Report From the Front: WonderCon 2014 Video Game Demos (Tetris_King)

Although I have attended San Diego Comic-Con for a number of years, this year I attended WonderCon 2014 in Anaheim for the first time, albeit for only one day (Saturday). As with Comic-Con, along with everything else I did on the show floor, I saw it as an opportunity to check out any video games I had an interest in to see if I would play them any further in the future. At the Namco Bandai booth, I had a blast with Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle, but later in the day I went back to try another game that caught my eye. While my time with All-Star Battle was covered in detail by my brother, I have decided to write about my first impression with playing the other game.

Preview Note: The following write-up represents only the opinions of the writer and is based on a work in progress. Should the final version be reviewed, these opinions may change to reflect the full game.

Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day (PlayStation 3)

What first drew me to this game was the title before seeing a snippet of gameplay, the latter of which is what brought me back eventually to the Namco Bandai booth. I’m going to come clean and say that my time with the game was continuing from someone else’s session and, after some brief time with it, I let someone else play in order to keep the (small) line moving. Regardless, the experience led to me wanting to check out the full game.

The player character, Ranko Tsukigime.

I didn’t play enough of Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day to get any context as to the actions on-screen, but the game itself is a side-scrolling platformer wherein you must outrun an advancing wall of doom while also taking care of any enemies in the way. Using this premise for the gameplay, it manages to make it so that the action keeps going and is actually pretty fast-paced as far as combat is concerned. Enemies don’t take much to be beaten, but this is a necessity as you must outrun the advancing wall, and running into them without attacking can result in nearly being swallowed by the wall; this also applies to the platforming, as you may occasionally have to do some wall jumping to make any progress. While I have no clue what the story is all about, the gameplay itself intrigued me and made me want to play the full game.

Later, before I typed this, I found out that Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is also a tie-in to a series of short anime films entitled Short Peace. In spite of my inexperience with this series, this does not deter me from wanting to play the full game anyway. What enhances this desire, however, is also having found out that Suda51, of No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw fame, was involved with this game’s development; having liked Lollipop Chainsaw, I now have further incentive to play this game when it comes out.