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Jun 9th, 2020 at 18:24:28 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PC) |
Completed. I overhyped it. The highs are really high and the lows are pretty low. Preface to say that I generally understood what was happening in the story, but it became confusing at times. Afterward, I watched a "making of" featurette included with the game, which illuminated a lot and made me appreciate the narrative more deeply.
Highs:
1. Setting. My goodness, these Norse-inspired levels are incredible to behold. I felt like I was walking along the cold seaside, exploring mountain ruins, and was sucked into Hell itself. I've been playing some newer games lately with some great art design, but I enjoyed looking at Hellblade even more than Gears 5 or the Ori games.
2. Sound design. My goodness, the voices whisper in your ears the entire game. Play this with headphones. If you don't, you're missing the point. You can hear the voices swirling around you. I've listened to many schizophrenia simulators and this captures the audio better than most, and has the voices ranging from friendly and helpful to berating and accusatory.
3. Representation of mental illness. This was the big selling point for me since I heard about the game and it is on the mark. The devs consulted with mental health experts and people who experience delusions, voices, hallucinations, and so on to inform the game. It was incredible to see this stuff handled with such care. Senua's experiences mirror people's modern-day experiences with mental illness. There was a biological component, she struggled with voices as a child, there was a triggering traumatic event that made things exponentially worse, she was stigmatized for her difference, she learns to accept it, and so on. Really, really excellent and worth playing for that alone.
Lows:
1. Combat. Combat is simple. You can dodge, melee, light attack, and strong attack. And no, they don't even combine together in a variety of combos. After not too long, you'll be going through fights without a scratch, until, inexplicably, the very end when the combat difficulty ramps up because the game throws an infinite amount of enemies at you at the same time. Have fun trying not to get bored of the combat earlier on, and have fun not being frustrated to no end when you die over and over and over until you realize what's going on.
2. Puzzles. There are some neat "perspective shifting" puzzles in the game, but by the end they become tedious and frustrating; I wound up keeping a walkthrough handy to save me from slowly creeping around the haunting environments spending a long time lining up trees and beams and light and whatever into rune shapes. Seriously, a lot of these suck and the kill the game's momentum.
3. Door bugs. Thanks to the perspective shifting puzzles, I think, I THREE TIMES encountered bugs. The first time I was trying to make my way back from killing the second boss. Getting to it had required navigating a maze of perspective puzzles to make bridges appear and debris disappear. On the way back, I could not see where I was supposed to go. I wandered around for 30 minutes thinking I had to undo the puzzles and that I just wasn't seeing something. Finally I looked up a walkthrough and it basically said, "from the boss room, go through the door in the back." I went and...there was no door. I had been back in that room like three times. Rebooted the game. Bam, there's the door.
The second door bug didn't stump me for quite as long. I was in one of Odin's trials where you use these masks to switch between past and present to get through a tower. Well, I was stuck for a while because a door that I opened in the past kept being shut again in the present. I didn't understand why because other doors I opened in the past were open in the present. Finally, as I was trying to open it, I got real close and clipped through it. Huh. I clipped back. Clipped through it. Dangit! The door appeared closed but it was actually open. Stupid bug.
Okay so. The game is totally linear, and that's okay because there's a neat story there. But the combat and puzzling somewhat detract from the experience. They make sense in context (combat is slow and difficult because it's realistic and Senua gets hurt; the puzzling makes sense because Senua's psychosis makes her delusional, seeing things that aren't there), but fighting and solving perspective puzzles are not particularly fun or interesting to do in practice in Hellblade. It's definitely worth a play through despite its flaws because its strengths make it unique. I'll likely not forget this one.
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Jun 8th, 2020 at 10:56:13 - Guacamelee! 2 (PC) |
Finished this a couple days ago. Fantastic follow-up to the original. It's more of the same, which is a good thing. At the end of the last game, you (Juan, simple farmer) defeated Calaca, evil boss man trying to merge the worlds of the living and the dead. Turns out that there are infinite parallel timelines, some in which you defeated Calaca, some in which Calaca killed you, some in which another hero and luchador, Salvador, defeated Calaca. In Guacamelee! 2, you enter the "Darkest Timeline" to take down Salvador and his henchmen, who are trying to collect ancient relics to complete a ritual that will, again, merge the worlds of the living and the dead and eliminate all other timelines except the one where he is ruler.
You'll meet up with old characters from the first game and new ones, such as my favorite villain, an evil chicken riding a giant mutant cactus. Other funny new characters include the variety of chivos from different timelines. They guide you on your quest, whether it's the hippie chivo from the Chill Timeline or whatever. The timelines are one of the coolest additions to the game. You'll find doors throughout the world that lead to others, some of which are optional and some of which are required. They're almost all jokes though. For example, there's the Service-Based Platform Timeline, where you essentially make microtransactions with your gold to unlock loot boxes, always being promised a great treasure at the end, which turns out to be one gold coin. There's the Git Gud Timeline, which has THE hardest platforming sequence I came across in the game. I made it about halfway through after an hour and gave up. The Dankest Timeline pokes fun at people who disliked the meme humor in the original Guacamelee. Apparently this was a sticking point for people, and the devs removed references to internet memes from the sequel. Another one makes a funny Street Fighter reference. Video game references replace meme references in Guacamelee! 2.
Entering special timelines, and using special moves to bust colored obstacles, nets you a huge variety of easter eggs, gold, and power-ups. There's always an incentive to explore, not least because the platforming is so creative, tight, and challenging. This game is way harder than the first one in terms of platforming puzzles. I loved the challenge and felt highly accomplished when I would clear an exceedingly difficult room and when I finally beat the game. By the end, I had a ton of gold and had purchased all upgrades, which are more useful this time around. All your special moves will be at max power, you'll be able to recharge your health and stamina at will, and so on. By the end, the combat is a breeze, but is still a lot of fun. This is well worth your time if you like Metroidvanias and good 2D beat-em-ups and puzzle platformers.
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Jun 3rd, 2020 at 07:51:41 - A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC) |
This game was hyped hard. I had no idea what to expect except: (1) people loved it, (2) it's set in plague-era France, and (3) there are lots of rats. This was to my benefit because one criticism a lot of people have is that the story goes into left field. I accepted the supernatural cult-ish stuff with open arms. Even though it was out there, it made the game more interesting.
The main thing I enjoyed, besides the visuals, music, and setting, was the relationship between Amicia (main character, older sister) and Hugo (child brother, develops gift). Their relationship is consistently strained and they play their roles well. Amicia is the protective one, and Hugo embraces being childlike and full of wonder. Even in the midst of a plague, he runs ahead of Amicia playing, makes loud noises when he shouldn't, wants to see his mom, and so on. Amicia struggles to quell his childlike tendencies because they are in serious adult situations (being hunted by the Inquisition, navigating levels full of deadly rats, and so on).
So, there is this cool tension here between seriousness and play, and I feel that the gameplay and story reflect this. Perhaps it is this tension that people criticize when they dislike the gameplay and narrative realism contrasted with, or morphing into, typical video game tropes and power fantasies toward the end.
The huge drawback of the game is its linearity. I recently played Dishonored 2, a game where you can complete any objective numerous ways, so this was especially frustrating. An example: On a farm, you have to lure rats away with meat. Amicia says that it doesn't matter if the meat is dead or alive. You have previously passed piles and piles of dead pigs, but no amount of looking near the dead pigs provides one you can interact with. There is one live pig, however. I didn't want to kill it (it was cute), but the game, after telling you there are options, forces you to kill the live pig. As others have mentioned, the game gives you tells moments before something or someone you like will die, which does feel a bit artificial.
The game frequently makes it seem like you have choices, but you do not. You'll stealth through an entire level only to have been caught all along at the end, or set up an elaborate rat-prevention system only for the rats to have busted through it all along in the end (and then you have to re-trace your steps through this puzzle for the THIRD time--I hate this puzzle). You are drip-fed new ammo types for your sling. Two of them I didn't use one time after the tutorials. You'll rely on just a few ammo types. The stealth parts are less open-ended puzzles and more scripted sequences wherein there is a correct way to pass. This also made dying frustrating because 100% of the time you knew what you were trying to do, but you stepped too close to some rats, or the sluggish combat system didn't allow you to aim quickly enough at an approaching guard, and you have to start the slow sequence over.
But you know what? In the end, when I was controlling rats and feeling like a power-hungry Crispin Glover in Willard, none of the game's problems mattered. TL;DR: If you can put up with a slow, linear game with a decent story and substandard combat for a while, you will be rewarded with rat tornadoes.
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May 31st, 2020 at 09:28:38 - Dead Cells (PC) |
Pretty neat roguelike that I nonetheless quickly tired of playing. It's very repetitive and difficult. While I've come to appreciate this genre, I enjoy a steady sense of progression. This one seems to require you to grind out upgrades before progressing. I would like to experience more of the story because the setting is interesting and the few characters I've met, including the main character, are intriguing. There's some sort of disease called "the malaise" that's infecting people, and I gather that you can be infected too, but I didn't make it that far.
Right, so the pixel art is great, the combat is smooth and responsive. One problem I have is that the screen quickly becomes an utter mess of status effects. I can't differentiate between what are my fire/poison/ice effects on the ground and what are the enemies'. You'll also quickly (by the second or third area) have upwards of 10 enemies right up on you. It quickly becomes chaotic and too much for me to track.
There seems to be a good variety of weapons with all sorts of modifiers, from bleeds to freezing to dropping grenades on attack. You can equip two "normal" weapons (ranged or melee), two "special" weapons (like traps or grenades), and an amulet (passive effect). So you have four attacks too, which can be wildly different, and since you're changing weapons throughout a run and from run to run (because weapons are all random), keeping track of which button uses which attack, and which attacks you even have, can be a bit daunting.
One thing I liked about the game was the merging of genres. It's not a standard roguelike, but incorporates elements of metroidvanias and soulslikes. You collect "cells" from enemies and use them to purchase upgrades. When you die, you lose all of your souls--I mean cells--and restart from the beginning of the game (yes, the beginning of the WHOLE GAME). It makes upgrades feel like you've really earned them and makes death meaningful (even though it often feels cheap). But, minus points for the title of this game, a clear aping of Dark Souls. Dark Souls, Dead Cells. Dank Seals, Doom Sails...The D--- S/C--- formula is gold.
All in all, neat game, some cool ideas, definitely fun for a while and chaotic combat. Worth a shot, especially if you like roguelikes, and you'll probably come away with something memorable even if you don't stick it out.
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