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Creature Features

That's not a printing error on the cover of Corpse Party: Blood Drive. It's just another disconcerting flourish in Corpse Party's ongoing tale of hauntings, curses, and gruesome fates befalling high-school kids.

Not to be confused with the recent Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, Blood Drive aims to wrap up the original game's storyline. Ayumi Shinozaki went through all sorts of typical horror-flick tragedy and ghastly possession during the original game and Book of Shadows, but she survived nonetheless. A bunch of her companions didn't, and that drives a guilt-laden Ayumi back into dark places. Lured by the promise of resurrecting her deceased friends (which couldn't possibly end badly), Ayumi treads into a mysterious, cordoned-off house (which also couldn't possibly end badly). Things inevitably turn nightmarish, and a bunch of other Corpse Convention survivors are drawn into the carnage in spite of Ayumi's best efforts to go in solo.

Previous Corpse Get-Together games did their best to build suspense from what looked like an old-school RPG, right down to the pixel-made graphics and big-headed characters. It could be quite spooky at times, and Blood Drive tries the same thing with 3-D character models. They're still exaggerated with large heads and eyes, though, and the halfway cute characters sometimes clash with the bloodied walls and ominous score. The gameplay relies mostly on conversations and item-gathering, not unlike prior Corpse Soirees, and it's the overall morbid tone that's meant to hold things together. It's creepy in both horror-film ways and more grotesque extremes. In fact, some of the artwork looks like the sort of thing you might've seen in the 1990s at those mom-and-pop rental stores that didn't bother sorting the anime porn out from the Macross Plus and Bubblegum Crisis tapes.

Import Barrier: There's a good amount of dialogue, though fans of previous Corpse Shindigs might be able to follow the story well enough.

Chances of a Domestic Release: No word at this point, but XSEED Games seems interested.

Bonus Stuff: The special edition includes “Pin Jack” figurines with detachable heads. Yes, you decapitate the toys and mount them in your smartphone port. Fitting.

Tokyo New World Record: Operation Abyss almost died on the operating table. It began as a collaboration between publisher Cyberfront and dungeon-hack-maker Experience Inc., but Cyberfront went through a management shift and a rapid dissolution. Some of their projects, including a Japanese release of Saint's Row IV, were canceled, but Tokyo New World Record: Operation Abyss endured. The 5pb/Mages collective took over publishing, and Experience Inc. finished up the game.

Operation Abyss falls in line with Experience's own Demon Gaze, which NIS America released here this April. Tokyo is besieged by monsters in Operation Abyss, and the player's among the rare creature-hunters who can use Blood Codes. These codes use the DNA of historical figures to turn ordinary explorers into traditional RPG character classes. Paladins bear some of Joan of Arc's essence, samurai are based on Miyamoto Musashi, ruthless emperor Genghis Khan inspires the archer class, and so forth. What about healers? They're rooted in the genetic makeup of social reformist and noted white mage Florence Nightingale.

The monster-wrecked streets and skyscrapers of Tokyo unfold as blocky dungeon crawls, and players pace around, get into first-person battles, and try to survive long enough to discover new areas or return to home base. It's all very much like Demon Gaze, even in the buxom designs for the female character archetypes. There's a vague story unfolding here as well; your crewmates include both ditzy teenagers and suspicious business leaders who know more than they're letting on, and a ghostly woman leads you on your travels. Trust her, I say.

Import Barrier: The Vita's region-free and dungeon-hacking ain't so hard once you figure out the menus, but character customization might present more of a challenge.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Not so bad, considering that Demon Gaze made it here. No one's bit just yet, however.

Bonus Stuff: The special edition comes with assorted DLC and an artbook, or rather a “visual fan book” for all you visual fans out there.

Level-5 had some failures to their name. The visual novel Time Travellers bombed, the PlayStation 2 RPG Rogue Galaxy didn't quite sell up to expectations, and even Gundam Age, which Level-5 president Akihiro Hino co-authored, had its broadcast cut short. Yet Level-5 has plenty of successes. Yo-Kai Watch is one of them. It's done very well across anime, manga, toys, and, of course, video games.

The original Yo-Kai Watch is a crafty and shameless revisiting of the Pokemon ideal, plus a little bit of Gegege no Kitaro. While on a forest bug-hunt one day, protagonists Keita and Fumika discover a race of creatures called Yo-Kai, and they include friendly ones as well as malevolent spirits. Players tame Yo-Kai by luring them with specific foods and defeating them in battle, after which they can raise them and call upon them in combat. They'll also evolve into new forms, just like that classic trend-setting franchise, Digimon.

Yo-Kai Watch 2 sends its hero and heroine back in time, searching for the origins of the Yokai Watch device in ye olden age of the twentieth century. Those origins concern a young man named Keizo and his pet feline Yo-Kai, one of many new creatures for kids to ensnare across the game's two different versions. Yes, there are two editions of Yo-Kai Watch 2: Head and Founder. It's a tradition.

Import Barrier: That mean ol' 3DS region-lock makes this one unplayable on American systems. If you can get around that, it's not too tough to figure out. But…

Chances of a Domestic Release: Yo-Kai Watch seems on the verge of a U.S. release. Level-5 applied for a trademark here, and Denstu Entertainment USA is sniffing around for someone to bring the series over here.

Bonus Stuff: Each edition of Yo-Kai Watch 2 has a limited-run version with its own Z Medal. The Founder set has the Nyaiiin medal, while the Head one has a Komanyachi medal. Buy 'em both, kids!

I will assume that everyone gets the pun in the title of Akiba's Trip. If not, just soak in the cover, disheveled maid and all. That'll make it clear.

Akiba's Trip is all about the expanse of Akihabara: the electronics stores, the maid cafes, the anime stores, the manga shops, and the range of geeks and uninterested passersby who wander its streets. Yet that broad citizenry masks a secret: some of them are vampires. The player's avatar learns this when he goes hunting exclusive action figures and ends up at the mercy of inhuman bloodsuckers. He's rescued by a pale, parasol-wielding young woman who initiates him into a cadre of vampire-hunters, dedicated with varying ferocity to wiping out the undead menace.

And how does the player identify and destroy those vampires? By attacking them, yanking off their clothes, and letting the scourging rays of the sun go to work. It's a silly idea at first, but there's a salacious tone to it—a lot of the suspected vampires are women, and the alleged hero forcibly tears their clothes away. XSEED and Access tried to even the score by exploiting male and female bosses equally, but I'm not sure if that works. I talked enough about this last week, I think.

Aside from the vampire hunts, Akiba's Trip builds a miniature mock-up of Akihabara. The hero meets up with his teammates, buys stuff for his seemingly shut-in little sister, collects all sorts of realistic merchandise at over 100 shops, and explores a half-satire, half-fulfillment of Akihabara geekery. He also outfits himself with fashionable attire (and cosplay outfits) while gathering various mundane weapons. Yes, it's the rare game where you can pound random strangers with a tennis racket because they might be vampires.

Sword Art Online picks up where Bandai's .hack multimedia horde left off. Like .hack, Sword Art Online is all about a futuristic online RPG where the real world and a virtual gamespace clash to potentially deadly effect. Sword Art Online takes things a step further, though. Its hero, Kirito, is at the center of one huge game-player fantasy, complete with numerous virtual romances and vast conspiracies. Unlike .hack's simultaneous releases, Sword Art Online worked its way up, being first a light novel, then a bunch of manga, then an anime series, and then an actual game.

The fictional virtual-reality game of Sword Art Online is a huge multiplayer expanse, but Hollow Fragment really isn't. It has a local four-player mode, but much of the game is a single-player tale about Kirito finding his way through a mysterious new sector of his comfy online world. Gameplay follows the action-RPG approach of a current-day Phantasy Star, as Kirito can dodge, build up attack meters, and strike at enemies with moves helpfully mapped to the Vita's face buttons.

Kirito also joins up with various allies from prior Sword Art Online stories. In both battles and village tete-a-tetes, he can pair off with blacksmith Lisbeth, swordsman Klein, archer/gunner Sinon, beast-tamer Silica, sylph warrior Leafa, and Kirito's virtual wife, healer-fencer Asuna. Hollow Fragment adds two more partners and/or potential girlfriends. Purple-tressed Strea is a sword-wielder who wastes no time in smothering Kirito with affection, while a criminal-class Orange Player named Phillia is a bit less trusting of our hero. And she should be, considering his gadabout ways.

RPGs in the Tales series? Plenty o' those. Direct sequels? Not so many. We have Tales of Destiny 2, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and assorted follow-ups to the spin-offs Tales of the World and Narikiri Dungeon. Tales of Xillia 2 closely follows the original, opening about a year after Tales of Xillia wrapped up its two needlessly bifurcated plotlines. But it's not the same thing.

Discarding the dual-character approach of the first Xillia, the sequels puts players firmly in control of Ludger Kresnik, an aspiring chef hired by the Spirius Corporation to rescue a girl named Elle Mel Marta. An accident leaves Ludger in debt to the company, and he must pay it off while clearing his brother's name and looking after Elle (making her this generation's fourth or fifth heroine named some derivative of Ellen). Ludger also possesses a preternatural ability to affect alternate realities, and his decisions shift the storyline appropriately. Elle's technically not playable, but there's a round of new face as well as the Xillia characters. You'll see older versions of them, including doctor Jude Mathis, otherworldly warrior Milla Maxwell, butler Rowen Illbert, and that vicious little puppet-thing, Teepo.

A Tales game is nothing without its extravagantly named combat array, so Tales of Xillia 2 gets the Cross Dual Raid Linear Motion Battle System. It's a lot like the DR-LMBS from the first Xillia, wherein four characters jump into the fray. The player once again can switch between them, staging team-ups and switching straight-line paths in a 3-D field. Ludger has a wider array of attacks, however, as he can switch instantly between bladed weapons, firearms, and big ol' hammers in the middle of a fight.

For those with $130 to spend on RPG box sets, the Tales of Xillia 2 Collector's Edition includes a Ludger figure, a replica of Elle's watch, a little stuffed version of Elle's cat Rollo, a music CD, an artbook, and some DLC costumes. If nothing else, game-merch collectors can fit that Rollo toy right into a flock of Harvest Moon animals.