DWGames

2017-01-27

Game Ramblings #31 – Gravity Rush 2

Platform: PS4
Genre: Action/Adventure

In a lot of ways, Gravity Rush 2 is entirely a sequel by the numbers. It’s taken both the good and bad of its predecessor and given us what is essentially a larger, more colorful package with a new story. To some extent the game felt like a couple of separate games plugged together in the middle, with a nice epilogue to round things out. Ultimately though, this melding of everything worked out and made the game worth playing.

The first thing that fans of the first game will notice is that this game is fantastically colorful. The new city of Jirga Para Lhao is a huge step up from Hekseville in presentation alone. Soaring through the sky just running through the city is still the best part of this game, and it’s absolutely more beautiful than ever. The idea of everything being bigger and brighter sort of becomes the theme of the changes. Rather than the flat upgrade system of the previous game, there are now non-stat ability upgrades AND talismans, acting like customizable add-ons for Kat. Rather than just one set of powers, there are now two new forms that supplement Kat’s ability set, giving much needed to the combat system. Rather than just running around one city, you now get two (as well as a pretty substantial side trek after the first time the credits roll). Basically, a lot of what made the Vita original so enjoyable is all there, but with some added layers on top of it to expand it into a more typical AAA experience.

However, it’s this idea of bigger and better of the original, rather than better for the sake of being better where things started to sour for me. In some ways, this sequel feels like they didn’t really learn anything from the original game.

Although entirely due to the nature of the gravity shifting, the camera is still dead awful. This is combined with boss battles that often lose a noticeable horizon to result in combat that can often be at best disorienting. The camera also tended to deal with blockers extremely poorly, resulting in Kat disappearing and losing complete sense of direction any time I was near a wall or large enemy. It’s also worth mentioning that motion controls haven’t really translated that well from the Vita to PS4, though they are entirely optional. However, using just the right analog to control the camera results in a lot of the lack of precision problems typical of action games on console. The combination of poor camera and somewhat finicky controls resulted in combat situations again being my least favorite part of the game.

The challenge areas and climb through the World Pillar also make their return in this game, and like the original, they often go on way longer than are necessary. These areas basically exist to remove core mechanics from the game in order to present players with different gameplay. However, rather than feeling challenging, they often simply slow the game’s pace down, as there are more than enough other powers to get through the game safely.

Like the first game, the story was what kept me going through the game. However, this one was somewhat disjointed. My best non-spoiler description of the story is that it felt like it was supposed to be comprised of at least 2 games the length of the original, with the epilogue chapter being absolutely important, but not large enough to be a third on its own. The TL;DR here is that the first half of the game is in the new city, the villain is defeated, and you’re off to Hekseville. The second half of the game has a seemingly new villain, and only at the very end of this portion, and specifically in the credits, are the connections to the first half of the sequel, as well as HUGE revelations to the first game and anime revealed. The two halves have their ties, but ultimately felt like it was planned as two Vita-sized games that were squeezed together to fit into a PS4 game.

The strangest thing here though is that after the credits roll, the game was not remotely complete. There’s an entire multi-hour epilogue to the game that wraps up the series’ story, as well as reveals the entirety of Kat’s back story prior to the first game’s start. Fans of the series absolutely must complete this, as it completes the entire saga across both games. However, because it wasn’t tied to any of the core story, it kind of exists on the side and can easily be missed if you turn off the game after the credits roll for the first time.

In the end, this was a strange game. Anything that was a plus or minus in the first is still here, so you kind of know what you’re going into if you’ve played the first game. The gameplay definitely has some fundamental problems with pacing, controls, and camera, but it’s still a fun game at its core. The story itself is also great, but feels like it was three independent ideas that were shoved into one game to complete the series. Given how neatly everything was wrapped up, I suspect this was the last we’ll see of Kat’s adventures, but if it is the end, they did a great job wrapping up the story in a complete fashion.

2017-01-21

Game Ramblings #30 – Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

More Info from WayForward

Platform: PS4
Genre: Metroidvania
Also Available On: 3DS, Fire TV, Steam, Wii U, Xbox One

The Shantae series has been around for a while, whether as one of the most valuable Game Boy Color games, experimenting with digital distribution on the DSi, or getting Kickstarted for its latest entry. This time around I played the third in the series, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse. As the series has evolved, it’s generally followed a Metroidvania style, with some key twists to stray a bit from the formula.

One of the key differences typical of the series was that Shantae gained Genie transformations, rather than the more typical weapon upgrades of the Metroid series. However, that went away for Pirate’s Curse for some relatively valid story reasons. This one uses the more typical gear upgrade path, but with a bit more themed variety. Since this is ostensibly a game involving pirates, the gear upgrades end up being things like a pirate hat to slow falling, a cannon to allow multi-jump, or pirate boots to allow for speed boosts. It all ends up feeling much like the Metroid upgrade path, with a very appropriate theme for the game.

Where this game highly differs from the typical style of the genre is that it is level based. Each piece of gear is found within a dungeon hidden within a themed level. The typical path is to get to a new level, explore and do some story quests to open up the dungeon, then head on in for an upgrade and a boss fight centered around the new piece of gear. In a lot of respects, the game feels like it brings in a very Zelda-esque focus there, where the boss fight is clearly themed around the particular item you got. There is some back and forth going to levels that were already finished for side quests and upgrades, particularly in picking up the effective replacement for health tanks, as some are out of reach without later upgrades. Overall while the setup is very familiar to the Metroidvania genre, the breakup across different themed levels brings a nice change of pace to each new area as you get to it.

In general this is one of the mechanically better Metroidvanias in recent years that I’ve played. Traversal is rapid, but easy to control. Jumping feels extremely tight, and mixes in some of the Mario-style jump height differences based on how long the button is held. The upgrades all serve noticeable purposes in enhancing the skill set available to get around the environment. Generally speaking, the core melee attack is going to be the 90% usage, but there’s also upgrades available for it, so there’s a noticeable power curve as the game goes on. The bosses are all pattern based, and by and large have some amount of challenge, but are fair and typically obvious in their weak points. Despite its relatively short length (avg 7.5 hours), the time spent in the game will go fast due to its fun play.

All that said, the last dungeon nearly made me shelve the game entirely, and did stop me from completing a 100% run. The tl;dr here is that its a multi-level dungeon with each level having its own mechanic to complete. However, they were more often than not based around memorization, rather than pure skill. One level had me using the boots dash to traverse across a set of spike traps. Due to the speed of traversal, I basically couldn’t see where I was going, or which path was the valid one until I hit a wall and died. Another level had me using the multi-jump cannon and destroying blocks in my way as I went through another series of spike traps. However, there were a few spots where I couldn’t see ahead, and basically had to blindly jump and die until I shot out my perfect path to get through. Once I got to the boss, everything was fine, but for a game that had to that point been so skill based in its traversal, it felt like a really strange turn right at the end of the game. My as spoiler free as possible recommendation here is to finish the 100% run as much as possible before entering the last dungeon, as you need to be there to get the true ending.

In the end, the game was still worth playing, especially for fans of Metroidvania style games. It’s mechanically sound, has a good story and soundtrack, and is visually fantastic. Given the recent rarity of the genre outside the indie space, you could definitely do worse than to give this series a try.

2017-01-15

Game Ramblings #29 – Final Fantasy VIII

More Info from Wikipedia

Genre: JRPG
Platform: PS1
Also Available On: Steam, PSN

For the first game of the year, I went with…..an old game? It’s been a while since I played something that I’d really describe as a straight JRPG. Pokemon Moon was probably about as close as I’ve been recently, so I pulled this one out of the pile. Having never finished it, I went into it a bit nervous. The last time I tried replaying a PS1 FF game (FF9), I shelved it almost immediately due to the slow pace of the battles and slow progression of the story. While this one certainly suffers some of the slow battle pace, mostly due to the summons system, a lot of the other systems that the game was built around have ended up aging incredibly well compared to many of its peers.

I guess I’ll get this out of the way first; the story of FF8 has held up very well. The core group has a wide range of different personalities that don’t end up irritating me. The world the game lives in has a nice variety of different settings, and a generally well put together overarching plot. There’s a relatively well put together love story between two of the main party. In general, this is still one of the better stories in the Final Fantasy series, and it’s held up pretty well. It’s also worth noting that this is probably my favorite soundtrack in total in the series. There’s obviously the high points in other games, but the FF8 soundtrack has always impressed me throughout in how consistently good it is throughout the game.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the game itself.

Let’s start with the core of the game, the battle system. While at its core it definitely is a Final Fantasy ATB-style battle system, the removal of mana from this game has a lot of interesting ramifications. Instead of using mana, spells are drawn from enemies and the environment and stocked per-character. These drawn spells also then act as a replacement for equipment typical of most FF games, and can be applied to characters for boosts to all stats. For my playthrough, this vastly increased the value of typical trash fights, as I’d be paying attention to what magic was available in each area in order to stock up on useful spells that I could not depend on being available further into the game.

The other significant change is that levels, while potentially important to a standard play through, function entirely different from the rest of the series. Leveling up is straight out 1000 EXP per level. While this may sound kind of strange, apart from a handful of areas that are fixed level, the rest of the enemies (including bosses) scale with the player’s level. For me, this basically gave me an expected flat difficulty throughout the game, which tended to minimize the amount of grind that I needed to do in any area. This also means that the game can be cheesed in curious ways. For example, the game could theoretically be finished with 0 exp, as bosses don’t give experience. I suspect the group can also effectively start the game at level 100 if enough grinding is completed in the starting area of the game. The end result of all this is that the game became a lot more about a per-fight strategy, instead of the typical back and forth of hitting a difficulty spike and grind wall that FF games were usually prone to.

All that said, I was kind of surprised by how well this one has aged. It’s certainly not without its problems. Boss fight strategy can often be vague, resulting in the need to get entirely wiped at times to figure out the specific set of things needing to be done. The actual summon animations are also incredibly unnecessarily long, though the dependency on using summons is typically tied to specific fights. However, this is still a JRPG that I’d recommend to fans of the genre that haven’t played it in the past. With it now easily available on PSN and Steam, there’s not much excuse for gamers on modern platforms to skip it if they feel the need to scratch that JRPG itch.