Tag: action

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Game Ramblings #102 – Iconoclasts

More Info from Konjak/Bifrost

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Vita, Windows, macOS, Linux, Switch

It’s no surprise that I like Metroidvanias, so hopping at another indie take on the genre is never something I’m going to argue. A lot of the time it can feel like they’re trying to out difficulty each other instead of just having compelling gameplay. Luckily, Iconoclasts definitely falls into the latter category. It combines some solid gunplay with interesting puzzle mechanics to really be a standout entry in the genre.

The big thing to notice was really how variety was pulled into this game, in a way that isn’t necessarily typical of the genre. It has a few things that are your typical “door opener” type of upgrade, but the more often than not, upgrades were used to solve full room puzzles that ended with the room being permanently traversable in a fast way, rather than being something that has to be run through every time. It was a nice difference to the norm where retraversal for new upgrades or new paths was generally going to be done as quick as possible to minimize wasted time.

A lot of this is built into the player’s weapon set – a giant wrench for melee, and a set of a pistol, grenade launcher, and beam pistol for ranged. Some examples of upgrades include an electric charge that is used to raise and lower platforms, the wrench’s built in ability to turn bolts to open doors, or a spin maneuver used to quickly crank gears. The electric charge is also built into the grenade weapon – any launched grenades while charged gain an electric charge – and some blocks that can hold a charge. This wide range of abilities are all built into the puzzle sets, where some puzzles require multiple combinations of the skill range to complete.

In practice, it works extremely well. Puzzle rooms are pretty well segregated from combat, allowing the player the time to think and plan for how to complete the room. The puzzles are also more often than not focused around a new power, giving the player a good chance to reenforce the use of any new skill.

These abilities also extend into combat. Each of the ranged weapons have a secondary charge mode – for example, the pistol charges into a shotgun blast, the grenade into a missile – that are used as ways to take out enemies in unique ways. This is particularly important in boss fights, where they will generally be specifically weak to either a specific mode of a weapon, or a specific area in the combat arena. Because of this setup, the bosses are more often than not a puzzle in itself, alongside needing to it out.

This is probably the point where the game really earned its fun for me. The game is challenging but fair, instead of being difficult for the sake of difficulty. I definitely died a few times, but it was either because I was being careless, or because I was learning new mechanics. Bosses will hit you if you aren’t careful, but you’re not going to die in a couple hits. You’ll die to trash if you’re not avoiding damage, but you’ll be fine if you’re paying attention. More often than not, the bosses also have adds that spawn health. It feels like the developers want you to win, and give you ways to do so, as long as you’re generally moving forward and learning as you go. That difference there has often been a rare thing to find in the independent scene in the past few years.

Add this one to the list of Metroidvanias that I’ve been playing over the last few years, and more importantly, put this one up at the top. It was able to combine really solid combat, really solid puzzles, and gorgeous visuals into a package that punches above its weight. This one avoided the indie trap of being exceedingly difficult, and instead crafted a great experience that was challenging but fair. This game took a long time to come out, but the effort definitely shows, and I’m hopeful that whatever comes next out of the team’s brains can be similarly positive in whatever genre they pick.

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Game Ramblings #101 – Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

More Info from EA

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

I’m honestly a bit surprised that I really enjoyed this game. In general, I’m not a huge fan of the Souls games. I generally don’t have the patience for the slower methodical combat style that those games have, and just end up getting my ass handed to me. This game isn’t really much different in that regard, but it played just enough into the power dream of being a Jedi to push the Souls combat into a slightly quicker and twitchy pace to a point where that balance between speed and patience really clicked for me.

At its core, combat in this game is fairly similar to Souls. Attacks and movement have a significant amount of heft to them, and poorly timed attacks or lack of defensive maneuvers can result in a whole lot of your health bar disappearing in one hit. However, you do have some fun Force helpers at your disposal. Force push and pull are there to mess around with enemy balance, and in some cases throw them straight off of cliffs. Some Force-based heavy attacks provide a nice burst of offensive output at key times. However, it was the combination of Force slow and a very lenient dodge that gave the combat the feel that I needed.

In general, if I were to pick between parry-based and dodge-based combat in an action game, I will always go dodge-based. Something about the physicality of moving the character to defend feels more intuitive to me than trying to grok the timing of parries. Fallen Order definitely followed that pattern. There were some fights where I was able to parry fine, but something about the scale of the fighters combined with the camera angle really screwed with my ability to time parries a lot through probably the first half of the game. While I was able to be decently effective with it by the end of the game, dodging was still the way I generally played.

Not that that always went as planned…

Luckily for me, that was also a way that the game was tuned. There’s skill tree bonuses in place for properly timed dodges. There’s some skills around doing quick dodges with secondary kicks to knock enemies off guard. With hard lock in place, dodge rolls keep you in range of the enemy, allowing for a consistent way to circle around to the side or back of enemies to lay in some attacks. In general, the dodge was also much more lenient than Souls around the dodge being triggered quickly within the window after my attack. It just ended up feeling slightly more gamey than Souls, but in a way that felt fairly believable BECAUSE you’re playing as a Force-wielding Jedi.

In general, the exploration aspect of the game also gave me a lot of leeway to grow my character in a way that made the game a lot more safe. There’s a bit of a Metroidvania aspect to the game, where going back to worlds that have been completed still offers new paths and new secrets to collect as your power set grows. A lot of these are cosmetics, but some of the secrets are really part of the player’s power curve. There’s your upgrades for the player’s health and Force meters. However, the most important one is the health stim upgrade. Health stims are basically the health potions of the game, but they automatically recharge when meditating at save points. For a player looking for a real challenge, these can be easily avoided. However, for impatient jackasses like me, these are invaluable.

The health stim upgrades provide both important health for getting through bosses in a more safe manner without having to do a bunch of redos, but they also gave me a lot more freedom to explore for long periods of time without worrying about where my next save point would be. They’re also tied into some helpful skills, where their effectiveness can be improved, and their ability to also heal the force meter can be added. This specific upgrade path was probably the single factor in my enjoyment of the game, as it provided an optional way for me to tune the overall difficulty of the game in a way that I enjoyed, without the game really having to simply be balanced around babying players like me.

That’s not to say that combat always entirely worked out well. There were a number of spots where the combat arenas were simply too small against some heavier enemies, so I would spend a bunch of time fighting the camera instead of fighting the enemy. Overall, the combat in place also felt like it started to really fall apart when I started getting above more than 2 or 3 people. This is a great 1 on 1 combat system, but trying to fight multiple melee people while also trying to deflect blaster beams back at ranged enemies just feels like a hectic chore, rather than a cool Jedi power trip. Where it probably wanted to be something akin to the Arkham games, it definitely fell flat. It doesn’t really have the enemy AI attack queuing or the good parry timing tells of that game to really handle a multi-enemy combat scenario in a clean fashion.

The rest of the experience was simply the fun of being a Jedi. The force powers used in combat are also used for traversal. It will always be fun to force pull a rope at me, do a double jump over some gaps, and land light saber down in a Stormtrooper’s skull. It will always feel badass to deflect blaster rounds back at a ranged guy trying to take you out from a ledge. It will always be incredible to fly into Kashyyyk and have a Wookie yelling indecipherable things at you. It was also always fun to try and spy out the little secret areas and find out what might be hiding in that crate around the corner. In general, the game plays a really good balance in being in-combat and being in-traversal, so I was generally able to get the down time I really wanted, while still being able to play that experience of being a ridiculously cool Jedi running all over.

This was definitely a game that I went in expecting the worst, and came out being pleasantly surprised given my history of not really liking the Souls experience. It definitely is a Souls game, but it leans away from the crazy difficulty and crazy combat precision enough to find a balance that I was able to get through in a lot more pleasant way. The set dressing of being a Jedi definitely helped keep me engaged, but I kept coming back for the gameplay. End of the day, this game gives me a bit of hope that there may just be more Souls experiences out there for impatient idiots like me to still play.

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Game Ramblings #96 – Luigi’s Mansion 3

More info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Switch

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is where the gameplay of the series has really come together for me. The original had clever mechanics, but was a bit rough around the edges, particularly with respect to the grind of catching a high health ghost. Dark Moon went a bit more mission-based and improved the mechanics a lot, but ended up feeling like a grind. This one feels like it’s finally hit a nice middle ground, and in doing so has probably finally proven that going a bit off-base with Luigi was a good call.

At its core, this one is still the Mansion gameplay that’s expected. You find ghosts, you zap them with your flashlight, and then you vacuum them up. That hasn’t really changed. However, there’s been a bunch of little additions that significantly improved the core experience. There’s a new sort of mini burst AoE move that can be used as a stun mechanic, and is occasionally used as a way to make certain ghosts able to be captured. There’s some good use of motion controls to make more precise vertical aiming much easier to pull off.

However, the most important change is the new slam attack. After having a ghost in the vacuum for a period of time (typically around 20 health), you can slam the ghost into the ground for 20 health damage. On its own this exists as a nice mechanic to more rapidly catch ghosts. However, it can also damage other ghosts, including ones that aren’t visible. This single added maneuver greatly increases the speed of capture in a general sense, eliminating a lot of grind. It also means that there are a lot of situations in which there are a TON of ghosts in the room, simply because there are now fun ways to clear a ton of ghosts all at once. It ends up being a huge boon to the fun of capturing ghosts that I wasn’t really expecting.

Despite this being listed as action/adventure, Luigi’s Mansion is really a puzzle game at heart, and there’s a bunch of cool new mechanics around that as well. The previously mentioned AoE burst can be used as a way to uncover hidden items. There’s also a new black light function of the flashlight that can cause hidden paths to appear. A plunger item has been added to the vacuum as a way to grab on and tear down blocked paths throughout the environment.

Again though, there’s one big important change that ties this all together – Gooigi. The hideous green goo clone of Luigi. At its core, this is simply a second Luigi, allowing for some interesting mechanics around two active vacuums (as well as a great built-in co-op mechanic). However, Gooigi can also slip through grates, fences, and more, allowing for the player to get to new areas that are simply blocked off to the more solidified Luigi body. In a lot of areas this plays heavily into the puzzle solving, with the player having to open paths and hold hatches for one or the other to traverse through the world. This also plays into a lot of the boss battles, where the player will be swapping heavily between the two to set traps for bosses that only one of the pair can get to at any time.

All of these tools together bring the puzzle element to a really high level, and it all works because of the changes to the overall game structure. While this is a “mansion” title, it takes place in a large hotel. Each floor has its own mini theme, and as long as you have the elevator button to the floor, you can go to it. In practice, this has a really fun cadence to completing the game – you get a floor button, go through and complete the core puzzle and boss sequence for the floor (typically around 30-40 minutes), then go on and explore a bit based on any new mechanics that you unlock. There’s always new things to find, whether it be Boos, gems, or simply more money, and there’s always a new floor on the horizon. It ends up giving the game a really good rhythm where you learn some new tricks, apply them in a strong floor, then go back and reinforce the learning by going back to old areas. It’s a rhythm that Nintendo and its second party developers have continued to show it does better than anyone in the industry, and it’s brought this game to a high point for the series.

It would be as easy to dismiss this title as it was either of the previous games in the series. After all, these aren’t Mario games, and after Odyssey, there’s a lot to live up to. However, dismissing this as a second rate title would be a huge mistake. I’d argue that this title has shown as much improvement as we’d seen in past mainline Mario titles, and it can now easily stand on its own as something worth playing. There’s a ton of really fun puzzle solving to do, and it’s wrapped around a really fun core ghost/vacuum interaction to give moments of high action amongst the moments of heavy thinking. I totally get that folks wanting a pure action platformer aren’t going to want to get after this, but those looking for a bit of that typical Nintendo magic will find a lot to enjoy here.