This review was written by Trey Sanders for Big Shiny Robot. You can reach him at treytothej@gmail.com

Alienation — Housemarque/Sony Computer Entertainment — PS4 — April 26, 2016 — $15.00

If you played “Dead Nation” on the PS3 or even its remaster after the launch of the PS4, chances are you had one hell of a time blasting away at the endless swarms of zombies. “Alienation” is very much the same. It  incorporates everything from “Dead Nation’s” progression system and edge of your seat firefights, but they’ve added simple, yet deep RPG elements from “Diablo II,” and allowed two more players to join the fight in eradicating the decades long fight against the alien threat.

Plasma Sword, Plasma Sword, Plasma Sword!

Exo-Skeletal Selections

Upon starting the game, you’re prompted to choose between the three classes of exo-skeletal bad asses. There’s the Xeno Rifle wielding Bio-specialist that can heal an entire squad, release swarms of homing nanomachines that lay waste to those unlucky enough to enter their path, and a poisonous chemtrail that slowly dissolves those trapped inside. The Akimbo Energy Gun wielding Tank comes equipped with a shield that protects the entire squad for a short amount of time, a devastating shockwave called ground smash throws enemies everywhere, and an eviscerating Tesla Charge that electrocutes everything in its path. And finally (my personal favorite), the SMG wielding Saboteur who can cloak and unleash an insane barrage of artillery from the sky and cut through enemies like butter with the awesome plasma sword.     

Command Center

After you’ve made your character choice, you are brought to the home screen. It’s clean, simple, and straightforward. This is the main hub for selecting new missions, upgrading and managing gear, checking your country’s rank across the globe, browsing the bestiary, and fiddling with the options menu. Selecting missions is as easy as “point and click” and drops you into multiple locations around the world. Managing your upgrades is simple, but it’s extremely vague as to what goes where, forcing you to discover how to best apply your upgrades to get more from your arsenal. Rankings return from “Dead Nation” and includes a mysterious ARK Ship ranking, and an Invasion ranking, but there’s no description as to how you achieve these stats. The bestiary helps discern one enemy from the next and helps you fight them more effectively in later missions.

Matchmaking 

Before you drop into any mission, you can choose to go in solo, start a private match, a friends only game, an invite exclusive match, or team up with random players. There’s also a mysterious option called Invasion that allows other players to invade your game and make everything more chaotic, but there’s little to no explanation as to how and when it can be done. Once you’ve dropped in, “Alienation” plays just like “Dead Nation;” tight, responsive, and chaotic. It also features the always satisfying active reload from the “Gears of War” series. The dash ability from “Dead Nation” is back but is far more useful once you’ve applied it’s passive offensive ability that pushes enemies out of the way. As you blast your way through the beautifully rendered and satisfyingly destructive locales, you can come across Hitman Events (sub-bosses), Challenge Events (eradicate various swarms of enemies), and Hideout Events (eliminate Xeno captains). You will also find everything from XP boosts, ammo, health, power cores, weapons and equipment from chests scattered about the map, as well as boss fights, and a care package you receive just before extraction.   

Cores allow you to create an overpowered, all too satisfying arsenal of destruction.

Crafting

After you’ve collected or salvaged your new Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary gear, you can re-roll specific stats (with your salvaged materials) or upgrade them with the cores you’ve gathered. With the exception of common weapons or equipment (grenades, mines, etc.), they come with a varying number of upgradeable slots in which you can place your Power, Boost, Utility, and Prismatic cores to improve damage, fire rate, magazine size, and critical hit chance on your weapons; damage, radius, and replenish rate for your equipment. The more you gather, the more powerful you can make them. For every three cores you have, you can increase their power up to six (the maximum level) and create an immensely overpowered, but all too satisfying arsenal of destruction. The only drawback to the upgrade system is that it never tells you how to get the best out of your power cores, other than a color coded system; while it makes sense to match the color of the slot with the corresponding core, there’s nothing there to point you in the right direction.

In closing, ”Alienation” is yet another stellar game for Housemarque. They’ve built on the formula that was introduced in “Dead Nation” and have knocked it out of the park yet again. The finite amount of vague integrations do nothing to diminish a deep, extremely fun and insanely replayable twin stick shooter experience. This, alongside “Resogun” and “Dead Nation” stand as three of the best PS4 games you can buy, and at the bargain price of $15, you’d be ignorant to not add this to your library.     

Severed — Drink Box — 04.26.2016 — PS Vita — $14.99

The enemy is ready to attack

Drink Box has brought us another original game, that sadly, I don’t think a lot will get to play. “Severed” is a gorgeous romp through a twisted world. While the combat takes a bit of practice to get the hang of, the game does a great job of training you for the final battles, but giving enough of a challenge that you’ll have to replay some battles a few times before getting through the enemies.  “Severed” is a first-person hack-n-slash RPG that requires you to monitor multiple enemies to make sure you can survive an encounter. Your character Sasha, is a one-armed girl that has been pulled into a beautiful but savage world in search of her family. Starting with nothing but her sword, she will take you on an adventure of discovery, intrigue, and occasionally getting lost.

Artistically this game is like playing through an oil painting. The characters are all very flat, and yet they have so much depth. Sasha, the main character conveys a ton of emotion, with  minimal animation and her full journey from beginning to end is pretty touching albeit, terribly depressing. As you take her through the different sections of this hostile environment you will interact with very few characters. However, the few NPCs involved have quite a bit of depth and do a great job driving the story forward. From the sharp-toothed ‘guide’ that finds you inside at the beginning, to the two-headed bird that helps you move keys around, there are just enough characters to give you interaction and story expansion, but still let the world feel desolate and abandoned.

The Citadel

The soundtrack wasn’t anything incredibly special until the end, mainly comprised of rhythmic tones that reflect the immediate scenario. At times, the sound of your sword slicing actually becomes a touch grating since you are doing so much goddamned chopping, but it is necessary for the upgrade system, which is my favorite mechanic in game. 

As Sasha slashes her way through enemies, you want to perform this without your enemy blocking the attack. This is done by timing your attack, or navigating their “armor” or disarming them with various abilities. After you have hit your enemy in succession so many times without being blocked you will charge your “Severed” ability. Once this is done killing an enemy drastically changes. Instead of simply “dying” you are treated to an interactive finisher where you have to slice the enemy to pieces. The more successful slices you can hit within the time limit, the more “giblets” you will receive. Giblets are used to upgrade your weapon, attacks, special abilities, and armor. This is gruesome, creepy, and super fun.

I can’t stress enough that this game is perfectly developed for the PS Vita. Using the touch screen perfectly to keep you engaged, slashing, and entertained. I can only hope, that this game will move to mobile where it can be exposed to millions who need to play this incredible game. In this writer’s opinion there are very few games that are “Vita exclusive” that I think make the system a required buy. This happens to be one of them.

Atlus has announced that “King of FIghters XIV” will release, August 23, 2016. With a cast of 50 characters, and a promise to preserve the games classic 2D combat style, 3 v 3 battles, and a slew of online features, the latest iteration of the KOF franchise is almost here. 

The original trailer for this game was met with quite a bit of criticism. Claiming it didn’t look ready, complete, exciting, or even current gen. After viewing the recent trailer updates, I think it’s safe to say that the game is looking better each day. It’s also safe to say that a huge number of fighting game aficionados will find this in their hands on day 1. You can catch the trailer below. 

This article written for Big Shiny Robot by Trey Sanders, you can reach him on Gmail treytothej@gmail.com

Following January’s announcement, the partnership between Insomniac Games and GameStop has now blossomed into a full blown video game publication hub for the retail giant; unveiling their new branch of operations: GameTrust.

As of April 18, GameStop has signed deals with multiple independent studios and will focus on supporting games at or around a $15 million budget. The studios that have signed with GameTrust are “The Order: 1886” developer Ready at Dawn, spanish studio Tequila Works, and the “Trine” masterminds, Frozenbyte. Under the non-traditional GameTrust umbrella, developers are free to do and create what they want, at the cost of losing QA support and localization that other publishers provide. GameTrust will act as publisher and distributor for both physical and digital GameStop store fronts, as well as digital services like Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Store.  

“GameTrust is a separate vertical for a reason, so we can’t be working with the core merchandising team with all the publishers.

In a conversation between Gamasutra and Mark Stanley, Vice President of Internal Development and Diversification, states that “this is another division that makes sense. Most of the challenges that developers face include two things: ‘how do we get to market?’ and ‘how do we retain full creative control of what we’re making?’ Through traditional publishing models, those are really tough pieces.” When he was asked about the concerns of competitiveness and monopolization he said, “GameTrust is a separate vertical for a reason, so we can’t be working with the core merchandising team with all the publishers. They need to focus on that, that is the bread and butter of GameStop.”

Becoming a video game publisher makes a lot of sense for a company built and driven by the industry, but after closing down more than a dozen locations in Puerto Rico, GameStop has been doing whatever they can to remain a viable, albeit profitable business as digital game sales continue to rise. With their first game, Song of the Deep releasing on July 12, 2016, we’ll just have to sit back and see if this new venture will pay off for the retail giant.   

This post was written by Trey Sanders for Big Shiny Robot. You can reach him via email: treytothej@gmail.com

Tom Clancy’s: The Division — Ubisoft/Massive Entertainment — PS4/Xbox One/PC — 03.08.16 — $60

On Black Friday in New York City, a mutated strain of the smallpox virus (dubbed the “Green Flu”) has spread throughout the city and quickly reached pandemic levels. The majority of it’s people have either died or are dying at an accelerated rate. The government activates sleeper agents from the Strategic Homeland Division, or The Division, to help the Joint Task Force (JTF) restore order and safety to the city. After meeting up with Faye Lau and getting shot down in a helicopter, you liberate the James A. Farley Post Office Building and make it your Base of Operations. From there you begin work on upgrading the Medical, Tech and Security wings of the building by completing their respective missions as you liberate what’s left of New York City.

Gameplay

The team at Massive Entertainment (Ubisoft Massive) have crafted an insanely tight and fun gameplay experience for their Action/MMO/RPG hybrid. They’ve taken the cover mechanics from Splinter Cell: Conviction, fused it with the tactical gunplay of EA’s “Mass Effect 3” and the  overbearing amount of content from “Watch Dogs”. For a third-person shooter, it feels like a visceral first person affair. The controls are tight and responsive, the weapon’s fire and recoil realistically; aiming from the hip or down the sights is impeccable and satisfying (especially with a Marksmen Rifle), the cover mechanic is simple, direct and invigorating; the character’s movements are heavy, yet agile (save for a crouch and jump ability) and the map — the most aesthetically pleasing in gaming history — is easy to access as well as navigate. However, with all of these great mechanics working in unison, the content of the game doesn’t seem to match that level of cohesion.

Comme Ci, Comme Ça

The Division borrows many mechanics and mission structures from other Ubisoft titles like “Watch Dogs”, the “Far Cry” series, and “Assassin’s Creed: Unity”, along with any MMORPG before it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — they all incorporate a great variety of missions to keep you busy and an overall sense of reward, but there’s just as many that become monotonous and annoying. Aside from the major storyline missions, there are various (and far too easy) side missions. These, as well as encounters, unlock tech, security, and medical supplies that help improve their respective wings of your Base of Operations. These unlock new abilities, talents and perks, but after you’ve reached level 30, there’s almost nothing else to keep you coming back for an extended amount of time. Completionists on the other hand will have no qualms travelling from safe house to safe house, scouring every inch of Lower Manhattan for an overwhelming amount of evidence like: lost cell phone conversations, missing person beacons, downed drones, JTF audio files, survival pages, and the “Batman: Arkham” Esque “ECHO’s” that provide a deeper look into the events of the outbreak; even with hundreds of them floating around, it’s hard to justify collecting them when there’s little to no reward for the tedious hunt, but this is narrowly saved by the best part of the game.

The Dark Zone

The Dark Zone is the most contaminated area of lower Manhattan and has been sectioned off from the rest of the city. This is where the best loot in the game is hidden and your job is to find it and extract it for decontamination back at your Base of Operations. Populating the Dark Zone are heavily armored and highly dangerous NPC’s, as well as other player controlled Division agents. Once inside the massive and unpredictable PVP/PVE concrete jungle, you and your team (always bring a friend!) begin the anxiety inducing loot and gear hunt. There is no such thing as safety in here, because not only will the NPC’s shoot on site, the other Division agents can’t be trusted and could go “rogue” at any moment, steal your gear and extract it as their own. Going rouge is all too tempting and immensely fun, but after doing so, everyone will be gunning for you to take back what was stolen from them. The Dark Zone is a unique gaming experience, but outside of finding new gear in level locked chests that can be opened with Dark Zone keys, or killing named enemies for the gear they hold, it becomes just as monotonous as the PVE sections of the game. At the moment, it still lacks the content to keep you wanting more, but with the promise of Incursions and constant supply drops, the Dark Zone is still a promising and enticing endeavor.

The Snowdrop Engine

The Snowdrop Engine is an absolute marvel and bona fide powerhouse. Despite the fact that the game doesn’t look anywhere near the quality of its reveal did three years ago, the visuals are still incredibly beautiful and crisp. The colors pop and saturate where necessary, the lighting and shadows are frighteningly accurate, the psychics are jaw dropping and freakishly realistic, and the reflections from every surface are absolutely surreal and beautiful. New York City has never looked so empty, but because of this powerful engine, it makes you feel the weight of a once great city that has crumbled to its knees. Empty, decrepit cars litter the streets, outbreak and containment signs are everywhere to remind you the severity of the Pandemic, the few civilians still alive loot shops and ask you for help, trash is piled high on the sidewalks and mountainous in it’s alleyways. Every iconic skyscraper is beautifully detailed and stretches for miles and miles with little to no load times. Besides the initial loading screen the game only loads for respawns and fast traveling to safe houses or missions. It’s impressive how few there are for a game so large in scale, visual fidelity, incredibly destructive environments, impromptu firefights and an overbearing amount of content.   

Over the years, Ubisoft’s “Tom Clancy” titles have been driven by story, and have been somewhat linear games; “The Division” is no exception to this, but as a more spread out and self discovered pace. “Tom Clancy” titles have never been associated with RPG’s by any stretch, and although this game has plenty of room to improve, they’ve succeeded in making a truly strategic, fun, and addicting RPG experience that can carry the banner with pride; let’s just hope that with the promise of plenty of end game content down the line, that it keeps those who stick around, more reasons to keep coming back.   

This post was written by Robert Hudak for Big Shiny Robot you can find him on Twitter @mrproboto

Stories: The Path of Destinies – Spearhead Games – available on PS4 and PC – reviewed on PS4 – 04.12.2016

I’ll get right to it—“Stories: The Path of Destinies” is an interesting game and not quite what I thought it was at first glance. Based on my brief preview of it at PlayStation Experience 2015, I knew that it involved a degree of replay value, but I wasn’t sure how well that would work in the long run. During what you could consider my “first playthrough”, I thought the pacing was pretty bad, but as that run ended I realized the fun was just beginning.

You play as Reynardo, a fox who fancies himself a rather cunning and charismatic hero in the traditional sense, fighting in a war against a tyrannical frog emperor. Every chapter begins with a choice: will you save your friend from years past, or perhaps you’ll pursue the more aggressive route, chasing down a lead to a legendary war machine capable of turning the tides of war. Each choice leads Reynardo to a different location, accompanied by thematic and aesthetic correlations. The path to the armament is glowing with hues of orange and brown, whilst the journey to save your friend is much more lush and forested. Accompanying Reynardo on his journey through time is a cheerful narrator, who also voices every character in the game. While listening to his quips and dialogue, I couldn’t help but think of Dudley Moore in the 1986 film “The Adventures of Milo and Otis”.

Combat is engaging for most of the early game, but I didn’t find it challenging. Stringing combos between foes was satisfyingly similar to Rocksteady’s “Batman: Arkham” series, but as I approached the story’s climax, I never got the payoff that I expected. There’s only a handful of enemy types, and once you reach a certain point on the skill trees, they don’t stand a chance. If you’re in the market for a vibrant action RPG with a fairly low difficulty curve and replayability being the primary narrative mechanic, “Stories” is worth your time. The jokes can get stale and at no point was I really connected to the protagonist, but I never really got bored retreading through the same areas. I’d say that’s quite an accomplishment.

Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure – Game Swing/Curve Digital – PS4/Xbox One/PC – 04.01.16 — $9.99

I was hesitant to enjoy “Stikbold!” because the word “dodgeball” implies sports, and sports games are the worst. I reluctantly created a new game, cynically stereotyping the block-headed characters as “Minecraft” ripoffs as I mocked the bright colors and disco music that poured out of my television. You can imagine my surprise when I spent the next few hours having a total blast.

The phrase “you’ve never seen anything like this” can be dangerous to throw around, but I think it applies here. Unless you can truthfully say, “Yeah, I’ve seen a game about two professional Danish athletes who have to play dodgeball against hippies and pirates in order to save a beautiful colleague,” then you’ve never seen anything like this. The aforementioned pros are Björn and Jerome, two dodgeball players that are reeling after taking second place for the first time in their careers. After getting reamed by their coach, Björn’s crush gets abducted by a dude in a devil suit, and the two teammates begin their epic journey.

Teamwork is the name of the game in “Stikbold!” Whether you’re playing solo with an AI teammate or playing co-op with someone else, it’s not a game that you can win on your own. Enemy AI is surprisingly agile—by the 5^th level or so it starts getting really hard to peg your opponents with dodgeball fury. Luckily, different arenas have different environmental aids that can be used to cheat a little bit. I was a big fan of one particular match against a salty sea captain in which anti-whaling activists jumped aboard. They ended up functioning like free agents, throwing dodgeballs at whoever got in their way. Success in a given match can be achieved with a balanced mix of reflexes and team-based strategy, but the different arenas often throw out weird obstacles that require quick adaptation as well.

Atmospherically, “Stikbold!” feels like a Scandinavian drug trip. It’s extremely bright and colorful, and all of the dialogue is spoken in Danish (I think) with English subtitles. Coupled with the disco soundtrack, the dodgeball premise becomes all the more surreal. I’m not the biggest fan of the blocky characters and graphics, but the developers have managed to give them all diverse personalities—I was particularly fond of Miguel Cigar, a legendary lifeguard who stood between me and the inflatable whale that I needed to attack an offshore oil drilling platform.

Multiplayer games rank just a little bit higher than sports games do in my book, but this is one that I could definitely get behind. It offers local multiplayer, and the further you progress in story mode, the more multiplayer characters that you unlock. Assembling a group of friends to throw dodgeballs, crabs and other junk at one another for fortune and glory isn’t a bad way to spend a Friday night. 

This article was written by Laurent Backman for Big Shiny Robot. You can reach her at laurentbackman@gmail.com

Epistory: Typing Chronicles – Fishing Cactus – PC/Mac – 03.30.16 – $14.99

If “Bastion” jumped “Typing of the Dead” in a dark alley and then rifled through its pockets for gameplay elements, the end result would be “Epistory: Typing Chronicles.” There’s a glut of indie games on Steam with distinct visual styles and experimental gameplay, and in the case of “Epistory,” the experiment pays off.

“Epistory’s” narrative is told by an omniscient narrator overseeing her muse, which takes the form of a girl riding a many-tailed red fox. After a meteor strikes near her home, a strange corruption worms its way into the land, and the narrator describes the journey her muse takes to restore balance. Everything in the game is styled in an origami papercraft fashion that contributes to “Epistory’s” wonderful atmosphere. New areas are folded into existence from multitudes of paper squares, gates and barriers curl up on themselves when you break through them, and enemies burst into whirling scraps of confetti.

Gameplay is broken up into puzzle solving, exploration, and combat. Pressing spacebar locks you into place and brings up words over interactable objects that you’ll then have to type to bring about the desired effect. Over the course of the game you’ll unlock different elemental attributes for your typing that expand your combat applications and also let you access new areas of the overworld. There are a number of collectible image fragments hidden within each dungeon that tell the narrator’s story, but apart from extra experience, there’s not much reason to go for 100%.

Combat is tough, but satisfying. Enemies often take several words to bring down, and near the end of combat you’ll usually encounter massive foes that require words like “verisimilitude” and “stenographer” in quick succession to avoid losing. If a single enemy reaches your character, you’ll be brought back to the last checkpoint, which can result in some frustration, but keeps a good sense of tension and forces you to think on your feet and use the best element for a given situation.

Sound design is unobtrusive, and music isn’t particularly memorable, but there are a few moments of brilliance, like when you have to swipe your fingers across a row of keys to slice open a barrier, or hit the same four keys in sequence several times to unfurl a bridge.

A full playthrough of “Epistory” will only take a handful of hours, but it’s a fairly good value for its price While its typing mechanic may be off-putting to some, “Epistory: Typing Chronicles” is worth a look if you’re a fan of unique titles that manage to back up visual charm with solid gameplay.

Hyper Light Drifter – Heart Machine — PC/Mac – 03.31.16 — $19.99

Retro, pixelated games have been trendy for some time now, but it’s rare that one strikes the proper resonant frequency to become a classic. “Hyper Light Drifter” is one of these rare titles—something that was crafted by artists that possesses the right balance of nostalgic influences and aesthetic innovation. It captures the controller-chucking frustration that defined my NES collection, but it’s so beautiful and weird that it compelled me to keep on trucking no matter how many times I had to watch my character die.

The game’s compelling beauty and weirdness is attributed to a story that is revealed via vague, wordless still-screens that depict an epic cataclysm that has destroyed a once powerful civilization. The protagonist is known as the Drifter, and it’s our job to venture forth into ruined temples to gather bits and pieces of ancient technology. Occasionally, the Drifter hacks up globs of blood, symptoms of an illness that may or may not be tied to the aforementioned cataclysm. Creating a story with no dialogue, subtitles or written language of any type is a risky move, but it pays off here. It encourages exploration, and rewards venturing off of the predictable path to find hidden areas. It also gives the player a good excuse to just take in every gorgeously rendered setting without any context—the world unfolds like a living work of art.

In addition to the game’s visual brilliance, I couldn’t help but notice the hauntingly ambient soundtrack. “Hyper Light Drifter” is one of the few games that made me stop and take note of the music. I freaked out a little bit when I discovered that the game’s soundtrack was composed by Richard Vreeland, aka Disasterpeace. Not only did he score the retro classic “FEZ,” but he’s responsible for scoring the fantastically creepy horror film “It Follows.” The music complements the game perfectly, and further solidifies my love for Disasterpeace’s musical abilities.

Despite the fact that “Hyper Light Drifter” loves to throw frustrating enemy encounters and traps in your path, combat is actually quite balanced—no matter how many freakish creatures surround you, there’s always a fighting chance. The Drifter has a good mix of ranged and melee attacks, and the dash mechanic allows for well-timed parries and dodges. Fighting in “Hyper Light Drifter” is extremely satisfying, and it’s fun to switch between ranged and close combat on the fly. It’s best suited for playing with a controller, but it’s not too shabby with a mouse and keyboard either.

“Hyper Light Drifter” can be easily compared to some of gaming’s most venerated titles. As I slashed and shot my way through hostile bird creatures and exploding plant parasites, I found myself thinking about “The Legend of Zelda,” “Metroid,” and even the more contemporary “Transistor.” Regardless of its influences, “Hyper Light Drifter” is something very special in its own right. It’s got a surprisingly vast world to explore, a tight combat system and it’s all wrapped up within one of the most visually and aurally captivating packages that I’ve seen in a long time. Buy this one now and thank me later. 

This post was written by Laurent Backman ro Big Shiny Robot you can reach her at laurentbackman@gmail.com.

Final Fantasy XV Platinum Demo – Square Enix – PS4 – 03.31.16 – Free

The ‘FFXV’ Uncovered event hosted by Square Enix a few weeks ago was a veritable behemoth in terms of information and content for the upcoming JRPG. Alongside collector’s edition details, a 5-episode OVA, and a full-length movie reveal, Square Enix also treated us to a free demo available later that evening. Having already played “Episode Duscae,” I was excited for another taste of what is rapidly becoming one of my most anticipated releases this fall.

“Platinum” feels more like a tech demo that scratches the outer surface of the game’s mechanics

 The first thing you should know going into “Platinum” is that it’s short. I played through it twice, taking much more time on the second playthrough, and my combined time is still around 75 minutes. Whereas “Duscae” gave us a small fragment of story and a glimpse into the open-world exploration, “Platinum” feels more like a tech demo that scratches the outer surface of the game’s mechanics, while trying to showcase as many flashy particle effects as it can.

 “Platinum’s” story takes place separate from the main story, in the dreamscape of a much younger Noctis. You’re approached in a forest by Carbuncle, your dream guide and a familiar face for series veterans.  Carbuncle explains that the only way to wake up from your dream is to find your safe place, and helps point you in the right direction for the thirty or so minutes it’ll take you to reach it. Along the way, you’ll learn the basics of movement and combat culminating in a fight where you transform into the older Noctis of the actual game.

the overall pacing still feels like you’re playing Kingdom Hearts while in a Lortab-induced haze

 It’s clear that Square Enix listened to player feedback about the combat in “Duscae,” but it still feels like there’s polishing that needs to be done before release. The weapons are easier to manage now, and there’s no analog stick weirdness to change weapons mid-combo since they’re all mapped to the d-pad, but the overall pacing still feels like you’re playing Kingdom Hearts while in a Lortab-induced haze. Guard timing is still wonky, and the warp mechanics in the final encounter are fickle. When it works, the combat flows well, but more often than not it doesn’t and you’re slapped in the face with a mountain of minute issues.

The good thing about “Platinum” is that it’s gorgeous, and there are a number of tools in each area to make it even moreso. Floor switches speed up time and change the weather, and consumable grenades explode in showers of red, droplets of blue, and meteorites of orange. Framerates are smooth throughout, even when the screen is filled with enemies and explosions.

 Beating the demo unlocks Carbuncle for use in the full version of the game, so if you’ve got the 3 gigs of free space, then give the “Final Fantasy XV Platinum Demo” an hour of your time. It’ll help you get prepared for a game that’s finally nearing the end of its long development, plus it gives you something pretty to look at.