Cat, the Great Detective / 猫には推理がよく似合う

Cat, the Great Detective is a mystery novel that, you may have guessed from the title and cover, features a cat. Our protagonist is Kaori Tsubaki, a legal assistant and the sole employee of an old, semi-retired lawyer. It’s a pretty chill job, but the main perk is the fact that the lawyer keeps his late wife’s cat at the office—and Kaori loves cats. In fact, she spends every Sunday in the office so Scottie won’t be alone. Scottie is the titular cat, and everyone else calls him Hyouta, but Kaori knows his name is actually Scottie, since he’s a Scottish Fold. How does Kaori know Scottie’s name is actually Scottie? She asked him. (Kaori can hear Scottie speak.)

Stray

Stray got a lot of hype. If you were completely oblivious to internet discourse in the weeks leading up to its release, allow me to provide a comprehensive explanation of Stray’s features and how they interacted with the main underlying currents of pop culture at the time in a way to produce one of the most anticipated games of 2022:

In Stray, you play as a cat.

…Hm? No, that’s it. Were you expecting more?

Huh. When you take a step back, that’s actually a pretty small base to place so much hype on, isn’t it?

So, how was it? Is Stray the cat’s meow, or does it belong in the litter box?

Let’s just say I’m more of a dog person.

Vaporum

It always begins with a man and a lighthouse… We play as a man with no memories who washes up on at a tower in the middle of the ocean. Upon entering, he finds a retro-futuristic steampunk dystopia that, based on audiologs scattered throughout the facility, appears to have resulted from the study of a mysterious miracle substance gone wrong. In other words, it’s… Vaporum!

Operencia: The Stolen Sun

Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a first-person grid-based dungeon crawler, which readers of the blog may already know that I love. While Legend of Grimrock is focused purely on exploration, combat, and puzzles, Operencia is a bit more well-rounded, with actual characters and story, and a more fleshed-out combat system. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean Operencia was better. It was fun, but it wasn’t great—it held itself back. But we’ll get to that.

Murderer vs. Maniac / 殺人犯 対 殺人鬼

While some books take a while to get into the action, Murderer vs. Maniac wastes no time. The opening scene is all about the protagonist killing someone!

...Wait, what?

Six Pork Cutlets / 六枚のとんかつ

Feeling hungry? Six Pork Cutlets is a baka-mys short story collection that won the third Mephisto prize, so as you could probably expect from that those pieces of information, it... has a bit of a different flavor than you might expect.

Those Who Cast a Curse Like the Headless / 首無の如き祟るもの

And so we arrive at the third book in the Genya Toujou series. The previous two books provided a wonderful blend of J-horror, murder mystery, and folklore, and Those Who Cast a Curse Like the Headless is supposed to be a contender of the peak of the series. So does this book have enough to take the crown, or is it getting ahead of itself?

Who Inside / 封印再度

Who Inside is the fifth book in the Saikawa & Moe (or, as I prefer, S&M) series. It’s ten books total, so we’re halfway through! (…Ignoring the fact that I never reviewed The Perfect Insider on this blog.) Anyway, the S&M series has a heavy dose of STEM, which I’ve always assumed would result in mechanical and stuffy mysteries, but Mori continues to play around with structure and convention. While the book gets a bit weird and might be a fair deal longer than it really needs to be, the core trick is great and enough for me to view the piece favorably. (That sentence, coincidentally, can also serve as my Perfect Insider review.)

The Mannequin House Murders / 人形館の殺人

I didn’t like this book at all. I don’t have much more to say about it.

Death Within the Evil Eye / 魔眼の匣の殺人

It’s difficult to succeed genius. Chrono Cross isn’t as good as Chrono Trigger, Bioshock 2 isn’t as good as Bioshock, and National Treasure 2—okay, that one is basically perfect. When you create something truly special, you’ve set a high bar for yourself, which makes it that much more difficult to overcome. And yet Death Within the Evil Eye… succumbs to this pitfall, as it’s good, but just doesn’t quite have the same magic as Death Among the Undead.

Chrono Cross / クロノ・クロス

Chrono Trigger is a stunning masterpiece with beautiful pixel graphics, engaging gameplay, fantastic music, memorable characters, and a well-paced, well-constructed time travel story. It's no wonder it's hailed by many as one of the, if not the, greatest video games of all time, and it's fully deserving of such exemplary accolades.

Chrono Cross, its sequel, is fine.

The Silver Case / シルバー事件

The Silver Case takes place in 1999 in the (fictional) 24th Ward of Tokyo, where the murderer Kamui Uehara committed the titular Silver Case twenty years prior. He's thought to now be harmless, until he escapes from the mental hospital at which he's being detained. We play as the unnamed sole survivor of the unit first dispatched to recover Kamui, who then finds himself swept up into the 24th Ward's Heinous Crimes Unit, which investigates... heinous crimes.

Overcooked! 2

I’ve taken down zombie hordes with nothing but some guns and parkour, faced down mad gods in decrepit, abandoned space stations, and battled otherworldly horrors in the darkest recesses of humanity’s subconscious, and yet… And yet, the most intense co-op experience I’ve overcome is cooking in a silly kitchen.