All-New Saturday Summaries 2017-06-10

Well, here it is. E3. The event technically doesn't start until mid-way through next week, but we're getting our first conference today and dang it all if it doesn't feel like E3's arrived already. That also means the first part of that Marvelous playthrough will be going up later today as well, though I'd better settle things with our weekly round-up first.

I didn't bother doing one of those "E3 Prediction" blogs because I really don't care for hype and half-finished games. There's already a number of 2017 bangers available for purchase that I can't wait to get around to, so pining for those coming later this year or next just seems like overkill. That said, I can absolutely look forward to the Bomb Crew's sardonic quips during the conferences themselves, and whatever embarrassing and poorly-conceived segments, occurrences and cameos that we might see in those big stage productions. And, of course, the evening interviews with all those talented game development luminaries, intelligent industry observers, and Dave Lang. Giant Bomb always makes E3 entertaining regardless of how much you care about twenty seconds of CGI footage for some inevitable sequel, or can tolerate listening to some sports legend drone on about how EA's somehow captured the spirit of the beautiful game before some marketing jagoff walks on-stage to wonderfully cap off that sentiment with news of an aggressively avaricious pre-order DLC campaign and how the audience can "join the conversation" by leaving their credit card details by their seats.

But, as I said last time, I like to offer something more low-key and very much unmodern for E3 sufferers to come down with, like a quiet glass of green tea in the middle of a tornado of news, commercials and industry insights. "A teacup in a storm", as the saying probably goes.

Before then, though, let's talk about the non-E3 week that was:

• The Top Shelf hit a momentous milestone with the conclusion of the first round of eliminations! It's big news for the feature, though it's still far from over. Check out some of the PS2's most tardiest arrivals, including the wonderful Yakuza 2, the complex Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, and this website's own personal favorite PS2 game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. Next week will be a smaller filler episode because of E3, and then soon after E3 concludes we'll be seeing regular individual blogs for those games that qualified for the second round. As long as my PS2 can hold up, I'm stoked to finally start ticking off games from one of my oldest backlogs.
• The Indie Game of the Week this week was the delightful Rebel Galaxy, currently being given away for free in the GOG Summer Sale with any purchase. I've been sitting on the PS4 version since the beginning of the year, so the timing seemed ideal. Rebel Galaxy is your standard space trader game in most respects, with gameplay revolving around taking down bands of pirates for bounties, buying commodities low and selling them high, mining asteroids for valuable deposits, and using all that money to upgrade your ship to take on ever tougher missions. The game has two things going for it though: its rockin' outlaw country soundtrack, and its naval-esque combat that relies on broadside volleys as much as omnidirectional turrets. Seems fun, but I'm concerned about how long I can keep playing it before I burn out.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

When I chose to play the first Danganronpa this week instead of a number of JRPGs I've been salivating over, it was because I knew E3 would keep me busy and I didn't want to start playing some enormous-ass game and be distracted the whole while. Turns out Danganronpa, which is of the "visual novel with benefits" genre in the style of a Ace Attorney or a Hotel Dusk, is a lot longer than I anticipated. The story of the game is that fourteen "ultimate" students, each the very best in their chosen field, and one goober selected by lottery (who is the guy you play as, naturally) become trapped inside a prestigious school and forced to live there in perpetuity with no contact with the outside world and very strict rules of conduct. However, the tyrannical mastermind (represented by a mechanical bear named Monokuma, who has all of Teddie's bear puns but none of his heart) that has imprisoned them reveals that there is one way to get out: murder a fellow student, and get away with it. If caught, the murderer is executed, but if they're not rumbled it's everyone else who dies and they walk away the only survivor. Most of the students are aghast at the idea and refuse to play along, but little-by-little Monokuma finds ways to wear down their resolve and encourage their desperation to escape.

It's a singularly weird game, split up into chapters which invariably end with the death of one or more students and the subsequent detective work and trial to reveal the culprit. The cast gets whittled down from its initial 15 as the game continues and more is revealed about your fellow prisoners. You can form friendships with someone during the game's "free time" periods, which are as close to the usual visual novel dating sim elements that the game gets, and then find out that they're a sociopathic monster who was biding their time for the perfect murder with which they can escape and leave the rest of you to rot. It's a game with a lot of dark humor and some grisly scenes, and I've been captivated by its plot so far.

The game can be essentially split into two types of gameplay: the trials, and everything else. The everything else are your standard visual novel trappings: you read a lot of dialogue text, choose who you want to build relationships with when there's a lull in the story, buy collectible gifts which you can hand out to people for bigger relationship boosts, and simply watch the story unfold. When someone inevitably meets their maker, you have a small amount of time to gather all the relevant clues before Monokuma hurries all the survivors into a specially prepared "Class Trial" room to uncover the perpetrator.

The trials are supremely odd, as they superficially operate the same way as the Ace Attorney games - find contradictions and refute them - but with a whole lot of silly mechanics and mini-games to establish its own chaotic identity. There's distinct shades of a "this ain't your grandma's anime Law & Order game!" sort of attitude with how Danganronpa's trials are paced and presented. The most prominent and frequent of these trial mini-games is the Non-Stop Debate, which has several statements flying at you from your fellow classmates as they discuss the murder. One of these statements, marked in gold, can be refuted by the right piece of evidence: the way it works is that you shoot this "truth bullet" at the spurious declaration in order to win the mini-game and move the trial along. The game can't help but add wrinkles to the mini-game though, including "white noise" (interjections from other prisoners that have no relevance, and can sometimes block the statement you're trying to shoot), giving the player more truth bullets to select between, and having them pick out statements and using those as impromptu truth bullets against other statements. It gets messy fast, and the player has a finite amount of times they can afford to be wrong before the game ends and they have to start over. Some of the other modes, like Hangman's Gambit and the rhythm-based Bullet-Time Battle are even dumber, as you piece together a vital clue in your brain and fight another delusional prisoner in a one-on-one fight debate, respectively. The game definitely has a very kooky and charming Japanese personality to it, and these trials are where that personality is most keenly felt, but they can be a bit too elaborate for their own good when all you want to do is solve the case and move on. Knowing precisely why someone is wrong, or even who did it, and waiting a long time for your opportunity to come along to prove it was already torturous enough in the relatively more direct Ace Attorney games, and here it's extra vexing. Doesn't help that Danganronpa doesn't have as many sudden surprises and eleventh-hour twists as its peer to keep the trials interesting; just more pointless mini-games.

All that said, though, I've been enjoying the game a lot. While it moves like molasses, there's enough intrigue going on that I'm hooked on its story, and the trials can be kind of exciting when they aren't dangling some obvious conclusion out of reach until you complete the specific set of actions it wants you to (like linking a specific statement to another one before your protagonist makes the connection - though his hints aren't subtle if you keep missing the combo the game is looking for). It could use a little less filler for sure, so I hope the sequel - which I also own, because I'm playing the 1-2 Reload compilation that was recently released on PS4 - can address a few of those issues.

At this moment, it comes recommended with caveats, and I hope I can find more to say about it when it pops up again next Saturday - I'm far from finished, and with E3 and the Alternative to E3 blog series all next week I doubt I'll have time for anything new.