In theory, this will be a short article because I've only played Platform 8 for 76 minutes, and I've seen most of the game, including two different (colored) credit sequences.
Platform 8 is an anomaly-spotting game from KOTAKE CREATES, the same developer behind The EXIT 8, and, with some experience in the liminal anomaly-spotting genre, I felt it was played against me as a player. But in order to talk about how to play the game itself, we're going to have to jump right away into spoilers. So, be warned.
~SPOILERS~
In several of the anomaly-spotting games I've played, there's frequently been a mechanic that tells the game you've seen an anomaly so you can proceed safely. In The EXIT 8, if you spot an anomaly, you turn around and walk the opposite direction. In The 18th Attic, you have to take a picture of the anomaly. In Room 713, if you spot an anomaly, you take the hallway to the right, or the left if you don't spot anything. In Platform 8, the mechanic is almost simplisticly nuanced to be overlooked or misinterpreted, potentially making the player feel that they're playing the game incorrectly. Maybe that's a feature? Unlike the list of rules you have to follow in The EXIT 8, the only direction that's given to the player is a small sign on both the front and back doors of the metro train you're riding in that simply reads, "Please check electric signs."
The direction is simple enough, but only if you register it as a sign put there by the developers to tell the players what to do when they spot an anomaly. You'd be forgiven if, like me, you thought maybe that's a perfectly normal sign to find in a Japanese subway car, directing the passenger to look at what the sign above the door says regarding which stop is coming up next. But no. The key to progressing in Platform 8 requires the player to take into account two main facts. The first is to look to the digital sign above the door for direction. The second is that passing from one car to the next does not immediately count as progressing through the game, and progression only happens after you've seen an anomaly.
Anomalies in this game also work differently than they do in The EXIT 8 or other anomaly-spotting games. Platform 8 feels like it forces the player to witness anomalies before you can continue. You might pass through the double doors into the next car, and the lights flicker, and the door at the other end begins opening and closing on its own. As you approach, the door closes and stops. That's it. You saw an anomaly and can continue. You might pass into the next two cars without seeing anything. Then, in the following car, you see the flickering image of a woman standing. Above the doors, the electric sign flashes in red text: "Do Not Look Away." If you follow the directions of the sign, you're allowed to proceed to the next car; otherwise, you run the risk of being "caught" or "killed" and starting over from the beginning.
Of all of the anomalies I saw in Platform 8, I didn't come across any that were as obscure as ones in The EXIT 8, like the face in the ceiling tiles or a poster slowly growing in size. The developers want you to see the multitude of bloody handprints covering the windows or the little girl who writes "Find Me" on the ground and prevents the door to the next car from opening until after you've found her. The game is having fun with the anomalies as opposed to making the player feel frustrated when you pass from Hallway 7 back down to Hallway 0. That's something that I greatly appreciate because that tells me that the developer respects my time as a player without padding the hell out of their game. It also shows evolution in a developer, not rehashing the exact same formula and mechanics in a different setting. I did go into Platform 8 expecting another The EXIT 8 set in a series of infinitely connected subway cars, but what I played was so much better.
I enjoyed the anomalies and was creeped out by several of them as well. I came across one anomaly multiple times because I couldn't figure out how to get past it, but I never felt the frustration of being sent back to the beginning of the subway terminal. I wanted to see the different anomalies, not just because they were how you progressed, but because they felt unique, and odd, and kind of absurd. Yes, having a nearly faceless creature make noises at you is unnerving; seeing a giant hand pass through an open subway door and pad around for a few seconds is just bizarre. That's what makes Platform 8 so much fun to play.
"The Front Hall" is the first song you hear when you enter the Raccoon Police Department after escaping the city streets, whether you're playing as Leon or Claire. The song starts as soon as you open the door, even before you get inside, with a chime that, to me, sounds like something you'd hear in a church or sanctuary, a secure place away from the world's horrors. Then there are the synths that add an air of danger, immediately reminding the player of the zombies outside. Then the piano comes in, and it immediately reminds me of "Peace of Mind" from the first Resident Evil. That calming piano line lets the player know they're safe.
The front hall of the RPD is the first full room in the game where there are no zombies, and the player can finally relax, but only just. It's like the piano can't finish its phrasing because ominous chimes/synths/bass threaten to take over in the most aggressively passive way possible.
It's a great piece that feels quintessential to the game and the location's memorability, as it was reused a year later in Resident Evil 3 when Jill returns to the RPD, and in the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake. If Resident Evil 2 had a theme, this would definitely be one of the primary motifs.
I bought the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection a while back, both on Steam and on the Switch. All six NES/SNES-era Final Fantasy games in one collection, but each game is its own separate game. But I'm not here to talk about the games, but the presentation within the games and the choice of which version of the music is played. Each game comes with the original NES/Famicom sound chip soundtrack and a newly arranged version performed by the Japanese Century Symphony Orchestra. The fact that the entirety of the soundtrack has been performed by a live orchestra is an amazing accomplishment in and of itself, and 14-year-old me would have been absolutely floored with this knowledge.
That being said, I have some thoughts. Some curmudgeonly thoughts. Some thoughts from a person born in the last century and last millennium.
And I should preface that these thoughts are my personal opinion.
I love the orchestrated arrangement of each of the soundtracks. I've listened to them all. Final Fantasy I through VI, and they're amazing.
But I don't have them playing when I'm playing.
For me, there's a kind of mental disconnect. Something is off when I'm playing the original Final Fantasy that has a palette similar to that of Final Fantasy II (on the SNES), and I hear music performed by a live symphony orchestra. It's similar to the "demand" from players when the pixel collection first came out in July, 2021, and the only font was a modern-looking one. A pixelated font was added to the Steam and smartphone releases in a future update when it was released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in April 2023.
I did try having the newly orchestrated music playing when I first started playing Final Fantasy in June of 2025 (not my first time playing Final Fantasy, mind you), but I wasn't fond of the orchestrations for the "Chaos Temple," "Matoya's Cavern," "Dungeon," and "Mount Gulg" in the context of the video game. On their own, I enjoy them significantly more, but they just didn't sit well with me. So I reverted back to the original MIDI score.
Let me give you a brief example from Final Fantasy III, because it's the one I'm currently playing; brief because the Switch can only record 30-second videos.
That's really it. I could give side-by-side comparisons to nearly all of the songs in the early games of the franchise, but I won't, for both our sakes. I love listening to the newly arranaged/orchestrated/recorded music on their own, but when playing, I have to have the original music on. The instrumentation of the MIDI instruments just sits better with the visuals for me. The one exception, because of course there's an exception, was "Pandemonium Castle" from Final Fantasy II. Because spending close to 15 hours in that dungeon, even when using the new sprinting mechanic, I was going to listen to this amazing and completely overblown arrangement instead of the original 27-second song.
As I started to write this article, I was convinced we'd already covered this song before in a MIDI Week Single, but that turned out not to be the case.
I feel like this theme is a quintessential "it's safe here" music cue. The first time you hear it after stumbling upon an unmarked room on your map, you've already come across the first zombie and several others, and you're likely already starting to calculate how many more zombies you can take out with how much ammunition you have left. You open a door tucked away behind a flight of stairs, and this music starts. It's almost like your brain registers the calming tones before your eyes have time to register that there's nothing harmful in this tiny little room. That small room with its warm orange glow is a haven, the first you find, and that cue, burned into your brain, signals safety away from the horrors of the mansion.
It's a wonderful little piece of music that has received variations throughout the series, at least in the games where safe rooms were utilized.
This isn't a first impressions article for ACE COMBAT 8: Wings of Theve because I've only played the first three missions in the game for about 3 hours, and easily half of that was just watching replays. The other hour was playing ACE COMBAT Zero: The Belkan War, which is only accessible by launching AC8. Anyway, this is my hot take about ACE COMBAT 8: Wings of Theve, and I'm sure that it will be a controversial one in the ACE COMBAT community.
Like the title says, ACE COMBAT 8: Wings of Theve is, at least through the first three missions, playable with a subpar graphics card. So y'all know where I'm coming from, here are the general/basic stats for my laptop:
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7735 U Radeon Graphics
Memory: 32 GB RAM
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon Graphics 995 MB
For reference, the "Minimum Specs" as recommended to play AC8 are as follows (taken copy/paste from the Steam store page):
Additional Notes: This game requires an SSD, a hardware ray tracing-enabled graphics card, and DirectX 12 with Shader Model 6.6 or higher. Estimated performance: 1920×1080(Upscale)/30fps with graphics settings at "Low". Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes.
Yeah, that graphics card is the main issue here, and I'm more or less okay with that. It's not like I'm looking to play the newest high-end AAA video game releases over here.
I tried to run AC8 on the Steam Deck, but I couldn't even get the game to start, so I figured I'd try my laptop. And you know what? It worked. Kind of.
On my laptop, the game automatically lowered all graphical settings to Low, which I fully expected, and I left them alone. During the first mission, I had the FPS settings at 60 max, but then lowered it to 30 after Cinema scenes maxed out in the mid-to-high 30s. While playing the campaign (I have zero interest in online play*), I'm anywhere between 13 and 20 fps. No, that's not at all ideal. But I was able to play through the first three missions.
I'm including what I recorded natively from Steam while playing, and yes, it's nowhere near as crisp and smooth as it should be, but I'm still really surprised that what I played was as playable as it was. After a few minutes, I grew accustomed to the lower frame rates and, in all honesty, when you're watching FPS consistently between 15-20, a brief dip down to 11 for a half second is nearly imperceptible, as compared to a drop from 60 down to 10.
Obviously, I'd much rather play this on a system that could handle at least the recommended specs and was playable at a minimum of 30 FPS, but I'm making do with what I have. I'm really just going to play as long as the game remains playable like this because I very much enjoy this series.
So the tl;dr for those of y'all who've skipped to the end. Ideal: no. Playable: yes.
*P.S. Once more for the people in the back. I don't have any interest in online play, so needing a higher-end system to play online with up to 100 other people in the HUB world or eight other players in a sortie is a non-issue for me. Even if I had a top-of-the-line desktop, zero interest.
I don't really even know where to start with October. So let's quickly glance back at September while we ruminate.
I'm really enjoy doing the Game EXP Trilogy series, if only because it's gotten me to play or at least give a damn good, honest try, on older games that have been sitting in my Steam Queue for nigh on a decade or more. I think Super Meat Boy surprised me the most; I'd written it off as too difficult before I came back to it, but that quickly faded as I started beating more and more stages in World 2. I already have the next three games queued up for Game EXP Trilogy Part V, but I'm taking a month-long break between articles because a couple of these games will take me longer than the others. Howlongtobeat.com has one of the games at 21 hours for a completionist run, not that I plan on 100%ing the game, but I find I tend to play slower than someone who's trying to beat the game faster than the average player. Another game is estimated to take me up to 34 hours, but I don't know if I'll beat it, as it has a mechanic I've never been a fan of and has been something that's stopped me in the past. The third game might only take me 8 hours, but it's a mind-bending puzzle game, so if I do beat it, I will likely use a walkthrough or a guide. But anyway, that article will probably go up in the middle of November; then we'll likely take another break and post Part VI in January.
On the Switch OLED, I'm in the final battle in Triangle Strategy, and it's definitely kicking my ass. Again. Still. I'm really tempted to lower the difficulty from Normal down to Easy because of how frustrating the whole stage is. There are 15 enemy units while you're only allowed to choose 10 from the nearly 20+ that I have in my roster, which seems utterly ridiculous, especially for the final battle. And then the game does the really annoying mechanic of enemy reserve troops showing up after a certain number of rounds. So shortly after killing two knights, two archers spawned, and later, three more enemies spawned. It's definitely crossed my mind that I built up my characters through skill purchases wrong and that I'm just ill-equipped for this beast of a fight. I've already failed it three times.
Speaking of failing, on the Steam Deck, I'm still playing through Red Dead Redemption, and I might be in the final act on that as I'm doing quests in and around the town of Blackwater. I've got John Marston's fame up to the point where everyone comments to/at him whenever people walk by, and I am no longer charged for drinks at taverns. I did run into a bit of trouble the other night when I was outflanked by a bear that was off-screen and just knocked me over and proceeded to use John as a trampoline. And then I was approached by a person who I only realized too late was affiliated with the bounty I was hunting, and got shotgunned in the face. And then killed by another pair of bears while trying to rescue a man who was being run down by another bear. And then I was swarmed by the bounty's bandits. It took a total of six attempts to capture this bounty, and I ended up killing him because he burst through a door and I didn't have the lasso out, so he, too, got shotgunned multiple times.
On my laptop, I finished lily's world XD, which I will have a Game EXP article for in the next week or two. That was a really fun and unsettling found laptop-type game, but I'm going to leave it at that so I can cover the rest in the article.
"Charge Assault" could easily have been an unforgettable song for your first mission in ACE COMBAT 7. The stage plays somewhat like a tutorial mission, getting the player comfortable with flight controls, recognizing and customizing the HUD, and gushing at how great the game looks, even for a seven-year-old arcade flight sim. Nothing really to distract the player from completing the mission. Loud driving drums, synths, and "bwoooaaammmms" are all the hallmarks of a Harry Gregson-Williams score you'd find in a Simpson/Bruckheimer film from the mid-1990s.
But that lasts only 1 minute and 45 seconds, because that's when the proverbial beat drops. The theme of AC7 blares, adding to the feeling that you're an amazing fighter pilot. Every time this particular theme plays, not only during this song but also during at least five other songs during the game, I can't help but feel amazing.
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