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Persona 5
AND WE THOUGHT WESTERN GAMES WERE MADE TO TEMPLATES...
PS3, PS4 | $ 99 .95 | atlus.com/persona 5
PERSONA 5 MARCHES to the same drum as
Persona 4, which, in turn, was structurally
indistinguishable from Persona 3. This is a
natural consequence of setting a game across
the span of the academic year; each new
instalment cannot help but hit the same beats.
If it’s a commentary on the stoic rhythm
society imposes on the young, fair enough,
but it also removes much of the game’s ability
to surprise you.
Still, within that framework are plenty of
variations on the Persona theme, though some
will simply evoke a different twinge of déjà vu.
Persona 5 continues Tokyo Mirage Sessions
#FE’s theme of experimentation with dungeon
design; gone are Persona 4’s drab endless
corridors, replaced with multi-layered puzzle
dungeons, each built around a different central
mechanic. None of it is particularly taxing
but there is, at least, more to think about than
simply finding the staircase to the next area.
The story casts the central group as the
Phantom Thieves and, as that name implies,
there’s a heavy emphasis on stealth. A new
cover system is an essential tool; enemies
patrol set paths, and ambushing them from
out of sight lets your party draw first blood in
the turn-based battle that follows. If you’re
spotted, the enemy force goes first, and the
area’s security level raises, increasing the
number of guards on patrol. The result is a
slower pace to dungeon crawling than we’ve
come to expect from the series.
The key to a battle is identifying an enemy’s
elemental weakness, since hitting them where
DEATH SQUARED
MOVE YOUR BLOCKS TO SAFETY OR DIE... LOTS.
PS4, XO, PC | $ 26 .95 | deathsquared.comThis is a cute little top-down puzzle game that relies
on communication — either between you and your
friends (you can play with up to three others in the
multiplayer mode) or between your brain and your
two clumsy mitts. In the campaign mode, you are
put in charge of two AI cubes — red and blue — that
you must navigate around the obstacle course to
their respective circular home bases.
We tested this game on PC with a mouse and
keyboard, with one cube controlled with your WASD
keys and the other with the arrow keys. In theory,
this sounds simple but we had quite a bit of trouble
remembering which hand was controlling which
coloured cube, which caused many an accidental
death by toppling off the edge of the course.
This was somewhat helped by programming our
keyboard’s per-key RGB lighting ability to mirror the
colour of the blocks, but in the heat of the moment,
we still made silly mistakes, which took some of the
enjoyment out of the game.
However, that doesn’t mean we gave up. Firstly,
you’re tasked with simply crossing the board with
your cubes without many obstacles, meaning the
only way you’d die was by falling off the edge and
exploding. Level by level, new elements and
difficulty are introduced — pressure plates that can
only be pressed by a certain cube, ghost blocks that
can only be crossed by the opposite-coloured cube,
coloured lasers that can be blocked by that coloured
cube, spikes, moving plates, mine-like things, lifts...
There’s a lot to this seemingly simple game.
We enjoyed it immensely. Recommended.
[CARMEL SEALEY]DISCOVERGAME REVIEWSit most hurts knocks them to the floor, letting
you attack again. Put the entire enemy party
down, and you can unleash an All-Out Attack,
where your group piles on to deal heavy
damage. Yet instead of smashing them to
pieces, you can enter a negotiation. Through a
series of multiple-choice dialogue exchanges,
you can extort cash or an item, or recruit a foe
to join your cause as a persona, giving the
main character more abilities in battle. There’s
a tradeoff, of course: you’ll get less XP for not
killing them, and if you fail in your
negotiation, you may get nothing at all.
Yet it’s a fine twist on the formula that fits
with the tone of the game. You are a band of
thieves, infiltrating the distorted mind palaces
of a series of ne’er-do-wells, defeating their
final form and stealing a treasure that, in the
real world, causes them to have a change of
heart and confess their sins. Whereas Persona
4 was about a group of kids defeating their
personal demons, becoming stronger and
k inder, Persona 5 focuses on the rebel spirit.
It, like its predecessors, shines in its quieter
moments. Away from the metaverse, back in
the real world the obstacles of real teenage life
must also be navigated. As ever, your every
activity raises one stat or another.
The focus on the rebellious, non-conformist
side of youth has its drawbacks, but means
Persona 5 is something to which its
predecessors could never lay claim.4 4WINNERAPPROVED
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