Tag: ubisoft

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Game Ramblings #73 – South Park: The Fractured but Hole

More Info from Ubisoft

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

TL;DR

  • Battle system is a phenomenal grid-based strategy system that heavily encourages the use of forced movement, ticking damage, and CC to eliminate enemies.
  • Like The Stick of Truth, does a fantastic job of integrating the player into the South Park universe, from the visual design to the way the story is written, especially when they straight up go at things they know will offend a lot of people.

I’m not kidding when I say they are not being shy about offending people, especially those worth offending.  For example:

This is a perfect example of why South Park as a multimedia franchise exists.  They’re crass, they don’t care about poking at things that others will shy away from, and they do it all with their own unique style.  Is it for everyone?  Not really.  However, if you’re a fan of this universe, The Fractured But Hole is another great entry that does more than just stand on its name for quality.

The visual style of characters is key to this universe, and this game absolutely nailed it.

South Park can be a lot of things, but one of the keys to the entire experience is the visual style that has existed since the first season of the show.  While past generations of games went with somewhat strange 3D representations of the world, the recent RPGs have gone all-in on making the unique style of the series work in real time in games.  Just the world alone is impressive, but the flexibility of the character creation system while fitting into this universe is a technical marvel.

The player character itself can be composed of a ton of different pieces: hair, facial hair, makeup add ons, multiple outfit pieces, etc.  They can all be mixed and matched with each other without limitation to create something that may or may not look good, but definitely is all your own, and definitely looks right out of the show.  Even more impressive is that all of this is done in a way that preserves the character’s appearance in all cutscenes.  You will always be seeing the character you wanted, and there’s no smoke and mirrors to keep it hidden in places where it would be inconvenient in a lot of games.  It’s phenomenally impressive to see in action, and a testament to how much the tech around this game was built to BE South Park.

While a lot different than the previous game, this game’s grid battles are a lot of fun.

None of the visuals would matter if the game’s core battle system wasn’t fun, and they definitely also nailed that.  While there’s some variety in size and obstacles, the core battle system is a turn-based system typically taking place on roughly a 5×10 play space.  Player turns are individually ordered, and that comes into play in some of the abilities at your disposal.  Abilities all have some grid space they can cover, whether it’s a 1×1 melee attack, a line ranged attack, or AoE grids that can be placed anywhere.  In a lot of ways it feels like placing magic attacks in the Disgaea series, and the strategy of where units are on the board is hugely important to maximizing each turn’s damage potential.

This is all backed up by some great effects beyond just simple damage.  You’ve definitely got your typical DoT type effects like poison, burn, bleed, etc.  However, this game places a heavy emphasis on relocation of enemies.  Knockbacks, pulls, location switches, and more are available to let you line up enemies for your future unit turns to really turn up the damage potential.  The turn ordering also comes in to play with some abilities causing turn loss or turn delay, allowing you to really lock down the enemy into not being able to take any actions.  It’s a fantastic set of functionality that all combines to add a ton of depth to what could have been a really simple battle system.  Despite all the depth, it’s also really easy to understand what’s going on, which allows the quick hitting battles to flow in a way that’s not typically of SRPG-style games.

Bosses play in the same battle system, but often have their own rules to throw things out of whack.

It’s also worth mentioning how much fun the bosses are in this game.  Generally speaking they live under the same rule set as normal battles, but throw their own curves.  Some of them are multi-space units that really change how the player has to position themselves both offensively and defensively.  One boss had you not actively attacking it, but instead using knockbacks to throw smaller enemy units into the boss’ eating range to cause damage.  Basically, while the core abilities are still there, the bosses throw enough curves to keep the player’s skill fresh in unique ways that aren’t just doing a battle with bigger numbers.

I’ll be the first to admit that the South Park wrapping on this game will definitely make this game a fairly niche product.  It is full of completely inappropriate humor that will make you burst out in laughter if you don’t take it too seriously.  Once you dig into it though, this game has a tremendously deep battle system that fans of RPGs in general will find a lot to love.  The rest of the wrapping on this, from the side quests to gearing to environment exploration provide the rest of the trappings that RPG fans expect, and give this game a level of quality that we’re thankfully starting to see common in many licensed games.

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Game Ramblings #58 – Assassin’s Creed Origins

More Info from Ubisoft

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

TL;DR

  • Combat’s is serviceable.  Best part of actual combat is in the capabilities around stealth and distraction-based kills
  • Fantastically gorgeous imagining of what ancient Egypt may have looked like
  • Story serves as an interesting starting point to the lore for the overall story, without the usual distractions of the assassin vs. templar nonsense

So after a year off, I suppose the question became Is this game actually good?  In general, the answer to that is a pretty resounding yes.  However, I also enjoyed Unity and Syndicate a lot, despite them being an obvious step back from Black Flag.  What this one has managed to do is smooth out a lot of the core mechanics in the previous titles, while also shedding a lot of the collection madness that plagues later entries.

The visuals of the game are an obvious starting point. They’re pretty universally fantastic.

I’ll start with the obvious one and keep this quick, this game is up there on the list of best looking games ever.  A lot of this feels like the culmination of a lot of past games.  The water from Black Flag is used here a lot, whether it’s in sailing down the Nile or puttering around the edge of the Mediterranean.  When sandstorm are rolling in they look imposing; when you’re stuck in a sandstorm it’s threatening.  Humans during cutscenes are significantly less derpy than in the past, and now actually do a good job of getting the emotion of the scenes out there, even if hair is still a bit of a struggle.  Even moving into the non-desert areas in the northwest, the plains full of grass and flowers swaying in the breeze are a sight to see.

However, that’s not important in the grand scheme of things.  Let’s get into gameplay.

Climbing and exploring is still a huge part of the game, and pyramids everywhere give you lots of opportunity.

I suspect most people would talk combat, but to me the core of the Assassin’s Creed games that I enjoyed was the exploration and stealth, and that’s still a great thing here elevated to even greater heights thanks to the landmarks you get to climb.

The synchronize points were always a fun distraction in past AC games.  However, it’s another entire level when the point is at the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza or at the top of the Pharos of Alexandria.  These areas have some of the better pure climbing in the game, and the views from up top are always spectacular.  Even better is the fact that any of the historical landmarks you go up to generally have some sort of puzzle-based temple in them.  While these are generally quick hitters, some of them get into some pretty neat use of weight-based physics segments to make sure that crashing a temple isn’t just about climbing in a straight line.

Getting around is easy thanks to autopilot camels.

Exploration is aided by the fact that moving around in the environment just doing random things is generally just really easy and a lot of fun to do.  Origins has had a severe reduction in pure STUFF to do.  Ya there’s still sync points, there’s still side quests, but there’s no longer fluff things in the map like paintings or unguarded treasures.  What this has been replaced by are small areas such as forts, trading posts, abandoned temples, etc that may contain things to collect.  Ultimately this ends up resulting in a lot of time in-stealth either shanking or avoiding enemies, but at least providing some amount of gameplay beyond just walking up to a thousand icons on the map.

The best part of all of this though the process of moving around the world.  At the end of the day, the game feels a lot like Black Flag despite the lack of pirates and sailing, and it comes down to how you travel.  The lack of a distinct singular large city opens up the map.  Sure, you have larger areas like Alexandria or Memphis, but the bulk of the map is small villages with a few shops and people, similar to the smaller forts and villages in Black Flag that were found just in sailing around the Caribbean.

The horses and camels basically become your sailing replacement.  Sure you can move around manually, but the best thing to do is set autopilot and let the horse do its thing.  This combines with the ability to swap to the main character’s eagle, allowing you to scan for resources, look out for enemies, or search for objectives all while your horse heads towards where you want.  It takes a lot of the tedium out of travelling, allowing you to focus on other things as you go.

I can’t avoid the topic of fire. It’s everywhere and always great.

I guess that leaves us at combat.  In a lot of ways it’s definitely the weakest part of the game, but not necessarily because it’s bad.  In general it’s just kind of simple, and feels like the backup for when things don’t go as you want.  There’s both bow & arrow and melee weapons in place.  When going into melee, you can do a shield bash as a parry or a dodge maneuver, both of which can be timed against solid and obvious tells in the enemy actions.  However, that’s about it.  Ya there’s some subtleties in the usage of the attacks, but it’s basically details at that point.  The real strength of the combat systems is when you avoid it entirely.

Pure stealth is still the ideal way to go about the game.  You’ve got your straight stealth kills, which is still an effective way to deal with baddies.  There’s also a number of tools in place to cause havoc.  A couple of the highlights are the ability to set poison traps on dead bodies or the ability to enrage enemies resulting in them attacking each other.  There’s also the little use of fire.  You can have swords with fire, bows with fire, set horses on fire, shoot pots that explode into fire.  Basically, when things go on fire it usually results in hilarious things, even if it’s a bit dangerous to be around.

So is this a big redeeming game that was worth Ubisoft skipping a year for? I dunno.  It feels like a natural extension of Black Flag, and not something that they spent an extra year doing something groundbreaking.  However, it’s still a pretty solid game.  If you enjoyed Black Flag but were pretty cold on the games since, this is a pretty solid spot to jump back into the story.