Despite a limited number of songs and an incredibly small number of game modes, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy garnered critical praise when it first launched two years ago. Its sequel is now here, packing in more songs and game modes than ever before. In fact, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call not only contains several times the number of songs as its predecessor, but a vastly larger number of game modes, collectables, and characters. Yes, bigger is truly better. Unfortunately, however, a few shortcomings prevent Curtain Call from truly reaching its full potential.
Perhaps it was at the point when I saw Chuck Norris doing yoga with Batman, the Joker, and Barack Obama or maybe it was when Princess Peach was rejected by Peter Griffin. At some point while playing Tomodachi Life, I realized how much the game activated my imagination. When I was little, I was never one to play with action figures or make up fake storylines for fictional characters to partake in, but with Tomodachi Life, I have never felt my imagination so stimulated. I feel like I am managing a virtual dollhouse of celebrities; that is okay, because I have never had so much fun planning the daily goings-on of my Miis.
Having played every Professor Layton game released, I have seen both the highs and the lows of the franchise and it saddens me that Azran Legacy marks the last title featuring the infamous and titular Professor Layton. With this in mind, I went in hopeful that Level 5 crafted a game suitable for Layton’s departure, a game which would allow him to go out with a bang. Unfortunately, although the presentation of the game and the finale to the game were grand, the rest of the game failed to be anywhere near as exciting as the rest of the Professor Layton franchise.
Bravely Default is a game that excites me about the future of the JRPG genre. It takes the standard JRPG that we have grown used to, adds in several new features, and modernizes the genre for the new generation. So much is done right that I hope other developers look to it as an example. Unfortunately, what Bravely Default does so ingeniously in its first forty hours falls apart in its last fifteen. What could have been a revolutionary game is debased by the horrendous endgame that Square Enix could have so easily omitted.
CastleStorm is just as much a game as it is a test of your multitasking and micromanaging abilities. What seems like just a knock-off of the iOS hit, Angry Birds, is actually so much more. In fact, CastleStorm boasts just as much, if not even more, addicting gameplay, as well as several other layers of depth that make the title even more exciting to play. Couple this in with extensive single-player and multiplayer modes and quite the quirky style, and it becomes quite the appealing product.