Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Astro’s Playroom is a Fun Little Platformer (and I’m Excited for Astro Bot)

 Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 092024
 

One of the few standout titles from the June State of Play for me was the 3D platformer Astro Bot.

Astro Bot came out a few days ago (on September 6, the same day as the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection!), but while waiting for it, I decided to play Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-installed on the PS5.

Astro’s Playroom part tech demo, part 3D platformer, and part PlayStation celebration.

It shows off various aspects of the PS5 controller while you explore 3D platforming stages as a cute little robot and collect coins and collectibles related to PlayStation’s history. There’s a room in the central hub where all these collectibles go on display.

Stages are mission-based rather than the more open collect-a-thon style I prefer (with one exception), but they’re still a lot of fun, with a lot of little secrets to find. My only complaint is that I didn’t enjoy the parts that were heavy on motion controls very much.

In addition to finding collectibles, there’s an additional set of collectibles you get through a gacha machine by spending coins found in the levels. Unlike real gacha, this is fun. For one thing, there are no duplicates. For another thing, coins are pretty readily available.

And the collectibles made me so nostalgic. Seeing an old PlayStation console or a PS2 controller made me think back to the days when I used to play those all the time. It was a nice trip through PlayStation history.

Astro’s Playroom is a short game and only took me a few hours to play. But those were a fun few hours, and it left me excited to see what they’ve done with a full game in Astro Bot.

The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is Here!

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 062024
 

Today is the day. The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is now out for all modern platforms.

Investigations and its sequel were the only games in the series that never made it to the 3DS, which made it feel a bit like Capcom had left them behind. And Investigations 2 had never received an official translation.

That makes this collection a momentous release, much more so than the Apollo Justice Trilogy earlier this year.

I already played the Investigations Collection and reviewed it over at MonsterVine, so you can head there to read my thoughts on this excellent remaster. I’m so happy this collection exists, and I’m thrilled that more people will get to play these games at last.

(Rest assured, I preordered a physical copy of the collection as well and it arrived today. There’s no way I was missing out on that!)

I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time.

All the way back in 2012, I blogged about the fan movement “Operation: Objection!” that hoped to show Capcom we wanted Investigations 2 localized. Two years later, we were holding a write-in/call-in event. A few months later, I was still at it. By the next year, we had a newly-revived movement to show our support.

I eventually put Investigations 2 localization on my list of pipe dreams, where it remained year after year after year…

By 2022, I had all but given up. I wanted to believe the Investigations duology would be remastered, but we’d had no new Ace Attorney announcements since The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (which itself felt like a miracle to have translated). I told myself that if there was no Ace Attorney news by the end of the year, I would finally give in and play the Investigations 2 fan translation. So the following May, I finally played the fan translation and came out of it hoping for an official translation harder than ever so that more people could play.

And now it’s finally here.

I’ve spent so long going into every single video game event hoping for an Investigations 2 localization announcement that it feels strange to no longer have to. What will I pin all my hopes and dreams on now? I guess I’ll just have to double down on wishing for Ace Attorney 7.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to see reactions from people playing these games for the first time. Are you planning to play the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection?

Level-5 Vision 2024 Scheduled for September 24

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 042024
 

When we discussed the Fantasy Life i delay a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Level-5 had yet to announce a date for their showcase that was delayed from April to this summer.

However, we now have a date!

The rescheduled Level-5 Vision 2024 has been announced for September 24 at 5 AM PT / 8 AM ET. It will have English and Chinese subtitles.

So… that’s not actually “summer” anymore, but at least it’s not too far off.

Titles featured in the showcase will be Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, Fantasy Life i (including information about the delay), Decapolice, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, and a brand-new title.

Now, with the delays we’ve seen so far, I don’t know how I feel about them announcing a new game before any of those four are even out. It’s probably going to be the maybe-Yokai-Watch-maybe-spiritual-successor teased last year, but I just wish it didn’t feel like they were taking on too much all at once.

But who knows? Maybe this was the final stumbling block and things will finally get moving. Hopefully we’ll get a release date for both Inazuma Eleven and Fantasy Life i. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if at least Decapolice has now been bumped to 2025, and I worry Professor Layton could get pushed even further off as a result.

(Hey, what ever happened to Ushiro? We never heard anything after it was un-cancelled, although it amusingly keeps showing up on Famitsu lists of Japan’s most-anticipated games.)

Level-5’s resurgence still has me worried, but here’s hoping we get some good news. What do you expect from the Level-5 showcase later this month?

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