1. This is a walking sim but you get to control two players at once so it is kind of two games in one. What a bargain!
2.
The single player "co-op" is a gimmick and adds little to experience.
There are times when it makes sense to control both characters at once
and there are times when it makes sense to control them one at a time.
Forcing you to control both always is an annoying mechanic at best, adding no
challenge and occasionally some frustration. Sorry you had to hear it
from me.
3. (If you want to see this mechanic done in such a way it actually adds to gameplay, check out Goats on a Bridge by Cabygon Software. That is some mind bending business right there.)
4.
People will say this game has puzzle elements but the puzzles are along
the lines of: "There is crank right there. Bet you can't guess what you
have to do next!"
5. This is not really about gameplay but
atmosphere and storytelling so 2 and 3 are kind of immaterial in a sense
but still worth mentioning.
6. This is set in sort of a high
fantasy setting with tutor houses and trolls and things like that. Good
times. It's not a super technically intense game graphically but it
is still very pretty.
7. Sound works well enough. Soundtrack is
mostly atmospheric and I felt like it could use something a bit more
punchy from time to time. That is just me though. Thing is, I'm right.
8. The characters speak in either gibberish or Norwegian or something. It is all the same to me, not gonna lie.
9.
Despite what you may have heard, there is not much of a story here. A
father falls ill. His sons go off to get him medicine. Adventure ensues.
Characters become more mature. Not exactly Pulitzer material. Again,
sorry you had to hear it from me.
10. Going back to controls,
there are parts where you've got to hold down the shoulder buttons for
way too long and it makes my tiny, baby hands cramp up. Maybe I just
need to gym more often... Or maybe they should have made it so you don't
need to hold down the shoulder buttons the entire time you are clinging
to a ledge.
11. There are two things I'd consider boss battles
in this and only one of them was remotely challenging. The other one was
more dramatic from a storytelling perspective. I feel like we could
have had both elements twice but maybe I ask too much.
12. For
the duration of the game, I could not help but to thinking: I hope my sons
are smart enough not to go risking their dumb butts to save my old,
decaying self.
13. But you know what? Despite all my complaining, I like Brothers. I thought it was a good game and I enjoyed myself while I was playing it. It is easy to analyze things until you stop enjoying them and that is also kinda fun too. So this game works for me on multiple levels.
Friday, June 29, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
13 Points on After Burner: Black Falcon - Sega - 2007 [Sony PSP]
1. I am way too busy coming up w/ pithy comments on video games to do proper research but from what I can gather, the After Burner franchise is a small handful of arcade games, their related ports and this, After Burner: Black Falcon. The PSP is an interesting place to have the one non-arcade game in a series but, hey, oddball stuff like this is what makes handheld gaming so fun.
2. It basically plays like any other game in the series but there is a bunch of stuff layered on top of it, some of which you would never see in a game meant to be played in an actual arcade cabinet.
3. You can pick between three different characters to play as. Two of them are insufferable so you will most likely pick the improbably cleavaged woman. Each has their own set of cut scenes but the overarching story is basically the same no matter what and your choice has no real effect on gameplay as far as I can tell.
4. What does change gameplay is you have a variety of planes to pick from, ranging from more agile fighter jets to sturdier but less nimble bombers. I found that you could just go ahead and use After Burner's classic F-14 for everything and that worked just fine. Experimenting w/ different planes is fun but not necessary and I didn't feel like anything handled so vastly different from everything else that it felt like a different game or anything.
5. It tries to encourage you to try different planes by recommending one for each mission but doing this actually works to your disadvantage. You collect money in game to buy upgrades and the new planes cost money as well. As far as I could tell, any well kitted out plane was better than the base model plane suggested for each mission. I guess they tried though.
6. You will have to go into the options and change the Y-axis controls to be reversed because it's programmed to be stupid by default but once that's done, you're cooking w/ gas and the game controls excellently.
7. You have a cannon, missiles and rockets. You use the cannon to shoot planes that are close, the missiles to shoot planes that are far and the rockets to shoot things on the ground. You do this all while dodging enemy fire w/ air-brakes, the titular after burner and a handy barrel roll. The arcade style gameplay comes from balancing chaining combos for points and in-game currency while avoiding enough enemy fire. This is a classic formula and it works.
8. Enemies you kill drop packages that slow down time, give you money, restore your health or your afterburner fuel and ammo. Collecting these is essential to the rhythm of the game, pushing high scores and just staying alive. It is a very welcome addition to the standard After Burner mechanics, an extra wrinkle that adds depth w/o getting in the way of the core mechanics.
9. In addition to the combat, there are some environmental obstacles you have to avoid and these are never anything but annoying. For the vast majority of the game, you can always take some damage w/o dying. A bunch of insta-kills thrown in there just seems out of place and cheap.
10. For some reason, ground targets give you way more money than air targets. There's a level about a third of the way through which has about twice as many ground targets as any other level and if you want to quickly build up funds to upgrade and try new planes, you are going to find yourself replaying this one level an awful, awful lot.
11. Black Falcon is not exactly a tour de force in graphical fidelity on PSP but it looks good enough. Excellent HUD elements make up for the fact that sometimes distant enemies can be hard to see. A variety of different landscapes present some variety and it all looks pretty good if not exactly stunning. The music is pretty standard rock music and has a resounding twang of genericness to it. Still I noticed some track have a cool post-punk flavor to them that I rather enjoyed.
12. How much replayability you will find in this will depend on how much you like going for high scores. Here is where the different planes start making a real difference, trying to squeeze a few more points by having a plane w/ more firepower but is harder to control. There's extra difficulty settings for those looking for a challenge as well as a multi-player mode that I will try after you get this game and bring it over to my house to play w/ me.
13. Given that the Sega Genesis collection on PSP does not contain any of the ports of the original arcade games, this is the only After Burner you are going to get on this portable. It is also a rather unique take on the series and is thus a good choice for both fans of the franchise and people who somehow have no other way to check out After Burner other than their PSP. How many people like this exist is anybody's guess, I suppose, but if you are one, hey, have I got a game for you.
2. It basically plays like any other game in the series but there is a bunch of stuff layered on top of it, some of which you would never see in a game meant to be played in an actual arcade cabinet.
3. You can pick between three different characters to play as. Two of them are insufferable so you will most likely pick the improbably cleavaged woman. Each has their own set of cut scenes but the overarching story is basically the same no matter what and your choice has no real effect on gameplay as far as I can tell.
4. What does change gameplay is you have a variety of planes to pick from, ranging from more agile fighter jets to sturdier but less nimble bombers. I found that you could just go ahead and use After Burner's classic F-14 for everything and that worked just fine. Experimenting w/ different planes is fun but not necessary and I didn't feel like anything handled so vastly different from everything else that it felt like a different game or anything.
5. It tries to encourage you to try different planes by recommending one for each mission but doing this actually works to your disadvantage. You collect money in game to buy upgrades and the new planes cost money as well. As far as I could tell, any well kitted out plane was better than the base model plane suggested for each mission. I guess they tried though.
6. You will have to go into the options and change the Y-axis controls to be reversed because it's programmed to be stupid by default but once that's done, you're cooking w/ gas and the game controls excellently.
7. You have a cannon, missiles and rockets. You use the cannon to shoot planes that are close, the missiles to shoot planes that are far and the rockets to shoot things on the ground. You do this all while dodging enemy fire w/ air-brakes, the titular after burner and a handy barrel roll. The arcade style gameplay comes from balancing chaining combos for points and in-game currency while avoiding enough enemy fire. This is a classic formula and it works.
8. Enemies you kill drop packages that slow down time, give you money, restore your health or your afterburner fuel and ammo. Collecting these is essential to the rhythm of the game, pushing high scores and just staying alive. It is a very welcome addition to the standard After Burner mechanics, an extra wrinkle that adds depth w/o getting in the way of the core mechanics.
9. In addition to the combat, there are some environmental obstacles you have to avoid and these are never anything but annoying. For the vast majority of the game, you can always take some damage w/o dying. A bunch of insta-kills thrown in there just seems out of place and cheap.
10. For some reason, ground targets give you way more money than air targets. There's a level about a third of the way through which has about twice as many ground targets as any other level and if you want to quickly build up funds to upgrade and try new planes, you are going to find yourself replaying this one level an awful, awful lot.
11. Black Falcon is not exactly a tour de force in graphical fidelity on PSP but it looks good enough. Excellent HUD elements make up for the fact that sometimes distant enemies can be hard to see. A variety of different landscapes present some variety and it all looks pretty good if not exactly stunning. The music is pretty standard rock music and has a resounding twang of genericness to it. Still I noticed some track have a cool post-punk flavor to them that I rather enjoyed.
12. How much replayability you will find in this will depend on how much you like going for high scores. Here is where the different planes start making a real difference, trying to squeeze a few more points by having a plane w/ more firepower but is harder to control. There's extra difficulty settings for those looking for a challenge as well as a multi-player mode that I will try after you get this game and bring it over to my house to play w/ me.
13. Given that the Sega Genesis collection on PSP does not contain any of the ports of the original arcade games, this is the only After Burner you are going to get on this portable. It is also a rather unique take on the series and is thus a good choice for both fans of the franchise and people who somehow have no other way to check out After Burner other than their PSP. How many people like this exist is anybody's guess, I suppose, but if you are one, hey, have I got a game for you.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
13 Points on Lion Quest - Dracula's Cave - 2016 [PC]
1. There is something about it that is inherently likeable about Lion Quest but it is very much an unpolished and unfinished feeling experience.
2. Graphically, I suppose this is effective enough. You get little, barely animated, pixel art character and enemy sprites on a very stark and square background. It looks pretty cute, to be honest, but I do think it might have looked better had the backgrounds been in the same style as the sprites.
3. There is a really cool mechanic where you control both your character and an NPC on screen at the same time and there's some clever little puzzles here and there where you've got to maneuver both yourself and the NPC into switches to progress. It's really cool but unfortunately does not make up the bulk of gameplay.
4. The bulk of gameplay is really mediocre platforming. The controls are kind of crap. Jumps are always the exact same height and it is incredibly easy to slip of the end of a small platform even when it looks like you've executed a jump perfectly. The are sporadic difficulty spikes and it seems like they are all there accidentally.
5. The levels, at times, seemed so random that I had to go and double check they weren't procedurally generated. You just sort of meander your way through haphazardly and hope you are going the right way.
6. The ambient soundtrack feels similarly random, as if someone just found a cool arpeggio preset on a synth and just noodled around w/ it for five minutes.
7. The descriptions of this online make mention of it being a 3D platformer you navigate in 2D, making me expect a Fez-like puzzling system where you would have to rotate each level to figure out how to get through. This is not the reality of the game though. What really happens is every now and again you hit a switch and it gives background objects drop shadows for some reason.
8. After a brief tutorial, you can play the levels in any order you like. There is a cool little hub world you have to explore and even a little bit of challenge of finding some levels. This is pretty nifty.
9. You can also find Lion Quest's arcade mode from this hub world and it is very strikingly better than the main game. The meandering levels are replaced w/ quick more puzzle-based levels that come at you in quick succession almost like Warioware or something. It's really fun and I hope future work from this developer ends up more in this vein.
10. There is also multiplayer but, like everyone else, I don't have any friends.
11. Playing through, you unlock a variety of characters who control vastly different than the little lion you start w/. They jump higher or go faster, things like that. Unfortunately, none of them really feels any better than your starting character so it's just different flavors of sloppy feeling controls.
12. In addition to everything else, Lion Quest just has good deal of general wonkiness. Sometimes you fall faster than the screen can scroll, for example. Or sometimes the spinning blocks that are supposed to kill you just don't. There's little things that just seem a bit off all over the place.
13. I don't really mean to be so hard on this game. The arcade mode, esp., has a lot of potential to it and Lion Quest isn't some asset flip. There was clearly attention and effort put into its design. However, when it comes time to actually play this game, its issues all add up and make it something that is simply not very much fun to play.
2. Graphically, I suppose this is effective enough. You get little, barely animated, pixel art character and enemy sprites on a very stark and square background. It looks pretty cute, to be honest, but I do think it might have looked better had the backgrounds been in the same style as the sprites.
3. There is a really cool mechanic where you control both your character and an NPC on screen at the same time and there's some clever little puzzles here and there where you've got to maneuver both yourself and the NPC into switches to progress. It's really cool but unfortunately does not make up the bulk of gameplay.
4. The bulk of gameplay is really mediocre platforming. The controls are kind of crap. Jumps are always the exact same height and it is incredibly easy to slip of the end of a small platform even when it looks like you've executed a jump perfectly. The are sporadic difficulty spikes and it seems like they are all there accidentally.
5. The levels, at times, seemed so random that I had to go and double check they weren't procedurally generated. You just sort of meander your way through haphazardly and hope you are going the right way.
6. The ambient soundtrack feels similarly random, as if someone just found a cool arpeggio preset on a synth and just noodled around w/ it for five minutes.
7. The descriptions of this online make mention of it being a 3D platformer you navigate in 2D, making me expect a Fez-like puzzling system where you would have to rotate each level to figure out how to get through. This is not the reality of the game though. What really happens is every now and again you hit a switch and it gives background objects drop shadows for some reason.
8. After a brief tutorial, you can play the levels in any order you like. There is a cool little hub world you have to explore and even a little bit of challenge of finding some levels. This is pretty nifty.
9. You can also find Lion Quest's arcade mode from this hub world and it is very strikingly better than the main game. The meandering levels are replaced w/ quick more puzzle-based levels that come at you in quick succession almost like Warioware or something. It's really fun and I hope future work from this developer ends up more in this vein.
10. There is also multiplayer but, like everyone else, I don't have any friends.
11. Playing through, you unlock a variety of characters who control vastly different than the little lion you start w/. They jump higher or go faster, things like that. Unfortunately, none of them really feels any better than your starting character so it's just different flavors of sloppy feeling controls.
12. In addition to everything else, Lion Quest just has good deal of general wonkiness. Sometimes you fall faster than the screen can scroll, for example. Or sometimes the spinning blocks that are supposed to kill you just don't. There's little things that just seem a bit off all over the place.
13. I don't really mean to be so hard on this game. The arcade mode, esp., has a lot of potential to it and Lion Quest isn't some asset flip. There was clearly attention and effort put into its design. However, when it comes time to actually play this game, its issues all add up and make it something that is simply not very much fun to play.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
13 Points on INSIDE - Playdead - 2016 [PC]
1. INSIDE shows a mastery of design that is rarely seen in any genre. There are a lot of "cute thing in a scary world" type platformers these days-- at least partly because of the success of Playdead's earlier game, LIMBO--but none of these create the mood and experience those games seek to quite so well as INSIDE.
2. You play as a small child. Your goal, as ever it is in gaming, is to head right towards some distant goal. Along the way, you are tormented by vile dogs, cops and all manner of wretched and deadly machinery.
3. The ambiance is terribly bleak. Sound effects are sparse and music doesn't start until you start thinking there is going to be no music at all.
4. One way INSIDE pushes its mood is through repeatedly portraying the violence done to your small, child character. When your child is killed, your child is killed brutally. I figured this would get gratuitous but I found these scenes never lost their impact to me even toward the end of the game.
5. This gets me to what makes INSIDE special: it manages pacing exceptionally well so moments that are supposed to have an impact really do. Gameplay is a mix of puzzle solving, bursts of action and a little bit of just going from point to point. It plays these elements off each other, building a compelling sense of tension and relief that pushes the game forward constantly w/o feeling relentless, repetitive or exhausting.
6. The puzzles constitute the main portion of gameplay challenge and even when you are in the more action and platforming oriented sections, there is a typically a puzzle element to it. These are designed such that the game is ever pushing you towards a solution w/o ever quite handing it to you. It consistently feels satisfying while almost never getting frustrating.
7. Controls are handled by the analog stick and two buttons, jump and action. This is never explained and doesn't have to be. It is as if the developers have played video games before.
8. Similarly, what plot this has is presented w/o any commentary--or any language at all. At first, you seem to be trying to escape but as INSIDE progresses, you get the impression more and more that you are actually breaking into something and thus the game's alluring but non-specific title is somewhat explained.
9. You get to remote control zombies in this. It's pretty cool.
10. There's a splash of color for effect here and there but, for the most part, this could practically be in black and white. The end result is something like David Lynch's dream scenario where gloomy interplay of shadows and light can be used to shocking effect.
11. I found the animations in this especially appealing. Those child-mauled-by-dog moments sure do look great w/ such smooth motion! I don't know what sort of techniques were used to make them but it reminded me quite a lot of rotoscoped animations from decades past. Think Prince of Persia or Another World.
12. The last segment of this game is enormously satisfying. I don't want to spoil it but I will say revenge is sweet.
13. Probably, one day, I will play a game that will make me regret saying this but I don't think INSIDE could be a better game. For the three or four hours it takes to play it, it is riveting scene by scene, puzzle by puzzle, moment by moment. Name for me another game that can do that. Hell, name a book or a movie that can do that. Comments are open on the blog. Have at it, nerds.
2. You play as a small child. Your goal, as ever it is in gaming, is to head right towards some distant goal. Along the way, you are tormented by vile dogs, cops and all manner of wretched and deadly machinery.
3. The ambiance is terribly bleak. Sound effects are sparse and music doesn't start until you start thinking there is going to be no music at all.
4. One way INSIDE pushes its mood is through repeatedly portraying the violence done to your small, child character. When your child is killed, your child is killed brutally. I figured this would get gratuitous but I found these scenes never lost their impact to me even toward the end of the game.
5. This gets me to what makes INSIDE special: it manages pacing exceptionally well so moments that are supposed to have an impact really do. Gameplay is a mix of puzzle solving, bursts of action and a little bit of just going from point to point. It plays these elements off each other, building a compelling sense of tension and relief that pushes the game forward constantly w/o feeling relentless, repetitive or exhausting.
6. The puzzles constitute the main portion of gameplay challenge and even when you are in the more action and platforming oriented sections, there is a typically a puzzle element to it. These are designed such that the game is ever pushing you towards a solution w/o ever quite handing it to you. It consistently feels satisfying while almost never getting frustrating.
7. Controls are handled by the analog stick and two buttons, jump and action. This is never explained and doesn't have to be. It is as if the developers have played video games before.
8. Similarly, what plot this has is presented w/o any commentary--or any language at all. At first, you seem to be trying to escape but as INSIDE progresses, you get the impression more and more that you are actually breaking into something and thus the game's alluring but non-specific title is somewhat explained.
9. You get to remote control zombies in this. It's pretty cool.
10. There's a splash of color for effect here and there but, for the most part, this could practically be in black and white. The end result is something like David Lynch's dream scenario where gloomy interplay of shadows and light can be used to shocking effect.
11. I found the animations in this especially appealing. Those child-mauled-by-dog moments sure do look great w/ such smooth motion! I don't know what sort of techniques were used to make them but it reminded me quite a lot of rotoscoped animations from decades past. Think Prince of Persia or Another World.
12. The last segment of this game is enormously satisfying. I don't want to spoil it but I will say revenge is sweet.
13. Probably, one day, I will play a game that will make me regret saying this but I don't think INSIDE could be a better game. For the three or four hours it takes to play it, it is riveting scene by scene, puzzle by puzzle, moment by moment. Name for me another game that can do that. Hell, name a book or a movie that can do that. Comments are open on the blog. Have at it, nerds.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
13 Points on Jeanne d'Arc - Level-5 - 2007 [Sony PSP]
1. I just kinda glanced over descriptions before picking up Jeanne d'Arc so I was expecting something of historically accurate tactics game revolving around the French in the Hundred Years' War. I got a game in which the opening cut scene is an evil wizard corrupting the juvenile King of England w/ strange magicks. You are whisked off shortly thereafter to meet w/ the titular character who then uses her mysterious powers to battle evil along side a rag-tag group of unlikely allies. Yes, it would seem as if this is some sort of Japanese role playing game.
2. Actually, seeing a Japanese take on European history is one of the most interesting things about this Jeanne d'Arc. Specifically, it does not really touch on Christianity or Catholicism in any specific way. There are mentions of the Christian God but that's as close as it gets. Priests and such do not have crosses on them and there's no meaningful mention of liturgy or theology. I suppose this might have been done to avoid offending people but, you know, it is pretty interesting to tell the story of Joan of Arc w/o a heavy does of the Christian religion. Still, I enjoyed this version w/ less visions from Catholic saints and more talking cat people.
3. I didn't really expect to get wrapped up in the story when playing a tactics game but nevertheless I did. Well, I didn't get wrapped up in the story, which is frankly a bit melodramatic for my taste, but in the game's version of fifteenth century France. The one element that was spot on w/r/t historical accuracy is just how much the Hundred Years' War was a bunch of fear mongering and intrigue on the behalf of powerful men. The soldiers in Jeanne d'Arc--including yourselves and many of those you fight against--are manipulated into killing and risking their lives out of some abstract notion of loyalty to country when really all they are doing is redistributing power among those who already have it. My mind kept returning to that old saw from All Quiet on the Western Front: the wrong people do the fighting.
4. There's also cat people doing the fighting. I think I mentioned that.
5. You get a pretty standard assortment of classes in combat. There's melee fighters, ranged fighters and magic users. There's over a dozen characters and each is unique but you've seen stuff like this if you've ever played a grid-based tactics game before. You equip your players w/ the best gear you can give them, place them on the map and have at it.
6. A layer of depth is added by allowing each character to have one of three elemental abilities, which interact in a paper-rock-scissors manner. This has a lot of cool possibilities but, in practice, it seemed to always be best to use the one that's got the least penalties against it for your whole squad on any given map. There were times when it made sense to equip a couple of your characters to take out one or two key foes but, esp. since you can use magic of any type regardless of what elemental ability you have equipped, it mostly made sense to just try to make sure a small mistake wouldn't get a couple of your characters killed in short order because of a disadvantageous match up.
7. There is also a mutual defense mechanic where each character gets a defense bonus for standing near other characters as well as a mechanic that provides an attack boost you can get from standing behind enemies that have been successfully attacked. I find it's a common problem in tactics games that it is always the best option to keep your party in one big group rather than breaking them off into squads and these two mechanics just make it all the worse. This is actually accurate in terms of real world military tactics as you typically want to concentrate your forces and throw them up against a weak point in the enemy's defenses but I don't think that makes for the most interesting gameplay. Also, it is another point of historical inaccuracy as this is a Napoleonic tactic and wouldn't have existed in the fifteenth century. Just saying.
8. The last unique wrinkle in Jeanne d'Arc is some of your characters wear an armband that lets them change into a super hero version of themselves for a couple turns. It makes you more powerful but its greatest advantage is giving your character an extra turn if they use their attack to finish off an enemy. Using your transformations at the correct time is absolutely crucial when the game throws thick waves of enemies at you. It's very satisfying to soften up the enemy army and then have someone go Super Saiyan and clean them up in one fell swoop. The downside is it does increase your tendency to rely on just a few characters rather than the full breadth of your roster because those w/ arm bands are so much more useful than the rest.
9. Outfitting your team properly is important but there's ample opportunity and side content to grind and level up your characters. You do gain less and less experience from the same enemy types as you level up, which tends to guide you to being at a certain level at certain points in the game. It keeps the difficulty curve pretty smooth while allowing you to cop out and just spend a while grinding if you momentarily don't feel like spending the brain energy on figuring out a clever strategy.
10. The story sections present themselves in a variety of ways. The most important events get gorgeous anime cut scenes. Lesser events get in-engine cut scenes and there's some tossed out dialog before battles. There gets to be enough of these that it occasionally bogged the game down a bit but the animated ones, esp., look great and serve as a nice reward for finishing each chapter.
11. Once you've entered an area w/ a battle, you cannot back out even if you haven't started the battle yet. If you save over your game at this point and find you cannot win the battle, you are stuck. Start the whole game over or hope for really good RNG. The hell of it is the developers seem to know this system stinks and give you a great big warning before you save. It seems to me like if your save system has a flaw deep enough you need a warning, you should just go ahead and fix it. What do I know though.
12. The end section is an absolute beast. Several battles in a row w/ no chance to stock up on healing items or grind your characters if you are feeling overwhelmed. It frustrated me a bit but was also one of the few times I was forced to strategically re-outfit my team from the ground up so it made for as a satisfying conclusion. You also get to return to the world and tromp about all you want in post-game which is fun too.
13. Jeanne d'Arc it is a really well executed example of an RPG tactics game and fans of the genre should absolutely dig into this one if they get a chance. The story is interesting, the music and graphics are great and the combat is very competently designed. I might make a small complaint that, other than the animated cut scenes, nothing really stands out as exceptional but the experience start to finish is enjoyable and tactics games are a great fit for handheld gaming so definitely check this out if you get a chance.
2. Actually, seeing a Japanese take on European history is one of the most interesting things about this Jeanne d'Arc. Specifically, it does not really touch on Christianity or Catholicism in any specific way. There are mentions of the Christian God but that's as close as it gets. Priests and such do not have crosses on them and there's no meaningful mention of liturgy or theology. I suppose this might have been done to avoid offending people but, you know, it is pretty interesting to tell the story of Joan of Arc w/o a heavy does of the Christian religion. Still, I enjoyed this version w/ less visions from Catholic saints and more talking cat people.
3. I didn't really expect to get wrapped up in the story when playing a tactics game but nevertheless I did. Well, I didn't get wrapped up in the story, which is frankly a bit melodramatic for my taste, but in the game's version of fifteenth century France. The one element that was spot on w/r/t historical accuracy is just how much the Hundred Years' War was a bunch of fear mongering and intrigue on the behalf of powerful men. The soldiers in Jeanne d'Arc--including yourselves and many of those you fight against--are manipulated into killing and risking their lives out of some abstract notion of loyalty to country when really all they are doing is redistributing power among those who already have it. My mind kept returning to that old saw from All Quiet on the Western Front: the wrong people do the fighting.
4. There's also cat people doing the fighting. I think I mentioned that.
5. You get a pretty standard assortment of classes in combat. There's melee fighters, ranged fighters and magic users. There's over a dozen characters and each is unique but you've seen stuff like this if you've ever played a grid-based tactics game before. You equip your players w/ the best gear you can give them, place them on the map and have at it.
6. A layer of depth is added by allowing each character to have one of three elemental abilities, which interact in a paper-rock-scissors manner. This has a lot of cool possibilities but, in practice, it seemed to always be best to use the one that's got the least penalties against it for your whole squad on any given map. There were times when it made sense to equip a couple of your characters to take out one or two key foes but, esp. since you can use magic of any type regardless of what elemental ability you have equipped, it mostly made sense to just try to make sure a small mistake wouldn't get a couple of your characters killed in short order because of a disadvantageous match up.
7. There is also a mutual defense mechanic where each character gets a defense bonus for standing near other characters as well as a mechanic that provides an attack boost you can get from standing behind enemies that have been successfully attacked. I find it's a common problem in tactics games that it is always the best option to keep your party in one big group rather than breaking them off into squads and these two mechanics just make it all the worse. This is actually accurate in terms of real world military tactics as you typically want to concentrate your forces and throw them up against a weak point in the enemy's defenses but I don't think that makes for the most interesting gameplay. Also, it is another point of historical inaccuracy as this is a Napoleonic tactic and wouldn't have existed in the fifteenth century. Just saying.
8. The last unique wrinkle in Jeanne d'Arc is some of your characters wear an armband that lets them change into a super hero version of themselves for a couple turns. It makes you more powerful but its greatest advantage is giving your character an extra turn if they use their attack to finish off an enemy. Using your transformations at the correct time is absolutely crucial when the game throws thick waves of enemies at you. It's very satisfying to soften up the enemy army and then have someone go Super Saiyan and clean them up in one fell swoop. The downside is it does increase your tendency to rely on just a few characters rather than the full breadth of your roster because those w/ arm bands are so much more useful than the rest.
9. Outfitting your team properly is important but there's ample opportunity and side content to grind and level up your characters. You do gain less and less experience from the same enemy types as you level up, which tends to guide you to being at a certain level at certain points in the game. It keeps the difficulty curve pretty smooth while allowing you to cop out and just spend a while grinding if you momentarily don't feel like spending the brain energy on figuring out a clever strategy.
10. The story sections present themselves in a variety of ways. The most important events get gorgeous anime cut scenes. Lesser events get in-engine cut scenes and there's some tossed out dialog before battles. There gets to be enough of these that it occasionally bogged the game down a bit but the animated ones, esp., look great and serve as a nice reward for finishing each chapter.
11. Once you've entered an area w/ a battle, you cannot back out even if you haven't started the battle yet. If you save over your game at this point and find you cannot win the battle, you are stuck. Start the whole game over or hope for really good RNG. The hell of it is the developers seem to know this system stinks and give you a great big warning before you save. It seems to me like if your save system has a flaw deep enough you need a warning, you should just go ahead and fix it. What do I know though.
12. The end section is an absolute beast. Several battles in a row w/ no chance to stock up on healing items or grind your characters if you are feeling overwhelmed. It frustrated me a bit but was also one of the few times I was forced to strategically re-outfit my team from the ground up so it made for as a satisfying conclusion. You also get to return to the world and tromp about all you want in post-game which is fun too.
13. Jeanne d'Arc it is a really well executed example of an RPG tactics game and fans of the genre should absolutely dig into this one if they get a chance. The story is interesting, the music and graphics are great and the combat is very competently designed. I might make a small complaint that, other than the animated cut scenes, nothing really stands out as exceptional but the experience start to finish is enjoyable and tactics games are a great fit for handheld gaming so definitely check this out if you get a chance.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
13 Points on Obduction - Cyan Worlds - 2016 [PC]
1. Spiritual successors are a great idea. They allow developers to make a game in the style of their popular series w/o getting bogged down by having to appease a writhing mass of fandom w/ their infinite time to analyze lore and complain about absolutely everything. Obduction is a game a lot like Myst and Riven that is not tied to those games' world. I suspect fans of the latter two games will also be fans of this updated take on it because it's really well done. Most people can just stop reading this review right here.
2. I really wanted to play this in VR but the teleport function only allows you to move about six in-game micrometers at a time, making getting around painfully slow. I was perfectly happy playing this on an ordinary monitor but, you know, if you are a VR gamer who prefers teleport for locomotion, this might not be the game for you.
3. You wouldn't normally figure movement speed to be such an issue in a puzzle-based adventure game but a whole lot of Obduction is walking around and looking for things, remembering places you've been, doubling back to make sure you didn't miss anything, doubling back again to check if whatever you last did last changed something... It's a lot of goddamn walking.
4. This gets me to an important point about Obduction: everything in it that's great and world-building can have the converse effect of being mind-numbing and tedious.
5. For one example, there were several points where my progress was stalled because I just didn't happen to see a metal button on a similar colored metal surface. This is something that would happen to you if you were in a situation such as Obduction presents. It's realistic w/in the game's world and it makes you feel like you are really there but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
6. It does help quite a bit that Obduction is set in a gorgeous land full of details both odd and familiar. The abandoned town it's set in seems truly lived-in and it has an almost tactile sense of history you get just by wandering around and looking through it. As you press further in the game, other areas get a bit more surreal but still maintain that feeling of being places that actually exist.
8. The soundscape is sparse but very effective. Most segments are accompanied only by ambient sounds but the score has a way of popping in at just the right moment to mark a key step taken or change of location.
9. Because of all the walking and exploring, world building is incorporated very well in the gameplay. A lot of games have logs and video diaries and so forth to add another layer of depth for those who chose to explore. In Obduction, you pretty much have to go through this stuff with fine tooth comb not only to understand your situation but to figure out what all you need to do next. This is a really cool system that brings you deeper into the world but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
10. Gameplay, beyond exploration, consists mostly of some rather tough puzzles. These will see you crossing expanses of multiple worlds and establish their toughness through a variety of means. Some of them are just plain tough. Some are tough because the disparate elements are so spread across the wide worlds that it's just difficult to visualize how all the interacting elements fit together. And some are tough just because they require some obscure bit of information you need to dig up by meticulously combing through every single document and small piece of information you find in the game. The first kind, I dig. The second, I grew to really enjoy as I made my way through the game and learned its landscape. The third, I still really can't get behind. This is just me though.
11. This game that was released in 2016 has puzzles where there are load screens you must endure after every new thing you try. Seriously. This is actually always infuriating.
12. You are allowed a good deal of freedom in the order that you do things. This is enough true that when I looked up hints and walkthroughs--don't lie, you use these too--sometimes they'd be just useless because the state of the game in my playthrough would be so vastly different than it was in the resource I looked up. To be honest, I wish I had looked less stuff up on this my first time through because I was always ultimately able to figure everything out myself and, while sometimes it was needlessly frustrating, it was all the more satisfying for this reason.
13. Obduction is very much an improvement over basically everything about Myth. It looks better, sounds great, plays a bit more easily and the puzzles are less obtuse while still being difficult on multiple levels. Obduction sticks remarkably close to its predecessors and as such feels like something of a weird, dated curio even w/ the late resurgence of adventure games. Very few games wallow in deliberately slow pacing and lack of direction as much as these games do and so few can match their immediate sense of realness. It's truly something exceptional but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
2. I really wanted to play this in VR but the teleport function only allows you to move about six in-game micrometers at a time, making getting around painfully slow. I was perfectly happy playing this on an ordinary monitor but, you know, if you are a VR gamer who prefers teleport for locomotion, this might not be the game for you.
3. You wouldn't normally figure movement speed to be such an issue in a puzzle-based adventure game but a whole lot of Obduction is walking around and looking for things, remembering places you've been, doubling back to make sure you didn't miss anything, doubling back again to check if whatever you last did last changed something... It's a lot of goddamn walking.
4. This gets me to an important point about Obduction: everything in it that's great and world-building can have the converse effect of being mind-numbing and tedious.
5. For one example, there were several points where my progress was stalled because I just didn't happen to see a metal button on a similar colored metal surface. This is something that would happen to you if you were in a situation such as Obduction presents. It's realistic w/in the game's world and it makes you feel like you are really there but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
6. It does help quite a bit that Obduction is set in a gorgeous land full of details both odd and familiar. The abandoned town it's set in seems truly lived-in and it has an almost tactile sense of history you get just by wandering around and looking through it. As you press further in the game, other areas get a bit more surreal but still maintain that feeling of being places that actually exist.
8. The soundscape is sparse but very effective. Most segments are accompanied only by ambient sounds but the score has a way of popping in at just the right moment to mark a key step taken or change of location.
9. Because of all the walking and exploring, world building is incorporated very well in the gameplay. A lot of games have logs and video diaries and so forth to add another layer of depth for those who chose to explore. In Obduction, you pretty much have to go through this stuff with fine tooth comb not only to understand your situation but to figure out what all you need to do next. This is a really cool system that brings you deeper into the world but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
10. Gameplay, beyond exploration, consists mostly of some rather tough puzzles. These will see you crossing expanses of multiple worlds and establish their toughness through a variety of means. Some of them are just plain tough. Some are tough because the disparate elements are so spread across the wide worlds that it's just difficult to visualize how all the interacting elements fit together. And some are tough just because they require some obscure bit of information you need to dig up by meticulously combing through every single document and small piece of information you find in the game. The first kind, I dig. The second, I grew to really enjoy as I made my way through the game and learned its landscape. The third, I still really can't get behind. This is just me though.
11. This game that was released in 2016 has puzzles where there are load screens you must endure after every new thing you try. Seriously. This is actually always infuriating.
12. You are allowed a good deal of freedom in the order that you do things. This is enough true that when I looked up hints and walkthroughs--don't lie, you use these too--sometimes they'd be just useless because the state of the game in my playthrough would be so vastly different than it was in the resource I looked up. To be honest, I wish I had looked less stuff up on this my first time through because I was always ultimately able to figure everything out myself and, while sometimes it was needlessly frustrating, it was all the more satisfying for this reason.
13. Obduction is very much an improvement over basically everything about Myth. It looks better, sounds great, plays a bit more easily and the puzzles are less obtuse while still being difficult on multiple levels. Obduction sticks remarkably close to its predecessors and as such feels like something of a weird, dated curio even w/ the late resurgence of adventure games. Very few games wallow in deliberately slow pacing and lack of direction as much as these games do and so few can match their immediate sense of realness. It's truly something exceptional but, my word, is it ever infuriating at times.
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