Game releases in Japan are slowing down in May, with the long spring holidays over and a long summer in the offing, but there are still a few highlights to come. Here’s a sample of the more interesting titles coming to Japanese shops next week, courtesy the review pages of Famitsu magazine:
– Portal 2 (10/9/9/9, 37 points): By far the most lauded game of the week, and for good reason — Japanese gamers are stereotyped as having an aversion to violent Western FPSes, but Portal 2’s quite different from that. “As an action-puzzle game it’s excellent,” one reviewer said. “It’s delicately balanced, with the gameplay tricks gradually getting revealed, and the atmosphere and voice work really pull you into the game.” Another agreed: “The system is brilliant, and it’s easy to lose yourself in this really fresh puzzle-solving experience. It’s a major rush when you figure out how to get past something, whether in single or multiplayer.”
The only complaints, light as they were, were about the challenge level. “Co-op play is difficult, with a lot of timing-based elements, but offers a type of fun that’s different from single-player,” one writer said. “It can get frustrating, though, when you get stuck on something without much of a puzzle element to it, or without any hints.”
