TheFakePsychic

The correct answer, for me, anyway, is Murdered: Soul Suspect. I love mysteries, detective stories, crime stories, etc, and I could look past the gameplay if the mystery... held up in any way, shape, or form. But good heavens, that mystery is not only fundamentally terrible, but it breaks so many important rules of mystery fiction that the summation at the end is just laughably terrible.

I'm getting re-angry about it all over again. Ugh.

There is a lot of this video that I really enjoy. From Ryan's deadpan reactions to a lot of this game's silliness ("So tell me about sucking up balls, Jeff.") to Jeff absolutely freaking out when a dead body suddenly rolls over, this is one to be remembered.

James Spader is easily among my favorite actors, and holy cow, does he know how to play a fantastic villain. Very excited for this.

I have to say, I am actually shockingly impressed by this game. I played through a decent chunk of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes and wasn't particularly impressed, but this new one is actually fantastic. I would highly recommend it if you have even a passing interest in adventure games, detectives, or Sherlock Holmes.

You know what they say, seventh time is the charm, I guess?

@solh0und: If I had to hazard a guess, I think it was Kanji, with Yukiko a very close second.

@irrelevantjohn: Lies and slander.

On paper, I hated the Naoto changes, but in execution I have much fewer problems with them.

The three trap limit still super sucks, but at the same time, 3 traps is essentially all of someone's fate counters. Combine that with the ability to use the autocombo to carry someone through a set of traps, as well as SB Anti-Shadow Shot, and you can just watch those fate counters evaporate. The gun change is also understandable, but the timer isn't as bad as I necessarily feared it would be. And Blight is a much more reliable anti-air than 2B ever was. Plus poison? Don't mind if I do.

If anything, I remember around the Japanese launch when people were telling me I'd have to switch to playing rushdown. And yet, I've started playing even more defensively than I used to. Naoto has some fantastic tools to capitalize on picking apart an opponent's mistakes. Sure, I'll never actually do well in tournaments this way, but they managed to make the way that I play the game even more fun than it was in P4A. And that's saying something.

I'd recommend Persona 4, L.A. Noire, and the Yakuza series.

Especially Yakuza 4. It's easily one of my favorite games of all time, and the mystery it presents is probably only second to Persona 4 in terms of what I would consider the best mystery writing in games.

I guess I'll be around as always.

PSN: TheFakePsychic, streaming services TBD.

Mario Party Party 2: Party Harder.