Category: PS4

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Game Ramblings #14 – Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

More Info from EA

  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available on: Xbox One, Windows (Origin)
  • Genre: Action/Platformer

So, it finally happened; we got a new Mirror’s Edge.  Like the original, the core of this game is all about the first-person parkour-inspired platforming, and this prequel/origin story/retcon doesn’t change much about that.  What this one does do is throw away the linear progression in favor of an open world taking place entirely on the rooftops of Glass, which was also the city setting of the original.  So then the question is, did that change work? Did this game improve on some of the shortcomings of the original?

Going to get this out of the way fast.  Yes, the running that covers the core of the game is still fantastic.  Getting into a good flow running across the rooftops is still better in this game than in any other parkour-style game that I’ve played.  The open world nature of the game makes this even better, as learning routes between common hubs pushes you to get faster and faster travelling around the city, making that traversal fun enough to often skip using the fast travel that was available.  Some people have already complained that some of the traversal skills are locked behind an XP wall, but I never hit a point where I felt limited in what I could do, and the new skills that were unlocked pretty seamlessly integrated into how I was playing, as I was learning to use them one at a time and could experiment over extended play running around the city.

That said, the open world nature of the game did suffer from something akin to Assassin’s Creed syndrome.  There are some good side events scattered around.  The time trials of the original came back in the form of Dash events, and are still as good as ever as you continue to improve on your runs to 3 stars.  However, most of the side content is little more than fluff consisting of collecting orbs or doing more normal running segments that you would already be doing to get around the city.  While these do give XP for people grinding out upgrades, I got to the end of the game without needing the XP only incidentally doing these things while getting around between story missions.  For the completionist, this game has a lot, but for the people going straight through the story, these are skippable.

Unfortunately, the combat was still not that great here.  While it’s definitely a game about staying OUT of combat, there’s enough forced combat missions that the poor quality of the combat can be annoying at times.  They did get rid of the poor gun combat from the original, which is a plus, but even the hand to hand combat was not that great.  It basically consists of weak punches that I stopped using about 1/3 through the game, and strong attacks that can be effectively head on or from a side.  While there are some nice possibilities in the side attacks, particularly in causing enemies to stumble into and interrupt each other, the actual pace of the combat is generally slow and clunky.  Given how good the running is, it’s not a huge deal that combat is poor, but giving more possibilities of entirely avoiding the handful of forced combat areas would certainly have gone a good way in improving this situation.

So overall this game was pretty similar in outcome to the original.  The running portion of the game is still fantastic, the combat was still pretty poor, but the game overall is still highly enjoyable and worth playing.  While the open world change to the game flow has some hits and misses, the parts of the game that were still fun about the original are still maintained.  Just don’t expect the story to make any sense when connected to the original.

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Game Ramblings #11 – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Revisited

More info from Wikipedia

  • Platform: PS4 (Part of The Nathan Drake Collection)
  • Genre: Action-Adventure, Third-person shooter

Uncharted 4 came out, so I’m doing what everyone else is doing; not playing it!  Admittedly I’ve always had a bit of a habit of picking up games, having more games come out, and never finishing games that I got sidetracked from.  For as quick as they are, the Uncharted titles definitely fell into that category.  Because of that, I decided to start at the top and work my way through, beginning with Drake’s Fortune.  So then the question is, how has this one aged?

So I’ll start this off by immediately admitting I have a love/hate relationship with the gun play of this series.  I absolutely adore that I can run through the entire game with a 9mm pistol, using it as an effective sniper rifle and getting the vast majority of my kills as headshots.  That said, it absolutely bugs the game developer side of me that I can do this.  Throughout this play through, I only really ended up using other weapons on a need-to-use basis.  The shotgun and MP40 came into play in the zombie-ish end game segments when they had effectively infinite ammo.  The AK47 and MP4 became relatively effective pray and spray weapons into walls of enemies.  However, they never really felt more powerful on a per-hit basis than either of the main 9mm pistols, and the lack of ammunition available for other larger pistols meant that I really had no reason to use others.

On the other hand, I have a much less positive relationship with the actual environmental design when it comes to this.  Going through the levels, it’s extremely obvious when you’re about to get into gunfights.  In general, you’ll turn a corner, see a bunch of crates, concrete wall segments, etc in a flat area, and know that once you hit a trigger point, a bunch of dudes are going to come into the field to start attacking you.  Sure by end game you get snipers in vertical nests, but by and large the combat areas are extremely obvious and scripted.

That said, mechanically I would tend to lean towards the gun play still being very fun, but not more than above average.  At this point I feel like the Tomb Raider series has taken some of the strong points of this series, and with the addition of that game’s more defined stealth mechanics, there are definitely options out now that have vastly improved on the third-person tomb crawling.

So then the question I guess becomes, is this one still worth a play through if you’re new to the Sony world?  Aging aside, I’d say yes.  The story is a pretty solid Indiana Jones-style story, the characters are entertaining, there’s enough visual improvements for the game to still look pretty decent, and the craftsmanship of the experience is without question.  Much like the Jak series, the first in the series showed the promise of Naughty Dog’s path, and new people to the series shouldn’t skip it for its age.

And yes, sniper 9mm is a lot of fun.

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Game Ramblings #10 – Ratchet and Clank (2016)

More Info from Insomniac

  • Genre: Action/Platformer
  • Platform: PS4

As it turns out, the game based on the movie based on the game is still as good as it was on the PS2.  As it also turns out, you can retcon an origin story without actually retconning an origin story.  Basically, Insomniac has pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

So, yes, this is technically a game I’ve played before.  Saying I’m a Ratchet and Clank fan would be a bit of an understatement.  I’ve effectively played through all the games, including Secret Agent Clank, Size Matters, and the slightly unusual side games on the PS3.  I came into this one not really sure what to think.  On the one hand, it brings the origin story into a more modern time, with the things that Insomniac has learned in the past 15 years.  On the other, I came in knowing that they were going to be retconning a significant amount of the origin story of what is now a 10+ game combined story.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit suspicious of the thing as a whole.

So, let’s get this out of the way.  If you’ve never played a Ratchet game before, this is a damn good starting point.  If you have played a Ratchet game before, this is a damn good restarting point.  In some ways, this game really is an all star combination of the best of the past titles.  The weapons and upgrade system tied to it are heavily influenced by the later titles in the series, with standard blasters like the Combuster to the absurd like the Sheepinator to the explosively fun like the RYNO.  The levels themselves are also show a bit of a mix.  There are some that are reimaginings of original game levels, and some created new for this game.  Overall, it hits a lot of the highlights from the original, while swapping in some newer, better designs for some of the repetitive elements that would no longer work as well.  And holy shit it was so nice immediately turning on the strafe controls right at the start.

So now, about that story.  I’m going to avoid spoilers here, but they explain away the retcon of the origin in a way that absolutely makes sense for this series.  From the opening cutscene, long time players of the series will be in on the gag, and appreciate the in-jokes that pop up to explain the differences between the original and remakes, while new players don’t even have to care that the original existed.  The end of the game also leaves an opening to explain how we arrive at one of the later titles in the series.  The trademark Ratchet humor exists throughout the game, and from what they’ve shown of pre-rendered cutscenes in the game, should also translate very well to the movie theater.  Is it kind of weird to see the changes? Sure.  Is it very Ratchet and Clank? Yes.

I guess I don’t really have much negative to say here though, which is slightly rare.  There’s a handful of weapons I didn’t really use, but that’s mostly because the ones I did use were never really running out of ammo.  There were a handful of areas where there was probably a bit too much collecting, but nothing that got in the way.  The difficulty on normal was too easy, and moving up too hard provided a nice challenge, but had sort of strange power spikes depending on my upgrade path, but again didn’t provide any negative blocker.  Overall this just continued the Ratchet and Clank mainline series history of being at worst a really damn good game.

So, I dunno, go out and buy it I guess! 😀