Tag: platformer

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Game Ramblings #47 – Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap

More Information from DotEmu

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Switch, Xbox One, Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Original Version On: Sega Master System, Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16

Right from the start I could see that this game is a lovingly made remake of Wonder Boy III.  This remake feels like the original, if the original was made in 2017 with fantastically drawn visuals.  While that means that it doesn’t lose its original charm, it also means that it carries some finicky mechanics from the late 80s with it.  However, the quality of the original still comes through, and being able to play it without having to break out the old consoles is still worth the experience, and the polish in place to transition between the old and new is absolutely impressive.

The hand drawn style is a standout, particularly against the original primitive pixel visuals.

The most obvious thing that’s been changed here are the visuals.  Rather than going the easy route and sticking with an upgraded 8-bit Master System style, DotEmu went all out with a full visual refresh of the original game.  Every character, NPC, and world area has been redrawn over the original geometry, maintaining the original gameplay space, but giving it a fantastically modern look.  If it wasn’t for Cuphead finally being ready to release, this one would probably be a runaway winner for me in terms of flat out best looking pure 2D platformer.

Transition between styles is immediate, and can be done at any time.

However, the more impressive trick is that you can go between the original and modern looks at any time, and most importantly, the original sprites maintain the aspect ratio of the remake on modern platforms, giving a nice mix between the look of the old and the practical functionality between the two.  You simply press R2, the screen wipes side to side, and you’re right in the old style without having to pause the game.  This can also be done with R3, changing the music between the old and new, giving you the option to mix and match your preferred styles for sound and visuals at any time.  This is particularly important, because it has some surprising gameplay ramifications as well.

The hit boxes in modern graphics are…vague.

One of the biggest issues I continued to have was that the hit boxes in modern style were not that precise to the actual visuals of the character.  In some cases they matched pretty well to the general shape of the enemies, but in a lot of cases they were often much smaller than I was expecting.  For single enemies this wasn’t a huge deal, but for packs of enemies, it meant I was often swinging and missing, then getting stuck in situations where I would take a lot of unnecessary damage.  However, the hit boxes in the original game were generally much more precise, so by the tail end of the game, I was often switching to the old visuals purely for collision convenience, and minimizing my damage taken simply due to the more instinct-precise way of attacking.

Mechanically speaking, there’s also a few warts that were fine in the 80s, but at this point are kind of just moderate annoyances.  There’s a lot of situations where enemies can stun lock you into corners and walls.  While I wouldn’t take damage after a hit until I finally landed, it was annoying getting endlessly juggled into a corner until an enemy decided to finally turn around and back off.  For the bosses, they were mostly fairly trivial as well, with each boss generally having one attack and a single hit zone that was generally placed in the most obnoxious place to attack, while trying to avoid relatively quick and low damage attacks.  Jump physics are generally fairly precise, but mid-air control is definitely not as good as some more modern takes on the genre like Shovel Knight.  Generally speaking, this was a pretty high quality game mechanically when it originally came out, and the remake benefits from being able to start with that solid base.  While everything here is still pretty solid, it definitely plays like an 80s game, for better or worse.

All that said, this is a great take on an older title.  In doing the port, they avoided the trap that a lot of remakes do in trying to reimagine an old title.  This one is as straight a gameplay port as I’ve ever seen, particularly since the old title runs permanently emulated in the background.  The modern visuals and audio, as well as the fantastic feature to switch to the originals in real time is a nice touch that I wish more remakes would take advantage of.  End of the day, if it comes down to breaking out an old console, or playing this remake on a modern platform, I’d say throw out the few bucks and go this way, it’s worth it just for the visuals.

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Game Ramblings #44 – Runbow Pocket

More Info from 13am Games

  • Genre: Platformer/Racing
  • Platform: New 3DS
  • Also Available On: Wii U, Windows, Xbox One

This is a strange one in a lot of ways.  Runbow is the second retail title I’ve seen (and own) in the US that is specifically New Nintendo 2DS/3DS exclusive.  Despite platformers being entirely dependent on good physics, the weak physics also ended up being something I could ignore because the core mechanics of the game were simply good enough to ignore the problems I was running into.  The short format of the levels also ended up being a significant draw to playing this in a portable fashion.

I suppose it’s worth getting the physics problems out of the way because it really is the main drawback of some of their design decisions.  Jumping itself is generally pretty stiff, and while it’s predictable, doesn’t have the same smooth variable feel that a lot of better 2D platformers end up having.  Because of this, I was becoming more dependent on overcompensating my jumps, then air dashing to adjust my landing positions if I under or overjumped my intended landing area.  However, dashes in general have an awkward pause at the end of the action.  While this wasn’t generally a problem, the inherent core idea of getting to the end of the level as fast as possible is negatively impacted by the loss of momentum, even just from a feel perspective.  The act of landing on platforms also had some issues.  I was never really able to pinpoint whether it was the small size of the screen or simply a game feature, but it felt like platforms had some amount of magnetism if you were “close enough” to landing on the edge of one.   This combined with the stiff jump meant I was second guessing a lot of precise jumps that were over more significant gaps.  For most platformers, this would all combine to be the death of the game, but luckily the core mechanics of the level progression were good enough to let me ignore a lot of this.

From a high level the core mechanic across the entire game is that the platforms, traps, and in some cases shields around enemies in the foreground and the level’s background are made up of a handful of primaryish colors.  If they match, the platform effectively disappears.  This right there is what elevates the game to something fantastic, and the amount of depth that the devs pulled out of a seemingly simple idea surprises throughout.  Each level has some way of playing off this system to actively change what things can be collided with.  This can run the gamut from the entire background changing in rhythm with the music to waterfalls of flowing color to shapes moving across the scene seemingly at random.  You’re simply dropped in and given a few seconds at the start to figure out what’s going on and react to it so you don’t lose time running through.

The format also worked fantastically as a portable experience.  The longest levels typically hit goal times around 1:15 or so, but were typically only in boss levels.  Most standard levels fit into the 20-40 second range.  The idea of grabbing my 3DS, hitting a couple levels while waiting on something, then putting it away has always been a draw of the platform, and this fits the bill nicely.  The fact that there’s a ton of content (nearly 200 levels in just the core game) means that I can be poking at this for a long time, even ignoring the replayability of going for low times across all levels.

This is definitely a bit of a unicorn.  It’s a New 3DS exclusive, a platformer with awkward physics that I didn’t hate, a game experience suited for portables that shipped last on a portable, and despite it all is a fantastic time to play.  A lot of that goes into a great style that is wrapped directly into the core mechanics of the game, giving a lot of mileage to what is at the surface a really simple idea.

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Game Ramblings #41 – Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

More Info from Yacht Club Games

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Vita
  • Also Available On: Windows, Linux, OS X, PS3, PS4, Wii U, 3DS, Xbox One, Fire TV

TL;DR

  • As mechanically tight and satisfying as the original Shovel of Hope campaign.
  • Fills a neat void as a prequel story to the original campaign.  Gives a lot of great backstory to one of the original bosses.
  • Changes to core mechanics greatly benefit traversal-based puzzle solving and bring a nice twist to combat.

Let’s get this out of the way.  If you’ve never played Shovel Knight, go grab the original campaign right now.  It’s one of the greatest examples in the past few years of a mechanically solid 2D platformer, regardless of the fact that it then goes even further and solidly represents an 8-bit style to great effect.  Specter of Torment is now the third campaign under the Shovel Knight umbrella, covering the prequel backstory to the Specter Knight boss from the original.  It brings some interesting mechanics with the change in weapon that really benefit the expansion overall.

The big obvious change here is that you’ve got a scythe instead of a shovel.  This has some pretty big ramifications to both combat and traversal.  Straight away the shovel bounce is replaced by a lock-on melee dash used for both traversal and combat.  For traversal, this ends up giving a lot more interesting and challenging traversal options.  Enemies, obstacles, and projectiles can all be used as traversal targets, meaning that entire rooms can be traversed without touching the floor.  This is used extremely effectively in getting the Specter through auto scrolling segments where falling down would mean death.  There’s also entire runs through boss fights where I would combo dashes the entire time without touching the ground.  While the original campaign was pretty quick paced, Specter had an entirely higher level of speed, and greatly benefited from this change.  While this will feel pretty immediately familiar to players of the original, at this point I’m leaning towards a greater enjoyment of this expansion purely because everything feels so fast.  It’s one of the best feelings a game can bring when I sit there comboing enemies while juggling them in the air, and it’s rare to see a game nail it so well.

Because of the emphasis on speed over safety, the items that are earned throughout the campaign also play into this.  Rather than being generally offense focused, a lot of the items are generally interesting helper items.  There’s a healing item that allows you to take greater risks and focus more on slash combos over a defensive play style.  There’s a hover item that lets you stay in the air to extend combos or get to a platform out of reach.  There are items that spawn a secondary clone of the Specter, as well as one that spawns a projectile firing skeleton.  In general, the items are used to effectively extend the speed focus on combat, rather than being used as purely secondary weapons, and all play into making sure the speed of encounters is kept as high as possible.

Overall this was a pretty solid expansion that I think ends up surpassing the original from a pure gameplay perspective.  Like Plague of Shadows, it’s also a nice touch to see the backstory to one of the original bosses, and give them more life than simply being a target of the Shovel Knight.  Given development of these campaigns seems to be continuing, with the King Knight’s campaign being up next, the Shovel Knight as a platform seems to have a lot of life.  We’ve now got three campaigns that all play fairly differently, and Specter of Torment shows to me that they are only improving as they go along.