Category: PS4

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Game Ramblings #27 – Final Fantasy XV

More Info from Square Enix

  • Genre: ARPG/JRPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One

This is a very special game.  It may not be the kind of Final Fantasy a lot of people would have wanted, but as usual Square Enix has put in all the effort typical of their top effort titles.  While some performance and balance issues show the scars of its long development cycle, the game they have created is easily one of, if not the best RPG I’ve played this year.

It’s been a long time since I universally liked the story and characters of a Final Fantasy game.  There have been high points in most of the recent games, but the last few sets of FF characters have always had at least a couple people that just annoyed the hell out of me the entire time, even when the stories weren’t complete nonsense.  In FF XV’s case, this is the exact opposite.  Right from the very beginning you start off with the entire effective party, and the growth of the group as a team, and the interactions between them as they go on their adventure are fantastic.  I so wish I could spoil things here, because there were moments that surpassed the death of FF7’s Aerith for me in their emotional impact.  Also of note, the use of the song Stand By Me as both the intro and credits scene could not have been a more perfect choice to end the misadventure of this crew.

Now that said, the battle system is definitely rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.  It’s been since FF9 that we have seen the same battle system used twice in a row.  That game was the end of the long-used ATB system.  FF10 used a more traditional turn-based system.  FF11 and 14 were MMOs, with 12 using a very much MMO-styled real-time system.  13 then followed those all up with an ATB-like system, with some key changes in how it queued up events.

15 has thrown all that away, going for easily the most action-focused battle system they’ve ever done in a mainline title.  Gone are menus, gone are spells, gone are waiting times between turns.  In this one you have an attack button, a pseudo-dodge button, a warp button, and a jump button.  The combination of those actions, and the ability to switch between weapons and a handful of element-based attacks gives you your entire range of functionality.  You only control one character, with the other three members of the party being AI-based, mostly ending up being support characters by the end of the game.  Rather than the skill of the game being asset management, this brings timing to the forefront as the main skill to the game.  The primary dodge and attack buttons are both hold to execute, so attack chains don’t require button spamming, and dodge can be held to automatically avoid a lot of simple attacks.  In the end, the flow of battle is dictated more by which button you are holding down, rather than the more frantic button combo systems that a lot of ARPG games use.  The closest comparison I can really give is the Tales of series, but even then I don’t think it’s an adequate comparison to the system in place here.

FF XV has also shown quite a lot of western influence, particularly with the Elder Scrolls series, in the design of the overall gameplay flow.  If you were to just rush the story, I suspect this game could be easily completed in 15 hours or less.  However, the overarching story is that the group is on a road trip, and the game definitely plays to that.  Rather than fast travelling around the world, the group initially drives around the world, radio blaring, going from town to town.  Each town and rest stop typically acts as a quest hub, giving a number of general side quests, as well as typically more challenging creature hunts.  There are also fishing areas scattered around the world, and a number of hidden dungeons to explore for extra treasure.  In doing this, you can easily spend the bulk of your time playing this game just hopping around the world doing absolutely everything but the main story, giving lots of longevity to the game outside of the typical story loop.

So, in the end, this game and its universe are easily something I would recommend.  There is also some good additional content that will help give light to some of the world’s backstory in the Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime.  That said, the core of the universe is definitely the game, and it’s a good one.  It’s likely to go down as one of the most controversial games in the Final Fantasy series, simply due to its departure from the style of the past, but I think Square has made a good decision here in reestablishing that Final Fantasy are at their core extraordinarily well produced games of any style at their core, and not just RPGs that have stick to a set of conventions to get by.

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Game Ramblings #25 – Shadow Complex Remastered

More Info from Epic Games

  • Genre: Action/Adventure, Metroidvania
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows (Steam, Windows Store, Epic Games Launcher), Mac App Store, Xbox One, Xbox 360 (XBLA)

Back before they spawned the mobile juggernaut known as Infinity Blade, Chair Entertainment released a nice little Metroidvania title called Shadow Complex.  In honor of why the hell not, a remastered version has come out for PC and current gen consoles.  With the great folks at Limited Run Games releasing a physical version, I figured it was as good a time as any to make a run through this one again, and as it turns out, the game is still damn good.

If there’s one genre I’m a sucker for nearly as much as JRPGs, it’s Metroidvania-styled Action/Adventure games.  If you ignore the setting, this one definitely strays much closer to Metroid than a lot in the genre.  It’s got upgradeable guns and pickups that unlock ways to get through new doors, a computerized mech suit that tells you where to go, and eventually a chargeable dash that breaks through even more doors.  Basically, a lot of what is here is straight out of Metroid, but grounded in a somewhat more believable Earth-based setting.

That said, all its similarities are definitely not a detriment to this game.  They’ve captured a lot of the exploration magic that the Metroid series, and in the roughly 3-5 hour adventure, you’ll traverse a lot of the same areas multiple times, but always in new ways.  The pickups and upgrades are scattered all over the place, so returning to old places always brings side paths to grab things that were just taunting you out of reach before.  To some extent I was even going out of my way once I got some of my larger weapon upgrades just because I’d remembered a handful of upgrades that I wanted to get right away.  In addition, unlike some games in this genre, ammunition for secondary weapons (grenades, missiles, etc) are plentiful, and available for recharge at all save stations, so you never feel crunched into not using some of your more powerful arsenal.

That said, there’s definitely some things that are missing that I wish were explored more.  There’s really not much in the way of memorable boss fights in this game.  For the most part, you fight the same spider mech a handful of times, with a couple other fights that can be mechanically exploited to avoid difficulty.  As an example, one fight has you up against a giant mech wheel that is jumping around the walls of a ring-shaped room.  By positioning yourself just behind one of the corners of the room, you could avoid all damage, while still being able to easily shoot at the boss’ weak spot, giving an easy victory.  In addition, there’s some points, particularly in the final battle, where I would get shot at and effectively instant killed without much of an idea where damage sources were coming from.

All that being said, when this originally came out in ’09, it was one of the best Metroidvanias that had come out around that time.  In 2016, I’d still say that it’s one of the better Metroidvanias out this year.  While the upgrade didn’t bring much new to the table, other than some improved visual fidelity, the game itself has not lost anything in its age, and should definitely be played if you missed it the first time around.

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Game Ramblings #24 – Thomas Was Alone

More Info from Mike Bithell

  • Genre: Puzzle/Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Steam, PS3, Vita, Mobile, Xbox One, Wii U

Thomas Was Alone is ostensibly a game about colored blocks.  At its core it takes a relatively simple visual style, and mixes it with simple 2D platformer mechanics in ways that have been done before.  However, by being extremely mechanically tight, and by having a great atmosphere that happens along side of it, it becomes one of the best platformers I’ve played in recent times.

There’s really two things that stood out about Thomas Was Alone compared to most platformers, and both of them directly tie into how the blocks are treated as individual characters.  The title of the game is no mistake, as each block is treated as a separate character within the game’s story.  Each block has its own unique personality that is exposed as the story is told.  Whether it’s the titular Thomas who is always taking note of the world around him and really doesn’t want to be alone, or Chris, who is initially a bit of a grump, but eventually ends up falling in love, or any of the other characters that you meet along the way, each block is elevated to a full character simply through fantastic writing  and great narration.  The overall characterization that is gained just through passive narration is reminiscent of games like Portal, where the depth of the game’s universe is a lot more than expected at first glance.

The individual character traits then extend directly into gameplay, giving each individual character their own style.  The combinations of characters in each level then determine how the puzzles proceed in each level.  For example, Thomas is the base character, and simply jumps a normal height.  James has the same traits as Thomas, but has reversed gravity.  Sarah can double jump, Chris has a short jump, but it also much smaller size and can fit through gaps, Laura can be used as a trampoline, etc.  Each new character introduced adds another layer to the overall experience until you’re eventually completing puzzles using the entire gang’s unique abilities to finish up levels.

All of this is tied together in a package that is extraordinary in how reliable the mechanics all are.  There were no situations in which I felt like I was misjudging my jumps or unsure of where I was trying to get to.  New characters would seamlessly integrate into my puzzle solving experience as soon as I learned what their ability or benefit was.  The game, as is appropriate in puzzle games in general, was never about the where, but the how of finishing each area.

I think in the end the best thing I can really say about Thomas Was Alone is that I accidentally finished it in one sitting.  Sure, it was only about 4 hours long, but there’s not many games that I play for four hours straight, and even fewer where I don’t even realize that four hours had gone by.  I suppose I should have gotten to this one sooner.