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Mar 11th, 2024 at 09:09:55 - Pyre (PC) |
A Supergiant Games game! I loved Bastion and Transistor, and knew that this one was a bit different, some sort of RPG-sports hybrid. I have been looking forward to playing it, with dreams of Blitzball. It’s a tougher recommendation than the first two, though. And whatever preconceived notions I had about playing RPG basketball were a bit misplaced. I think that first and foremost, this is a visual novel, with some RPG, sports, and MOBA elements. As a visual novel, the focus is on character development and storytelling, and I think that if you approach it like this, then you will enjoy it more. As per other Supergiant Games games, the narrative, the worldbuilding, the characters, all that is quite good. You will spend more time reading, especially if you read the (100 or so?) entries in the Book of Rites, than doing anything else.
You’ll recognize similar themes as in Bastion and Transistor: a disembodied voice (here, not so much a narrator, but actually a titular Voice) whose origin is later revealed; characters who are trapped in one way or another (here physically in the Downside and by reputation and past deeds); and an end-of-the-world scenario (or a major change or remaking of the world). Despite the shift in genre, some of the RPG stuff is still there (combat, leveling up, some equipment, some skill trees), and so is the modifiable difficulty of Bastion and Transistor, this time in the form of constellations, members of a pantheon that you can toggle on/off to make the Rites (the MOBA/basketball sport) harder on yourself.
The Rites is the sports part. You and others cast into the Downside must compete in the Rites to earn your freedom and return to the Commonwealth. The Rites are divinely inspired and ritualistic, serious business. Most of the characters (especially those on the opponents’ teams) very much want their freedom, and they all resent the system that would cast people into the Downside. Much of the story is about how the Rites came to be, including about the Eight Scribes who banished the Titans and formed the triumvirates, and on and on, and you can read the extensive mythology.
I am trying to start talking about how the Rites work, but keep veering instead into the narrative surrounding the Rites because that’s the more interesting part! It really is “just” RPG/MOBA basketball. Games are played between two teams of three. Your goal is to put the celestial orb (ball) into the other team’s pyre (basket) and extinguish it (score enough points to win). Each character has attributes that govern movement speed, how quickly they respawn once defeated, how large their “aura” (attack range) is, and how much damage they do to the enemy pyre. They also all have some movement and attack abilities (e.g., sprint, leap; project aura, spawn sapling), and can gain various skills (e.g., more stamina, faster speed, faster respawn, force enemy to drop the ball in flight, etc.). The characters really don’t play all that differently from one another, Rites are over in a matter of minutes, and in my experience, the faster/more mobile the character, the better they are. Fast characters, especially once upgraded with stamina and greater burst speed, can just zip around the field and outmaneuver the slower ones. Sure, their strength isn’t great, so you have to score a few more baskets, but you’ll be doing donuts around the strong, slow characters. The game emphasizes teamwork, but it isn’t all that necessary.
All in all, the story is the star. The sports addition was a miss. It was a weak vehicle for delivering narrative. I would have liked a more fleshed out sports component, with more complexity, longer matches, and so on. I think I could have really gotten into it then.
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Mar 11th, 2024 at 08:21:56 - The Unfinished Swan (PS4) |
I’ve taken an embarrassingly long time to get to this PS3 (!) game (and soon, both Flower and Journey [and I really, really hope I have not waited out the wonder that Journey has sparked for so many players]). Before beginning The Unfinished Swan, I thought it would be something like Beyond Eyes or Chicory: A Colorful Tale, two games that probably derived inspiration from it. I thought that you’d “paint the world” to navigate it, progress the story, solve puzzles, or whatever. And yeah, that was spot on, except instead of painting with a brush, you lob paintballs, which is a more chaotic way to apply color.
Though the game itself is not chaotic! It’s so straightforward and static that my girlfriend asked if it was a children’s game. You go through four chapters, and in each chapter, you do something a little different with the paint. For example, in the first chapter you shoot black paintballs at white space to reveal the level geometry: walls, stairs, doors, and so on. This was interesting, if basic, lobbing paintballs around until you saw stairs or a door or a hallway, walking there, then lobbing more paintballs until you saw the next way forward, and repeat to the exit. In the second chapter, you shoot “water” balls at vines. The vines grow and you can climb them, so this chapter had some light platforming. This was my least favorite chapter by far because it was tedious to direct the vines where you wanted them to go. Hold down the triggers and just wait for the vines to creep…neat to watch them grow, but boring after a few minutes.
The last use of paint was the most interesting, to shoot lights to illuminate dark areas, and to shoot paint at a light orb, following it down a river. (If you attempt to walk in the dark, spiders attack you and a terrible, tinny screeching noise emerges from the controller. It was so jarring that I turned off the sound effects until I figured out the trick with the lights!). Then the very last thing was, for some reason, unrelated to paint. You basically create blocks in the environment, then use them to platform around. This was neat and could have been the basis for some more puzzles, but felt like a level from a different game.
The whole thing is wrapped up in a children’s storybook narrative about a king, his wife (representing the main child character’s mother), and his mismanaged kingdom. Also featuring a giant swan who appears to honk at you and run away, which made me think of Untitled Goose Game. The swan is, as you may have guessed, an unfinished painting. Specifically, its neck is missing, which raises questions about how it can vocalize.
Interesting game for sure, and short enough to not wear out its novelty. Similar mechanics are implemented better and more cohesively in other games, but I can’t knock it for 2012. I did notice a familiar name in the credits, Ben Esposito, who made Donut County (underwhelming) and worked on What Remains of Edith Finch (loved). Looks like this was one of his first.
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Mar 9th, 2024 at 13:43:15 - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4) |
Burned my way through this over Spring Break and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is the final (?) entry in the series with Nathan Drake, which is sad. He’s so likeable! Naughty Dog has perfected this series. They’ve taken everything great about the previous games and polished them even shinier, with more crazy chase scenes and set pieces (e.g., running from the machine gun truck in the city; getting dragged behind a jeep on a rope; exploding corpses; etc.). I liked everything about it except that it ran long, although imagining this from the developers’ perspective, that this is the last game featuring a beloved character, I understand the sentimentality. The worst offender on this point was the chapter where Nate and Sam break into the old lady’s house to find their mom’s stuff. It slammed the brakes on the momentum at the end. Though again, it’s hard to critique for character development and nostalgia.
One thing they added (or I just don’t remember from previous games, but really liked) was nuance to the climbing animations that signify when Nathan can safely jump to the next thing. For example, when climbing around on a cliff, Nathan will reach toward the next ledge, indicating that you can jump there. When swinging on a rope, he will reach out when he is close enough for you to leap onto a platform. The interactable ledges blended in well with the cliffs and other environments, such that Nathan’s reaching was quite useful. I was thinking about pattern recognition while playing, how I have learned to recognize what is “climbable” and what isn’t in games, and how specific games train you a bit differently. Also, it’s interesting to think about Nathan’s “knowledge” versus the player’s knowledge. Nathan reaching indicates to the player that Nathan “knows” something, and the player, reading the cue, can then act on Nathan’s knowledge.
Another thing I was thinking about while playing was Tomb Raider. I played Rise/Shadow of the Tomb Raider a year ago and remember hating all the collectibles and crafting, and how those games were moving more in the direction of open worlds. I spent those games clicking the right stick to activate “hunter instinct” or whatever it was called, which highlighted crafting resources, collectibles, and so on. I am so thankful that Uncharted didn’t move in that direction. There are totally optional treasures to find that have no bearing on Nathan’s strength or abilities, and a reasonable amount of journal entries (and the journal is fun to engage with). I loved that there was not a ton of shit to pick up. No resources, no crafting, no inventory, no skill trees, no upgrades, no costumes or cosmetics, no intrusion of online play, no microtransactions. The writing, platforming, puzzling, and shooting carry the experience without needing all those other sources of motivation that, for me, usually just bloat the game and make me worry about searching every corner, hoarding inventory items, going to every “?” on the map, etc. That made Uncharted 4 refreshing to play.
I do want to know, regarding the epilogue, how in the world Cassie didn’t know more about her parents’ adventures! How did she reach adolescence—being a young adventurer/archaeologist herself, interacting with Sully, Sam, and the rest of the gang, presumably having THE INTERNET—without learning that her parents were involved in such dangerous work? Specifically, I want to be there for the conversation, after she is stunned by seeing a picture of Nathan holding a shotgun (“Dad has a shotgun?!”), when they recount to her the thousands of hired goons they’ve killed over the course of four games. There’s your story for Uncharted 5: The Drakes Go To Family Therapy. Haha, oh man. Anyway. I’m looking forward to knocking out Lost Legacy soon, then cleaning out my remaining PS4 games, which are all old indies that I’m ashamed of not playing sooner, perhaps subscribing for a month of PS Plus, and then trading in the ole’ PS4 for a shiny new PS5! Summer 2024 maybe? Early birthday present? Woohoo!
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Mar 9th, 2024 at 11:46:00 - Iconoclasts (PC) |
Iconoclasts came onto my radar when I was doing a content analysis of gender representation in Steam advertisements some years ago (one of my unfinished projects /sadface). We were looking at top-selling games in various categories, including those user-tagged “female protagonist.” This was in our sample and looked cool! It’s a Metroidvania with a narrative focus. You play as Robin, a wrench-wielding mechanic in a world where being a mechanic is illegal. In this world, a religious organization known as One Concern, who worships a figure called Mother, has authoritarian rule over the people. They exploit a natural resource called Ivory, which powers everything, but it is running out and the planet is dying. One Concern controls all Ivory and machinery (thus mechanics being illegal). There’s quite a lot going on plot- and character-wise, but long story short, One Concern is having internal power struggles, there is a small resistance movement against them, and their “god”, the Starworm, is coming to end things earlier than anyone anticipated because of said Ivory depletion. I found the plot intriguing and well-written, and it moves along at a brisk pace.
The plot sends Robin to various areas in the game world, which feature, as per Metroidvanias, combat, platforming, and puzzles, (but oddly minimal backtracking). For me, the puzzles were the strongest part, and combat against normal enemies the weakest. The novel mechanics (pun unavoidable) in Iconoclasts involve Robin’s wrench. It is her melee attack, which later on she can charge to electrify, which also electrifies her gun’s attacks, all of which are used for various things. It is also a tool in the puzzle-platforming, allowing her to crank bolts to open doors and power things, to latch on to conveyor rails, and so on. Later on, using the wrench becomes frantic as you are fighting enemies and need to also crank a door open, shooting at enemies and luring them away from the bolt, sprinting over to crank it, fending off the enemies, cranking it some more, until you open the door or whatever. Robin also gets a gun that has alternate firing modes: a regular shot with charged blast; a grenade with charged missile launch; and another regular shot with charged thing that lets you switch places with some objects (used in puzzles and some combat encounters at the end of the game).
The stronger elements of the game were balanced by the weaker elements, but the latter didn't detract from the experience. For example, while the boss battles were creative, challenging, and heart-pumping, the normal combat with regular enemies was lacking. I ended up ignoring most combat altogether, running and jumping past enemies to the next screen. There is an upgrade system where you spend precious resources you find in treasure chests to craft and equip “tweaks,” which do things like let you breathe longer underwater or stay electrified longer. The tweaks are pointless and are either broken or there is something I didn’t figure out. Since resources in treasure chests are only used to craft tweaks, and tweaks are unnecessary, that means that the treasure chests are unnecessary. Therefore, the only reason to go after chests is for the puzzle challenge. Now follow this logic further. Backtracking to explore new areas and find previously unobtainable treasures after acquiring new abilities is a key feature of Metroidvanias. But since the resources in treasure chests are only used for pointless tweak crafting, then that key Metroidvania feature of backtracking is also unnecessary here (what little of it there may be). The lackluster tweak crafting system then has some serious implications.
The thing that makes me wonder if tweaks are straight up broken is that I would occasionally unlock a new crafting recipe, but when I went to a crafting table, the new recipe was not there. This began happening around the fifth recipe I got. Like, halfway through the game, there just was never anything new to craft, even though I’d find new recipes. I wonder now if it’s because there is limited “space” for crafting options in the crafting table menu and you have to craft “older” items for them to be replaced with newer options. But even then, I crafted one of every tweak except the consumable ones, and there were multiples of even permanent tweaks to craft (why do you need three of the same one?!). So, if I’m right, then you would have to craft a bunch of tweaks (that you don’t need) in order to gain access to new ones. Very strange.
Anyway, quirks aside, like I said, I really enjoyed playing this one. The pixel art is fantastic, too. It’s an easy recommendation if you like Metroidvanias, especially if you want one more focused on narrative, but still with a variety of excellent boss fights.
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