Games of the Year 2019 - Biggest Surprise

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Nick: Wreckfest

The definition of fun, Wreckfest caught a lot of people by surprise - myself included. The carnage is impressive and the physics just make the chaos that much more interesting. I had few to no expectations for this title coming in, so my unadulterated enjoyment easily made this my biggest surprise of the 2019.

Pierre-Yves: Fade to Silence

Sleeping hit? Maybe? It's not the only entry into my 2019 Games of the Year that is far from perfect, but, it was fun to play and I appreciate what it went for. End of the world. Check. Crazy assed demons that came out of nowhere? Check. You're all alone? Not quite as you start off with your daughter at the base but can find others to bring back in order to help out. Balancing a rogue like survival where you really have to work hard to carry something over to your next life and pushing forward to be able to build new items and structures, it was rough, but it was like a diamond in the rough.

Robert: Star Wars: Jedi - Fallen Order

Let's be real here a minute, even though Respawn was behind Fallen Order we all had our concerns with EA at the helm. After the letdown that was Star Wars: Battlefront and the absolute affront to gaming, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, I went into Fallen Order with a lot of trepidation. While it is not as good as many say (to be frank, even our very own head cheese, Nick, was far, far too nice to it), Fallen Order was a huge surprise because it was actually good. Shallow, linear, dull gameplay, horrible camera angels, a fake progression tree, and the absolute worst gameplay element that I have seen in gaming (those damned slides) aside, Fallen Order was largely adequate. Why is "adequate" a surprise? Because EA was at the helm and their history of hating consumers combined with an incredibly notorious stance of disrespect for all things Star Wars and well 'nough said. Still, for all of its shortcomings, Fallen Order is a fun 13-15 hours of lightsaber stabby goodness.

Susan N.: Islanders

Alright I have to say that I ended up getting a cute little game called Islanders during 2019.  It looks like it's a simple game but it can get complicated in its own way. Players start on a large island. They can choose a path for their citizens to take like the lumber pack or the farming pack. Which ever path you take will give you access to buildings related to the pack. And your objective is to hit the total score with those buildings. Each building will award more points when close to certain buildings where others require a more solitary location. As you build up the island, it get progressively harder to acquire points. If you do manage to reach the point threshold, then you have the option to move to another island. Get the idea? The casual strategy thrown into this cute little game surprised me, and I absolutely love playing it. It's actually a neat game to stream because you can have viewers vote on which pack you open. Honestly, it is awesome!

Richard : World End Syndrome

Whenever I get a visual novel style game to review, my first thought is generally "oh boy, what's this one gonna be?". World end syndrome totally threw me for a loop with its engaging story and characters, the aura system, the beautiful "live 2D" scenery, and the fact that the illustrators actually made side and back portraits for the characters. I was honestly expecting something rather bland and cliche, but I ended up with something I didn't want to put down.

Natasha: River City Girls

Omg... I loved this game. I'm usually one to shy away from beat em' ups, but this takes the cake, adds a bucket load of extra cream, sugar and spice, then throws it in your face. Wow... that's one hell of a cake. The style, characters and music are to die for and this is one game I'll gladly play with a friend.

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World End Syndrome - PS4 Review

Welcome to Mihate town, a place where the dead are said to gather, and where people come to either throw their past selves away, or to meet the spirits of those deceased. The protagonist (that’s you) arrives in Mihate town and hears the local legend of the Yomibito, a tale where every hundred years a deceased person will roam the streets of the town, unaware that they are dead, but will progressively lose their grip on their sanity. At the end of summer, it is said the Yomibito will start a murder spree, unless confronted. But that’s just a local legend…right?

Our protagonist transfers to the local highschool, where he meets fellow classmates Miu, Maimi, Kensuke, and Saya, a teacher who also doubles as the author for a recently popular novel, as well as out-of-town reporter Yukino and…person, Hanako. Will our protagonist find something to do with his life? Perhaps love? A hobby? Maybe a sealed evil deity to combat? Who knows, but this summer will certainly be unforgettable by those living in the town.

World End Syndrome is an interesting supernatural/suspense style visual novel set in a small Japanese town. While that description could be attributed to a great many different visual novels, I found the World End Syndrome set itself apart, sometimes by betraying my expectations, sometimes by being self aware, but mostly because it’s set up in a way that I was really pleased to see. As a Visual Novel, there isn’t a whole lot of “gameplay” per se, mostly just reading. World End can be roughly divided in two parts: a prologue of sorts, where you meet the main cast, and the “chapter” portion, where you actually “do” things. The prologue is mostly text, but when you start in the chapter portion, you get to choose where in the town you want to go over your summer break. Most days are divided into three: Morning, afternoon, and night. Different events will take place in different areas at different times, and you need to decide where you want to go and what you want to do before your summer ends.

Here is where we start getting into the stuff I really like to see in World End, at least from a gameplay perspective. Having the player choose from a number of different possible locations, instead of just text choices, really brings a more “interactive” feel to the game. In fact, I feel more apt to call it a game rather than just a visual novel because of the sheer amount of options they give you. Included in that are the occasional “missions”, where a character will give you a task to complete. Sometimes this is rewarded with an item or “aura”, and sometimes you just get a bonus scene.

World End Syndrome also has a “global” system to it. What I mean by that is collectibles and such are retained through multiple “playthroughs”, and requirements for certain events depend on whether or not you’ve experienced other events that you would need to see either later, or on a different route. To help you out with this, if you’ve visited a location previously, the game will mark the location with a blue icon, signifying you’ve already visited that area to view the scenes. Additionally, there are also little character portraits to indicate who will be there for you to interact with. Extremely helpful if you can’t figure out a route, you can, for the most part, hit the events or character portraits pertaining to the character you’re interested in.

In fact, World End Syndrome does a lot of things I really liked to see. The biggest is the fact that characters turn. What do I mean by this, you may ask? Well, in most visual novels, characters tend to be hand drawn “cut-outs”, static portraits that may express a small array of emotions. In World End Syndrome, while this is still mostly true, unlike in other visual novel I’ve seen, character portraits actually have side and back views, and they will blink at you too. In fact, the art for the game is really stellar. Most of the backgrounds aren’t just beautifully hand draw backdrops, they almost all have some sort of dynamic component too.

Maybe the grass is rustling, maybe there are pinwheels spinning, maybe a stream is flowing, the point is, very rarely is anything in this game truly static, and I felt as if that really drew me in more than anything else. A lot of care seems to have gone into crafting World End Syndrome, or at the very least a lot of thought. For instance, when you talk to a character and they leave afterwards, you hear them slowly walking away, even outside of the text boxes. Also, if there’s a door around, they will “walk” to the door, and you hear it open and close, which I thought was really neat.

Are there any bad or annoying points? Well, yes. If you aren’t interested in the story, these style games can be a real drag, but that’s primarily personal preference. I rather enjoyed the story behind World End Syndrome, and I feel it lends itself to being accepted by a wider range of people, if not for the plot, for how they’ve drawn all their characters and scenes, or organized their gameplay. The protagonist can’t seem to differentiate between internal monologue and spoken words sometimes, as what I thought were his thoughts turned out to be spoken.

There’s also the whole “aura system” thing. You can pick up a handbook about halfway through the chapter section that explains what it is, but essentially, as you interact with various people, you get “dyed in their color”, helpfully color coded by route (although I expected yellow and blue to be switched). Some events require a certain level of aura to initiate. Aura is gained simply by interacting with the various characters, and is permanent across the “system save data”, so if you needed a set amount to activate an event, you can simply go gather more, and then load a previous save point if you really wanted to. Unfortunately, I felt it took too long to really explain the system, and can be a little confusing when you get white auras, which aren’t really explained at all. Fun fact, if you combine all the colors in the spectrum, you get white.

I’ll be perfectly honest here, I wasn’t expecting all that much out of World End Syndrome when I first got it. Heck, I was told it was going to be a different game altogether. So imagine my surprise when I sit down to play it, and then notice it’s three in the morning and I don’t want to put it down. World End Syndrome is super user friendly, intriguing, has a really fitting soundtrack, and totally drew me in almost from the get-go. If you enjoy interactive novels, World End Syndrome is definitely an experience you probably don’t want to miss. So come and unravel the mystery behind the Yomibito, and join us in our World End Syndrome.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Toybox
Publisher(s):
Arc System Works (NA)
PQube Games (EU)
Genre(s):
Visual Novel
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Nintendo Switch

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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