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Game Ramblings #14 – Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

More Info from EA

  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available on: Xbox One, Windows (Origin)
  • Genre: Action/Platformer

So, it finally happened; we got a new Mirror’s Edge.  Like the original, the core of this game is all about the first-person parkour-inspired platforming, and this prequel/origin story/retcon doesn’t change much about that.  What this one does do is throw away the linear progression in favor of an open world taking place entirely on the rooftops of Glass, which was also the city setting of the original.  So then the question is, did that change work? Did this game improve on some of the shortcomings of the original?

Going to get this out of the way fast.  Yes, the running that covers the core of the game is still fantastic.  Getting into a good flow running across the rooftops is still better in this game than in any other parkour-style game that I’ve played.  The open world nature of the game makes this even better, as learning routes between common hubs pushes you to get faster and faster travelling around the city, making that traversal fun enough to often skip using the fast travel that was available.  Some people have already complained that some of the traversal skills are locked behind an XP wall, but I never hit a point where I felt limited in what I could do, and the new skills that were unlocked pretty seamlessly integrated into how I was playing, as I was learning to use them one at a time and could experiment over extended play running around the city.

That said, the open world nature of the game did suffer from something akin to Assassin’s Creed syndrome.  There are some good side events scattered around.  The time trials of the original came back in the form of Dash events, and are still as good as ever as you continue to improve on your runs to 3 stars.  However, most of the side content is little more than fluff consisting of collecting orbs or doing more normal running segments that you would already be doing to get around the city.  While these do give XP for people grinding out upgrades, I got to the end of the game without needing the XP only incidentally doing these things while getting around between story missions.  For the completionist, this game has a lot, but for the people going straight through the story, these are skippable.

Unfortunately, the combat was still not that great here.  While it’s definitely a game about staying OUT of combat, there’s enough forced combat missions that the poor quality of the combat can be annoying at times.  They did get rid of the poor gun combat from the original, which is a plus, but even the hand to hand combat was not that great.  It basically consists of weak punches that I stopped using about 1/3 through the game, and strong attacks that can be effectively head on or from a side.  While there are some nice possibilities in the side attacks, particularly in causing enemies to stumble into and interrupt each other, the actual pace of the combat is generally slow and clunky.  Given how good the running is, it’s not a huge deal that combat is poor, but giving more possibilities of entirely avoiding the handful of forced combat areas would certainly have gone a good way in improving this situation.

So overall this game was pretty similar in outcome to the original.  The running portion of the game is still fantastic, the combat was still pretty poor, but the game overall is still highly enjoyable and worth playing.  While the open world change to the game flow has some hits and misses, the parts of the game that were still fun about the original are still maintained.  Just don’t expect the story to make any sense when connected to the original.

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Game Ramblings #13 – MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies

More info from Idea Factory

  • Platform: Vita (PlayStation TV Compatible)
  • Genre: Action RPG

Blanc + Neptune as the long name implies, is an extension of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, this time acting as a side story focused on Blanc.  The gameplay is similar to Vita and Steam release Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed.  I’d also played that one, so went in knowing roughly what to expect, but generally left entertained but disappointed as it felt like it hadn’t picked up on the promise of that title.

Let’s get this out of the way first.  Like the rest of the Neptunia series,  the girls are all powerful female forms of various game consoles and properties, and the setting absolutely makes fun of some known videogame tropes.  In this case, the girls are part of a high school movie club, and spend most of the game filming movies that poke fun at the Resident Evil series.  Like the rest of the series, the story is generally pretty non-serious, but absolutely entertaining.  Also like Neptunia U, the minute to minute gameplay is relatively fast paced, and generally entertaining combo-based action RPG gameplay.  So then, where do things go wrong?

Neptunia U at its core was a game out along the lines of the various Warriors titles, where individual levels would often result in killing hundreds or thousands of enemies as I went around completing the story and various side quests.  Far as I can recall, the most enemies I was tasked at killing in Blanc + Neptune was 80.  That right there exemplifies a lot of the problem I had with this game.  It took what worked in Neptunia U, and made it all shorter.  There was less story, less action, less side questing, less progression.  The core game was there, but felt like a step back in the series.  In the end it definitely felt that this was a side game focused on a side character, where the game just didn’t receive the attention that a core Neptunia title would receive.

So, was it worth playing?  Probably, though I’d probably recommend waiting on the price dropping some.  End of the day, these games have always been pretty mindless fun, and this was no different.  I was generally just left feeling like they could have done so much more, even if they just went in with the goal to match Neptunia U.

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Game Ramblings #12 – Phantasy Star 3: Generations of Doom

More info from Wikipedia

  • Platform: Sega Genesis
  • Genre: JRPG

Going back to old JRPGs is something that I do from time to time, and usually end up regretting.  I can’t go back to the PS1 Final Fantasy titles without getting annoyed at the amount of time waste because of loading that happens during battles.  Games like Dark Cloud, which were so revolutionary at release have lost a lot of their luster.  Even more recent titles like Lost Odyssey have simply been surpassed by the latest and greatest.  So, going back to play a game that I’d never played is usually an even bigger risk.  The question then becomes, was it worth playing?  In this case, it’s reserved, but a yes.

The story generally plays out over multiple generations of a single family, including the option of who you are marrying at the end of a generation.  While this does mean you lose party members you invest in, they are replaced by generally stronger characters.  There are also a pair of cyborgs written into the story that maintain their level and gear across generations, so the party’s power curve never suffers from the transfer between generations.

The game also greatly benefits from largely being quick and focused.  Battles are fast, leveling is fast, gear is generally easy to find and purchase, and the story is there and is well written, but does not get in the way.  I got to the end of the game within about 20 hours, so unlike a lot of modern JRPGs, I didn’t ever reach the point where I was bored.  There’s a lot to say about the over reliance of fluff in modern JRPGs, and PS3 offers a good show of focusing the experience for the player to get the most out of more limited hours.

That’s not to say everything has aged well though.  While it is interesting that you can customize the relative strength of character’s magic spells, I never really dove into the  system beyond heavily leaning towards the strength of single target heals.  The shop and inventory system is also simply bad at this point.  Items give no description, gear shows no stats, and also doesn’t show what characters it can be equipped to.  This is nothing that an item list from Gamefaqs couldn’t solve, but is definitely a little strange to have no information in the shops.  Purchasing and selling is also one item at a time, inventory is capped per character at only 15 items, and items can’t be stacked.  It’s just kind of frustrating, and not even something that even games of similar age tended to do.

So, I wouldn’t say this game has aged that gracefully, but end of the day it had enough going for it, and a length short enough that it didn’t grow old.