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Best of the Rest: Susan's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Framed Framed is so elegant and simple that it needs not a single word to teach you how to play. If you understand the basic function of the panels in a comic book and are able to poke things with your finger, you will swiftly understand the basics of how to make things happen in this brilliant mobile game. Arrange the panels one way, and your spy makes a daring escape from the police; position them another way, and he emerges from the wrong door right into the hands of the law. From the very first level, which uses just two panels to illustrate how switching the order of the comic can change the outcome of its events, Framed builds on its simplicity, adding more panels, directionality and timing to create more complex puzzles in its stylish spy-vs-spy thriller. Each page of the comic is a puzzle complete unto itself, making Framed perfectly designed for short bursts of inspiration, or restricted play time. It's one of those games that's so damn clever, you wish you'd thought it up yourself.
Danganronpa Unlimited Battle brings tap-heavy havoc to iOS
The latest game to join the violently dysfunctional Danganronpa family is Unlimited Battle, a co-op action affair coming to iOS next month in Japan. As Gematsu reports, it's a free-to-play game starring the protagonists of visual novel Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, and in it players slingshot the chibi cast across the screen to attack enemies. Unlike other Danganronpas, Unlimited Battle supports four-player co-op as well as single-player. If you're aware of Trigger Happy Havoc's story of entrapment and murder mystery, you may share our confusion as to how Unlimited Battle fits within the series' narrative. Then again, maybe that's misplaced worry. After all, we are talking about games starring a sociopathic robotic bear who masquerades as the principal of a high school...
The best game about depression stars a homicidal toy bear
Whether it's because you can't afford to give the gifts that society says mark you as a good person, or because you're missing someone who used to be at your celebrations, or even just because it's cold and dark, depression can hit particularly hard during the holidays. One of the biggest problems with depression is trying to explain it to people who've only ever experienced the transitory kind that everyone faces at some point in their lives - the kind that hits after a breakup or a loss. They tend to think that depression means you're sad and just need a good cheering up. If you're suffering this holiday season, rather than suffer through another round of suggestions that you "shake it off," consider handing your well-intentioned friends a Vita and copies of Danganronpa:Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa: Goodbye Despair and let Monokuma explain how depression really feels. I'm as surprised as you are that a game starring a homicidal mechanical bear would be a good instructor on the nuances of mental health, and I rather doubt it's what the developers had in mind, but Danganronpa does a surprisingly elegant job of conveying what it can be like to live with depression. In case you're not familiar with the games, they involve a group of exceptional students who are kidnapped, have their memories erased, and are forced to kill each other if they ever want to return home. Admittedly, it's a situation that just about anyone would find depressing - murder someone or never see your loved ones ever again - but the most important part is the villain of the games, known as the Ultimate Despair. Every one of the students is the Ultimate Something-or-other - baseball player, programmer, swimmer, traditional dancer - but the villain's speciality is making people feel despair on such a deep level that they lose all hope. In that state, they become part of the Ultimate Despair's terrorist network because, really, why not? When you don't see the point in anything, does it really matter if you destroy entire cities or kill yourself? Nothing's ever going to get better anyway. It's an extreme depiction that serves the over-the-top nature of the game, but it's a pretty apt description of what it's like to live with depression.
Fan-made Persoronpa Q mash-up looks beary interesting
This fan-made recreation of the Persona Q opening with Danganronpa characters is a little old and it's also quite spoiler-ish, but we figured it's still worth highlighting because, well, it's fantastic. Also, since it's apparently open season on crossovers in Japan, maybe it will nudge Atlus and Spike Chunsoft in the right direction, hmm?
Dead teens and a fiendish bear highlight Danganronpa launch trailer
Like the unholy offspring of Capcom's Ace Attorney series and Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, newly-released Vita murder mystery Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc pits teens against one another in a supernatural trial that is legitimately of life and death importance. [Image: NIS America]
Last of Us DLC, Lightning Returns, TxK join EU PlayStation Store
Yesterday the North American PlayStation Store was updated with a host of new software. Today it's Europe's turn. The highlights of this update include the addition of Jeff Minter's retro-shooter TxK, unexpectedly great roleplaying epic Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 and Left Behind, the final singleplayer DLC release for award-winning zombie apocalypse drama The Last of Us. In addition, European Vita owners now have access to Toukiden and Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. The former is a riff on Capcom's Monster Hunter formula that pits players against oversized beasts drawn from Japanese mythology, while the latter is an anime-inspired visual novel that melds courtroom tension with teenagers murdering one another. It's less grim than it sounds. In less modern news, this update also brings with it the PSN digital release of Atlus' excellent PlayStation 2 roleplaying game Persona 3: FES. While this incarnation lacks certain mechanical improvements added to the PSP's Persona 3 Portable, it still features hundreds of demons to befriend, loveable characters and more teenaged drama than your average inner city high school. A full rundown of today's additions can be found on the European PlayStation.blog. [Image: Llamasoft]
Judge or be judged in new Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc screens, trailer
Anime archetypes and evil remote-controlled bears engage in a murderous battle of wits in Spike Chunsoft's Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, a visual novel set for release next year on the PlayStation Vita. Publisher NIS America sets the stage this week with an array of new screenshots, along with the introductory trailer above. Danganronpa finds a group of high school students trapped in an academy headed up by Monokuma, a two-faced bear that sounds like an unhinged cross between Persona 4's Teddie and a Prinny from the Disgaea series. The only way to win Monokuma's deadly game is to kill a fellow student and not be identified as the murderer in a group-led courtroom trial afterward, under penalty of execution. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc will premiere at retail in North America and digitally via PSN on February 11, 2014.
Three quirky Japanese imports coming to PS Vita
PS Vita owners can look forward to a trio of new localizations bringing fresh weirdness to their handhelds. Up first is Holy Sorcery Story, a dungeon crawler and roguelike focused on curry preparation, due later this year in North America from developer Compile Heart. Aksys announced the localization during Anime Expo (via Siliconera) on Saturday, revealing Compile's game will be released here under the title Sorcery Saga: The Curse of the Great Curry God. The other two localizations are coming courtesy of NIS America, which announced early 2014 launches for Demon Gaze and DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc in both North America and Europe, Kotaku reports. Demon Gaze is a quirky RPG about Oz, a vagabond with a magical eye that can be used to capture demons. The even more bizarre DanganRonpa is about a black-and-white mystical bear named Monokuma, who traps kids in their school and won't let them leave unless they "graduate" by committing a murder. And to think, our parents complain about what their high school was like.
