One Time Dilemma

You may have heard of Danganronpa, one of the best franchises to ever exist, but did you know that the creators behind Danganronpa have another lesser known gem of a series? Introducing Zero Escape, a trilogy of games focused on murder, puzzles, and theories about the human mind that will cause your own to explode. The way I discovered this series was through the steam queue, where I was recommended a game called Zero Time Dilemma. After looking through the reviews, I learned this game actually had 2 predecessors. Not wanting to buy and play this without having played the other two, I removed it from my wishlist, forgetting to put the predecessors in its stead. Then one fateful day at the mall, my girlfriend found the first 2 games just by chance. Then yaddah yaddah yaddah, here we are. I've just finished Zero Time Dilemma, and am now ready to review it for you.

As I've said before, these games are murder mysteries with a great story and a lot of puzzles. The games revolve on a visual novel engine, and have lots of choices you can make throughout the game which alters your path through the story. The final game of the wonderful mindfucking trilogy has received mixed reviews. This could be because the animations are... incredibly lackluster, the storyline puts the rest of the games in a really weird limbo of contradiction but also not contradiction. Plus, it takes the term 'game flow' and throws it out the window, as you play the game in fragments. The rest of the game stays similar to the franchise, puzzles, occasional typos, murder, etc. So, what makes the game good, and what makes it bad?

To start off, if you don't like anime or visual novels, don't buy this game. It's not a dating simulator, so don't fret if you're worried that's what it is.
Another thing about the game is the graphics. After playing the first games, you may be thinking that they've improved upon the weird animations from VLR, or have returned to the anime style from 999. You would be very deterred from the game, as the animations return in CGI, with even choppier movements. No lip syncing with the voice acting, no fluidity of movement. Honestly, I'd bet money that the only thing they worked on was boob physics, and even then it's still quite unnatural and choppy. Yes, I may have forgotten to mention that the creators of this game actively encouraged rule 34 material, so if constant boob jiggling makes you uncomfortable when you're just trying to play a murder mystery game, maybe wait for a sale, or buy it used or something, because there's a lot more of it than necessary.
Of course, as I've mentioned before, the fragmentation of the gameplay makes the story extremely hard to follow, with you having to check on the flow chart after practically every fragment just to figure out when something happened. Your choices barely matter at this point, throwing the whole decision part practically out the window. It makes for a major disappointment, especially considering how well VLR did in this aspect.
Other than that, the game overall is quite boring until you get around halfway in and plot points start revealing themselves. Plus, there were some knots that could have been tied together better.

So, what did the game do right? Unpopular to common opinion, I personally loved the story AND the ending. The way it was presented was a little sloppy, but the twists were amazing, even if a bit weird sometimes. So even if you do get bored, go ahead and take a break to play something interesting, but do keep in mind that this game is 100% worth playing all the way through.
I also personally enjoyed the escape rooms a lot in this game, they kept true to the franchise, even if it felt a teensy bit different.

Overall, this game gets an 8/10 from me. Great story with great puzzles, but the presentation was just a bit sloppy. However, once you get past that, it becomes an amazing experience. Definitely an ending to a franchise that is worth your time.

This Is Not The Police

I should have figured that not every game was going to be a hidden gem, but my gut said otherwise. I was at gamestop one day, going through some games because I had some cash to spare and I wanted to spruce up my selection. One game I hadn't heard of before caught my attention, This Is The Police. It looked like it might be pretty neat, so I decided to pick it up to see what it was about. I regretted that decision so much that practically the very next day I returned it and got the Mega Man collection instead.

So, what exactly is This Is The Police? It's a management sim with minimalist graphics and heavy story elements. You play as a corrupt police officer who works with the mafia to accumulate 500k before retiring in 180 days. You have to use your minimal staff and resources to do your best to protect the city as well as profit.

What makes this game good? Well, it has a decent soundtrack, you can purchase vinyls with the in-game currency for music to listen to while managing your force. Of course, there's only a few that are really quite good, but I have a weird taste in music, and you might find a lot more pleasure from the tracks than I do.
Other than the music, the feeling of having your own squadron to control and dispatch on plentiful missions to stop crime is a great euphoria. Of course, this may just be a me thing, some people might find the limited staff quite stressful at many times.

Sounds like an alright game so far, what makes it so bad? Well, the story is... lackluster. To put it bluntly, it's boring and bland. I honestly can't find any words to put together to describe it. There's some weird subplot of your wife cheating on you or something, and you frequent a strip bar where you meet a lot of mafia members, but other than that, that's really all there is to the story. Maybe I'm just not far enough or something, but I've tried and tried to progress through the story, but it's just so boring. It's a real deterrent to the game, especially since it relies so heavily on its story.
Other than that, well, as I've said, it can be unnecessarily stressful, especially when a lot of it comes down to RNG. The management aspect of the game should be meant to be strategic, but it doesn't feel like you're making decisions to strategize to the best advantage. It feels like you're doing whatever you can to have RNG always work in your favor.

Overall, I'd give this game a 4 out of 10. It has it's moments, it has a few good things, but overall, it's a bland game that deters me so much that even the fun parts become a chore.

Growing Trees Is Surprisingly Fun

You've probably never heard of this game. But it's good, and you should play it. What's it called? It's called Photosynthesis. What is it? It's a game about growing trees and fucking over your friends by being a bigger tree than them, casting them into the eternal darkness of the void (until the sun rotates next turn), and overall just having a good time enjoying being a tree hive-mind. 

So, why should you play this game? How do you play? Should I play it if I don't like trees? All these questions shall be answered.

Photosynthesis is mainly an area control game, as well as sort of a resource management game. To win the game, you must have the most points at the end of 3 (or 4) full rotations of the sun. To do that, you must plant trees, grow them, and score them once they're big enough. To do those things, you'll need the games currency: light points. How do you get light points? You grow trees, and have the trees touch the sunlight. So overall, a simple cycle. Trees = money = more trees = points. Of course, there is a lot of strategic elements such as how to spend your money, where to place your trees, when to score them, etc. But it is much more of a casual game than expected. You can gather your family or a few friends and force them to play a game about trees, and although strategy is an important part of the game, you can still have fun even if you're miserably losing and surrounded by everyone's giant trees.

What are some reasons that would be a good idea to not spend money on this? Well, if you don't like board games or nature. That's really the only thing I can think of. If you like playing games, buy it. If you like nature, buy it. It may not be a hardcore nature based game with all sorts of facts and biological accuracy, but look at all the pretty colors and the squirrels. I don't know, just buy it, it's the same price as pokemon sun and moon, and everyone should know those games sucked. If you've got 40 bucks to spend on a relatively 'big' purchase, go ahead and yoink this game, it's worth it.

Hey, sorry I missed last week's review, I may or may not have been really busy with work. Normally I'll get it done before work or during a break, but last week was scouring a huge building to take out ALL the trash. And even after scouring the building, we still missed a bunch. Still, not here to give excuses, just here to apologize. Not like anyone reads these haha.