Category: PS4

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Game Ramblings #80 – Shadow of the Tomb Raider

More Info from Square-Enix

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One, Windows, macOS, Linux

TL;DR

  • Consistently good combat, exploration, and puzzle solving
  • Entertaining story involving the legend of the city of Paititi and a mix of Inca and Maya lore
  • On console, nice option to prefer framerate over visual quality. 60 FPS feels really good during the heavy movement segments of the game.

If you’ve played the prior two games in this trilogy, you know what to expect – solid semi-open world exploration, good puzzle dungeons, excellent stealth mechanics, and fun combat when pressed into action. Although this is definitely starting to trend towards being formulaic, there’s a few things here that made this feel like the best iteration on the gameplay that’s come out of the trilogy.

The game is only really a semi-open world experience, but the handful of larger towns are still fun to explore.

One of the reasons that I’ve really enjoyed this trilogy is that it’s only really openish. It’s got some open world trappings in terms of a relatively seamless world and a ton of things to collect in it, but in general this is still a fairly linear experience. The handful of times you get an open-style area, it’s really to allow you to breath between strictly linear story segments and give you a place to return to when a story spot is complete. These larger areas also give you the push to explore to find tombs – after all this IS Tomb Raider – that act as a significant side item to do.

The tombs are the best part of the game, giving you a mix of puzzle areas to engage in.

The prior titles in the reboot series had their share of tombs to go into, but it never really felt like a focus. While the content here is still entirely optional, the quality and count of tombs available in this game feels more significant than before. Its these tombs and crypts that are the best part of the game for me, and pushed me to seem them out whenever I could.

Each open area typically has somewhere between 3-6 hidden areas to explore with a single focus in each one. Some tombs are focused on manipulation of light to open doors to proceed further. Some focus on weight-based puzzles to open up paths to move on. A couple of them really end up being purely about climbing from point A to B without dying. These are entirely optional experience, but they’re worth seeking out simply because they are so much fun to complete. On their own, you could make a game out of a series of these and it would be worth playing, but as a part of the greater experience they still stand out. It also helps that they tend to have skill rewards at the end to really push the need to complete them.

I’m a sucker for stealth games and bow + arrow games, and this gives me both in great supply.

Combat remains largely the same as previous iterations, but is still a ton of fun. That said, the fact that there is less of it throughout the game oddly makes it feel even better. The previous titles had similar problems to Uncharted where almost any story area had obvious segments of a room of bad guys, then a room of jumping, then a room of bad guys, etc. Shadow significantly reduces this, and the game really only ends up having a handful of significant combat events in the entire game. Of this, most of them can also be completed entirely through strong stealth mechanics. When you do end up firing weapons, it’s usually for a strong story-reason, and luckily the handful of weapons (pistol, shotgun, auto rifle, and in particular the bow) all feel solid to fire.

Overall, Shadow felt like an appropriate ending to the reboot trilogy, and probably a good ending for the series on the current generation of hardware. There’s some obvious fluff to the experience that could be trimmed away, particularly with side quests that generally involve running around towns doing nothing in particular, but the overall game feels like it has reached a solid peak. Combat is fun, the puzzle solving is the best it’s been, and the origin story for Lara wrapped up in a relatively satisfying way. I’m hoping the next generation of hardware allows the series to stretch into new directions in a way similar to God of War, but for now I’m happy in where this one has ended up and can’t wait to see where Lara’s adventures take us next.

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Game Ramblings #79 – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

More Info from Ninja Theory

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • Fantastic storytelling backed by a phenomenally good audio design
  • Combat is the obvious weakpoint for the game – it’s serviceable, but nothing special. Also not a reason to avoid the game.

Hellblade is a curious game to recommend. It’s technically an action game, but its action is not a reason to play it. It’s purposefully AAA in quality, but not in scope so it doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s also the rare game that I would highly recommend wearing ONLY headphones for, even if you’ve got a high end audio system purely based on the merits of its audio design. It’s proof that a high focus on a specific element can result in an extremely high quality title without the need to add unnecessary fluff to pad the experience.

The game is entirely based around Senua’s psychosis, and everything from the audio to world design focuses in on that.

I’m really regretting not pulling some video footage of the game’s audio design while I was playing, because that’s where I want to start here. Up in the TL;DR I mentioned that this game is worth playing with headphones, and it’s entirely because of the focus on Senua’s psychosis. Throughout the game, the player hears voices in Senua’s head that act as something of a narration. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the narration that takes place in the game Bastion, but in this case is often telling the player the opposite of what they want to do. These voices are entirely spatialized, so you spend a lot of the game with voices floating around inside your hearing. It’s a simple audio trick, but it’s fantastically impressive in practice, and one of the few true good uses of stereo panning of audio that I’ve heard in a game in recent years.

The fact that you can’t see anything in this screenshot is very much on purpose – it’s the mechanic of an entire level.

The heavy emphasis on audio even becomes game mechanics on its own. One of the puzzle segments of the game from the screenshot above involves effectively removing the player’s vision. The entire level takes place in near blackness, with only things directly next to the player even being visible as a fog. Throughout this entire section of the game, the player depends on their sense of hearing, and to some extent sense of touch through controller vibration to get through the game. Within the context of the game’s story at this point, it’s a fantastic way to force the player into an uncomfortable position where they can’t depend on what they see to give them clues of where to go. Everything comes down to your ability to listen to what’s going on, and move towards the sounds that can lead you to the exit.

These kinds of use of strong technology also abound in how puzzles are solved. The little video above is one example in how they manipulate the environment through the use of portals to open up progress to the player. There’s a few variations of this type of mechanic around, and it plays a really nice balance between making the player pay close attention to what they are looking at without being a vague guessing game.

Combat was clearly not an emphasis, but the bosses themselves are still a lot of fun to face.

If there’s anything where the game could have used more time, it’s probably in combat. The combat that is there is effective, but it’s pretty simple and has its own share of problems that grow as the game nears its end. This game has the problem that I’ve seen in a lot of melee games where the combat is fun against one or two tough enemies, but not fun with a bunch of weak enemies. The sections with weak enemies near the end of the game end up being an effective dodge spam to avoid a bunch of attacks, then poke damage to kill the enemies. There’s never much danger from the enemies themselves but I ended up dying a few times simply from getting stuck in chains or other environment pieces that seemed like they weren’t really meant to be hazards.

That said, the simple nature of the combat does shine in boss fights. The handful of bosses have a pretty wide range in sizes and mechanics, so they end up being the satisfying nearly Souls-style fights, where you slowly face off against the boss to learn its mechanics, minimize damage, then really go on the attack as you learn the patterns. Because many of the boss attacks are one or two shot deaths, finishing off the bosses is always really satisfying due to the recognition that the difference between you winning and you dying was really down to skill.

Ultimately this is a game that is really easy to recommend. Just on its gameplay and story alone, it’s probably worth the look for a lot of people. It’s a relatively short game that takes place as a single continuous camera shot (about 6-8 hours in general) and will come in at an affordable price at this point. However, the audio design is above and beyond what almost any developer is doing at any level these days, so on that alone I give it a nod. Now that Ninja Theory is under the Microsoft umbrella, I’m hoping we see more experiences like this where a strong focus wins out over marketing bullet points.

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Game Ramblings #78 – Spider-man

More Info from Sony

  • Genre: Open World Action
  • Platform: PS4

TL;DR

  • Best example of web slinging that we’ve seen, backed by a gorgeous version of New York City
  • Good use of stealth segments with other characters to break up the pace of the story sections
  • Combat that ranged from frustrating to fantastic, depending on where I was in the skill progression

 The obvious indicator that I really liked the game is that I got a platinum trophy.  Granted, this was an easy platinum to get in the grand scheme of things.  However, the fact that I wanted to literally do everything to unlock it is a clear sign that the game was pretty damn good.  That’s not to say I didn’t have my issues with it here and there, but being able to web sling around Manhattan was often more than enough to just keep me playing.

I start with a video of swinging because quite frankly that is the draw of the game.  Even going back to Spider-man on the PS1 you just wanted to swing around, and this game is as good as it’s ever been.  The base swing is extremely fluid and easy to pull off, but it’s the additional maneuvers that really flesh out the experience.  There’s little web pulls that give you speed boosts and a bit of extra distance while gliding.  There’s diving to build up speed when dropping down off buildings.  There’s points you can latch onto then leap off of to quickly gain height and scale over the top of buildings.  The entire thing is basically all on the shoulder triggers as well, so it’s incredibly easy to pull off the entire time.

If this was the entire game on its own I would still have played it.  The joy of swinging through Manhattan never diminishes as you play the game.  Using it in combat is also a lot of fun, and can be used offensively and defensively in fun ways, particularly in boss fights where rapid movement and quick succession of strike and run maneuvers becomes key.

Combat is also a big draw, even if it is more inconsistent than swinging.

However, the rest of combat was at times more inconsistent, but in ways I wasn’t really expecting.  I went through periods in this game where I hated combat, then loved combat, then went back to hating it, and ultimately really enjoyed it at the end.  The entire wave here came down entirely to the growth of the skills available to me as I went through the game.

Through about the first quarter of the game, I found combat largely annoying due to its early dependence on dodging.  The control scheme has dodge in what I felt was a weird spot on the circle button, placing it furthest away from camera movement.  The quick timing necessary for a lot of dodging meant that I generally either missed dodges or couldn’t really see where I was attacking.  However, as I gained some more offensive abilities, such as improved enemy juggling or electric webs, I found myself not really caring about looking around, and more focusing on controlling the larger enemy group and taking out enemies one or two at a time.  At this point combat felt really fluid and it clicked in a way that made sense given how much emphasis there was on web slinging capabilities.  This continued fine for a while until the introduction of flying enemies and enemies with whips that could pull Spider-Man out of the sky.  For a bit, combat was kind of annoying again until I gained some more improved capabilities, such as chained finisher attacks or trip mines that automatically grab and web enemies.

Ultimately though combat was a lot of fun, even if I would have preferred a bit of a different power curve given to me.  Where it really ended up clicking was in the arenas used for boss fights.  Whereas most group combat took place outdoors, boss arenas were generally in enclosed or at least obviously specific arena-style areas.  The bosses also generally couldn’t be directly hit with melee attacks without first doing other things.  These really emphasized constant movement with webs and the quick use of thrown projectiles to really lock down a boss, enabling you to then web sling directly to the boss for melee chains.  This is where combat really came alive for me, and generally speaking ended up being the best show case for the way the fights really felt the best.

The game isn’t all Spider-Man all the time.  There’s a bunch of stealth segments with other well known characters as well.

The game was also paced really well to not always be high action.  There’s a number of segments that rely purely on stealth mechanics.  These bring in some well known in-universe characters like MJ or Miles Morales to sneak around.  While that may sound a bit fan-servicey, it ends up being a big help in giving these segments a nice change, both to keep the player from always being in high-action stress, as well as to provide a bit of a different voice to the story.

There’s also some minigames that pop up here and there to challenge the mind.

In addition, there’s also a few different style minigames to complete throughout the game.  These range from the sort of hacking-style electricity pathing game above to a game that focuses on color spectrum analysis to a game that focuses on intercepting and manipulating radio waves.  These all serve an important purpose of giving the player a bit of a breather between combat to keep the game from being all high action all the time.

This game was definitely a pretty special experience though.  Zipping around a city as Spider-Man is one of those comic book dreams that people have growing up, and this game is by a long shot the best representation of that.  You are 100% Spider-Man in this game, and despite a few hiccups that I think could be improved in combat, this is the way to go to fulfill that dream.