Solve a hot pink murder mystery in Danganronpa

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“Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc,” an anime-styled visual novel detective game newly-released on PC from developer Spike-Chunsoft, is as hard to explain succinctly as it is to pronounce.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a good way to unwind

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Sometimes after a long day, you don’t necessarily want to play a hyper-competitive, logic-based, fast twitch fighting or shooting game. Sometimes you want to just chill. The Animal Crossing series has always been good for that, but the recent 3DS release Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer might be the most chill game Nintendo has ever devised.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a ghost story from the murky depths

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Fatal Frame is a series that seems like it’s been waiting over a decade for the Wii U console to come along. The esteemed horror games that have players fighting ghosts by taking their picture seem tailor-made for the system’s Game Pad, which allows players to hold the controller like a camera as their character does in the game. However, while it has great atmosphere throughout, actually busting ghosts is where Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, like a panicked victim in a horror movie, stumbles.

Superhot is a slow-motion ballet of bullets

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While many first-person shooters have tried to make the player feel like the protagonist of a hard-boiled action movie, nothing makes it feel as smooth and effortless as Superhot. Countless games have employed a “bullet time” mechanic to slow down the action to a crawl while letting players react to danger in real time, emphasizing the spectacle of the action when it’s at its peak.

Getting the band back together with ‘Rock Band 4’

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For years, Rock Band was my go-to party game. But with the advent of a new generation of consoles, those plastic instruments have been left to gather dust. Rock Band 4 reintroduces the classic recipe for a new generation, but that classic is missing a little of the spice I remember.

Capcom’s classic character is honored in ‘Mega Man Legacy Collection’

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There’s been a recent trend in the video game industry of companies collecting, anthologizing, and remastering their classic titles to re-release on modern platforms. “Mega Man Legacy Collection” is part of a new breed of anthology that isn’t content to update a classic, but instead seeks to honor its history. And with Capcom’s iconic little blue robot, what a history it is.

‘Grim Fandango Remastered’ digs up a classic PC game

This article originally appeared on The Oakland Press.

 

Grim Fandango Remastered features a new graphic setting with improved lighting and textures, which can be toggled on and off with a button press.

 

Originally released in 1998, Grim Fandango is often considered to be one of the classics of the adventure game genre, but for years it was difficult to find. At long last, the legal hurdles have been cleared, and a remastered version has been released by the original game’s creator, Tim Schafer, and the people at his new studio, Double Fine.

But does one of the classic LucasArts titles hold up to the legacy it’s built over 17 years? I approached Grim Fandango Remastered as a new player, having never tried the original release. While Double Fine has dusted off the old title and given it a shiny new finish, some of the dated mechanics have still gotten rusty over the years.

‘Sunset Overdrive’ is all about enjoying the apocalypse

This article originally appeared on The Oakland Press.

Who ever said the end of the world had to be depressing?

That seems to be the central theme in developer Insomniac’s newest game, Sunset Overdrive, an exclusive to the Xbox One. While titles like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us have focused on the soul-crushing despair of living in a monster-overrun apocalypse, Sunset Overdrive asks, if the rules of society don’t apply anymore, why not take your pants off and go swinging on the power lines? The result plays like a classic Tony Hawk game where you can shoot mutants, or as Sunset Overdrive refers to it, “the Awesomepocalypse.”

Sunset Overdrive offers a mix of Tony Hawk-esque mobility with over-the-top weaponry in a cheerfully-post-apocalyptic world.

‘A City Sleeps’ is a fleeting dream

This article originally appeared on The Oakland Press.

Do you ever have a fascinating, enjoyable dream that suddenly ends before you really get a chance to explore it? A City Sleeps is like that.

In an unusual departure for developer Harmonix, creators of the highly-popular Rock Band and Dance Central series, A City Sleeps plays like a blend of tough-as-nails side scrolling shooters like Ikaruga, mixed with the trance music aesthetic of games like Rez. When playing with a gamepad, the basic action is like that of a twin stick shoot-em-up, where your left thumbstick controls the movement of your character and the right thumbstick controls the direction of your shots.

In A City Sleeps, it can get hectic trying to pick out your character amidst the maelstrom of neon-colored bullets.

‘Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax’ delivers fast, fresh fighting and story

This article originally appeared on The Oakland Press.

Understanding what Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is requires first unpacking the name. Ultimax is an expanded, updated version of 2012’s Persona 4 Arena, a fighting game based on the characters from Persona 4. Persona 4 is a Japanese RPG in the Persona series, itself a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series.

A pop star fighting an android in a food court is one of the many weird matchup possibilities in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.