Late to the Party: Void Stranger

emories of my youth in school certainly aren’t the most pleasant times from my childhood, because, surprising no one at all, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call an academic kid—some would say I was more of the opposite. Still, aside from all of the coming-of-age crap that public school pounds into you, there was a memory I had from an art assignment our English teacher gave us to complete (weird, I know, but stick with me.)  The guy was SUPER into Ernest Hemingway, like, he just loved the way that old drunk could mentally instill a scene with his stories using just carefully woven words and nothing more. So, naturally,  he wanted us to try and draw out a specific scene from one of his books, A Farewell To Arms, where we had to do an interpretative sketch drawing of the moment the main character, Frederic, was caught in the mayhem of the Italian army’s retreat during World War I.

The classroom sheet detailed the instruction in a blurb at the top, right below the usual heading where you would write out your name and the date, with the rest of the sheet being a blank canvas for you to use for the sketch. I don’t know what came over me, but I used ALL of the real estate the paper had to offer, which included me scribbling art over the instructions and header area, using every inch of the paper I could.  I mean, I too enjoyed the work of Hemingway, so I’m sure that helped my engagement with the work, but my teacher absolutely gushed over the paper after I turned it in (I promise you this humble brag is going to go somewhere, stick with me.) My English teacher praised that my vision wasn’t limited by the concept of margins, and that I went beyond these perceptions to complete my goal with the classwork.

I haven’t really thought about this dumb little moment for years, until just recently, when I decided to pick up where I left off on a little gem of an indie game that took over my life for a few weeks in 2023, System Erasure’s Void Stranger. As much as I had enjoyed the game, I eventually succumbed to the density of its challenge, and the availability of several other new games at the time, I decided that it was time to move on to something else to boot up on my screen.

So yeah, I started playing Void Stranger again, since I thought it was a natural fit for some bedtime gaming with my new ROG Xbox Ally X, and at some point, something just clicked, and it really has sunk its teeth into me this time around. I know I’m a sucker for the usual Avant-Garde gameplay designs that actively work to subvert the very conventions they’re built with, with stuff like Tunic and FEZ, but Void Stranger is just, in a whole different class of its own.  After, ahem, falling deeper into the void with my play through, I managed to tough out the game and make it to the credits.

Something that I’ve felt immensely proud of, and yet sickeningly anxious about, because I’d soon learn that I’ve only scratched the surface of this dumb little brain worm of a game.

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Late to the Party: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

ou know—some trends just don’t live past their 15 minutes of fame; Zombies? Played out, Vampires? Done to death, & Superheroes? We’re approaching terminal velocity on that can of worms soon, just give it some time. There are, however, some exceptions in Pop Culture that’ll just never NOT be rad as all hell, and one of those things is giant mech-suit robots.

Where mainstays of the genre like Gundam, Macross, and to some loose extent, Transformers have populated the public headspace in the genre, one particular property has commanded an underground yet dedicated peak of fandom in Video Games like no other IP specifically has—Armored Core.

Riding on the wave of new fandom that Dark Souls and Elden Ring have afforded them, FromSoftware unveiled the next entry in their long-dormant series that hasn’t seen a release in well over a decade with Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon and they’re giving it the red-carpet treatment to boot. This new release does ask an interesting question though; where its demanding twitchy-trigger gunplay carved out a modest niche of dedicated fans much like that of the “Soulsborne” series of games, those titles were able to steadily evolve and refine their gameplay hallmarks with the sort of resources that Armored Core has never had the privilege of receiving.

How exactly does Fires of Rubicon close such a long gap between releases without compromising the ardent quirks of its combat and difficulty? Well, it turns out that the answer is a lot easier than you’d think—Fires of Rubicon takes everything Armored Core V did and doubles down on it with all the technical performance the ninth generation of gaming hardware could afford the long-awaited sequel.

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Late to the Party: Sonic Orgins

orgive the clichéd sentiment, but even after 31 years of blazing across all manner of screens, SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog does show any sign of slowing down. Riding the hype train of the recent film’s success at the Box-Office in the same year the little guy turns 31, the folks at SEGA and Sonic Team in collaboration with the talented folks at HeadCannon took to the task of releasing yet another Classic Sonic Collection, Sonic Origins. The collection features Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, and the first re-release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles in over a decade; each one optimized with the same Retro Engine Sonic Mania ran on, enhancing these cult-favorite titles with a sizable HD upgrade for the current generation of gaming.

Despite the number of times some of these titles have been re-released, Sonic Team and company have boasted that this new arrangement will come loaded with more passion and fandom than we’ve seen from the likes of Sonic Jam or Sonic Mega Collection. While some of those claims are founded, I can’t quite help but feel like Sonic Origins struggles to live up to the potential it had, let alone the hype going into the whole thing.

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Late to the Party: Lost Judgment

eing a Spin-Off from a popular series is hard because you’re either as beloved as Family Matters, or as forgettable as The Cleveland Show—the reception to these ventures is rarely in-between.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s first foray into the Yakuza Universe outside of Kiryu’s story continuity, Judgment, fringes between both ends of that measuring stick. The crux of this weakness fell upon its failure to carve a meaningful identity of its own from the rich source material it pulls from, well, aside from a fickle protagonist who was charming one second and irritatingly cringe-worthy the next at the very least.

Inconsistent delivery aside though, the premise of an Ex-Lawyer turned Private Eye in the world of Kamurcho still carries plenty of merits to re-visit in its own right, especially with mainline Yakuza series shifting into the Turn-Based RPG Genre for the indefinite future. This is where the follow-up sequel to Takayuki Yagami crime-solving caper, Lost Judgement, comes into the grand picture.

The Private Eye’s latest case leads him to the rough streets of Ijincho, and the setting isn’t the only thing that’s new as Lost Judgment is a sequel that boldly builds upon its formula instead of trying to deliver a familiar formula with some forced twists, making for an immensely better experience this time around.

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Late to the Party: Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1

hings certainly weren't easy for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, a short-lived handheld that had to compete with the likes of the classic Game Boy Color and newly released Game Boy Advance shortly after. Still, there's something sweet and neat about recollecting a portable version of one of the most expensive consoles in history.

(Recollecting — see what I did there? I, well uh, never mind.)

That being said, SNK is at it again with the retro party pack full of nostalgia. This time, we've got a fully portable 10-pack of favorites from decades ago through its Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1 on the Nintendo Switch.

So is this a home run for even the newest takers or an acquired taste that only diehard fans need apply for? A little bit of both, honestly.

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Late to the Party: Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

ow that the character is over 24 years old, Crash Bandicoot has amassed a generation of fans that look at him with the same reverence as Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog—he’s a household name among Generation Z. On that token though, beyond the remastered releases and cameos, just how relevant is the property today’s gaming climate? Ironically enough, one of the biggest attractions the marsupial had over its competition was its sense of exclusivity, both in terms of gameplay difficulty and the platform brand the property wore heartily on its sleeve.

Interestingly, the Crash Bandicoot property made its bread and butter on appealing to the public as the coolest outlier on the market with the PlayStation, but as the years have passed, the marsupial mascot has evolved into a far more accessible franchise. That sentiment couldn’t be more apparent than the latest entry from developer Toys for BoB, and publisher Activision, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

With the success of the remastered trilogy, the developer was tasked with releasing a new sequel that would invoke the initial spirit of Bandicoot’s PlayStation outings, and thankfully, Toys For BoB answered that call with a game that successfully caters to everyone like no other entry before it, and is easily the best Crash game to date.

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Late to the Party: The Ninja Saviors - Return of the Warriors

aito was doing crazy things with multi-screened arcades games in the late 80's. Already having released the three-screen-wide Darius to arcades in 1987, they would release a double monitored brawler known as The Ninja Warriors the same year, which would get a sequel on the Super NES in 1994. It's this game that Taito and ININ Games have released to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch as The Ninja Saviors- Return of the Warriors.

Ninjas are cool, but cybernetic ones are even cooler, and the same team that brought us the revamped Wild Arms Reloaded definitely knows what’s up when bringing classic (and impossibly expensive) titles from the 16-bit era to the modern stage. As a side-scrolling brawler, Return of the Warriors is definitely an engaging title, one that's more involved than many of the brawlers we've played in the past. Taking place over eight lengthy stages, players into this specific game time are in for a real good time.

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Late to The Party: Fallout 3

ack in 2010, everyone here at Press Pause Radio came up with the idea of recording an episode where we would discuss what we all personally felt were the best games to have come out within that past decade. As challenging as that was for us, it was really fun topic for a show, but there was always one piece of feedback that came back at us and our lists every time the that episode is ever brought up; “why didn’t any of you guys include Fallout 3 on that list?”

Well, I don’t think anyone on the show had a terribly remarkable memory playing it during initial reflection, but it turned out that none of us had really played it enough when it came to giving it a fair assessment either.

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