I know some people I’ve talked to found it underwhelming compared to Night School’s other game Oxenfree, but I haven’t played it (I did download it on my PS5 a few days ago) so I went into Afterparty with nothing to compare it to. I figured it would give me a different perspective. Honestly what really made me interested in the game was the voice cast, I love Ashly Burch and Dave Fennoy and it was on only $20 on the eShop so I figured why not.

Story wise I loved the plot (SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON): Two best friends have died shortly after graduating college, they don’t know how and they’re shocked to find out that they must have been bad people because they end up in hell. There is one way they can get back to the land of the living: Out drink the devil himself and he’ll let them go, but in order to challenge him they’ll need two out of three seals from the other monarchs of hell. I love this story because it’s on par with a lot of other indie game stories where they sound weird and make no sense on paper, but when you actually play it, it is really engaging.

The main characters are fine, just fine. I feel like we’ve seen these types of characters a dozen times before and I didn’t think they will be that memorable to me. One positive I will say about them is that they do feel real. If you have ever once had doubts about where your life is heading or if you have some serious unresolved family issues then you can find yourself relating to them. Although if I had to pick I liked Lola more just because she was more sarcastic and those characters are always fun. My favorite character was their personal demon Sister Mary Wormhorn who is delightfully annoying. Erin Yvette (who is so underrated and deserves more video game roles) is so over the top with dialogue and I mean that in the best way. Wormhorn does everything she can to annoy Milo and Lola and sew friction between them and to judge you on every major decision you make regardless of what it is. She is so enthused to do so because it is literally her job as a personal demon.

The design for hell does not really stand out and looks pretty generic. It feels more like the slums of neon lighted city. The taxi segments where Sam drives on lava is cool, but that is about it. Speaking of the landscape be prepared for some backtracking and it can get old. It doesn’t help that there are a bunch of dialogue between our two protagonist that overtime feels like the same conversations just worded differently. Skipping the dialogue would have been nice, but alas. The art style is nice at least, but it could have used a little more polish and sometimes the game would lag. Which made the backtracking feel even longer.

As far as choices go they don’t matter as much as they should. The drinking is one of the mechanics. Sometimes you need to drink in order to get past some obstacles, but they mainly give you a third dialogue option, but they aren’t used to unlock a secret third route, they are mostly just jokes. Story choices like “how should we help this person” always lead to the same ending no matter what you pick so it doesn’t mean as much. SPOILER warning agin: It turns out Satan has a drinking problem and his siblings stage a surprise intervention for him. This is where the two different endings come into play. If you win the drinking game his family gives up on him and he passes out because of his excessive drinking. Sure they get to be alive again which should be the good ending. Then if you give up on the drinking game and stay in hell Milo and/or Lola get fancy new jobs, Satan is hinted to have gotten a support system and Sam finds another way to get them out of hell. So Ironically when you stay in hell everybody gets what they want. If there is no real good or bad ending then what is the point of another play through?

That last sentence sums up my thoughts. Afterparty is an ok time. It has its funny moments and the mini games like the dance offs, beer pong, and the drinking game. If you just want something quick and easy and cheap to play then go ahead, I don’t regret playing it, but just like any party you have to know when to call it a night.

As soon as I finished DMC 5 I had to sit down and comprehend what I played… and to catch my breath after the intensity that was the final boss. To me, DMC 5 is the best game in the franchise. First off this is the most gorgeous looking game in the series and one of the best looking games of the PS4/XBOX ONE generation. Photorealism was the right call and it shows that the RE Engine can handle action games. It’s quite fitting that it did use the engine from Resident Evil 7 since DMC was supposed to be a Resident Evil game.

The story may not be strong, I mean these games aren’t exactly known for their stories, but it does have a lot of memorable moments like Rebellion being destroyed, Neros Devil Trigger awakening, the resurrection of Vergil, and the greatest moment of all: Dante doing the moonwalk.

What this series is known for is gameplay and boy does DMC 5 have it. To no surprise everyone has their own playstyle, Nero being my favorite because of his sword base moves. His new abilities the Devil Breakers all have their powers like a chain whip, electricity, time stop, and the literal Mega Buster (my personal favorite next to Punch Line). They are fun, but their drawback is that the only way to switch between them is to self-destruct the one you are currently using, so you better make sure you equip your favorites in a specific order. The decision to not switch them up is puzzling, that would be like if Dante threw away his guns. You could argue that equipping 8 Devil Breakers would make combat easier, but why not just leave it at 4 or 3? Dante has fewer sword moves compared to Nero in favor of more weapons like the Cavaliere (the coolest motorcycle/sword hybrid ever created), the King Cerberus, and Sin Devil Trigger (which is like the Super Sayan God form). Then there’s V who ironically stays away from the action from a distance and lets his demons do the fighting for him. This is so drastically different from other characters yet it doesn’t feel out of place. Lastly, there is Vergil who’s playstyle is as smooth as butter, Pulling off Judgement Cut End is never not satisfying. Everyone is fun in their way and I never got bored with any of them.

Acting-wise everyone is on point. Ruben Langdon (who can probably play Dante in his sleep at this point) portrays a more mature, but still fun-loving protagonist in Dante. While Johnny Yong Bosch (a personal favorite of mine) delivers his sarcasm and swagger to Nero. Most of JYB’s best roles are considered to be Ichigo, Vash, Lelouch, and Izaya, but I would put Nero up there as some of his best work especially during the final mission. Brian Hanford gives V an ominous and tranquil tone which helps add to the mystery of who V is. And Wendee Lee as Trish who sadly does not get a lot of screen time, but does a serviceable job with what she is given, a shame Trish wasn’t in the game that much because this was perfect casting. (I would also like to point out that including Daniel Southworth makes four actors in here who were on Power Rangers… just a fun fact).

Other than the devil arms my other gripe was that there was no playable Trish of Lady. Last time we got a Special Edition of a DMC game Vergil, Trish, and Lady were all included as playable characters yet this time we only got Vergil. I know they didn’t get enough screen time in the game but they didn’t in DMC4 either and they became playable. If they were I honestly would have called DMC5 the magnum opus of the series.

Overall DMC5 is my favorite game in the franchise and I recommend playing it.

I’ve always wanted to play the original No More Heroes games since I played Travis Strikes Again. I enjoyed my time with TSA, but I felt like I was missing out on the real experience. So when NMH 1 & 2 dropped on the Switch I was ecstatic and boy did NMH1 not disappoint.

The story is... unconventional to say the least. It has a simple premise: You are Travis Touchdown and you have to kill the ten highest ranked assassins and your reward is nailing the woman who orchestrated these fights. There are several fourth wall breaking jokes and the story never takes itself seriously. I’ve been playing a lot of story focused games like Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us Part II, and Yakuza 7. So to see a game that doesn’t take itself super seriously is weirdly refreshing. They even jokingly say that it won’t get a sequel, self awareness jokes are hit and miss for me personally, but Suda51 hits the mark on them.

The Hack and Slash gameplay was addicting and as a huge wrestling fan it made me smile to see Travis pull off a Brain Buster and a DDT. I thought the graphics/art style complimented the tone very well. Don’t get me wrong I love games like Ghost of Tsushima and God of War that are known for their gorgeous scenery, but in my opinion sometimes having your own artistic style helps a game stand out more (like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, I’m interested in it just for its aesthetics alone).

I know a lot of people weren’t fond of the jobs, but personally I did not mind them as much. Except for the Scorpion and Mine removal jobs, those were just tedious. I think they’re a great way to prevent the game from feeling repetitive. Plus they get you money so you can buy clothes and more Beam Katanas to unlock the true ending so there is an incentive. That was one of my gripes with NMH2. All of the jobs were optional and you didn’t need them to participate in the rankings and I only used the dual wielding Katanas when I unlocked them so I didn’t switch them out. That’s how I noticed the game can be repetitive, but I’ll talk about that when I do a separate post for NMH2. Although I will say traveling to the job location was pretty boring, something that was fixed in the sequel, but again that’s for another post.

Back to the Beam Katanas, my favorite would have to be the Tsubaki MK.II just because the design is so impractical, but I got so many multi kills in the “Kill 100 enemies in x amount of minutes” a classic “don’t judge a book by its cover” example.

The bosses are some of the most colorful characters I have fought in a game. I often found myself coming up with new strategies. Like when fighting Dr. Peace I dodged/deflected bullets and rolled up behind him to attack. When I fought Bad Girl I didn’t even try to swing the gimps back to her (which sounds so weird now that I type it) or attack her when she was crying, I couldn’t risk it so I was patient, took my time, and attacked her when I was sure I had the right opportunity. Even Jeane was a whole other animal. The Beam Katana was useless and had to rely on melee attacks. So as far as battles go NMH has a wonderful series of boss battles. We only get to spend less then five minutes with them in the cutscenes, but they all standout with their over the top and eccentric personalities. Hell I could see some of them staring in their own games. How cool would a Destroyman prequel game be where he is the stereotypical hero, but slowly loses his mind as you progress. Or maybe Shinobu in a stealth/action spin-off.

Lastly I want to talk about the performances. This in my opinion is Robin Atkin Downes best role. It’s thanks to him that I found Travis to be likable. Downes also shows the two sides of Travis: the nerdy otaku who just wants to be the best assassin in the world and the subtle honorable side of him who shows sympathy and respect to the people he killed (albeit he only shows this side when he kill woman). I also have to give a shout out to Josh Keaton as Destroyman. I think it’s funny that for a guy who’s well known for voicing iconic super heroes from Spider-Man to Green Lantern to recently Iron Man, he plays a parody of a hero in Destroyman who sounds like he is going to snap and go on a killing spree at any minute (although judging by how you meet him it looks like he already has).

My only gripes with the game are small nitpicks. The aforementioned driving segments of the game was lackluster, but again they fixed that in the next game. Perhaps it just wasn’t meant for an open world style. My other nitpick is the camera there were a few times when it would get to close to me and the enemy which resulted in some awkward angles, but they weren’t really frequent so it didn’t ruin the experience. My last gripe (and again this is a nitpick) is that literally every time I got the cool slot power ups I only obtained them when there was only two enemies. Every. Single. Time.