect difficulty balance
LOW The story does not hold together
WTF The twist at the end of the game is infuriatingly unearned

The Zero Escape series, starting with 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, has been a trailblazer in the visual novel genre. These works are typified by book-length amounts of text, often including player choices that take the narrative into one of several branches. In the case of Zero Escape and its kin, the storytelling is broken up with escape-the-room puzzles. Let there be no mistake, though—the story is front and center in this genre.

Though visual novels have been popular in Japanese markets since the early 80s (making up nearly 70% of Japanese game sales by 2006) only the safest and least genre-adherent titles had previously been brought West. Following the surprise success of 999 on Western shores, those restrictions have been challenged, and Western audiences have been introduced to a second generation of Zero Escape’s cohorts such as Danganronpa and Steins;Gate. Does the O.G. of the genre have the same prestige it amassed years ago, or has it been usurped since its last iteration?

First and foremost, Zero Time Dilemma is a sequel in all senses of the word. It is made exclusively for those who have followed the series up to this point and is not a good place to start for new players. For long-time fans, though, ZTD is a fitting conclusion to the story and brings excitement with callbacks to earlier entries. In fact, the three groups of characters (more on that later) are essentially broken up into “Team 999”, “Team Virtue’s Last Reward”, and “ZTD newcomers”, with each answering questions and tying up loose ends related to their specific entries.

Zero Time Dilemma begins in the same way that previous Zero Escape games began: nine people wake up in an unknown location, kidnapped by a masked man named Zero who forces them to play Saw-esque games to avoid gruesome fates, and horrible deaths wait around every corner in Zero’s underground bunker of puzzles. This time the rules are a bit more straightforward than they’ve been before— the door to freedom will only open when at least six members of the group have been killed.

It may start the same, but much of the structure after ZTD’s opening segment is significantly different than its predecessors’. Unlike previous installments, the characters are divided into three teams and kept separate from each other for the majority of the story. It gives more time to explore the intricacies of the relationships between three sets of three characters, but I missed seeing the cast play off of each other, as we have before.

Another change is that instead of telling a mostly linear story (branching storylines and time-travel aspects aside) Zero Time Dilemma treats each scene like a separate vignette, allowing players to go through most of them in any order. Though the writing tends to be strong in each individual scene, this decision ultimately hurts the pacing of the first half, as actions don’t build towards much and choices don’t compound over time.

Furthermore, these individual scenes take place in multiple timelines where different combinations of characters have died and different events have transpired. It’s quite difficult to keep the timelines straight, further decreasing the immediacy of any one situation. A certain level of disorientation is intentional, but it does not play to the story’s strengths.

This disorientation is a shame because the dialogue in each scene tends to be quite strong, and the writers have become masters at creating smartly-constructed, nail-bitingly intense situations for the characters to work their way out of. The narrative is not afraid to deliver some heavy punches, gruesomely killing off major characters and tasking players with making gut-wrenching decisions. Unfortunately, the strengths inherent in each scene are let down by the script’s lack of cohesion.

The confusion of timelines also compounds a problem that Virtue’s Last Reward (the second of the series) had. Since these titles require searching every possible timeline for clues and information, players must eventually replay all of the major choices and choose the opposite of what they originally picked to ensure that all information is acquired. Knowing that all choices will have to be reversed undercuts their weight, though. Any strong feelings about making a hard choice are negated since the player will have to do both, making it pointless to invest in the events.

This dissonance is amplified in Zero Time Dilemma because choices not only have to be immediately reversed to experience all of the content, but they’re also robbed of meaning by being taken out of timeline context. Whether a character was killed has no bearing on future chapters because the game randomly throws the player into scenes where that character survived regardless. It’s all rendered meaningless.

So that’s the first half of ZTD. The latter half? It falls apart even harder.

Don’t get me wrong—the drama is an exciting rollercoaster, but it absolutely does not adhere to any kind of internal consistency or logic. Without going into spoilers, the game directly contradicts information it had given multiple times, it has impossible grandfather paradoxes inherent in its time travel narrative, and the biggest twist is completely absurd because it’s based on information that all the characters knew, but was intentionally and clumsily obfuscated from the players. It could have left me with the feeling of “wow! I’ll have to watch that all again to see what kinds of hints they left for me!”, but it completely drops the ball as it defies not only probability, but also possibility. When the big reveal happened, I was unsure whether to laugh at the sheer audacity of it or be angry about how graceless it is.

More disappointing on a personal level is the fact that Zero Time Dilemma’s script does not incorporate the same amount of urban legends, unsolved mysteries, and pseudoscience from the real world that previous entries had. Grounding aspects of the scripts in genuinely unexplained phenomena made them feel well-researched and educational, prompting me to do reading and learning after turning the games off. Apart from a couple of brief instances, Zero Time Dilemma drops this motif almost completely, instead spiraling into its own increasingly-incoherent narrative.

So the overarching story is a bit of a mess, but what about the gameplay? ZTD occasionally breaks away from cinematics to have the player complete short escape-the-room sequences. These are, for the most part, well-composed and are set at a good difficulty level, allowing most challenges to be solvable while still making players feel accomplished and clever. While I generally enjoyed these, they felt like they were keeping me away from the story rather than being used to further the story. They aren’t the main attraction here but they are genuinely gratifying to complete, complementing the moment-to-moment play even if they’re not as memorable as the drama.

As mentioned previously, the majority of Zero Time Dilemma’s scenes are gripping and exciting, but the faults in the overall structure of the narrative let the individually-brilliant vignettes down. It’s also following up on two of the finest games in the genre, and its strengths are not cast in a favorable light by comparison. I hope that we haven’t heard the last of the Zero Escape team, but I also hope that their future projects rein themselves in and they produce something more coherent and personal. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd. and published by Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd. It is currently available on PC, PS Vita, and 3DS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Vita. Approximately 21 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains sexual themes, strong language, blood, and intense violence. This game is markedly more violent and gruesome than previous entries in the series. Though bodily mutilation is not shown on screen, there are multiple scenes of dismembered bodies, copious amounts of blood, and moments of intense violence happening just off screen. Sexual themes are relatively light, with the exception of one character who prominently displays her breasts throughout the entirety of the game.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game remains playable without sound thanks to subtitles and an ongoing log of all dialogue exchanges.

Remappable controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The inventiveness of the core mechanic

LOW The narrative doesn’t fit the gameplay

WTF It’s amazing to see how far this game has come from its original prototype

The Xbox One’s Kinect has been on life support for years, and the future is looking even more grim for the once-mandatory peripheral. Kinects have been left out of most Xbox One bundles, Kinect integration has been removed from the OS menu, and the newly-announced Xbox One S has done away with its dedicated Kinect port altogether. What was once the defining trait of Microsoft’s third home console is now a relic of the past, quietly being swept under the rug by the decision-makers at Microsoft.

I mourn the decline of the Kinect, as some of my favorite games on the console make heavy use of the motion-tracking camera. From the brilliant Fantasia: Music Evolved to the now-defunct Xbox Fitness, developers showed some astounding advances in what the Kinect was capable of, and the level of inventiveness and novelty on display is yet to be matched on the console. With Kinect on the way out, though, one brave indie studio from the Netherlands thinks that it may have one more masterpiece left in it.

FRU, at its core, is a 2D puzzle-platformer with luscious graphics and a simple control scheme: use the thumbstick to move and the trigger or bumper to jump. Where it becomes interesting, though, is in its integration of the Kinect camera.

In FRU, the player appears as a silhouette on screen. Areas outside of the silhouette depict the landscape as it exists in the present time of the game’s unnamed main character, and areas within the silhouette exist in the distant past. Between the two time periods, objects may appear and disappear, areas may become flooded with water, and hazards can pop into or out of existence. Players must guide the character through these single-screen puzzles by angling their bodies and contorting their limbs to create platforms, trigger switches, bypass dangers, and cut paths through solid objects.

Despite minimal explanation the game becomes immediately understandable for players, and it isn’t long before FRU begins increasing the complexity of its puzzles. Tutorials and introduction of new elements are brilliantly paced, and puzzles are uniformly clever without ever feeling unbearably taxing—mentally, that is.

Throughout the game, I had to bend my body into all kinds of shapes to allow for the safe passage of my character. It is difficult to describe the connection I formed with the silent avatar, but there was something magical about hunching my body over to close a gap, watching the character swim up my arm, or letting the character run down my leg and jump off of my toes to safety. Carrying the character over pits with my own hands brought us both into the same physical space, in a way, and it made me feel like an integral part of the game in a way that I’ve never experienced before.

The magic of this experience never wore off for me. I can only compare the novelty of gameplay and slickness of execution with Super Mario Galaxy and The Unfinished Swan. Though not as cerebral as Braid or Portal, it’s the type of game that gripped me from beginning to end.

Performance-wise, the game runs incredibly smoothly, and its Kinect integration worked admirably, with my only annoyance being when it defaulted to my girlfriend instead of me when she was on the couch watching me play. Given how rough the demo of the original version of the game was (included as a series of bonus levels after nabbing all of the collectables) it’s impressive how well the final game is optimized.

Narratively, the game tells a very simple tale through lines of text hidden in the environment of particular stages. It’s ancillary to the main attraction, though, and serves as flavor text adding a sense of storybook wonder.

The primary complaint that I’ll level against the story is that it doesn’t comment upon or reinforce the themes established in the gameplay in any way—beyond explaining why the character wears a fox mask, the story and gameplay feel entirely separate. The story doesn’t reflect many of the prominent aspects of the experience, such as the degradation of structures over time, receiving help from other worlds, or the existence of windows between the past and present. As is, the game feels as if it only told half of the story that it wanted to and left many of the most important questions unanswered.

Though the game has factors in place to encourage ease of use, such as the simple control scheme, I feel it necessary to warn that the game requires a fair amount of gross-motor dexterity. Players with restricted mobility will likely experience difficulties which may not be surmountable. Though most levels have multiple feasible solutions, some levels, particularly towards the end of the game, were exacting and physically taxing for me, and I’m a young adult with no physical restrictions. If players are not able to physically engage in a yoga session, I have to recommend a hard pass on this game.

Overall, FRU absolutely delighted me with its ingenuity and elegance. It has gone on to become not only a surprisingly enjoyable indie gem, but one of my absolute favorite exclusives for the Xbox One, and one of my favorites of all time. I heartily recommend this game without reservation to anyone with a Kinect peripheral and the physical ability to play it. Though it falls a bit short in some niceties that would have made the experience accessible to wider audiences, it delivers a slick and well-designed experience that kept me smiling, stretching, and sweating throughout. Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Through Games. It is currently available on Xbox One. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Xbox One. Approximately six hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. No time was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: The ESRB does not list any descriptors in their E rating of the game, and I did not encounter anything in my playthrough that would cause me any concern when showing this game to children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game is entirely playable without audio.

Remappable controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The variety between characters keeps the combat fresh.

LOW Battles against low-level grunts are repetitive and often mindless.

WTF Massive screen-tearing during the opening cinematic.

The Senran Kagura series, though still relatively young, has been surprising and diverse since it first made its way to western shores a mere three years ago. Since then, the games have been 2.5D side-scrolling brawlers in the style of Streets of Rage on the 3DS, 3D brawlers in the style of Bayonetta on the PS Vita and PS4, a cooking game on the PS Vita, and a Japan-only card battling game for mobile devices.

What is perhaps most surprising, though, is that a series marketed solely on buxom anime girls has often been the talk of the town in brawler circles with each subsequent release. Now, with a PC port of the series’s first 3D foray, audiences who don’t own a Vita can experience a pivotal entry in this curious franchise for themselves.

Shinovi Versus, originally on PS Vita, is a marvelous PC port. The game runs at a crisp and consistent 60fps with only minor visual glitches that, for me, did not affect the gameplay. Also notable is that the controls are fully customizable, and there are even a few options that show that the developers put some serious time and care into this port, such as the fact that the game starts in a borderless windowed mode. Perhaps the only thing that did not survive the port was the opening video (a hand-drawn anime scene) that had pretty egregious screen-tearing. Though it was a poor first impression, I encountered no other problems to that scale throughout my play experience.

The game’s visuals are largely appealing.  There are times when it’s clear that it’s a port from the Vita, as some character and environmental models seem a touch too low-poly for the upscaled resolution, although some models can look especially smooth, so obviously some work has been put into improving these aspects.

Senran Kagura’s battle system is quite deep for a 3D brawler. Attacks are broken up between light and heavy attacks, and combinations of these buttons can trigger different sequences, mostly used for launching enemies into the air. Once enemies are airborne, the player can dash to them and continue with a long air combo, finishing by either slamming the enemy to the ground or initiating a subsequent air combo.

Where the combat gets interesting is with its two transformation states. Once the player fills a power bar, they can trigger either a Shinobi Transformation or Frantic Mode.

Shinobi Transformation triggers a costume change into a signature outfit, refills the player’s health, boosts attack and defense, and allows access to extremely-powerful special attacks—it basically makes the character more powerful all-around, and the timing of this change can sways the tide of battle.

Because this change can be seen as a one-time refill of the life bar, players are encouraged to do as much damage as they can before triggering this transformation. This often turns into an uphill battle against a transformed and more powerful shinobi while the player carefully manages her health, waiting for just the right moment to swing the odds back in her favor.

If the battle is going especially well, the player can choose to trigger Frantic Mode. This mode takes away 10% of the character’s health, strips her down to her undergarments, significantly boosts her offense, and reduces her defense. Combos become easier to chain and deadlier than ever, and also allows access to special attacks. This mode is a way to end the battle quickly—either the character becomes an unstoppable train of fury, or she becomes too vulnerable and succumbs to enemy attacks.

There are more than 20 playable characters, and each has a wildly different weapon and moveset. The variety in the fighters is perhaps Shinovi Versus’s greatest strength. Though no fighters will fundamentally change the way that the game is played, players will have to consider each girl’s strengths and weaknesses when approaching each situation.

There are some excellent customizability options available for each girl and players can change outfits, hairstyles, and accessories. The costumes are all thoughtfully and exquisitely constructed, giving even more visual variety to a game already quite diverse in stylistic options to begin with. Items can be bought for easily-obtainable in-game money, and all of the DLC from the PS Vita version has been included in the PC version at no additional cost.

The only criticisms I have are relatively minor. I am a bit annoyed that the on-screen cursor can’t be hidden, particularly since this game is best played with a controller. Also, some of the smaller cannon-fodder enemies are a bit too prone to blocking, slowing the game’s pace to a halt while the player has to wait for them to lower their block before attacking.

Finally, I have to address the sexual elephant in the room—if players find the marketing of Senran Kagura to be uncomfortable, the game itself does nothing to assuage that feeling. Shinovi Versus proudly wears its sexy-anime-girls badge, and it permeates every aspect of the game—from the battles punctuated with slow-motion shots of the girls’ jiggling breasts and butts as clothing tears away, to the writing in which more conversations are held discussing boobs than any other topic.

While Shinovi Versus is undeniably masturbatory in its depiction of female characters, players who aren’t bothered by that fact will find an excellent brawler. For those who are bothered by it, it will be a consistent and difficult-to-ignore problem at every level. I myself have mixed feelings about it, but I can at least appreciate its consistency, as it never pretends to not be pandering to the horny teenagers of the world.

Overall, Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus is among the finest examples of modern-day 3D brawlers. Though not as technical as a Bayonetta or God Hand, its wide variety of characters keeps its lightning-fast ninja battles exciting and fresh to the end, and it comes highly recommended to those who don’t mind a little (okay, a lot of) T&A in their fisticuffs. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 13 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 1 hour of play was spent in multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is Unrated on PC but contains: partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language, and violence. The game is very sexually-focused and contains weapon combat, though there is little or no blood.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The game plays just as well without audio and all dialogue is subtitled.

Remappable controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH Its stylish aesthetic is well-realized

LOW The frustrating latter half of the game

WTF Could those rockets be any more uncomfortable to control?

CarneyVale: Showtime is a port of a 2008 Xbox Live Arcade game about flinging a ragdoll circus performer through deadly airborne labyrinths while collecting balloons and rare stars. Slinky, the main character, propels himself by swinging between grapple points in the air and using centrifugal force to fling himself to the next point on his way.

The first thing that stood out about CarneyVale was its striking Cirque du Soleil-style carnival setting. It is celebratory, death-defying, and vaguely sinister in a way that this type of carnival is, and the music and visuals reinforce the fact that Slinky is constantly battling against gravity for daredevil appeal.

Each level has five challenges to complete: finishing the level, collecting all of the balloons, collecting the level’s hidden star, completing the level under the given time limit, and completing the level without taking a single hit. Though the first half of the game’s areas were easy enough for me to fully ace in one go, many of the later areas caused me to prioritize which challenges I intended to finish and make decisions on the fly.

The game is quite short, but I actually usually prefer a few well-designed levels that can be replayed in a variety of ways. The problem is, I don’t feel like the levels were always that well-designed in CarneyVale.

The first of my frustrations came from levels that introduced fire hazards to be avoided. I like that this reinforces the notion of being a death-defying carnival daredevil, but on more than one occasion the fire hazards were put juuuuust a bit too close to the grapple points. I’m not sure whether this was a miscalculation of how far the ragdoll limbs reach or just a cruel design decision, but it proved tiresome at least a handful of times throughout the game.

Worse, there was at least one instance of a rotating fire trap being off-screen from my previous grapple point, meaning that I had to time my fling based on … intuition? Dumb luck? The game gave me no way of knowing whether I was launching myself into safety or danger, which is vital information when one of the level’s five challenges is getting through the level unhurt.

To make it even more annoying, Slinky doesn’t just pass through the fire as one would expect. Slinky collides with the fire as if it were a physical object, killing his vital momentum and sometimes causing two or three hits while I scrambled for ways to get unstuck from the fire.

Later in the game Slinky will encounter rideable rockets, and their controls leave a lot to be desired. Though controlling the rockets’ trajectories with the iPhone’s gyroscope seems like a no-brainer, it is puzzlingly dysfunctional. There’s a sizable delay and a pretty massive dead zone when turning the phone, meaning that players have to make extreme movements in advance of when they want the rocket to actually turn, which usually means a lot of overcorrecting and smashing into walls.

What’s worse, there are no alternate control schemes for the rockets, meaning that players with limited mobility or those who require their play device to be mounted will be unable to progress any further in the game. Similarly, there’s no colorblind mode. The visual design is quite busy, and without seeing the vibrant colors, necessary details may not be obvious. It doesn’t seem like there was much thought put into making the game playable by differently-abled audiences.

My complaints aside, the game did have some rather brilliant touches. The critical path through each level is marked with sporadic arrows, making each one a reassuring encouragement that I was on the right track. Also, when a star is not visible from the critical path, there was often a hazy yellow mist that subtly pulls the player’s attention in the direction of the secret—a very intelligent design decision.

Overall, CarneyVale Showtime offers striking presentation and promising core gameplay which is let down by some questionable design decisions, sometimes-poor controls, and a lack of accessibility options. The balloon-hunting completionist in me enjoyed the first half of the game, swinging through the air and chasing down collectables, but even I grew a bit weary of the latter portion. A three-ring circus this ain’t. Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by the Singapore MIT-GAMBIT Game Lab and published by Appxplore. Code was obtained via the publisher and reviewed on the iPhone. Approximately 2.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

 Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains: comic mischief. I would not have any concerns over the appropriateness of this content for people of any age.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: The audio is nonessential here—it plays just as well without audio.

Remappable controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, and its controls may prove to be restrictive for players with disabilities.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The audio design is absolutely on point

LOW A few puzzles require too much walking between areas

WTF Lengthy memorization puzzles can be challenging

Amanita Design has made quite a reputation for themselves. The Samorost series, Machinarium, and Botanicula have enticed and puzzled players for more than a decade with mechanically simplistic but aesthetically rich point-and-click adventure.

Returning to the series that incited Amanita’s success, Samorost 3 follows a curious little man traveling to various planets to solve environmental puzzles and continue his journey. The game communicates entirely without written language—even in the menus—which gives it an appeal not bounded by words or literacy. The game’s core challenge comes from interacting with alien environments in imaginative ways.

Drawn in Amanita’s unique Monty Python-esque visual style, the worlds of Samorost 3 are, in equal measures, grungy and fantastical. Though much of the art design is grounded in objects that are typically associated with “gross-out” humor such as bulbous pustules, giant hairy insects and fungus, everything is approached with such curiosity and wonder that even these things showcase the beauty of nature. There is no ugliness in the worlds of Samorost, there is only life, and life of all kinds is beautiful.

Similarly, nature is depicted as being inherently musical. Objects in the environment make noise, and even the most cacophonous sounds are treated with artistic reverence. One of the game’s core mechanics is the ability to simply listen closely to the world around the character. Using his trumpet to absorb to the sounds of nature, he can reproduce the music of the world around him, opening secrets and solving puzzles.

The planets and moons visited throughout the game are wildly varied. Some feel lushly beautiful, while others spin quietly through the sterile blackness of space. Each planet has a story to tell, and a unique “thesis statement” of sorts that ties that particular leg of the journey together. The geography and wildlife encountered is bizarre, but just familiar enough to evoke a certain dream-like quality. Everything pedestrian feels alien, like a child playing imaginative games with household objects sitting around her.

Mechanically, the game is simple. Pointing and clicking will allow the character to move around and interact with the world. An occasional item from the inventory is needed, but most puzzles can be solved with simple clicks, though puzzles require careful observation of the visually-dense game environments.

Some challenges, such as triggering musical elements in order, can be trial-and-error and will possibly test the patience of players with poor short-term memories. I got through them, but I found I was more annoyed when I had to coordinate elements between multiple screens. Unfortunately, those screens aren’t always close to each other. Having to walk through two or three screens (some requiring me to solve traversal puzzles to pass through each time) began to wear on me when my efforts to implement a solution proved unfruitful.

Such frustrations, compounded by the slow walking speed, some complicated walking routes between screens, and the lack of shortcuts between disparate locations tried my patience until I realized it was like the game was pushing back against my natural gameplay tendencies. The pace became much more tolerable and actually served as a boon when I put my time concerns out of my mind and cooperated with its meditative pace.

For those having trouble with the puzzles, the game has a handy hint feature. Tucked in the menu is a tome, and inside are drawings that look like design documents giving vague answers to each puzzle. The pictures are just vague enough to require some mental legwork on the part of the player, so these hints give a satisfying boost to those who need a nudge once in a while. When all was said and done, I completed the game in about four hours, so the game isn’t immensely time-demanding under any circumstance.

For as short as the game is, though, it doesn’t feel sparse. Though not an 80 hour epic, it is a nice, bite-sized window into an intriguing world. I spent quite a bit more time, in fact, simply sitting back, having a glass of wine while watching the game world and listening to the music in the environments. Samorost 3 feels like a picture book, and it takes exactly as long as it needs to tell its story and impart its experience.

Ultimately, the game conveys a wonderful sense of adventure and exploration. Samorost 3 is an excellent point-and-click adventure game for those looking for a slow, surreal experience. Finely crafted with an exquisite attention to detail, it’s a pleasure for players who enjoy more aesthetic, less mechanical experiences. Amanita is sitting squarely atop a keenly-defined niche, and they continue to refine their delivery with each expertly-polished title. Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately four hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB, but I did not encounter anything in my playthrough that parents would likely take issue with.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: Though much of the game’s appeal comes from the sound design, it remains playable (though quite a bit more difficult to play) without audio.

Remappable controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options. Visual acuity and distinguishing small details are important in this game and colorblind or vision-impaired players may have trouble.