Tag: PS4

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #77 – Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

More Info from Ubisoft

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

TL;DR

  • Another great entry in the series that iterates on the new AC style established in Origins
  • Stealth was still the most fun way to play, but both melee and bow combat were not detriments
  • Ancient Greek environment is a lot of fun to run through, especially for history nerds

Sailing is back, and it’s gorgeous.

While it would be easy to look at this game and assume it’s simply a mashup of Origins and the sailing from Black Flag, there’s a lot more going on under the hood here.  Where last year’s Origins explored the starting point of the assassins, this year’s Odyssey explores where some of the series artifacts come from.  In doing so, the game leans way into the supernatural/alien elements that have been hinted at for so long in the series’ back story, and really give us a game that fans of Greek mythology can dig into.

The place to start really is to just point at my ramblings about Origins last year as it covers a lot of what I normally would have said about combat.  That’s not to say that Odyssey is a straight copy, but really this is a solid iteration on the ideas from last year.  What this does differently is brings back the large scale sailing of Black Flag and really leans into the RPG side of things through skill trees, even more emphasis on gearing, and a lot less hand holding if you decide to go with the developer’s recommended options.

The game generally gives you an idea of where to go, but it’s up to you to find the goal.

It’s going to sound weird that such a simple change drastically changes the game, but the default style of this game doesn’t really give you goal locations.  Because of story reasons, you’ll often have a rough idea of where to, but if something isn’t in the dialog options presented to you, it’s often up to you to find the location.  What this ends up doing is really encouraging the thing that Origins started; the push to simply explore.  On your way towards a general area, you’ll run into any number of areas that can be cleared out of enemies and treasure, and it’s generally worth going through them.  One of the systems that was added to this game to also encourage exploration is a series of hunts against the Cult of Kosmos, which is basically a precursor to the series’ templars.

These cult leaders are the driving force behind the game’s story, and a number of them simply show up as targets during the story.  However, the rest have to be found.  They might simply be leaders of the various cities.  They may be out living on their own, taking care of a fort or a farm.  They may also be mercenaries sent to try and kill you.  However, behind all of it are clues that you can find by completing the small invasion areas; clues that lead you to the cultists location so you can take them out.

War is active, and it’s up to you to fight in it.

There’s also a large emphasis on war in this game, and you can generally get yourself directly involved in the battles.  This game takes place a few decades after the events of the movie 300, and Athens and Sparta are nipping at each other’s heels.  One of the consequences of you taking soldiers out is that the regions you’re in become weaker, exposing their leaders to be killed, and eventually the region for invasion.  In doing so, you can open up battles like the above screenshot for extra rewards, as well as to potentially turn over the region to the opposite side.  It’s a neat system that exists effectively as a distraction, but offers up something to do as a result of all the sneaking around you’re doing.

Mythology comes to life here, including a really fun fight against Medusa.

However, the lore behind the world is also a huge driving factor in exploring.  There’s fights against creatures like Medusa or Theseus’ minotaur.  There’s an entire segment of lore around the city of Atlantis and how it ties into the greater Assassin’s story.  There’s also the historic locations to see like the Parthenon in Athens or the famous people you meet like Sokrates or Hippokrates.  Basically, the entire game is a historian buff’s dream, and you’ll consistently be seeing things that you’d only ever seen in books.

All said, this is another great entry in the series.  It takes everything that worked about Origins and iterates in great ways.  The game has really leaned further into RPG territory than ever before, but it’s working out well for the series.  The fact that I can sit here having played it for 80 hours and still want to do more is a testament to them having really perfected their formula.  I guess I’m basically recommending this, especially if you liked Origins or Black Flag.

Also for what it’s worth, sync points are still great.