THE CRUNCH
Stranger Than Heaven, the new action game from Like a Dragon studio RGG, left a hands-on previewer smitten after a few hours, though they suspect its combat will divide players. The game follows Makoto Daito, a man of half American and half Japanese lineage trying to make a home in Japan, across decades of the country's history.
Combat departs from Like a Dragon's familiar action: left and right strikes are mapped to the controller's triggers and bumpers, making blows feel heavier, with a strong emphasis on parrying and dodging in the direction an attack comes from. The previewer, who needed a few minutes to adjust, grew to adore the scheme, but worries the crucial parry timing will feel like a wall for some players rather than a climb worth enduring.
The other standout is the setting, which moves from the smoke-choked skyline of 1915 Kokura to 1929 Kure and 1943 Minami, depicting a gradually modernising Japan in detail the previewer found soulful and mesmerising. The game is also among RGG's most explicitly violent action titles, with brutal finishers on low-health enemies, save perhaps for the zombie spin-off Like a Dragon: Dead Souls or Like a Dragon: Ishin.