Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Reviving My Review of Detention

 Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 182020
 

After all of the chaos surrounding Devotion this week, someone brought it to my attention that my review of the developers’ first game, Detention, is another one lost to time.

So just like my 25th Ward review, I’d like to revive my review of the horror game Detention!

Detention takes place in 1960s Taiwan, during the period of martial law known as the White Terror. There are notes throughout the game that provide context for the situation if you aren’t familiar with it.

You play a student who becomes trapped in the school building after everyone else evacuates due to a typhoon warning. But the storm isn’t all you need to fear, because the school has been twisted into a nightmare mirror of itself, haunted by deadly enemies.

There is no combat, so you’ll use stealth to get past enemies, including a feature where you need to hold your breath if an enemy comes close. Those sections can be pretty tense, but it’s really the disturbing imagery, unsettling atmosphere, and dark story that build up its sense of horror.

Although Detention has a 2D perspective, the rest of the core gameplay feels like a traditional survival horror game. You’ll need to explore the school to find key items and use those items to solve puzzles and open the way to new areas. The strange puzzles, surreal (and symbolic) environments that get progressively stranger as the game goes on, and the way the story gradually unfolds reminded me a lot of Silent Hill – which is part of why I enjoyed it so much.

The story is pretty interesting, too. It kept me guessing as the pieces started to come together, and I was invested in learning exactly what had happened there.

Detention is a short game, but it’s a great horror experience that fans of the genre should definitely check out.

And I hope we get to play Devotion someday.

Eternal Radiance is Out Now! (And Other News)

 My Games, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Dec 162020
 

After launching in Early Access earlier this year, our action RPG Eternal Radiance is now finished and officially available!

Eternal Radiance is inspired by JRPGs, and it follows a young would-be knight named Celeste who goes on a journey to reclaim a stolen artifact after failing her initiation into the Ashen Order.

I wrote the story and dialogue for Eternal Radiance, and I’d love to revisit its world and characters someday. For now, I’m excited that all of you will have a chance to experience it!

It’s come a long way from its initial Early Access release, because in addition to completing the game’s content, we were also able to improve the combat and polish things up. Once again, Eternal Radiance is out now on Steam, with console ports planned for next year!

In other game news, the last couple of days have been a little crazy, so here’s a rapid-fire account of the highlights:

  • The Tales anniversary live stream had no news, but since 2020 was the way it was, the 25th anniversary has been extended for another year, with exciting announcements promised. Tales of Arise is also reportedly in the final stages of development.
  • Nintendo held another Indie World Showcase, which included the announcement that Finding Paradise is coming to Switch. It’s the sequel to To the Moon, and it’s really good.
  • Kojima Productions announced an anniversary announcement for midnight Eastern Time. At midnight, they announced the announcement would be in an hour. An hour later they revealed a wallpaper, eventually followed by some merchandise and the news that they’d won an award. It probably would have gone over better without the announcement of the announcement of the announcement.
  • Details on the next Trails game surfaced from Famitsu, as translated here. Combat details are still a little murky, since it’s a real-time action system that doesn’t require input skill, and you can switch to command-based combat. Hopefully they’ll show it on the 20th. Nayuta no Kiseki is also being remastered.
  • And this morning, the horror game Devotion was announced to be returning… only for GOG to reverse the decision mere hours later due to “many messages from gamers,” an explanation absolutely no one believes.

I was hoping we’d be celebrating a big Tales announcement today, I have mixed feelings about the possibility that Trails is switching to action combat, and I was planning to buy Devotion the moment it went live… but at least we have some good news to celebrate in there, too!

Melody of Memory: A Celebration of Kingdom Hearts

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 142020
 

Over the weekend, I finished Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, the Kingdom Hearts rhythm game that came out for the Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.

(I played the Switch version because I like the convenience of playing handheld.)

Going into Melody of Memory, fans had a lot of questions. How much new story content would there be? Is it worth buying? Do you need to play it to stay up to date on the series?

In short, I would say this: if you love rhythm games and Kingdom Hearts music, it’s worth it. If you’re only interested in the new story content, you’re probably better off looking up the scenes. Melody of Memory is about 95% rhythm game, 5% new story… but what new story content it does have will probably be very important to the series going forward.

Since I played Re:Mind, I knew that the basic story premise for Melody of Memory is that Kairi is going back through her memories for any clues about finding Sora. It’s a good thing I knew this ahead of time, because the game doesn’t bring that up until the end. It doesn’t frame the story at all, just throws you right into the rhythm game like there is nothing else. I’d imagine the ending must have felt like it came out of nowhere to anyone who didn’t have that context.

If you’re a rhythm game fan, there’s a lot of content here. It retreads every Kingdom Hearts game except the mobile games, generally with two songs per world, plus additional songs for key moments, bosses, etc.

…Until you get to the Kingdom Hearts III section, which has one song per world, plus the songs for the ending scenes. It really surprised me that Kingdom Hearts III got substantially less content here than the other major games, but it might be because the presentation is different.

Most of the songs in the “World Tour” (story mode) have you running along a track, hitting the correct buttons to the beat to defeat enemies that appear. There are a handful of boss fights that include different mechanics and show a boss fight from the series in the background, with the rhythm game determining how well you attack or defend. But the Kingdom Hearts III Disney worlds all use the “Memory Dive” format instead, where you play a sequence similar to the boss fights while cutscenes from the game play in the background.

This format is also used for certain songs you can unlock for the Track Selection mode, but it felt odd that World Tour went to that only for Kingdom Hearts III. I guess they wanted to show off the cutscenes.

Anyway, as you progress through worlds, you’ll occasionally get a cutscene that summarizes part of the game in question. This is not gradual, so I wouldn’t say it’s a good way for someone new to the series to get a recap.

However, as a celebration of the series for someone who is already a fan, it’s fun, and it reminded me that I really love Kingdom Hearts music. I’m surprised it took them this long to make a rhythm game.

Then once you get to the end of the World Tour, you finally reach the new story content that shows where the series is going next. I’d say it takes about an hour, and it’s very interesting. Part of it involves Kairi’s memory of her past in Radiant Garden, covering the events previously only ever referenced in Ansem’s Reports, and the rest takes place after the end of Re:Mind, dealing with the results of the characters’ search for Sora… and it’s going in wild directions that left me very excited for the next game in the series.

I am never getting off this wild ride.

Once again, if you’re looking for a celebration of Kingdom Hearts and its music, Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory is worth playing. If you’re interested in the story, you need to at least look it up to see what’s going on. As for me, I can’t wait for more!

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