Tag: playstation 5

#oneaday Day 526: Full Metal Schoolgirl

Full disclosure: the other day when I said I was going to play Full Metal Schoolgirl, I actually ended up playing more Tears of the Kingdom. I didn't feel bad about that, either, but it did mean I haven't been able to talk about Full Metal Schoolgirl.

Until now! Because I played it this evening.

Full Metal Schoolgirl is a roguelite action game. I know, I know, we're not exactly short of those, but this one had my attention for a few reasons. Firstly: mecha gyaru schoolgirls. Secondly, it's developed by Yuke's, who do cool stuff. Thirdly, the entire concept of the game is savagely anti-capitalist, and frankly, with the world the way it is right now, that was rather appealing.

You take control of one of two mechanised schoolgirls, each of whom have their own reasons to want revenge on the local megacorporation, which has been turning its workers into cyborgs so they can work more hours without having to take a break. The upshot of this is that they have become "The Working Dead", doomed to continue working their meaningless, joyless jobs even after death.

Enter our schoolgirls, who raid the company's 100-floor headquarters, only for the one you didnt pick to get immediately injured and, predictably, show up as a recurring boss character at various points throughout proceedings.

Your gal has a melee and a ranged weapon. Ranged weapons either have infinite ammo and an overheat gauge, or a limited clip size (and thus the need to reload) but an infinite stock of ammunition. Melee weapons, meanwhile, use up a stamina bar with each strike, and this bar is also used for dashing, dodging and blocking.

The game flows on a room-by-room basis. You're not always locked in each room and have to defeat all the enemies to proceed, but you often are, particularly when some of the game's special mechanics come into play.

Clearing a room rewards you with loot, which can be replacements for either of your weapons or shield, a battery for healing, or a mod which confers a reasonably significant passive bonus of some description, along with a small passive penalty. You also gain various materials with every kill and most bits of scenery destroyed, and there's a currency that only applies to your current run that can be used for various purposes, such as opening locked item chests that can guarantee items of a particular rarity.

Part of the game's setup is that your chosen gal is livestreaming her massacre, and as she progresses, requests will come in from the viewers. These usually take the form of clearing the room in a time limit, without healing or without depleting your stamina bar completely at any point. When one of these comes in, you can accept it, or you can accept a harder variant for a bigger reward. If you successfully complete the request, your gal earns cash donations which do carry over between runs, and these, along with the materials, are used to upgrade her Base capabilities between runs.

It's a lot of fun so far! There's some nice weight to the combat, and plenty of variety in the guns. Since the enemies are robotic, they explode and shatter into pieces dramatically when you blast or slice them, and each room is furnished entirely with physics objects, meaning you absolutely wreck the joint with each encounter.

There are a variety of different enemy types that change up with each block of levels, including some who have a "job title" and act as a miniboss. These can be staggered, which leaves them open to a "Retirement Blow", a satisfying cinematic attack that usually defeats them outright.

Thus far I've enjoyed what I played, and it kept me occupied for a good two hours solid earlier. I'm looking forward to playing it some more — it's a nice, silly, fun game, and that's exactly what you want sometimes.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 476: A few first impressions from Silent Hill f

I'm excited to be playing a brand new Silent Hill game in 2025. I wasn't sure how I felt about Silent Hill f transplanting the series from late '90s/early '00s America to 1960s Japan, but thus far it appears to be a change that works. If you've played any entries in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series, you'll know that small-town Japan has plenty of scope for eerie activities, and such is the case with Silent Hill f.

I'm just shy of four hours in so far and thus far I've been having a good time. Protagonist Hinako, in true Silent Hill tradition, clearly has some Issues to work through, though the exact specifics of these haven't been revealed as yet, aside from the fact that her father is an abusive alcoholic and she resents her sister for moving away to get married. She also may or may not be dead; my internal jury's out on that one thus far.

As with prior Silent Hill games, Silent Hill f sees Hinako wandering through a sort-of open environment, stumbling across interesting happenings and finding horrific trouble at fairly regular intervals. This time around, rather than being completely alone, Hinako regularly runs into her school friends, who are seemingly seeing the same things she is seeing — there's always been some ambiguity in the series as to whether things are "really" happening — but for the most part she ends up having to act by herself in order to catch up with her peers in various ways.

Part of the narrative is clearly going to involve how Hinako is ostracised from certain parts of her supposed "friendship" group for refusing to conform to behavioural gender norms. Her best friend is an icky boy named Shu, and even as teens, they are still obsessed with their imaginary "Space War" games that they've been playing together since childhood. I'm interested to see quite how far the game ends up leaning into matters of gender identity, because it would very much be in keeping with the series' past of exploring psychosexual matters, among other things.

Much of Silent Hill f sees Hinako stumbling around in the fog as is series tradition, but likewise there are times when she finds herself in "other" places. In one sequence, she finds herself lost in a seemingly endless field of scarecrows and must solve a puzzle to find a way out; on several other occasions — seemingly when she's unconscious in the "fog" world — she goes somewhere completely different, shrouded in darkness, filled with mysterious temples and shrines, and guided by a man in a fox mask who almost certainly is not entirely trustworthy.

As you might expect, the game dives deep into traditional Japanese spiritualism and superstitions, with the main angle exploring the fox god Inari. There have been a couple of mentions of an "ancient god" that may or may not be Inari at various junctures too, though, so it remains to be seen where all that ends up — and whether Inari is a force one should feel comfortable putting one's faith behind.

Mechanically, it's pretty much as you would expect for a modern survival horror game. Combat takes a few cues from heavy-hitting stamina management action RPGs because of course it does, everything seemingly has to these days, but since the Souls games, trope codifiers for this type of experience, are effectively survival horror RPGs in many respects, it does make a certain amount of sense. It also helps to highlight that Hinako, as a teenage girl, is not a fighter. She can't take much punishment and she isn't particularly agile at swinging anything around with the intention of doing damage. As such, combat has a rather deliberate pace, though mistakes are punished quite severely, even on the default "Story" difficulty.

Initially I wasn't all that enamoured with this, but once you get a feel for its distinctive rhythm and learn to spot enemy tells — including some particularly explicit ones that allow you to counterattack — it's probably a good fit for Silent Hill, if indeed the series really "needs" combat at all. (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was an attempt to do a Silent Hill game without combat, and it was mostly successful, though the "chase" sequences it had in lieu of actual fights were, at times, a little frustrating.)

The puzzles have been interesting so far, though despite the default puzzle difficulty being "Hard" none have been too taxing as yet. The trickiest one thus far took place in the aforementioned scarecrow field and required reading of body language and facial expressions to match a particular statement; I'm not entirely sure I solved this one "correctly", but it made internal sense to me while doing so and thus I'm counting it as a success.

I'm intrigued, then. I want to know more about Hinako's situation and what is really going on with her. There are quite a few different ways I can potentially see things proceeding from where I am thus far, and in keeping with series tradition, not many of them promise a happy ending for our heroine. And we longstanding Silent Hill fans wouldn't have it any other way.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.