Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam Will Be Playable at TGS

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 112024
 

TGS is coming up at the end of the month, and I have my fingers crossed for exciting announcements.

One of my most-anticipated games that’s already been confirmed to be there is Professor Layton and the New World of Steam!

Level-5 announced their TGS lineup today, and Professor Layton is on the list. Not only will New World of Steam be featured at TGS, but it will even have a playable demo!

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, Fantasy Life i, and Professor Layton and the New World of Steam will all have playable demos in addition to being included in Level-5’s live broadcast, while Decapolice is listed as only having a video showcase. There was no mention of the new titles (two are listed now instead of just one) set to be announced at the upcoming Level-5 Vision.

I’m surprised that Professor Layton will have a demo while Decapolice won’t, since Decapolice is supposed to come out first. I already thought Decapolice had probably been bumped to 2025, but maybe Professor Layton will come out ahead of it after all.

Although the TGS demo will be in Japanese, I’m hopeful that we’ll get a better idea of what New World of Steam will be like. I’ve been getting nervous about Level-5’s delays lately, but I’d like nothing more than for them to knock it out of the park with an excellent demo.

Update: The website has now been updated to say the demos will be in both Japanese and English.

(People who play the Professor Layton demo will also get a hint coin keyring.)

A small gameplay segment was shown last November, but I don’t believe we’ve seen anything since then. Hopefully this will be a longer segment that provides a good look at the new game.

Are you looking forward to seeing more of Professor Layton and the New World of Steam?

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?

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