While I tend to play a wide range of games on the PS Vita, I have a tendency to be drawn more towards arcade shooters and JRPGs. While Steins;Gate doesn’t fall into either of these categories, I was certainly eager to try out this visual novel for the PS Vita if only for the game’s origin as I’ve usually enjoyed most localised Japanese games that I’ve played on the PS Vita and while I haven’t played many visual novels so far, I had high hopes for this one…
If you’re not familiar with visual novels, it’s quite an unusual experience at first. It’s less of a game but more a passive experience being an illustrated story with limited interaction along the way. In some games you’ll be able to make choices that chance the course of the story or the way characters interact with each other, some not so much. Many have spoken dialogue, music, animation, sound effects but they’re more entertainment than games. Steins;Gate follows the story of a group of teenage scientists who believe that they have discovered a way of communicating with the past, which leads to a series of occurances that affect their very future, amidst some very strange goings on including the very fabric of time seeming to be unravelling around them…
So far the jury is still out on Steins;Gate. I certainly don’t think it deserves the acclaim that many have given it and while it is an enjoyable story with some interesting characters, superb artwork and has been expertly translated, the pacing is too sluggish for my liking and even with the limited character interaction, I just feel that nothing I do has any influence on the outcome or direction of the story and that I’m little more than a spectator.
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