Zero Escape

I finished Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors last night.  Technically this morning at about 1.30 a.m. due to the mysterious phenomena that means you only ever finish a game when it's past midnight. 

It's the first title in the Zero Escape trilogy.  I'd already finished the second game, Virtue's Last Reward, back in 2014. 

I did 'em out of order because 999, originally a DS game, didn't get a UK release until a cut-down iPad port quite recently.  I imported 999 - unusual for me, I don't tend to bother importing stuff - because I loved VLR that damn much.  If you've played the games, you'll know that playing them out of order actually kind of makes a weird sense, given that several of the series' characters like to play merry hell with causality.

My point here is that if you haven't encountered the Zero Escape series, you really should.

Imagine Saw meets The Crystal Maze, to start with, then layer in a whole bunch of scientific and philosophical hypotheses, most of which I hadn't come across before and a pleasingly daft sense of humour.  They're intriguingly plotted, satisfying to work through (999 climaxes with a giant sudoku grid to solve - while I've previously understood sudoku puzzles in the abstract, I've never actually sat down and done one by myself before.  999 was the first time I ever did one under my own steam) and filled with meaty concepts to chew on.

The on-off-on-again final instalment, Zero Time Dilemma, is out this year.  Well, this year in Japan and the U.S., at least.  Europe has the good ol' ominously vague "TBD".  Still, I'll wait.  It'll be worth it.