Ghost Blade HD (PS4)

Hucast's Playstation 4 port of their Dreamcast shmup "Ghost Blade" is a perfect HD upgrade with plenty of challenges, and tweaks to appease a fan of the genre. It is a sensory overload filled with vibrant colors, detailed designs, and impressive art that holds up to today's shoot 'em up standards. The game itself stars three intergalactic female pilots (Milan, Ghost & Rekka) who each pilot a ship/tank that has it's own style of bullet fire, and satellites. The ships are color coded to match their pilot's uniform, and each carry a unique design. With these ships you must brave one of three different difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard) along with five top-down enemy filled stages as well as the five boss battles within each stage that are in themselves a proper challenge. The difficulty settings included have their own accompanying perks including a specific number of continues, lives, and bombs/bomb usage types. The 'Easy' mode in particular will have you focusing mostly on the screen filling bullet hell spray, and less on the bombs as the bombs activate automatically when you get hit making you temporarily invincible. Supposing you have some in stock In the other two difficulties bombs are a manual deal meaning that you must activate them in order to use them. Along with the bombs comes main weaponry in the form of a focused fire attack, and a spread attack. A feature that's included in all levels of difficulty. The focus attack streamlines the bullet fire from your ship making the beam it creates more powerful, and in the process slows down your movement so that you can dodge bullet hell spray easier. It also doubles as a means to create tech orbs which add to your combo focused score. The standard wide spray shot only gifts you stage stars, and gold when shooting down enemies, but adds to the growing score, nonetheless. It is also weaker making it more useful against smaller enemy types.

Danganronpa 1•2 Reload (PS4)

For those of you out of the know, and new to the show the series that is "Danganronpa" is in a class of it's own. Pun intended. Despite leaning heavily on visual novel style storytelling, and basic point and click investigations the game provides a character based judicial process unlike any other. A judicial process that has you figuring out who's who in the grand scheme of things, and administering a punishment deserving of the crime afterwards. In the first game, "Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc" you follow average student, but ultimate lucky attendee Makoto Naegi as he embarks on a life changing journey at the presumably prestigious "Hope's Peak Academy". A school for the ultimate of ultimate classmates. Each of which are the ultimate at whatever it is they do best. Supposedly the school is to open up a world of opportunities for the students who attend, but the 15 students that end up arriving on opening day find out otherwise. Through the maniacal managing of Monokuma, and the murderous intent of those among them the classmates must keep their calm, and assess the situation intelligently or die trying. As Makoto you must observe others in your presence, find clues about certain situations, and build upon relationships to try and figure out what exactly is going on as well as how to escape the nightmare thereof.

Clicker Heroes (Impressions)

Clicker Heroes is what you'd call an "idle RPG", or a clicker RPG. It's a part of a new sub-genre in the world of role-playing games. Mainly those of the touch screen type. In fact most of you would recognize this type of experience as something you'd usually see only on a mobile device. As an RPG though it doesn't really seem to have an end point, and as far as I can tell the only purpose is hands-on, and hands-off micro-management. All of which takes in account the heroes versus monsters trope. You'll basically be upgrading hero stats as you level up various unlockable heroes through lucrative battles with monsters and monster bosses. A system which contributes to the growing DPS (Damage Per Second), and "Click Damage" that comes from the game's tedious button mashing mechanic. As you level up the named heroes you've unlocked you'll also unlock perks which add to the damage given. Both by percentage, and damage type. There are also activated abilities to unlock with accompanying cooldowns that limit their usage. As far as the free-to-play aspect goes it looks as if the developer wants to capitalize on a special ruby currency which can unlock gilded heroes, in-game money/cooldown boosts, and ascension material that allows you to upgrade your experience further. If that's something you are alright with you might enjoy this seemingly never-ending time waster ...

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Extended Ed. (PS4)

Before I get into the updated options of the extended edition of 'The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing' let me redirect you for a moment to my previous Xbox One review of the same base game. You can click the link here (Van Helsing) to get a good idea as to what I thought of the original console release before hearing me rant again about some of the same issues ...

Van Helsing (as I'm gonna call it) is a game that borrows heavily from Blizzard's Diablo series. It features character gear setups that are not too dissimilar from said gaming world as well as a rarity system that takes in account Blizzard's color coded item and enemy rankings, among other things. There's that, and the overall look of the game which in itself is reminiscent of Diablo on so many levels. When it comes to this particular game though you'll find that it does have it's own mythology, and story that is admirably accented by nonstop voice-over talent that was no doubt costly for the developer to add in. We get to see the son of the infamous monster slayer Abraham Van Helsing do his thing as he follows in his father's footsteps alongside his ghostly female companion, Katarina. It's an adventure filled to the brim with humor, sarcasm, and challenging quests involving the burdened people of Borgova (Borgovia?), and those who would meddle with science and the supernatural.

The extended edition of this quirky dialogue enriched Diablo-like Van Helsing adventure, as it were, is a direct all inclusive port of the PC and Xbox One versions of the same game. Yes, I said "port". It lacks any fixes, and is pretty much a carbon copy of the previous PC, and console versions all the way down to the frame rate stuttering. As far as being "all inclusive" goes I simply mean that the additional DLC of the first game is included at no additional charge. You get the base singleplayer adventure from before which follows closely the exploits of the original Van Helsing's son, and his ghostly companion Katarina as well as the multiplayer tag-along-mode for an online co-op experience, should you feel the need to drag a friend along on the journey. Along with that is the character class DLC (Thaumaturge & Arcane Mechanic), and two new modes of play that extend up the originally offered four difficulty settings (Easy - Hellion) and two campaign types (Normal & Hardcore). Everything from the gameplay to the in-game mechanics, and even the campaign content stays fairly much the same. Those pesky problems I mentioned in my link, they are still there as well. The lack of a guide explaining what you should level up first still hinders early progress as does the abusive hive minded enemy AI which, for lack of a better word, makes for a proper fustercluck. It's a game experience that could have been great, but fell short due to over-complication.

Blue Rider (PS4)

Ravegan's 'Blue Rider' is a minimalist shmup (shoot 'em up) oozing with vivid visual charm, and challenging gameplay that is spread across 9 environmentally different stages. It is "minimalist" in that everything from the menu to the control layout, and even the gameplay itself is easy to understand, and easy to get into with the only real challenge being the controlling of the Blue Rider ship. At the main menu you'll gain access to 9 different stages in unlocked order as well as a controller diagram via the 'Help' menu option that will explain the controls to you. Your goal in each stage is to simply survive without losing health meter while shooting down all patrolling bullet hell enemies as well as the end boss for a top score. There are multiplier opportunities gained from consecutive enemy kills, and power-ups dropped from the occasional enemy to extend upon further gameplay potential. Each stage has branching paths that are sometimes blocked by enemies of varying types as well as gates that require mechanism destruction/activation to get through. There's even stage specific environmental hazards to avoid along the way. When you make it to the end of the stage you will face off against one of nine unique bosses that incorporates a specific strategy for defeat. Learning this required strategy, and dodging bullet hell spray will help you defeat the boss. As it were the main goal in each stage is to ultimately make it through to the end boss, and defeat it in order to unlock the next stage in rotation. Supposing you fail your score will be tallied up at that end of your playthrough, and you'll have to start over at one of the currently available/selectable stages via the main menu 'Play' listing.