Hi guys,

So it's been a little bit of time since I have been writing about games and I want to get back into it! What I would like to be doing is each week giving a little bit of information about the games I have been playing and what I think of them. I am currently in my senior year of college and have been working hard on my projects and classwork, but there is always time to play a game and this week I am making time to write about it. So let's begin!

Danganronpa

So I decided to give this game a shot after hearing Patrick talk about it during the game of the year discussions. Danganronpa is a Vita game where you play as a student who is about to go to a new high school with a group of other students, except there is a big difference about this school. The school is called "Hope's Peak Academy" where all of the students are known as an "ultimate" in their specialty. For example, there is the ultimate baseball player or the ultimate pop star. Your character though is just a normal kid who was chosen out of all of the other normal high schoolers but dubbed the "ultimate lucky student". One thing which is associated with Hope's Peak is that those who graduate are "set for life".

You meet the 14 other students the first day and learn that some things are not quite right. The school is being ran by a masochistic bear named Monokuma. He informs you that everyone will be spending the rest of their lives in this school, unless they become a blackened and graduate. In order to do this, you must kill another student and not be caught. That is about all I am going to go into the story since this game is very much a visual novel and the main point of playing it is for the story.

The gameplay itself is broken up into three sections. There is the daily life part where you can walk around and talk to some of your other classmates. Then after a few days, you will begin the investigation process and learn as much about a murder as you can. After you investigate, you will be in a class trial where you and the other students must decide who the murdered was. If you get it right then the murdered will be executed by Monokuma in an elaborate over-the-top fashion, but if you get it wrong all of the other students will die and the murderer can graduate and leave the school.

The main draw to this game is the story and the characters. It is interesting to go in deeper through the mystery and see what else can happen in the story. The characters are also very stereotypical versions of whatever their ultimate ability is, so it is interesting to see how these students interact with each other and towards Monokuma. I have been enjoying this game and I recommend it if you are interested in a slowly paced murder mystery.

For non gaming related media I have been consuming, I have been watching Sword Art Online 2 and have been really enjoying it. For those who have not watched SAO 1, I highly recommend it especially if you are into video games since it takes place in a video game world. The main premise of SAO is that these characters are in a virtual reality MMO. In SAO 1, they are trapped inside this game and the only way to get out is to get to the 100th floor and beat the final boss. If they die in the game, they die in real life. SAO 2 has a similar concept except they are free to leave the game world, but there has been a murderer in the game who can shoot you with their "Death Gun" and kill you in real life because of a heart attack. I am currently about 11 episodes into this series, but it is very interesting and consist of deep characters like the first season. I recommend this series too if you are interested in video games or like some good action and character building.

That is all for this week, thanks for reading this and hopefully more to come!

Danganronpa is fantastic. I'd like to hear what you think of the ending when you get there since it's by far the most interesting and memorable part of the game.

If you want another anime about videogames I highly recommend Gatchaman Crowds. It's more about gamification of real life than actual video games but there's a bit of that too with the titular CROWDS.

The more people who play this great game, the happier I become.

I've been hearing about this game for years, but as a non-PSP owner, my options for playing the game were less-than-stellar. I made a couple of attempts, but never got much further than the initial free exploration period before my annoyances with the setup mounted. I just picked the game up for PC and finally made it through the first trial. Holy schmoly, I was not expecting the minigame bonanza that was that first trial. I really enjoyed it, coming from the perspective of a longtime Phoenix Wright player who was expecting the same here. This felt much more dynamic and madcap than the trials in that series. And the initial trial, at least, was really satisfying to play through (even the weird rhythm game portion) and makes me excited to find out how many more exist.

If you dig 999 / VLR and want that mixed with Phoenix Wright and a smattering of minigames, this is fantastic. And the PC's 360 controller support is totally passable. The 3D first-person-view controls are unconventional, but irrelevant to my enjoyment. I sincerely hope that the sequel gets a chance at PC support due to this game's sales.