In his video last year regarding context sensitivity, Matthewmatosis opens by describing Ghost Trick as entirely context-sensitive: the main action button ("trick") always performs a different action depending on the item possessed. However, he points this out as an exception to the trend of heavy context-sensitivity weighing down modern titles, because simply put, Ghost Trick uses context-sensitivity not as a crutch, but as its core. It never seems to suffer from fuzzy context: the game not only gives you plenty of safe time to experiment with set-pieces leading up to timed sequences (since untimed traversal to the victim is every bit a puzzle in itself), but also briefly describes the single "trick" of each object possessed to give players an idea of how to progress. Furthermore, Ghost Trick's difficulty hits a perfect sweet-spot: it doesn't feel free because traversal and manipulating objects to your advantage require a good degree of planning and experimentation, but failure also never feels too punishing because other characters and the environment are great at providing thoughtful feedback upon failure, so the player isn't just banging their head against a wall via quick restarts at built-in checkpoints.

Essentially, it's like playing the ancestor of Return of the Obra Dinn but with a time loop mechanic attached. The objective remains simple (travel back to four minutes before death to avert fate), but how to achieve said objective is always completely dictated by your surroundings. As a result, it naturally iterates upon its basic structure to create more unconventional scenarios: soon you're not just manipulating objects for traversal and foiling assassins, you're also solving locked room mysteries, or traveling to different environments to save victims from elsewhere, or diving into deaths within deaths to avert multiple fates at a time. Through all of this, Ghost Trick understands one of the key strengths of video games: creating virtual playgrounds of experimentation unsaddled by the limitations of time to reward players through the joy of discovery. The player is constantly surprised time and time again not only from unexpected object interactions, but also from how the narrative weaves in and out of death sequences to create suspenseful moments. It's a minor miracle in itself that the story never jumps the shark: the gameplay mechanics remain firmly consistent alongside its lore, and every plot thread is neatly wrapped up by the end of the game after a series of subtly foreshadowed twists. Combine this marrying of storytelling and gameplay with expressive animations, a colorful and very personable cast, an understated yet powerful soundtrack, and a great mix of humor and emotional moments, and you get what is perhaps the most cohesive title in the DS library.

It's rather poetic that a game which looked simple on the outside provided such an intricate exercise for Shu Takumi to prove that he was no one-trick pony. I'm grateful that Ghost Trick has finally been ported to modern systems for a whole new audience to lose their minds over this, for it's a masterpiece that everyone owes to themselves to check out. At the end of the day, nothing feels quite as cathartic as miraculously changing destiny in the face of inevitable death.

I’ve always heard a lot about Ghost Trick but never got around to playing, but luckily with this remaster I figured I’d give it a shot now

Loved it, it’s a really great adventure game with an interesting mystery and a ton of charm. The puzzle gameplay (ghost tricks) can have a bit too much trial and error for my liking, but the story and likable characters kept me hooked and it comes together with a very cool ending. The music’s awesome too, they did a great job with the arranged tracks for the remaster especially. Well worth checking out

Shin Megami Tensei NINE is a psychological horror game about a guy who gets attacked by a giant angry scrotum at a Taylor Swift concert, and then spends several months facing horrific hallucinations from the resulting PTSD. There are no rules in this game. In the first five minutes you shatter the boundaries of space and time when you try to leave this flower shop only to realise that you're trapped as this lady and her lesbian furry lover crawl on two planes of existence at once as she seemingly goes down the wall and towards the screen at the same time. The only way out is through this table down here and then you're back on the street where this guy yells at you, as if you just did all that shit on purpose. Sometimes when you walk down the street you literally walk down into it. I mean this looks like some kind of surrealist painting. Trying to imagine the perspective on this destroys the human mind so just don't think about it too much. Almost every building is empty and plays mildly disturbing music, except for this one where Jack Frost says welcome and promptly shows you a series of menus with no text. The whole game feels like you aren't welcome in its presence. It almost feels like the software is sentient and it's watching, trying to figure out why you're playing a Japanese Xbox game. I truly do believe that if demons can manifest themselves in lines of code, there's almost certainly one hiding in here somewhere. Oh yeah, and the battle system you can't really do anything it's like a movie. You can smack that ballsack all you want, but it's just not gonna go away. Overall, I have to say it's about as good as Persona 5 so check it out when you get the chance. See ya