Now Playing at SUPERJUMP, Issue 14

We're back with another issue of Now Playing at SUPERJUMP! With the insanity of 2024's release calendar about to begin in earnest, our team is prepping with a wide variety of games, from the uber-popular to the widely unknown (a Vita game, holy cow)! You don't want to miss this list, so enjoy, and we'll see you back here soon with more recommendations, and odes to the games our team loves!

Rachel Alm

I beat Final Fantasy XVI, and it was definitely a game I want to play again without the completionist mentality I had, which somewhat soured this playthrough. Next on the chopping block is Persona 5 Royal, since I failed to beat the original Persona 5 and have been on and off with it since it came out. There's simply so much to do in it! I'll be trying to unwind with it a little this week.

Otherwise, I'll be sneaking in some Final Fantasy VII: Remake in anticipation of Rebirth. I also gave Triangle Strategy a shot on a long-haul plane ride recently, and hope to jump into that one at some point in the near future considering it's portable and my Switch is feeling just a little neglected lately.

Joshua Gautreaux

I'm playing through the Resident Evil 2 remake. While I stopped playing the first remake within an hour, I'm really enjoying this one. It almost feels like a point-and-click adventure game combined with a horror survival shooter game. And the Tyrant definitely goes down as one of the most terrifying video game enemies I've encountered.

Brandon R. Chinn

I just beat Chrono Trigger on Steam Deck, first time playing the Steam version and it's a fantastic union of the PS1 anthology and DS versions

Guilherme Alves

I'm playing Valkyria Revolution on the Vita, and what a weird game! I don't love it, but I really enjoy how out there it is. It's probably the game with the longest cutscenes I've ever played, each chapter having between 3 and 4 hours of them, even though the levels only have 2 or 3 missions that take just 10 or 15 minutes each. That clock ticks up even more if you watch the optional scenes, as the story is told through a journalist investigating a book, and sometimes new scenes are added to earlier chapters.

It's a very ambitious story about war, history, and how the media can manipulate the outcome of every conflict (also being very heavy-handed with those themes and the magic-WWII setting). It knows that the outcome of war is always decided by just a bunch of men sitting around a desk, but it's so weird how they actually just show that for hours on end! So interesting, a very strange experience.

Paul Barnes

Recently, I've actually been playing Fortnite. As far as Battle Royale in Fortnite, I only play Zero Build modes. The building aspect was something I could never grasp or get good at. I've gotten one solo win and a handful of wins with friends in duos, trios, and squads. I really enjoy the various ways to modify guns and of course, the never-ending plethora of IP characters in the game are fun to see. I also really enjoy the Rocket Racing karting mode and the custom maps with modes like Gun Game and Prop Hunt are super fun. I feel like hating this game is a meme that's died out but they have truly added multiple things that are genuinely fun and enjoyable and I love how I'm still learning about new things in it and getting better at it too.

Bryan Finck

I'm getting ever closer to finishing Cyber Shadow, and while I love it, the difficulty at times is laughable. Forcing players to go several screens between checkpoints feels punitive, but I always get that endorphin rush after getting through it on the 60th or 70th try and keep coming back for more. The old reflexes aren't what they used to be.

I took a few hours to jump back into Hogwarts Legacy as a Hufflepuff, in order to play the Azkaban mission. Unfortunately, the mission seems glitched on PS5 as it never popped up for me, even after I employed several tactics to fix whatever might have been going wrong. No amount of time in the Wizarding World is ever wasted, but I was frustrated not to be able to experience the infamous wizard prison.

I'm also making progress in Cyberpunk 2077 in the hours when my son is monopolizing the PlayStation. The game continues to get even better as I figure out the right combination of hacks and guns to manage each combat scenario. As with all games that include stealth options, I try to go quiet but almost always end up getting loud, which can feel like a failure but is so damned fun in this universe. There's something about a 6-foot-long sniper rifle that just screams for you to use it, and who am I to defy the natural order of things?

CJ Wilson

I have mainly been playing the new Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown since it came out earlier in January. While I am slowly been progressing through the game, I’ve been trying to get a handle on the combat. I feel like I am struggling with the parrying mechanic, but part of me feels like I am rushing through. Regardless, I’m enjoying the combat and the puzzle-solving that made me have to figure out the solution in clever ways.

Otherwise, I have been catching up on my backlog earning trophies as a platinum trophy hunter with games like Toem: a Photo Adventure. It's a fun, chill game where you take pictures of various creatures and help citizens with their problems with goofy, creative solutions. All the while you are on a journey to reach your destination in documenting the phenomenon known as Toem.

Latonya Pennington

I started playing Rainbow Billy: The Curse of The Great Leviathan today after craving a cozy, nonviolent monster-catching game. You play as the character Billy, in an attempt to bring color back to the world by befriending and empathizing with monsters. By doing so, you gradually work to save the world & break the curse of a dragon known as The Great Leviathan. Not only are the graphics colorful and cute, but the nonviolent confrontations are reminiscent of the show Steven Universe, but with the turn-based system of a Mario RPG game, and the boat travel and puzzle-solving exploration are callbacks to Zelda games like Phantom Hourglass. It's a really chill game that has helped me decompress.

That's a wrap for this week's Now Playing at SUPERJUMP! Thank you for checking out the veritable treasure trove of games our team is playing right now, and be sure to check back next week when we're back with more.

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