Attack of the Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale

[DANGERMAN]

This is a really odd game for a few reasons. The story is that giant monsters used to roam Japan, Godzilla style, and eventually people got to quite like them, made tv shows about them, and that's how we got stuff like the Power Rangers. The suburb of Tokyo the game is set in has a TV station and it has a giant monster problem, with huge footsteps littering the landscape. Oh, and there's aliens in the town somewhere

The gameplay is probably even stranger as you really don't do a lot. You sort of bump up against tasks, called 'episodes', that involve talking to people. Occasionally to trigger these episodes you have to fight other kids in card battles, the cards are based on monsters, but it's basically rock/paper/scissors. The thing that makes it strange is that there's only about 10 of those battles prior to the credits rolling, and while it's obviously not a long game I expected more 'gameplay' over the 5 hours

Most of your time is spent looking for glims, little orbs that must be collected to make a new monster card. You also get these for winning battles and completing an episode. Generally they aren't hidden as such, but finding them on the 3DS screen can be a bit difficult

What Attack of the Friday Monsters is though is charming as fuck. It reminds me a Totoro style Ghibli films, low on action but making you smile quite a lot. There's some funny lines, some nice ideas, and a quirky story. It looks great too, the 3d character models aren't anything too special but the environment has a nice manga look too it, especially the foreground stuff that makes good, if not very showy, use of the 3D.

I liked it, it was a good palette cleanser after the relative stress of Dragon Quest 6 and Crimson Shroud. I think if you liked Costume Quest you'll like this, but even the light Costume Quest has more to its battle system than this

[retroed]

Plus 1 for mentioning Costume Quest.

I've had my eye on this for a while, but I think I'm going to wait for a sale as I have a lot on my plate at the moment. Sounds good, though.

[DANGERMAN]

I bought a stand and grip for my phone to try to record footage of 3DS stuff. This is my first attempt at it and it's not come out perfectly, but its a demonstration of what the game looks like and plays like. It's a bit stuttery at the start but I think it gets better

[spatular]

Yeah! played this over the last few days, not really got anything to add over what DANGERMAN says. I liked it, it's cool.

[illdog]

What Attack of the Friday Monsters is though is charming as fuck.

Totally. It's sort of hard not to fall in love with it whilst your playing, it has a real innocent charm to it, the kids behave and talk like you'd expect them too.

It's quite relaxing for the most part, if your stuck it was never something that just walking around the whole area and talking to everyone didn't solve and that was ok to do because its not that huge of an area and there are only so many people.

I did get stuck once, I couldn't beat the bad kid, Nanafushi or someone, he was getting the best of me every time. I had to go off and find a couple of glims I guess I was missing, they unlocked a card that could beat two elements (lit could beat rock and stone but was still weak to scissors) that finally gave me the edge.

The whole game just had a charm and when I finished it I felt like I did when I finished Touch Detective for the first time, sad that it was all over but happy to have experienced it.

[DANGERMAN]

I thought you'd like it. I'd sort of love another one but at the same time I don't think it could support one so why ruin it