thechcoman

[thechcoman]

WIBP: Super Mario Odyssey

Before I begin today, sorry this took so long to come out. Hopefully, the next post won’t take as long. Furthermore, while I would like to talk about Nier Automata so more, I haven’t play much of it lately due to a lack of time. So when I get a chance to play more of it, I will write about it.

My love of platformers has been well-documented when I first wrote about A Hat in Time. I’ve always loved them; how they reward careful movement and jumps; how they have countless numbers of collectibles that reward exploration and finer platforming; and I love discovering all the cool maneuvers you can do and using them to try and look cool and complete the level faster. They are, usually, completely skill-based experiences that if designed correctly, are incredibly rewarding. However, another great thing about most of these platformers is how you don't have to be incredible at them to beat them, but being incredible at them is fun and rewarding.

Such is the case with the game I’ve been helplessly addicted to for the last week: Super Mario Odyssey. Much like the platformers of the Nintendo 64 Era and modern-day games such as A Hat in Time and Yooka-Laylee, Super Mario Odyssey is a huge collect-a-thon, however it might be the most densely-packed collect-a-thon platformer that Nintendo has made. One of the appeals of the game for me is not only the sheer amount of content and collectibles, but also, much like A Hat In Time, the mechanics for controlling and moving Mario is incredibly fun. And if you’ve read my post on A Hat In Time or my post about Final Fantasy XV, then you know how much I love fun and fluid movement options and techniques.

The main goal of the game is to obtain Power Moons, similar to collecting Stars in Super Mario 64, or Time Pieces in A Hat In Time. However, unlike Stars or Time Pieces, Power Moons are quite literally EVERYWHERE. The maximum number of unique moons you can get in the game is a whopping 880 moons. Keep in mind that A Hat in Time had 40 Time Pieces, and Super Mario 64 had 120 stars. It’s ridiculous how many moons there are. It gets to the point where you’re almost quite literally tripping over moons every minute of playtime. Nearly every action you do gets you a moon.

One unfortunate consequence of having so many moons in the game is that a good chunk of them end up being not so interesting to obtain. Unlike A Hat In Time or various other collect-a-thons that are similar to it, many of the moons have uninteresting or uninspiring objectives or missions behind obtaining them. A lot of 6the moons are just sitting out there, waiting to be collected, or they’re pretty easy to find.

The benefit of doing this however is that because of the high number of moons, it ensures that the game isn’t too difficult to blaze through, which is good for the audience who aren’t so skilled at the game. Furthermore, it feels good to be collecting a new moon every couple of minutes, if only because it feels as though you’re constantly making progress and constantly building up to something. Furthermore, it makes the game rewarding for my particular way of playing games; the one that rewards thorough examination, exploration and thinking.

Every time in this game when you think “I bet there’s a moon there,” there usually is. And if not that, then usually a gigantic amount of coins. More often than not, this is usually indicative of you reaching an area that you thought you weren’t supposed to be able to get to or an area that’s difficult to reach that the developers want to reward you for reaching.

However, let me talk about the thing that made me really enjoy Super Mario Odyssey: the mobility options. Having fun, fluid and intuitive mobility and movement options is critical to most platformers (alongside good level design). In this particular Mario game however, movement is far more fun than it ever has been in previous Mario games. It requires skill to do, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you get it right. By mastering the game’s movement options, it becomes easy to sequence break and skip over portions of each level. But what are your movement options specifically?

Well, a good majority of your movement options comes from the main new mechanic in the game – the ability to throw your hat. Once you toss your hat out, it can damage enemies (and let you take control of some). If you toss out your hat in midair however, it stops all your momentum for moment. Furthermore, if you hold down the button that throws the cap, it will stay out and you then bounce off of it. This can be combined with the ability to dive mid-air by beginning a ground-pound, and pressing the dive button. So first you can throw you hat, dive, land on the hat to launch yourself higher into the air…and then you can do the whole process a second time, though you don’t get a second bounce. Then, after the second dive, you can transition that into a roll, which can also transition into a long jump, where you can then repeat the whole process.

This ability to continually move forward not only lets you get from point to point faster, but also allows the player to stay engaged and constantly make progress. And the fact that it requires some skill to perform also makes it further rewarding when you pull it off.

The maneuver can get even more complicated, allowing you scale walls you normally wouldn’t be able to. You first ground pound, then immediately jump in order to get extra height; then throw the hat and dive and bounce off it; then wall jump; then throw your hat towards the wall, dive towards it, and when you dive, you can potentially make it over the wall. This can lead to some cool moments in which you reach places that you initially believe the developers didn’t intend for you to reach…until you find the giant stack of coins that implicate otherwise. This is insane to me. While the reward is small, it’s still an acknowledgement from the developers that you were not only able to get there, but also that they knew it was possible to get there and planned for it in advance.

I love it when developers acknowledge and reward the mindset of players who explore every possible outcome or think of everything. It shows the forethought of the developers as they know how people are going to want to play their game. It shows good game design, it shows good level design, and it’s fun for a player to be acknowledged when they do something impressive, cool or difficult.

I mentioned earlier about how throwing your hat at enemies can let you take control of some of them. This mechanic is named “capture” which is a terrible pun. While you can’t take control of EVERY enemy in the game, you can take control of a good number of them. A lot of them fundamentally change the way you play the game and interact with your environment, which helps to change things up and introduce variety into the game.

Some of the enemies you control are kinda boring and uninteresting, such as possessing Fire Bros. or Hammer Bros. which lets you throw fire and hammers respectively…and all it does is introduce a way to break very specific blocks and a new way to attack. Plus, they are difficult to control, which makes playing as them not very fun at all.

But then we have enemies like the…well I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s some kind of bird enemy you can encounter late in the game that can peck into walls and flick itself upwards, sideways, or downwards a wall. This changes how you interact with the world in a new and interesting way, allowing you to open up new paths and find new collectibles.

One thing I’ve neglected to mention so far that the game does amazingly is its presentation. So many games that come out these days, despite the amount of color that are in them, don’t have colors that pop or stand out. Furthermore, most games’ presentation is very…basic. Super Mario Odyssey, again like A Hat In Time, has very creative and interesting worlds that are well-thought out and beautiful, with plenty of colors that pop and interesting and creative levels. Many of the traditional Mario levels we see usually have some sort of interesting twist on them that makes them feel different than previous Mario games. The lava/volcano stage is actually a stage based around food, with the lava being hot soup. The desert stage is themed after Mexico and is filled with Mexican culture. These kinds of changes are done in order to give the impression of traveling the world and going on a grand adventure…and I’d say it works pretty well.

The presentation gets even better when it comes to the soundtrack. The game has several memorable tracks, such as the music for the Cascade Kingdom, which ends up being one of the main themes of the game. The other main theme of the game is the song “Jump Up, Super Star!” which is a jazz-inspired song sung by one of the in-game characters. It’s a song that, the first time I heard it in the trailer of the game, it simply cannot leave my head. It’s such a great song and if you have any love for Mario or Jazz music, you should give it a listen because the song is just that good. I just wished it was used a bit more often in the game proper, but it's not a big deal.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Super Mario Odyssey. I just wish that there were more games similar to it and A Hat In Time, since the 3D collect-a-thon platformer seems to be such a rare genre these days, yet I think that there’s still definitely a market for it. People like to explore and have freedom in there games, and these collect-a-thon 3D platformers are great for those people who like to be rewarded for exploring and going out of their way to find rewards.

[thechcoman]

Late Post

Sorry about what’s taking so long for last week’s post. Things have been busy, and I’ve been having a difficult time writing last week’s post...I’ll try to get it out before the end of the week, along with this week’s post as well. Sorry about this!

[thechcoman]

WIBP Nier Automata Week 4

One thing I usually cannot STAND in most JRPGs is how so many of them try too hard. This can apply to their gameplay, the story and the presentation as a whole. Instead of focusing on just making a good game with a good story and good gameplay, they always feel the need to make the combat as over-complicated and as cluttered as possible. The same usually applies to the story, ignoring the base foundations of a decent story and instead only focusing on overly complicated themes and philosophy. If not this, they focus too much on the plot and events, and not enough on the characters. There are numerous other problems with JRPG stories that I won’t get too into here, but generally speaking, most stories from JRPGs in the past decade or so tend to be not so great. This isn’t always true, but many do fall into these familiar traps. The designs of the characters tend to be cluttered and over-designed, and most of the music either sounds like generic J-pop, generic rock, or generic orchestral music.

Many JRPGs tend to feel similar in the modern day because of this. Yet, ironically this is all usually done in an effort to stand out. Back during the days from the NES all the way up to the Playstation 2, JRPGs actually were the reigning kings of storytelling in games. While there were good, story-based games that were made in the west, those weren’t all that popular in comparison to the JRPG-craze. However, once western games started to become popular and had better stories, JRPGs started to slowly fall by the wayside. In an attempt to stand out, many JRPGs started implementing more complex battle systems, and tried to look cooler; prioritizing things that look stylish over things that look good and played well. It’s repeatedly a problem.

Nier Automata is a JRPG in recent years that manages to take all of these frustrating aspects of JRPGs and make it into something that’s not only truly great, but also something worth talking about and has got me thinking about subjects and topics that I don’t normally think about. This is, in my mind, the mark of a truly great piece of art. It even manages to have its story and gameplay be completely integrated in a way where the story is not only enhanced by the gameplay, but only works as a game.

While playing through the game’s main story and sidequests, I began to notice two different reoccurring themes: one about the purpose of fighting and it’s necessity; and the other being questions about how much someone values their memories and the memories of those around them. These two are someone connected in this game. Is it worth sacrificing your memories to become stronger to protect what you value most? Is it worth it to be unable to fight and protect what you love to preserve the happiness of your memories, especially in a world that feels devoid of happiness? These are some of the questions that Nier Automata raises. Whether or not the answers to these philosophical questions are actually answered or not by the end of the game is yet to be seen however, and it’s something that makes me look forward to playing this game each week.

For this week I’d like to provide a few examples of these themes being seen throughout the game.

First and foremost, in the main story, we see extra information given to us during the “forest king” section of the story on this second playthrough. We learn more about something that felt odd on the first playthrough, and was kind of out of place. Towards the end of the forest section of the game, you find the “forest king” that many of the various machines have kept mentioning and well…this “forest king” is just a machine child. It was…odd, especially since a moment later, the child was killed by A2.

Now on the second playthrough, we get some backstory on this. We learn that the original forest king, who was wise, kind, and generous, had died giving up several of his parts to his followers to make them stronger and better. Before he died however, his followers took his various memories and implanted them into the mind of a machine child, and then plan to raise the child and so when he grows up, he will be able to rule them as the forest king once more.

In this section of the story, we see the theme of memory appear. We see how much the forest king’s people value the king’s memories of his subjects, along with them valuing the memory of the forest king himself, believing preserving his memory is important to preserving…well him. Here we see a metaphysical concept taken quite literally – the idea of immortalizing yourself through other’s memories of you.

This all also ties into the theme of why people fight, as we see the various subjects of the forest king throughout the forest area who attack you. They will say things like “Fight for your king!” and “This is what you’ve trained your whole life to do!” This, like many things throughout the game, parallels to the main characters, in that they are androids built purely for fighting and have a cause to fight for that’s probably futile (since it’s fairly obvious that the humans on the moon are either dead or don’t exist, even though the game hasn’t officially revealed that yet).

Let’s look at another example of these themes within the game. There’s a sidequest in the game focusing on a character from the first Nier game, named Emil. Emil asks for your help in finding specific flowers called Lunar Tears. Every time you find one for him, he manages to recover a little bit of his memory with each flower. We eventually learn that he’s actually a being from back when humans were around, and was built as an ultimate weapon; his purpose was to fight. He had friends and was a nice person, and when the aliens invaded, he tried to fight back to protect his friends by cloning himself thousands of times over. However, with each clone, his memories slowly began to disappear, in order to increase his fighting prowess.

I feel as though this entire sidequest is summarized and perfectly encapsulated in one single line. When 2B asks Emil about a certain memory (I don’t entirely remember what they ask about; I wish I wrote it down), Emil responds by saying “I don’t know. I didn’t need those memories to fight.” It was honestly the line that made me realize the existence of these two reoccurring themes and nudged me to look closer and more analytically at the game’s story. Here, Emil has sacrificed his memories to protect the ones he loves and holds dear…except once again, his friends end up dying anyways and he’s unable to protect them. Emil chooses to cast his memories aside to get stronger, but in doing so forgets the purpose behind his constant fighting. The game is trying to create a connection between fighting and memories, much like with the whole forest king section. Now that Emil’s fighting is over, his memories would be the only thing that remained and the only thing that matters, yet ironically, he no longer has those memories that could be considered precious.

There are countless examples of this connection made between memories and fighting, such as the sidequest “The Wandering Couple” In this sidequest, two androids that are in love want to escape from the resistance created by androids on the surface (Non-YorHa androids) as romantic relationships aren’t allowed, and they ask your help to do so. Eventually the quest has you helping them get money to pay for someone to get them out, but that person betrays them and nearly kills them. After helping them both, the man asks to have his memory reset so that the resistance will take him back and he doesn’t have to live in fear on the run. The woman agrees and his memory is formatted…only for the woman to then take him and say that she plans on updating him with programs designed for battling and fighting so that they won’t be in danger and that she needed him formatted to do so.

Another sidequest  that exemplifies these themes is “Amnesia”, in which an android wants to take revenge on the one who killed her friend, and at the end of the quest, we find out that she killed her friend, and blocked the memory out of her mind. She’s apparently an execution-model YorHa Unit (YorHa being the organization of androids created by humanity that 2B and 9S work for, in case you don’t remember) that was created in order to kill traitors, which he friend apparently was, and the event was so traumatic that she blocked out the memory.

Or how about the main characters themselves? 2B becomes upset at the beginning of the first playthrough when 9S doesn’t remember sacrificing himself to save her, since he didn’t upload his memory to the YorHa bunker and instead just got a new body. At the end of 2B’s playthrough we learn why she was so upset when 9S is going to do the same thing again: she doesn’t want the 9S that she had grown so attached to, to die off and lose the 9S that currently exists; the 9S she cares about. The thing is that he’s sacrificing himself in both occasions either due to a battle or to end one, once again, creating this connection between memory and fighting.

So what is the game trying to say with this connection? Well, this is just a guess, but I believe that the game is trying to tell us that memories are what make us who we are, and that they are the most important things to us. However, I also believe that it is trying to say that the natural state of humanity and of existence as a whole is one of violence, hatred and fighting. However, the memories we create and the connections we form with others transcends this natural state of violence and hatred. That our love for others is too important to let go, lest society and people in general fall apart, like it does in Nier Automata. We see time and time again that people are unhappy in this grim state of the world; that we are depressed because we keep sacrificing our memories to become stronger and fight more, yet not realizing the cost of doing so. And on the occasion in that the memories try to be preserved, like with the forest king, in the end the machines still resort to violence, as the memories that they try to preserve are within the mind of a child who could not possibly rule them properly. As such the machines go back to their original purpose – violence and fighting.

Through this, there is also a lesson that goes hand in hand with this idealogy. The idea that we have the power to defy our fate. If our fate is to be destructive and to fight and kill, yet we overcome this destructive and violent nature, we defy our fate, and have the ability to choose how to live our lives, despite our inner natural states and overall purposes in life.

There’s so much more to talk about with Nier Automata and it’s various themes and moral philosophy, but this post is getting to be incredibly long, and anything else I would say would just be redundant at this point.  As I play more of Nier Automata, I will continue to search for potential examples of these two themes within the narrative of the main story and the sidequests as well. With that being said, I’ll see you all next week.

[thechcoman]

No post this week.

You may have noticed there was no post last week. Unfortunately, I’ve been really busy these last couple of days, and barely had any time to play any video games to speak of. Not only did I not have the time to write up a blog post for last week, but also I didn’t have enough material to talk about this week as well. So there’s not going to be any posts for last week. I’m sorry, and I’ll try to make sure this doesn’t happen again! Expect another post about Nier Automata by the end of the week.

[thechcoman]

Nier Automata Week 3

A small warning before I begin. For nearly every post here on out about Nier Automata is going to contain spoilers, as it would be difficult to talk about what it is about the game I like without bringing up spoilers. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, here’s your warning.

With the gradual shift for many video game franchises to integrate RPG elements and mechanics, one of the common features that gets introduced along with these RPG elements is New Game + (or just NG+ for short). And, much like these RPG mechanics, I feel as though NG+ is just thrown in there for the sake of having it. Sometimes, you’ll have a game that will increase the difficulty and rebalance the game for NG+, but even then it still feels like an afterthought as it doesn’t really make the game more interesting. Most of the time, when NG+ is untouched, it’s to let you go through the game again and destroy everything with all the new powers and level ups you’ve gained throughout the game. When NG+ is changed and made more difficult, then it rarely makes things more interesting or actually harder; instead it usually just increases all the numbers in the game, making it feel like I’m just playing the game regularly again. Because of this, I find myself rarely touching NG+ for the majority of games I play, even the ones I like.

But why do most games include NG+? Well, like I said earlier, it’s because many developers have integrated RPG mechanics into their games, and many RPGs have NG+. Ever since Chrono Trigger release in 1995 and popularized the concept of NG+, nearly every RPG since has put NG+ into their games. When Chrono Trigger put in it’s NG+ however, it had a distinct purpose. Since you would be able to fight the final boss at any point during Chrono Trigger’s story, you could get different endings depending on when you defeat him. Since it would be essentially impossible to defeat him at those earlier points in the story, NG+ was included to make it possible to get all the multiple endings. However, most RPGs since then have included NG+ I feel simply because Chrono Trigger had it, and people loved it in that game. And while there are plenty of people who do enjoy a simple NG+ where little is changed (and I don’t belittle the people who do enjoy that), I personally don’t enjoy most NG+ modes as they do little to change up the game or make things more interesting. (pictured below is Chrono Trigger’s file select screen, showing how you had access to NG+).

Well, that was until I began my second playthrough of Nier Automata.

Remember how I mentioned last week that I was hoping that the story would pick up on this second playthrough? Well it absolutely did. One of the most fascinating things about the perspective shift isn’t so much that we get to see events that 9S went through that we couldn’t see on the first playthrough, but rather the ways in which 9S’s playthrough integrates story and gameplay. For 9S, instead of having Heavy Attacks like 2B has, you instead can hack opponents, which when initiated; you’ll play a quick top-down shooter mini-game. After completing the mini-game, you deal a great amount of damage to the enemy. However, because of this mechanic, you’ll be able to see the memories and thoughts of some of the bosses that you hack.

While I’ve only seen this been done once so far within this second playthrough, I’d be shocked if I don’t see it multiple times throughout the playthrough. When I first saw this happen, it was against the third boss fight in the game, which was a machine obsessed with becoming more beautiful (who, much like the first boss, we learn the name of, which is Beauvoir). We assumed in the first playthrough that this machine was just crazy and just wanted to kill androids to be “beautiful” and had just gone berserk. However, in this second playthrough, we learn that this machine actually wanted to impress another robot by becoming more beautiful, believing that being beautiful was not only equivalent to love, but the meaning of life itself.

My describing it here however doesn’t really do the whole section justice though. It’s something that you truly need to experience yourself. It’s through this section that Nier’s more philosophical side of its story is seen. After defeating the boss, we are treated to a long monologue from the boss about their life story; about the horrible things she did to become more beautiful, and her gradual obsession with beauty. Since she associated beauty and trying to impress this one person she loved with her entire reason for existing, when her advances were rejected, she believed that there is no reason to go on anymore, leading her to become insane. This is clearly an attempt by the story to comment on both the meaning of life and the concept of nihilism, though I haven’t played enough of the game so far to fully understand what the game is trying to say about these themes. I’m certainly curious to see the ways in which the game handles these themes.

Another interesting way the story differentiates itself from the first playthrough is through the addition of “storybook” cutscenes. At random points during the game, there will be a cutaway to show a cutscene with 9S narrating over cardboard cutouts of machines who begin to discover various things about the world and trying to figure out the meaning of life. At this point in the story I’m still not sure what the exact purpose of these cutscenes are, nor do I really understand why they are placed where they are, as the placement of them seems…random. Like there’s no rhyme or reason as to when and where they appear. They just…happen, completely without context and without any knowledge of them coming. I hope that these cutscenes will amount to something at some point…but every time I seem to say that about this game, it usually does amount to something, so I’m optimistic.

Something else I want to talk about however is the hacking mechanic I had mentioned earlier. I’m a little iffy on it, as it seems to basically break the game in terms of difficulty. The thing is that every time you complete the hacking mini-game it will ALWAYS carve out a certain percent of the opponent’s health. The only way this number will change is based how many levels higher you are than your enemy, in which case, hacking an opponent can be a one-hit kill. But since hacking will ALWAYS remove a set percentage of the opponent’s health, it trivializes multiple fights in the game. There was one sidequest that involved me fighting a level 50 enemy while I was only level 35, and hacking made the fight incredibly easy. They do try to implement a risk-reward system for the hacking mini-game, where failing it will make you lose some health, but the damage you take is so pitiful that it can easily be healed with the lowest tier healing item. It doesn’t help that the mini-game for hacking is usually fairly easy. It CAN be difficult, but the more difficult hacking mini-game are usually reserved for bosses or really tough enemies. And these difficult ones get fairly predictable and easy the more you do them (thus why the level 50 enemy I fought was still fairly easy).

I should clarify however that I don’t necessarily think that the hacking mechanic is a bad one on paper though. I just feel like it needs refining and fixing. I think making failing these mini-games more punishing and having a cooldown on your ability to hack an enemy (on either success or failure) would fix most of the problems I have with it. This way, you couldn’t spam it and it’s a true, high-risk/high-reward scenario. As it is however, it’s more of a low-risk/high-reward scenario, which isn’t great.

Something I haven’t talked about much but I do want to bring up while I’m talking about combat being trivialized and made too easy are the plug-in chips I mentioned in earlier posts. Remember how I said once before that, depending on your loadout, plug-in chips could completely break the game? At the time, when I said that, I was somewhat exaggerating. Now though? That is absolutely true. After I realized I had a TON of in-game money, I spent a lot of it on upgrading my plug-in chips and my plug-in chip capacity. All I did was upgrade all of my healing chips and it made the game stupidly easy. Between the auto-item chip (which automatically uses an item to heal you when you’re low on health), the deadly heal chip (which will heal you when you kill an enemy) and the damage heal chip (which heals you each time you hit an enemy), I feel like I’m rarely ever in danger of potentially dying as I’m constantly healing any time I do…well anything really. Combine that with a weapon upgrade system that makes your weapons significantly more powerful with each upgrade, as opposed to more, smaller damage upgrades and the previously mentioned hacking mechanic…and yeah, I’d be lying if I said that combat was difficult in this game.

On one hand, I like the easier difficulty. It lets me breeze through the game during times where I want to play but I have little free time. On the other hand though, I do wish the combat was a bit more difficult and demanded me to become better at the game and learn it’s mechanics better. This especially hurts because I do think the combat has a lot of great mechanics behind it. I love the dodge and counter system. I love the various different combos you can perform. I love the high-octane speed of combat. This is why I still enjoy the game’s combat despite it’s real lack of challenge. Perhaps when I finish the game (and I mean ACTUALLY finish the game), I’ll go back and replay it on a harder difficulty, as that might alleviate some of the problems I have with the combat. But like I said, I’m still enjoying the game and it’s combat. If I didn’t like it, I probably still wouldn’t be playing it nor would I be writing about it.

Before I wrap up, I do want to address a problem I was worried about last week that I can happily say I didn’t need to be worried about. Thankfully, any and all progress I had made in my previous playthrough regarding sidequests did indeed carry over. I’m so thankful about that. I really didn’t want to go back and redo all those previous sidequests I had already done.

Anyways, that’s all for this week! See you all next week, where I’ll be talking about…well probably just more Nier.

[thechcoman]

WIBP: NieR: Automata Week 2

A few things before today’s post. First of all, I’m sorry for the super-late post. I’ve been incredibly stressed out lately, alongside being sick and being frustrated with multiple things happening in my life recently. So, I’m sorry this is going up so late. Secondly, I won’t be covering Hollow Knight this week, as I didn’t get a chance to play it. I’ll try to get back to it as soon as I can (and once I’m in the mood to play it more), but until then I’ll just be writing about Nier: Automata. That’s all for updates, now onto the actual blog post.

One of the most difficult things to design in a video game are sidequests. Far too many times, sidequests just boil down to “Go collect X number of Y’s for me,” or “Go kill X number of Y enemies for me.” Sometimes it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s what it usually boils down to. Sidequests are an incredibly potent, yet misused tool in so many video games. When used correctly, sidequests can help world-build, let players unlock new abilities and reward players for completing tough challenges and mastering the mechanics of the game. When used incorrectly, they become boring busywork that’s overly-repetitive and don’t tell interesting stories with them. Some examples of games that manage to do sidequests well are The Witcher 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Chrono Trigger. Some games that do sidequests poorly are Borderlands 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and practically every open-world Ubisoft game.

I bring up the topic of sidequests because the sidequests of Nier: Automata do everything they should…most of the time anyways. They are well-written, usually providing extra pieces of story and always having an extra layer to them; something else that’s happening within the story of the sidequest beyond the surface level. Although sadly the sidequests in the game don’t seem to offer anything gameplay-wise to differentiate them from most combat encounters in the game. Occasionally you’ll have an escort mission or you’ll have to do a race, but rarely do the sidequests stray from the usual gameplay loop, which is a bit sad, but nothing to be too bummed about. Especially since most of the sidequests have really good stories and are generally interesting. I love seeing how these sidequests eventually play out as they help to paint the picture of the world’s current post-apocalyptic, cruddy state.

One of my favorite sidequests in the game involves a man asking you to find some plug-in chips for him. Halfway through collecting them however, you’re told by higher-ups that a soldier defected and had several plug-in chips with them that contained vital and confidential information. When you go back to the man who gave you the quest, he claims to know nothing. Handing over the chips, he asks you to come visit his family some time. Later on in the game, you can find him in the desert and he introduces you to his “family” which turns out to have been the runaway android, who died and was rebuilt by this man. He needed the plug-in chips to finish his repair and explains that he was going crazy because he had an insatiable need to protect something or someone and desperately wanted a family. He gives you your reward and you leave…only for a few minutes later to get an e-mail from the higher ups explaining that the android had been destroyed along with it’s “ally”. If you go back to where you met them both, you’ll find that neither are there.

It’s a beautifully bleak example that helps to perfectly paint what kind of world this game inhabits. It’s not the only example either. Many sidequests in Nier: Automata play out similarly. Most, if not all, sidequests in Nier: Automata are fairly bleak and depressing, and usually contain some sort of twist or extra layer to them in their writing to make things more interesting. This alone keeps me enthralled in the game. Not only am I doing the sidequests to obtain the rewards (because money is for some reason still used and needed in a post-apocalyptic world), but because I want to see how they play out.

It’s a shame though that the sidequests take several hours of playing before you can start doing them. It’s also a shame that the sidequests end up getting locked off after a certain point in the story. Yes really.

That being said, you are encouraged to do multiple playthroughs (since half of the entire story of the game is locked off behind many different endings and multiple playthroughs), meaning that you’ll get more opportunities to do these sidequests as you play more. However, if I didn’t have that knowledge beforehand about the game, I would be frustrated by this as the game doesn’t even warn you about the sidequests being locked after the story mission that locks them off is completed. As a result, I could imagine some casual players being frustrated at the game for this, especially if you want to do the sidequests to obtain money and upgrade materials to upgrade your weapons late in the game. Furthermore, while I am on my second playthrough now, I have no idea if some of the progress made during these sidequests will carry over or not since I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping that they will, but I have no idea.

SPOILERS FOR NIER: AUTOMATA’S STORY AHEAD

Speaking of my second playthrough, let’s talk about the first playthrough overall. I enjoyed the first playthrough of the game for the most part, but like I stated before, the story didn’t do too much for me personally. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it didn’t do anything too unique or anything that stood out that much. The most creative part story-wise that stood out was a part towards the end in the factory, where some machines that 2B is trying to become peaceful with that are part of a gigantic cult all go insane and attack her, chanting “Become as gods!” over and over. They become filled with the belief that death will allow them to become god-like beings and willingly attack you so you can destroy them to this end. Towards the end of the section, we also see machines committing suicide to achieve this end, and it’s somewhat frightening . It’s such an effectively terrifying sequence, which while I’m not quite sure about the meaning behind it all, both symbolically and within the actual plot, it was a very terrifying section of the game if only because you were essentially helping all these people commit suicide.

However, as I said, there’s nothing too special about the story of the first playthrough. The most interesting part of it, besides the whole end section with the robot cult, is the characters. Watching the protagonist, 2B, slowly break out of her shell and come to care about her partner, 9S over time is nothing new, but executed well regardless. This is thanks to the amount of small talk they make while just walking around, commenting on things happening or about the current sidequest. You actively see their interactions and watch their relationship grow over the course of the game.

The main antagonists of Adam and Eve (really laying it on thick there with the symbolism eh?) were just alright in my personal opinion. Adam was a character who I’ve seen done in many different stories before and I didn’t really find anything too interesting about him. He wanted to find out the “secret of humanity”, by which he meant that he wanted to understand why humans waged so many wars and caused so much death, despite also being caring, loving people (or at least claiming to be, according to him). It’s an interesting motivation and idea that I’ve seen done thousands of times done in other stories beforehand and frankly, done better. It just felt rushed here. Eve was even less interesting. He’s just a musclehead who loves to fight and goes insane and ultra-powerful after his brother Adam dies. He becomes a fairly easy final boss fight that, while climatic, isn’t anything all that amazing or nothing I haven’t seen done before...which I feel like is a complaint I keep having with the game. I suppose this is due to how the first playthrough of the game is just meant to be setup and a prologue for the actual main story that goes on in the later playthroughs of the game. However, much like with the sidequest situation, I have to wonder how many people thought that the game was just mediocre after having just played through the first playthrough and thinking that was the end of the game, not knowing that multiple playthroughs are basically required. I suppose Nier: Automata is a fairly unique game in that regard, but it’s crazy how much of a creative risk that is. This idea that people have to commit to replaying the game multiple times if they want to see everything. It’s a level of commitment to playing a video game that most people don’t usually give. Because it’s so creatively risky, I do have to wonder as to why this was done.

The first playthrough introduced many plot elements and characters that were definitely meant to set up some events and story aspects for later on, presumably during these additional playthroughs. This includes characters such as A2, Devola and Popola, Emil, and a few others. There’s also times where 2B will allude to things she’s done in the past or things about 9S that she’s hinting at, but we never learn about. I’m hoping that a lot of these elements pay off later on in the story, because if they don’t then I’ll be really disappointed, especially after becoming so invested in both the world and in these characters.

What I find most interesting about the second playthrough however is the shift in perspectives and the change in the main character. Instead of focusing on 2B as the protagonist in the second playthrough, the focus shifts over to 9S. This makes sense as there are many points throughout the story in which 9S and 2B are separated and we could potentially see new and interesting things from his perspective. What I’m most curious however is to learn what 9S was doing during those points when 9S is separated from 2B. Another thing I find interesting about 9S’s story is, believe or not, the enemy names. During 2B’s playthrough, a lot of the names of the bosses in the game were written in an alien language (which makes sense, considering that the machines were built by aliens), meaning that you couldn’t read their names. However, with 9S, I’ve noticed that the names are now translated to English, and are now readable. Before, the first boss’s name was just alien gibberish, but now it reads “Engel”. I’m not sure what this means at this juncture, but I am excited to learn more about 9S and his story.

Perhaps this is the answer as to why this game is taking such a creative risk with the multiple playthroughs? To give us multiple different points of view of the story so we can get the full picture? If so, that would make sense, but then I also have to wonder why the story wasn't just told in a linear fashion and we just get huge plot reveals at various points into the game like a traditional narrative. I have two theories about this. Firstly: due to the nature how the story goes down, the huge reveals wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Secondly: the writer wanted to take adavantage of the game’s format as a video game to tell a more engaging story by presenting it Rashomon-styled. Only allowing us to see the perspective of whatever character we’d be playing as. Of course, this second theory does make me wonder who we will be playing as in later playthroughs, as there are only two protagonists introduced by the game so far. Perhaps A2 will become a playable character? Who knows. The curiosity and my not knowing is exciting though. I can’t wait to see what direction the story goes in from here, especially since so many people have told me how great the story is.

Anyways, that’s all for this week. See you all next week, where I’ll be talking about the major gameplay and story differences that occur in the second playthrough of Nier: Automata.

[thechcoman]

WIBP: Hollow Knight Week 2

In this industry, I think we all can admit that triple-A gaming has become...frustrating. The games are repetitive; manipulative; or boring. As a result, I’ve seen a lot of people choose to stick to indie games and ignore most triple-A games entirely. However, at the same time, indie gaming isn’t perfect either. A good portion of indie games that release these days are also very similar to each other, and getting fairly boring, especially when so many of these games rely on nostalgia or other factors; purely getting by on those, rather than the game’s own merits. Nearly every indie game I play is some sort of retro platformer (either in it’s presentation or gameplay); a metroidvania; or a roguelike/roguelite. And for as much as I enjoyed games like Shovel Knight, A Hat in Time or FTL: Faster than Light, I will admit that I’m tired of indie games just copying other games and being just as repetitive as the triple-A industry. Let’s not forget that a large chunk of indie games also have similar presentation. Usually, they’re hand-drawn or use pixel art; or perhaps the graphics will be “intentionally” bad to invoke the spirit of older games. It’s a legitimate problem for the indie game industry I feel.

So when it comes to a game like Hollow Knight comes along, I rolled my eyes. Because despite how much fun the game is, and how beautiful it is, it felt and looked so similar to a lot of other indie games I’ve played. That doesn’t necessarily make it worst, or even a bad game, however it’s something important to keep in mind while I talk about the game.

So on my first session of the game, I had unlocked the first shop, unlocked fast-travel, explored the first area and defeated the first boss. On this second session, I reached the second area, (called the Greenpath) explored said second area, found a THIRD area (of which I immediately NOPED out of after I realized how under-powered I was for it), and fought the second boss of the game, Hornet.

One thing I found interesting about the Greenpath in comparison to the opening area of the game, it was far more linear then the opening area. The opening area was far more what I would expect out of a metroidvania title. Winding and weaving hallways, constantly folding into itself, plenty of backtracking, and unlocking new areas as I get new powers. Once I got into the second area though, I realized how much more linear the area was. There were a few other directions I could go in, but they seemed like mostly dead ends, or still led me back on the main path towards the boss. While at first I wasn’t a huge fan of the linearity of the second area, I did eventually come around to it. I liked the change of pace, and the area was a lot nicer looking and prettier than that of the previous area.

The second boss of the game, Hornet, I also enjoyed more than the first boss, as it felt more like a test of skill. The first boss felt fairly easy (as the first boss should), but the small size, larger move set and greater mobility of the second boss made the fight far more interesting and fun, even if it was more difficult. The boss also gave me some more insight to the story, implicating that our protagonist’s goal could cause problems. However, everything that’s happening in the game is still incredibly cryptic at this point.

After having more time to play the game, I’ll say that the combat of the game is just alright. The game gives you all the options you need to properly fight things such as the ability to attack above, below or in front of you; or the ability to pogo on enemies (which is a mechanic I love in ANY game). However, one of the more frustrating aspects of combat in Hollow Knight is how you get pushed back every time you successfully hit something. It’s a minor annoyance that does little to hurt the combat in the game, but it is annoying how I have to walk forward a tiny bit each time before I do my next strike. However, I do enjoy having to time my hits in succession in order to try and defeat my foes as efficiently as possible. Timing my hits help me stunlock my foes and kill them easier. I also enjoy dodging an enemy’s attack by jumping over them, and countering by doing a pogo attack to land on the other side of them and be in a more favorable position while also getting some damage in…though this is a technique that I’m still having difficulty doing.

And yet, I still only think the combat is average. As is much of the game in my personal opinion. Stranger still, I have a hard time pinning down what it is exactly I don’t enjoy about it. I talked to my friends about it, one who didn’t enjoy it and one who did. We came to a potential conclusion of the problem with the backtracking of the game. While I enjoy backtracking in most metroidvania titles, for some reason I don’t feel compelled to go back and explore areas with my new powers each time I get a new power. However, even this I don’t think is entirely responsible for why the game isn’t clicking with me. Perhaps it’s the art style? No, I like the art style; it’s really a beautiful game and I love the aesthetic of the bug world. Is it enemies or the environments or the level design? I honestly don’t know for certain. I wish I could accurately describe my problems with the game, but I can’t pinpoint what it is.

If I had to guess though, it might come back to the problem I initially talked about in my opening paragraphs. As I said, many indie games feel similar to each other. Hand-drawn or pixel art. Metroidvania or roguelike. Retro platformer or retro RPG. So many of them feel so similar, and that could be part of the problem. The game does little to distinguish itself from a ton of other indie games of similar ilk. The hand drawn artstyle mixed with metroidvania exploration and retro-style platforming…I’ve seen it before with other indie games. Again, I don’t think it necessarily makes the game worst in anyway. All these things are great both on their own and when working together too. And there ARE times where I do enjoy things that don’t do much differently from other pieces of media that are similar to it (the movie Moana sticks out in my mind as an example), so maybe this isn’t the issue either.

That’s why I’m still going to keep playing Hollow Knight. I feel like I still need more time with it to fully form my thoughts on it, as I really don’t know how to feel about the game. I’m not all that excited to boot up the game, but at the same time, I know I know it’s going to be enjoyable to some extent and it’s not like it’s a BAD game, and I’m not DREADING it or anything. And hey, I’m if you think you might know what it is I could potentially not find enjoyable about the game, then please let me know. I’d love to talk to people who might enjoy the game more then me (along with people who didn’t enjoy the game either) to help me figure out what it is that isn’t clicking with me. I would love to have a discussion about this, so go at it!

Anyways, that’s all for today guys! Sorry for the super-late post (I need to organize my life better). See you all next week!

[thechcoman]

WIBP: NieR Automata

Hey guys, another quick message before the rest of this. I played A LOT of a single game this week, and I have a lot to talk about with it. So, while I did play more Hollow Knight, I’m going to have today’s post only cover this game, and tomorrow I’ll make a separate post about Hollow Knight, as this post is going to be LONG. Anyways, that’s all for now. Enjoy!

I love RPGs. Especially Japanese RPGs. I grew up playing them, and RPGs have always remained as one of my favorite genres. This stems from when I, as a kid, had a Gameboy advance and played Final Fantasy V on it. It introduced me to so many concepts within RPGs. The idea of specialization; the job-class system; among others. However, one of my favorite things about RPGs has always been the stories. This stems from the original granddaddy of all RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, which while it inspired most mechanics seen in most video games, it also inspired video games to tell amazing stories, as D&D, despite it’s deep mechanics, was mostly about the storytelling and…well…role-playing. It was about the characters and the party and the story those party members went through. As such, when first video game RPGs were being made, they wished to emulate the D&D experience by giving players of these games a grand story to embark on, along with multiple characters in a party to invoke the feeling of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I bring this up because despite many people’s feelings about stories in games, they have always been part of games, and have had many ups and downs in quality.

The game I’ve played this week is one such experimental JRPG with an experimental story. That game being NieR: Automata, a game which I had ZERO interest in when it first release, but got continually recommended to me over and over, until I eventually broke down and bought it during a sale. The main reason why I had no interest in it is because it was a sequel to an obscure game that barely sold with a boring-looking environment and looked like typical JRPG bullcrap that had turned me off of the genre for the longest time (such as the skimpy, fanservice-y designs; the over-the-top combat that was impossible to follow; and a story with far too much mystery and philosophy-talk while that’s overly convoluted). However, if what other people have told me is true, then NieR: Automata’s story will be an excellent one...I hope.

So why was there so much hype around the game? Well I did a little research, and found that the game’s creator, Yoko Taro, was notorious for having games with excellent (and insanely WEIRD) stories, but horrible, terrible gameplay. So the appeal of NieR: Automata was twofold. It had the excellent story that Taro is known for, while also being his first game that was, apparently, really fun to play. Thankfully, the developers of this particular game was Platinum Games, known for their work on the Bayonetta series and several successful licensed games that are known for having super fast-paced, over the top, QTE heavy gameplay that many people enjoy.

And yes, I can confirm that NieR: Automata has not only a great story (so far), but also REALLY fun gameplay.

The game starts out…rather differently than I was expecting. From everything I had seen of the game, I had thought it was an action RPG…but here’s this section that’s a full on top-down, twin stick shooter. Thankfully, I like top-down, twin stick shooters, so that’s fine, but it’s really out of place, especially when you reach the actual action RPG portions. It’s also not bad, but as of what I’ve played so far every time this gameplay crops up, it feels out of place. It’s still fun, for sure (if you’re expecting a deep analysis about the top-down shooter sections, I have so little to say about it because it’s a standard top-down shooter soooo…) but I like the action RPG portions far more and when most of the game is the action RPG portions, whenever I’m forced to hop into a giant robot and just hold down the shoot button, it feels a little boring, even though it’s incredibly flashy.

Although something that is flashy and also FUN is the action RPG combat. It plays out very similarly to other games made by Platinum, unsurprisingly. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, multiple different combos you can do (usually involving juggling opponents into the air), and a gun (which is the best term I can come up with for it) which will constantly fire a stream of bullets into whatever nearby enemy you’re locked onto so long as you hold down the button. You also have cinematic finishers you can do when an enemy is at low health and a special super attack that you can do when the cooldown from the last time you used it goes away. The combat also emphasizes attack quickly, and dodging through enemy attacks. Dodging, much like most Platinum games, slows down time slightly after every dodge, though unlike something like say, Bayonetta, where time will slow and allow you to get combos in while it’s slowed, NieR: Automata instead will just pause everything for a brief second as your character performs the dodge to make things flashy and exciting, all while keeping the flow of combat going and giving you time to react to what the enemy is doing next.

I love this sort of gameplay. Combining light attacks and heavy attacks to do cool, unique and interesting new combos to see what cool new flashy ways you can defeat your enemy is incentive alone. It makes you feel badass and empowered. One of my favorite things to do in the game is to start a jumping attack into a combo after I dodge someone’s attack, and then pressing the heavy attack button mid-air to slam them back down to the ground. The combat feels so incredibly fluid and free. Whenever I see an enemy off in the distance, I get excited because I know how much fun it is to fight.

However I do have a few critiques with the combat. Firstly, it feels incredibly easy. I’m playing the game on normal difficulty, and I feel like it’s still far too easy to dodge, counter and kill enemies exceptionally fast. Secondly, the flashy finishers feel…pointless. While it looks cool, if an enemy is that low on health, then there’s no point in doing the finisher since you’ll probably just kill them as easily, with the same rewards. Lastly, the controls are a little complicated and take some getting used to. You have to hold down both L2 and R1 to lock-on and be shooting at whatever enemy is closest, while occasionally pressing L1 to activate your super, mashing R2 to dodge, and then switching between that and the X/Square (depending on the controller) button for light attacks, the Y/Triangle button for heavy attacks and the A/Cross button to jump mid-combo. While you don't have to perform any finger gymnastics, it is easy to get the various buttons mixed up, and remember to hold down certain buttons while also occasionally pressing the necessary ones.

The game also attempts to incorporate aspects of Bullet Hell games. While I also like the idea of incorporating bullet hell aspects of the gameplay (both in the action RPG portions, and the top-down shooter sections), it’s not super well executed. In most bullet hell games, you would have to avoid a crap load of attacks with an incredibly small hit box and carefully maneuvering through all the bullets being shot at you. However, NieR: Automata decides not to care about that by allowing you to easily destroy buttons with a single melee attack or by shooting them down with your gun. It’s a mechanic that feels ultimately pointless since it’s barely an obstacle. I like the concept, but the execution needs work. Though from what I understand, this mechanic is a relic from the first NieR game, and well…that game wasn’t great gameplay-wise so…that should be telling on it’s own.

When it comes to the level design and the world design, I at first wasn’t very impressed, as most of the world looks fairly gray and boring, and whatever colors there are feel…muted and washed out. Plus, the starting area of the game have all these barriers everywhere that make it difficult to traverse the starting area. However, once you move on from the starting area (the City Ruins) and head into the Desert and then the Desert ruins, the game’s level design becomes a lot better and stays better. The world becomes more fun to traverse and it feels a lot more open, with plenty to explore as well.

The last thing I’ll mention about the gameplay is the RPG mechanics within the game…which is admittedly shallow, but it doesn’t need to be anymore complicated than it needs to be. There’s the usual RPG mechanics, such as leveling up to increase your stats, various equipment you can equip and upgrade, items to buy, etc. The most interesting thing the game has in its RPG mechanics is the plug-in chip system…which is basically the badge system from the first two Paper Mario games. You have a certain amount of “memory”. Each plug-in chip, which can give you abilities or increase your stats, takes up a certain amount of memory. If you run out of memory, you can’t equip anymore chips. You can slowly upgrade the amount of memory you can hold and upgrade your chips to get better chips that cost less memory. The chips, depending on what you equip, can either completely break the game’s difficult and make it pathetically easy, or make for some fairly interesting builds. I love mixing and matching different chip sets and optimizing the various builds by combining chips. It’s enthralling, and is a good way to expand on an already interesting system from the Paper Mario series.

However, it is worth mentioning that if you die during the game, you’ll lose all your plug-in chips and you have to find your old body and re-obtain them. If you die again before getting your chips though, you lose them forever, so death is legitimately scary, and through this the game basically forces you to get good at the combat in the game. And let me tell you, the moment I lost my plug-in chips and failed to recover them at one point in the game, it was a devastating feeling.

While there’s a ton more I could talk about the gameplay, like how great the sidequests are and how none of them are simple and always have a story to them, or the online components in the game, I’d be here all day if I talked about those. I’ll talk about them another time, as I do plan on writing more about this game as I play more of it.

The game’s presentation is amazing to say the least. At first, I wasn’t a fan of the art style or the character designs. The main protagonist, an android named 2B, seemed like another overly-sexualized female character in video games and it was initially frustrating, but it was something I moved past, especially since most of the other characters designs (such as the male lead of the game, another android named 9S) are really good. The art style I wasn’t a fan of at first either as everything was grey, and the colors that WERE there seemed drained of all their color. However, the art style of the game manages to match the perfectly bleak tone of the story, so it managed to grow on me as it felt appropriate. And on the few occasions where there were colors, they popped even more thanks to everything else being so dark and grey.

The music of the game is the best part of the presentation. Words don’t even begin to do it justice. The only criticism I have is that some of the tracks sound somewhat similar and repeat themselves a little too often, but other then that, the music is great. I love the mixture between the orchestra and the constant wailing and chanting of female voices. It sounds intense during intense moments, and soft during moments of respite, as it should. However, a lot of the tracks are really memorable (Pascal’s village music stands out, as does the boss fight in the carnival too), and I highly recommend listening to the game’s OST online or buying it. It’s that good.

Lastly, I want to take a moment to talk about the game’s story (and how it thankfully only barely ties into the first game, so you can experience it without playing the first game). It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where mankind was forced to live on the moon after aliens invaded and made machines to fight against humanity with. In retaliation, humanity created YorHA, a group of android meant to fight the machines and reclaim Earth.

The main protagonist is one such android named 2B, and her love intere…uhhhh best frie…errr…sidekick? Named 9S, who desperately wants to impress her. The two are as opposite as you can get. 2B is closed off, cold and while she does truly care about 9S, she hates showing it for one reason or another that the player is not entirely sure of yet. Meanwhile, 9S is incredibly extroverted, extremely observant and always trying to solve whatever mystery and is generally pretty upbeat. The two have great chemistry with each other. The two have great banter, and I especially like the parts in which 9S tries to get 2B to call him “Nines” as a nickname, and she occasionally gives in.

The game’s story is very obvious in what it’s trying to do, as the story is kicked off due to the machines that 2B and 9S have been fighting start becoming more and more passive, even finding that they are gaining emotions and self-awareness, and generally wanting to live a peaceful life. 2B and 9S are skeptical of course, as they’ve been fighting these things for decades, but have never shown any signs of becoming good or being more and more passive. It’s clear that the game is trying to make a story about acceptance and caring for each other, and it’s done somewhat clumsily since it’s so obvious. Also, I can already easily guess some of the plot twists that are going to happen for sure (Yep, I’m TOTALLY positive that humans are on the moon, and that they totally aren’t extinct or anything).

Since the story is so simple and basic right now, I sincerely hope that something more interesting happens down the line. However, as you might’ve guess about my opening paragraph, the game’s story is really unique, risky and different. Given what I already know about the game, after the initial playthrough, things get pretty crazy, interesting and well-written. Yes, you read that right; “initial playthrough”. Much like Chrono Trigger, half the fun of the game is replaying the game on new game + in order to get new endings and to see changes in the story. Things change significantly from playthrough to playthrough, and you need to get five different endings to get the full story. So I’ll stick with it and see what happens. I’m having fun with the gameplay so I don’t mind having to replay the game a few times, especially because it seems like the game is not terribly long either.

I’m looking forward to see what NieR: Automata delivers on in the future. It’s been fairly promising so far, so I’m excited to keep playing!

Anyways, I’ll see you all again tomorrow for my second post about Hollow Knight!

[thechcoman]

WIBP: FFXV Windows Edition Demo; Slay the Spire

A quick word before today post: unfortunately my busy schedule didn’t give me an opportunity to play more Hollow Knight last week. As such I managed to play some smaller, quicker experiences this week. Sorry! I’ll get back to Hollow Knight next week hopefully. I also wanted to apologize for the late post. Again, my life has been really busy lately. I’ll try to post earlier next week.

Much like last week how I talked about the revival of a long-dead genre, this week I’d like to talk about a long-dead concept within the gaming world: the demo. Demos used to be everywhere. There would be demo discs in video game stores where you can try games before you bought them. Steam would have a demo made for nearly every big, triple-A release. Nintendo would let you download demos of both Wii games and DS games. Heck, Nintendo is one of the rare last game developers who still try to have demos be readily available on their Nintendo EShop. But aside from Nintendo, it’s rare to see demos anymore. After all, it only makes sense, since developers and publishers don’t want people to not pick up a game based on a small, extremely limited portion of a game that may or may not represent the proper experience. Nor do they want people to form their opinions on the game as a whole when they’ve barely played the game.

As a consumer personally, I love the idea of demos as it’s less about a “try before you buy” sort of thing, but rather it allows me to get a basic taste and feel for a game when I am strapped for cash. I still would like to play these games, but most of the time, I have to be careful about how much money I spend. And piracy is something I’m heavily against, so that’s not an option. So it’s less like, “Do I want to buy this game based on how much I enjoyed the experience?” and instead more like “I get to try out this game I was interested in but don’t have the money for!” But the worries that developers have towards demos is not entirely unwarranted. While it makes me sad, I’m not surprised when I don’t see any sort of demo for an upcoming game.

So when I heard that, one week in advance of it’s PC release, Square Enix was offering a Final Fantasy XV Windows edition demo, I was more than a little shocked, yet also pleased. Final Fantasy XV was one of those games I had seen plenty of footage of and was incredibly interested in, but never owned a console to play it on (I’m mostly a PC gamer, though I do own some Sony and Nintendo Consoles because of exclusives I’m interested in). I was already happy to see that Square Enix was bringing the game to PC, and was even happier when they released a benchmark tool for the PC version ahead of time as well to see if my computer could run the game. The moment I heard there was a demo of Final Fantasy XV however, I decided to give it a shot, not only to get a better idea of how it ran, but also to get a taste of the game as well, like with demos of the past.

Final Fantasy XV’s demo covers the entire first chapter of the game and serves to be an introduction to the game’s story and the basics of combat in the game. And when I say basic, I truly mean the barebones basics. I don’t know how the combat changes later in the game, whether the enemies you fight get more interesting or if you learn more interesting techniques then the ones given to you in the demo, but I found the combat to be fairly dull and uninteresting for a variety of reasons.

The combat of the game is very simplistic, and rarely do I say this, but that is actually to it’s detriment. In order to do basic attacks, you hold down the B button. That’s it. You hold the Right Bumper to lock onto an opponent, and then you hold down the B button and Noctis, the protagonist, will go to town on the enemy. Every now and then the game prompts you to press the X Button to block something and then follow up with a parry, but in my time with the demo, I rarely ever had to do that. The combat itself is so simplistic and yet chaotic that most battles were ending with me just holding down the B button. Rarely did I ever feel any sort of challenge, which would be fine if the combat was easy because it encouraged me to use a bunch of my techniques and become skilled, and it just had a low skill barrier, much like the Kingdom Hearts games or Zelda games, but the combat never evolved beyond holding down the B button.

One of the good things the combat manages to do however is to keep things flowing and moving. Every now and then I would also press the Y button to do a warp-strike and initiate an offense against another nearby foe by having the game instantly teleport me to an enemy I was locked onto to, while also dealing damage to the enemy. By using the warp-strike, combat would never have too much downtime and everything managed to feel smooth and methodical, taking out enemies one by one. The game further encourages warp-strikes by giving you damage boosts the father away you are from an enemy, thus enticing you to continue your offense and rewarding you for keeping the flow going. Another way the game manages to keep combat going is also clever in how it manages to incorporate the other party members into combat. During battle a meter will fill that will let you command your other party members to do certain attacks, which if they connect, can let you follow up for further attacks and damage. This makes your party truly feel like they’re working together and fighting as a team while also not slowing down the pace and flow of combat. Lastly, you can also use the warp-strike to also teleport in and out of danger, and by doing so, you can recover lost health or MP in order to do more warp-strikes. The fun part of this is how you can use this technique to latch onto nearby walls and look at the entire battlefield, and then choose a foe to warp-strike to. This once again, keeps things going by giving you a healing option outside of literally pausing the game to use a healing item, so that combat can keep going.

But regardless of how good the game manages to keep the flow of combat, it barely matters as combat itself is boring since it ultimately doesn’t evolve past holding down the B button. Little to no effort or skill is required in what is meant to be an action RPG. Previous Final Fantasy games would have a skill barrier by requiring you to make smart decisions, plan things out, build up your part in a specific way and strategize in the middle of battle. However, with Final Fantasy XV, it seems as though Square Enix tried to have their cake and eat it too, as they wanted to make an action RPG, but also create an experience where you were to strategize. Unfortunately, the combat is just far too basic for that, and it’s really disappointing. The worst part is, it can be so much better with one or two tweaks. Don’t make fighting enemies as simple as holding down the B button. Introduce some greater skill tests and make fighting enemies more exciting, rather than holding the B button and occasionally pressing another button or two. Those moments where you’re warp striking all over the place and there is a lot of blocking and parrying are the most fun part of combat and therefore, the combat should focus more on those elements in my personal opinion.

Along with boring combat, the game’s open world is also not very exciting, at least in this demo. There’s not much in the way of exploration, as it’s mostly just wide empty spaces that you either drive through in your car (which is entirely on rails and fairly uninteresting) on run around on foot. There’s very little to find in the open world; there’s barely even any random encounters or monsters to fight. I would wander around the game’s world to try and find some enemies to fight so I can analyze the game’s combat mechanics closer and it took ages to find any sort of enemy to fight. I managed to find a broken-down tunnel and a dungeon, but the dungeon was locked off for the demo and the tunnel was completely boring and uninteresting. The most the game has to offer are some sidequests, but sadly since it was a demo, there weren’t many of them. All the ones I did do however were just “Go to this place and fight this thing,” which is disappointing since combat is boring for the most part.

Sadly, the story isn’t all that great either. It focuses on a prince named Noctis Lucis Caelum, and his friends as they try to defeat an evil empire who destroyed their kingdom under the guise of signing a peace treaty after years and years of war. This was caused by their desire for Lucis’s (Noctis’s kingdom) crystal which could give them incredible magical power. The story begins with Noctis going to a neighboring kingdom ruled by the empire to get married with a childhood sweetheart of his as part of the peace treaty, before finding out it was all a ruse.

We see early on when we find out about the death of King Regis, Noctis’s father, that Noctis is incredibly torn up about it and we’re supposed to feel for him. And while sure, this is an inherently a sad moment, we barely see him and his father interact, and we see even less of his father in general before he dies. This is meant to be what causes Noctis to go into action, and is the crux of his character development later on in the story when he wants to reject his lineage as king because of the various responsibilities associated with it, including all the targets that would be painted on him and his loved ones backs because of it. However, this is cheapened throughout the story as again, we never see him and his father together that much, nor do we see much of his father at all before he dies. I know that the story has a myriad of other issues that happen later on, but even based on this first chapter alone, it already has multiple signs of problems.

Lastly, the game’s presentation is just ok. The music is fantastic; the battle theme in particular stands out. This is to be expected as the franchise has always had great music in nearly every game, even the terrible ones (COUGH COUGH FINAL FANTASY XIII COUGH COUGH); and it also helps that I’m a fan of Yoko Shimamura’s (the composer) work in Kingdom Hearts and the Mario RPG games as well. She knows how to do grandiose, epic-sounding soundtracks that make you just feel like a complete badass. However, for as good as the game’s music is, the visual style needs a bit of work. While it IS interesting to see all these fantasy monsters roam about in a fairly current-day world, the design of most of the enemies are fairly bland, as are the environments, which mostly boil down to “grassland,” “broken down small enclosed area” or “tiny southern village”. While the character designs are fine (they somehow manage to make four guys all wearing nothing but black each feel visually distinct), everything else around them needs work other than just looking pretty and like current-day.

I suppose this is why most game developers and publishers don’t bother with demos anymore, as my experience with this game would dictate that I didn’t enjoy it and probably wouldn’t pick it up. But by that same token, a demo is just that: a demo. It’s not meant to be completely representative of the full game, and as such, I could feel very different about the quality of the game’s combat after I finish the game compared to just the first two hours of playing. I’m still very interested in playing the full game some day to see if the combat gets better or evolves in an interesting or unique way that involves more skill and more interesting fights than what is presented within the demo. However, I don’t think I’m going to do that until a potential price drop or until I actually have money again.

As for the second game I’ll be talking about this week, I recently played a little early-access roguelike on steam. I know that’s probably already a turn off for a lot of you, since Steam is so saturated with this sort of game, but this one feels different and unique. It’s called “Slay the Spire”, and what makes it so different and interesting is how it takes a Collectible Card Game and turns it into a roguelike. In the game, you have to go through several different encounters on multiple different linear paths to try and build your deck up, get better cards to play in each battle, and gain permanent upgrades to become strong enough to defeat the three main areas and three separate bosses.

As someone who is a fan of CCGs such as Hearthstone and Magic, this game instantly clicked with me. The game is more similar to Hearthstone rather than magic, what with the smaller deck sizes and simple gameplay. Also, unlike most CCGs, you don’t play minions and have them attack the opponent who is also playing minions, but rather you play cards to make your avatar do different actions. This includes attacking, defending, buffing, debuffing, etc. You can only play so many cards a turn thanks to the amount of energy you are given each turn, and you are forced to use your resources carefully and think through every action, as death is permanent.

It’s scary how enthralling Slay the Spire is. Choosing different classes and trying out different decks to see how far you can get, and playing as efficiently as possible is what makes it so engaging. Healing is difficult and your health carries over from encounter to encounter, so every action you do is always a risk between defending against potential damage, and attacking to finish the fight. What makes this great is how you can always se your opponent’s intent. The game gives you all the information necessary to make informed, strategic decisions.

An example of the game’s excellent risk vs reward decision making is what action to take when resting at a bonfire. You can choose to rest and gain some health back or you can choose to upgrade a card to make combat encounters easier. However, if you forego healing, it might make the next immediate fight hard, but upgrading makes things easier in the long run. I love difficult gameplay decisions like these, that force me to weigh my options and figure out what my best move forward is in order to survive and keep going.

One other thing I’ll say that I love about Slay the Spire is the various permanent upgrades – or relics as the game likes to call them – can create such interesting builds and combinations, making each run unique and interesting. It’s always fun whenever you manage to obtain a relic that lets you block for free at the end of each turn, and then you obtain another relic that lets you deal damage do your opponent every time they attack you, allowing you to be both defensive and offensive without even doing anything. It’s things like these that make me come back to Slay the Spire and keep playing it. I like to see how different runs and different builds will play out; and I like to see how different deck strategies will work in conjunction with these.

Anyways, that’s all for this week. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you guys next week with some more over-analysis of video games!

[thechcoman]

WIBP (What I’ve Been Playing): A Hat in Time; Hollow Knight

One of the most recent trends in most entertainment and media (for better or for worse) is how everything is usually a remake, sequel, or reboot. Usually this is done as a result of wanting to appeal to people’s inner nostalgia; to a time when their lives were less difficult and money was more valuable than time. That’s not to say originality is dead (because that would be an incredibly ignorant statement to make), but among big-name companies and long-running franchises, we see constant attempts to appeal to one’s inner nostalgia. The game I’ve recently played over this last weekend however, is a bit different in this regard…at least in the entertainment world at large. It’s supposed to invoke nostalgia, yet has no previously existing IP to fall back on, instead relying on people’s nostalgia for a genre that’s been dead for years now. Like I hinted at earlier however, this is a phenomenon that seems to be exclusive to video games, rather than industries such as the TV industry or film industry. I bring this up because the game I played this weekend manages to not only faithfully recreate and innovate the genre of old 3D collect-a-thon platformers, but is also potentially better than those older games (though the older games I will always consider to be more important due to the impact and general important that those games still have).

This game is known as “A Hat in Time” developed by the indie developer known as “Gears for Breakfast”; and I consider it to be one of the greatest success stories to come out of Kickstarter. The game works on so many levels, however I feel as though the presentation and gameplay are the best aspects of the game.

For me, the most important thing in any platformer is that the jumping and movement mechanics need to feel fluid and keep your momentum, or at least give you multiple options for how to initiate a jump and try to stay in the air as well. This is why I enjoy games such as the 3D Mario platformers (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, etc.) and the latest 2D Rayman platformers (such as Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends). If the jumping and movement mechanics aren’t about constantly keeping momentum and flow, then it needs to be about patience and precise jumps, and being meticulous and careful, while also being reactive much like in the original NES Super Mario Bros or Banjo-Kazooie.

This constant flow and motion while jumping and maintaining momentum is something that “A Hat in Time” does expertly. When you jump in the air, you have the option to then double jump, and then you have the option of doing a dive mid-air to get extra distance of the jump. Out of this dive, you can then press the jump button again to cancel it mid-air and be given more control over where you’ll land. This allows for precise platforming while also maintaining momentum. Furthermore, if you land on the ground after doing a dive, you can press the jump button almost immediately after you touch the ground in order to get a small hop forward that increases your speed for a moment. This is another layer to the platforming that makes the movement and jumping mechanics maintain momentum and make you constantly moving. This is brilliant, as the game rewards you for going the extra mile and timing your button presses by letting you maintain movement and momentum, and by doing so letting you complete objectives more smoothly.

Since “A Hat in Time” is meant to callback to classic 3D platformers such as Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, the main goal of the game is similar to that of these older games; that being to collect and collect and collect. The main form of progression in these sort of games and in “A Hat in Time” is to usually go into some sort of world and then complete some sort of unique mission. Upon completion of said mission, you will be granted one of the main collectables in the game that you need to get in order to progress (which in this game is known as Time Pieces). However, in my opinion, one of the reasons why the genre began to die out and became boring in the first place was because the missions that were done in order to obtain the main collectables became increasingly less interesting and more boring with each subsequent game. They were usually “Collect X number of collectible item”, “Get to the end of this platforming section”, “Complete a minigame” or “Do a quick fetch quest.” One of the games that I felt suffered heavily from this problem was Jak and Daxter, which while mechanically was a fun game, the missions to obtain the main collectable were just uninteresting and boring. The only games that managed to keep it fresh was the Mario Galaxy games, and even then at times it felt like those games were being lazy.

I say all this because “A Hat in Time” manages to not only avoid this problem completely, but in fact I think that it’s creativity of the missions you complete is one its strongest aspects. There are two reasons for this, so let me go through both of them.

First and foremost, the game is short. At first, this seemed to be a criticism I had for the game, as I managed to obtain one hundred percent completion after only 13 hours and three days or playing. But after doing some thinking I realized that that the short length of the game helped with the creativity. Because there was less game to make, they could spend more time on each and every individual mission and Time Piece all in part of an effort to make the missions memorable and fun. Furthermore, because the game is short, each Time Piece sticks out in my mind. After only one playthrough, I can recite to you nearly every single mission I did in order to obtain one hundred percent completion.

This leads me into my second point about the creativity of the missions; the variety. There are four worlds in the game, and each world feels distinct from one another in terms of themes and overall aesthetic. One moment, you could be taking down the mafia, another you’re exploring a haunted mansion with a restless ghost haunting it and the game becomes something more akin to a horror game. Another moment you can be shooting a murder mystery movie and trying to solve a crime, and in another you can be exploring a city above the clouds. It’s the creativity and variety of each situation that helps to make each and every mission stand out in my mind.

Furthermore, the game has an excellent presentation. While the graphically fidelity isn’t all that high (it IS an indie game after all), I would still say the game is beautiful thanks to a very strong and colorful art style. Every stage’s colors pop vibrantly and each of them are designed with enough flavor and difference between each other to make them all feel distinct. This is something that is once again, helped by the short length of the game. The main protagonist, named Hat Girl, is one of the best protagonists in a 3D platformer. While she is a mostly silent protagonist, she still has a strong personality simply through her facial expression and the small amount of dialogue she has. In fact, most of the characters in the game have memorable designs and hilarious dialogue that adds to the charm and memorability of everything within the game.

“A Hat in Time” is one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time, and I really highly recommend it. Along with it, we’ve been seeing a resurgence in this genre with games such as Yooka-Laylee and Super Mario Odyssey, and I’m happy to see what I once thought was a dead genre have a revival. I also look forward to future games from Gears for Breakfast.

Now then, as for games I’m currently playing through; I went from one throwback indie platformer…to another throwback indie platformer, though of a different ilk then that of “A Hat in Time”. This other game is a Metroidvania 2D platformer known as Hollow Knight. This is a game that my brother had actually played quite a bit of and recommended to me due to his knowledge of my love for games such as Metroid and Dark Souls.

As of right now, I’m enjoying Hollow Knight. It has the difficulty and recovering lost items mechanic from Dark Souls, with the exploration and progression of a Metroid game, and RPG mechanics similar to that of Paper Mario; all three of which are games that I enjoy greatly.

One of the things that stands out to me most about Hollow Knight is how great the presentation is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the game was completely hand-drawn, and while I haven’t really noticed the music much as it’s mostly ambient, the sound design is fantastic. The various different grunts that NPCs make give off a lot of personality, and even if they didn’t have any dialogue I could probably still tell you what they’d probably be thinking based on their animation and noises that they make. The sound design is also great when exploring as well, as each enemy has distinct sounds they make as they patrol around, letting you know what’s in store for you.

One thing I’m still trying to get used to however is platforming and combat. That’s not to say that the combat and platforming is bad, or that it’s even difficult to get the hang of, but rather after finishing A Hat In Time, wires are getting crossed in brain, as I keep attempting to double jump or do some sort of homing attack. Furthermore, the combat has this thing where every time you attack an enemy, there’s a little bit of pushback from attacking the enemy, and if you want to hit an enemy multiple times, you need to time your swings and move forward a little bit each time. This was something that threw me off initially, but it’s also something that I very quickly adapted to.

Something else that Hollow Knight is doing well, at least based on my first impressions anyways, is the Metroidvania aspects of it. There are multiple paths to explore, usually that have something at the end of them and many of the paths also wind around, all maze-like and eventually lead back into itself. However I need more time with the game before I can definitively say how well it handles this aspect.

I also unfortunately don’t have much to say about the Dark Souls and Paper Mario influences yet, as I haven’t played the game enough yet to make a decision about either of those yet.

Anyways, thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with another post.

PS: If this post felt a little bit, Video Game Review-ish, that’s because this is the first post of the blog, and I needed something more to talk about than just Hollow Knight, which I didn’t have much to talk about yet. So I talked about the last game I finished, which was A Hat In Time, which I had so much to say that it basically became a review. Future blog posts will be more about my experiences with the game and my general impressions.

Also, a question. I play Street Fighter V a lot. Would anybody be curious about reading my experiences with my weekly Street Fighter V session as well? Let me know!

[thechcoman]

Welcome!

Hi! Welcome to my blog where I play video games, give my impressions of them and think WAY too hared about them. Whether it’s about game design, analyzing the story or gawking at presentation, this is where I’m going to just be talking about whatever I’ve been playing recently. Welcome, and enjoy!