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dekay01 · 1 month

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Paradise Killer (Nintendo Switch)

A systems based murder mystery visual novel in a vaporwave Lovecraftian u/dys/topia. Lady Love Dies is summoned from exile to solve the murder of the leaders of the Syndicate, immortal humans who meddle with banished gods in their mission to create an island Paradise. In the search for answers you re-establish connections to old friends and feel out the new state of affairs. Who would stand to benefit? Who had the opportunity? And - whisper it - did the Council have it coming?

Island Sequence 24 is as densely structured a setting as anything in the Metroid Prime series. Backtracking between suspects and crime scenes soon encourages a bit of off-path first-person platforming, which the game is surprisingly well attuned to. Like Samus, Lady Love Dies moves with presence and is immune to fall damage, and the compact setting makes accidental detours tolerable. It’s a pleasure to simply explore this place for its own sake, soaking up the lush audio and juicy-crunchy visual design, but these excursions yield lost objects which offer an insight in to the millennia-long history of the Syndicate, or advance your investigation.

For a game with no prescribed structure, major revelations arrive at a steady rhythm, inconsistencies implying alternative explanations that hint at motives that must be investigated further. Your crime solving computer Starlight organises evidence and testimony but the assembly of these facts in to the truth of the crime occurs entirely in the player’s head - to the point that, famously, there is no prescribed answer.

The pull of the central mystery and the cryptic setting grow as you attune yourself. A full sense of the Island and its occupants arrives as the mystery behind the murders becomes clear, leading to a dramatic and satisfying trial sequence where Lady Love Dies doesn’t so much build her case as bury her chosen suspects under it.

Holding the truth is a unique kind of power, and power is this game’s main preoccupation. There’s nowhere you can’t go, nothing you can’t say, and by the coda, nothing you can’t do in pursuit of justice. And it feels good.

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dekay01 · 1 month

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Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Switch): COMPLETED!

Donkey Kong ’94 on the Game Boy is one of my favourite platformers. After the first four levels, which are the same as the original Donkey Kong arcade game, it becomes this massive puzzle platformer with a very agile Mario up against Donkey Kong. Mario vs. Donkey Kong, the Game Boy Advance sequel, was also great, but it introduced levels with mini Mario toys in it that you have to help to the…

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#completed #mario #switch

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dekay01 · 1 month

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Superliminal (PS5): COMPLETED!

Imagine a cross between that weird hypercube animation optical illusion thing and The Stanley Parable, and you’re some of the way to understanding Superliminal. Like The Stanley Parable, it’s a narrative discovery game in a series of corridors, offices, warehouses and… other places. Whereas Stanley is trapped in a Groundhog Day style scenario, your nameless hero here is inside a dream which has…

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#completed #ps+#ps5 #psn

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dekay01 · 2 months

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Tinykin (PS5): COMPLETED!

Well, what a lovely surprise this turned out to be! It had been on the periphery of my want list for a while, but I was sceptical that it was just going to be a Pikmin clone like the reviews suggested it was, and Pikmin is fantastic so that’s a hard wall to break through and every likelihood it’d be a bit pants. And, while there’s definitely a Pikminny taste to Tinykin, it’s certainly its own…

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#completed #ps+#ps5 #psn

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dekay01 · 2 months

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Golden Sun: The Lost Age (Switch): COMPLETED!

With the original Golden Sun ending on a cliff-hanger, and The Lost Age carrying on directly from it (or rather, from slightly before the end of the first game), I didn’t really have a choice but to start it immediately afterwards. Well, not quite immediately, as you can transfer your saved game from the first game to the follow-up but this required half an hour of password input and…