C'est nimp : Senran Kagura – Estival Versus

When a game goes into a spin, it's surreal and makes you oscillate between fits of laughter and despair, it deserves its place in the chronicle "C'est Nimp" !

A little less than a year ago, I tried a new column called Nanar Games where the objective was simple: have fun. It is obvious that when we talk about a cinematographic nanar, we laugh a lot, and we necessarily laugh at the expense of the failed film most often for reasons of budget or scenario more than dubious. Very fan of video games (yes, otherwise I would not be here) and these bad movies erected on a pedestal by Internet users who have made it a genre of cinema in its own right, I innocently thought that video game nanars deserved their chronicle too. I started with The Order , a very ridiculous game by its 5 hours of play if you drag your paw, its cliché scenario, its level design in corridor that would make Final Fantasy XIII look like an open world and its whiskers (if you missed this column, it's never too late to do well). But here's the thing: there are defenders of The Order. After I have managed to write this sentence, violently convincing myself that I had not dreamed, I will try to explain the cause. Devil's advocates invoked the graphics, the only highly indisputable quality of the game. So, as long as there is a budget, a game will never be unanimously considered as a nanar and it must be admitted that an independent game that is sorely lacking in budget does not lend itself to laughter. So there are fans for any game (whereas in cinema, it is rare to hear someone say "Stop, Uwe Boll is a good director".) So I paused the column until the concept evolved. 

More simply, we will forget the "nanardesque" side (even if it can be part of the game anyway, let's know) to focus on games that have something to laugh about by their concept, dubious "artistic" choices, random gameplay or any other ridiculous stuff. To start this new "C' est nimp" review in style, we are going to talk about Senran Kagura: Estival Versus on PS4 and I let you discover why, I could not start it better.

Pervert Castor, tell us a story! 

Not knowing at all the rich series of two fairly recent games released on Nintendo DS, I receive Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, first opus to break through on PS4 expecting a kind of beat'em all to the Omega Force (known for the Dynasty Warriors and many variations). So certainly, it's not Omega force, but it still looks like beat'em all. Well, of course, I expect to see girls in swimsuits given the title screen, but I am told about Shinobi and stuff like that, I expect to have to save the world against some kind of demons on a cliché scenario background, possibly with a moldy j-pop background, All of it. It starts quite seriously by the way, eh, well we do not understand much, but it seems quite serious. And suddenly… Head for the beach… Joke scene, girl in swimsuit. STOOOP everything goes so fast! Good… Ok… We will say that it is an intermediate scene between two moments of scenario. Except no, the story is beautiful and well dead before it begins. Now, the delirium is fully assumed, and we will be satisfied with quite ridiculous, even downright embarrassing scenes, where girls who presented themselves as warriors with great powers will spend their time fighting to determine who will pass solar oil on the body of the other, or to invoke the "goddess of boobs" (I am not inventing anything, that's the name of this strange and useless entity). A little more each scene, we can perfectly imagine the face of Japanese developers (male necessarily) who took particular pleasure in giving life to their most varied fantasies (much, much too varied). You were a supporter of censorship in Dead Or Alive Extreme ? Forget quickly, but then very quickly Senran Kagura ! 

Shinobi very … Special

Now that you are familiar with the atmosphere of the ultimate Japanese beauf, let's look at the gameplay because I remind you that it is a game and not a Hentaï (even if it is sometimes difficult to differentiate them). Indeed sometimes we fight, do not mess around, and there it is just as grandiose. We face hordes of enemies that are made up of 95% women (who we end up putting in swimsuits by hitting them) and 5% of unlikely critters like pieces of wood lookalike of Mokujin of Tekken and uh … species of large bears strangely resembling Pedobear which would have mutated following a tourist excursion to Chernobyl. Then you face playable characters (women too, necessarily) and over the missions it changes: sometimes you control characters, sometimes you hit them for reasons that defy reason (nice turn of phrase isn't it?). On the armament side, here too it is fantasy assumed. So certainly we find the classic katanas but we wonder since when shinobis fight with rifles or double pistols, but we completely abandon the logic when we see them fighting with water guns or with a plastic beach bucket. How is that possible? At the distribution of weapons, it must have gone: "well girls I still have a water gun, a pedobear backpack, a beach bucket made of plastoc and a frying pan, who wants what? ". I suggest hiring them to assist the army in case of a zombie apocalypse.We're kidding but Frank West from Dead Rising, he would know what to do with all this! 

Epic battles

I was going to start with "more seriously" but frankly, I don't think it's possible for me to be serious about writing about Senran Kagura: Estival Versus. If you remember (I hope, because it was just a paragraph above) I mentioned the fact that we put the hordes of enemies in swimsuits by hitting them but it's even grander with the main characters (understand the shinobi you play or face as end-of-level bosses). Indeed, there we have several levels of deterioration of the outfit (a bit like the Dragon Ball Z games where Goku ends up with the clothes torn after taking a Final Flash house by Vegeta) but why stop at the swimsuit (and the comparison with DBZ stops there) when we can put them entirely hairy? Indeed, if you finish off your opponent with a special attack, you have a good chance of leaving him completely naked on the ground (or in a cherry tree, or anywhere). Well, to hentai lovers who are already preparing their credit card, I want to specify that there is a censored area in "strategic" places but hey, it leaves little room for imagination, if you know what I mean…

When I'm about to write an article, I necessarily take a good number of screenshots to be sure to have something to illustrate it. So, every time I come across a screen that could be interesting, I capture it like a wild pokemon, and too bad if there are too many I will sort it out later (knowing that in the end I need about 5). But here, it was completely abused for Senran Kagura: Estival Versus, the more I advanced, the more I told myself that I could not find worse, and yet… In the end, I ended up with 95 screenshots (it took me almost longer to sort through all this than to write the article). And again, at the end I screened much less since I was used to … I could have detailed with precision all the elements that make this game unusual and completely "anything", but I suggest you go dig a little on the web by yourself if Senran Kagura: Estival Versus interests you, many video compilations have flourished on the web! Otherwise, in the end, we can not say that it was a bad game, but what could I have laughed in front of! The evolution of the chronicle is therefore justified in my opinion. So see you next time for a game at least as nimp!

Shino what?[ /caption] Oh no, fuck peace to the language of Molière![ /caption]