Mollie L Patterson's Reviews
The long-running Project Diva formula gets a welcome freshening up in Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X. While a good-but-not-great soundtrack and a few misguided decisions keep it from reaching its full potential, this is probably the best chapter gameplay-wise we’ve received in the West yet.
Though its visuals still betray the legacy of SNK’s rich and gorgeous 2D sprite work, The King of Fighters XIV revives the glory of the franchise where it counts most: gameplay and core mechanics. This will hopefully be the first step in a better future for the series, but even this unpolished first entry is worth the time for longtime fans and newcomers alike.
I Am Setsuna is a mixture of beautiful, heartfelt, and depressing moments, one whose depth is unfortunately overshadowed by its over-abundant moments of shallowness. The worth in Setsuna may end up being not in what it did on its own, but the groundwork it provides for future projects.
While it gets bogged down by story and character elements that I found to be the opposite of fun far too often, 7th Dragon III Code: VFD offers up a stellar RPG experience that’s stuffed full of enjoyable gameplay mechanics and ideas.
As the final chapter of the Zero Escape trilogy, Zero Time Dilemma is a dramatic journey through the strengths and weaknesses of the human spirit, one that longtime fans and newcomers can both enjoy and appreciate.
Sega 3D Classics Collection is a hard release to judge. On one hand, it’s a mixed selection of M2’s fantastic library of classic Sega games reworked for the 3DS. On the other, it offers up stellar versions of every one of those games, which fans will especially appreciate.
While it's still impossible on a personal level for me to admit that any of Dark Souls' siblings could better it, when taken as a whole, complete experience, Dark Souls III may be the best chapter of the Souls series that From Software has crafted. A fitting way to end, if that will indeed be the fate of the franchise.
Street Fighter V paves the way for the future of Capcom's legendary fighting game series—but it's also a release that's relying on near-future updates in order to feel like a finished product. Once they come, however, this should really be something special.
One of the best Vita games becomes one of Sony's best PlayStation 4 offerings. While its portable origins mean the game never truly pushes the console on a technical level, Bluepoint has refreshed and reworked the original Gravity Rush with the care it deserved for its debut in high definition.
Resident Evil Zero HD sees the return of a weird chapter in the Resident Evil saga, one that feels clunky and frustrating in its low points, but which also shows some uniqueness from the legacy it helped bring to a close.
From its opening moment until its final scene plays, Life is Strange is a wonderful, beautiful, captivating, touching adventure built upon the undying friendship of two girls trying to find their place in the world.
Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below mixes Omega Force's now-famous style of overwhelming action combat with the storied world of Dragon Quest, and the result is an adventure that's quite enjoyable outside of occasional bouts of feeling monotonous. Longtime fans will certainly love the fanservice and visuals, but even those new to Dragon Quest may find a lot to like here.
Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash takes Nintendo's adorable mini helper robot and throws him into a mediocre side-scrolling platformer that's too easy, too frustrating, and too below the standards of either its hero or its publisher. There's some good here, but it's not enough to raise this one above being an average experience.
Atlus somehow finds a way to craft a music game based around Persona 4 and have it end up as a serious entry to the rhythm genre. Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a great experience, with gameplay, visual, and a soundtrack that all come together in one heck of a package.
One of the Vita's best releases come to the PlayStation 4 in Tearaway: Unfolded, a charming, endearing, and enjoyable adventure whose jump to the big screen will allow a far wider audience to appreciate a game that went criminally overlooked the first time around.
Until Dawn doesn't always live up to the potential Supermassive Games envisioned for its ambitious PS4 project, but the game succeeds in enough ways to make it a fascinating and engrossing twist on the horror genre.
Whispering Willows offers up some interesting gameplay ideas behind its tale of a young girl communicating with spirits as she desperately searches for her father. It's unfortunate, then, that Night Light Interactive wasn't able to flesh out most of them, leaving its side-scrolling adventure feeling unfinished for most of the way through.
Nintendo's newest cast of characters leaves their mark on the third-person shooter genre in Splatoon, one of the freshest and most exciting competitive multiplayer experiences so far this year. It's just a shame that we'll need to wait a few more months for some of the game's basic functions to be fully implemented.
While Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker isn't the full 3DS remake some might hope, it's still a bigger, better version of what was already a fantastic, engrossing strategy-RPG twist on Atlus' beloved demon-summoning series.
While it never truly feels like it reaches its full potential or the promise Undead Lab's ideas hold for the genre, State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition is still a fun, fascinating take on the tradition of zombie-apocalypse games that's worth playing for hardcore fans.