Tag: platformer

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Game Ramblings #102 – Iconoclasts

More Info from Konjak/Bifrost

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Vita, Windows, macOS, Linux, Switch

It’s no surprise that I like Metroidvanias, so hopping at another indie take on the genre is never something I’m going to argue. A lot of the time it can feel like they’re trying to out difficulty each other instead of just having compelling gameplay. Luckily, Iconoclasts definitely falls into the latter category. It combines some solid gunplay with interesting puzzle mechanics to really be a standout entry in the genre.

The big thing to notice was really how variety was pulled into this game, in a way that isn’t necessarily typical of the genre. It has a few things that are your typical “door opener” type of upgrade, but the more often than not, upgrades were used to solve full room puzzles that ended with the room being permanently traversable in a fast way, rather than being something that has to be run through every time. It was a nice difference to the norm where retraversal for new upgrades or new paths was generally going to be done as quick as possible to minimize wasted time.

A lot of this is built into the player’s weapon set – a giant wrench for melee, and a set of a pistol, grenade launcher, and beam pistol for ranged. Some examples of upgrades include an electric charge that is used to raise and lower platforms, the wrench’s built in ability to turn bolts to open doors, or a spin maneuver used to quickly crank gears. The electric charge is also built into the grenade weapon – any launched grenades while charged gain an electric charge – and some blocks that can hold a charge. This wide range of abilities are all built into the puzzle sets, where some puzzles require multiple combinations of the skill range to complete.

In practice, it works extremely well. Puzzle rooms are pretty well segregated from combat, allowing the player the time to think and plan for how to complete the room. The puzzles are also more often than not focused around a new power, giving the player a good chance to reenforce the use of any new skill.

These abilities also extend into combat. Each of the ranged weapons have a secondary charge mode – for example, the pistol charges into a shotgun blast, the grenade into a missile – that are used as ways to take out enemies in unique ways. This is particularly important in boss fights, where they will generally be specifically weak to either a specific mode of a weapon, or a specific area in the combat arena. Because of this setup, the bosses are more often than not a puzzle in itself, alongside needing to it out.

This is probably the point where the game really earned its fun for me. The game is challenging but fair, instead of being difficult for the sake of difficulty. I definitely died a few times, but it was either because I was being careless, or because I was learning new mechanics. Bosses will hit you if you aren’t careful, but you’re not going to die in a couple hits. You’ll die to trash if you’re not avoiding damage, but you’ll be fine if you’re paying attention. More often than not, the bosses also have adds that spawn health. It feels like the developers want you to win, and give you ways to do so, as long as you’re generally moving forward and learning as you go. That difference there has often been a rare thing to find in the independent scene in the past few years.

Add this one to the list of Metroidvanias that I’ve been playing over the last few years, and more importantly, put this one up at the top. It was able to combine really solid combat, really solid puzzles, and gorgeous visuals into a package that punches above its weight. This one avoided the indie trap of being exceedingly difficult, and instead crafted a great experience that was challenging but fair. This game took a long time to come out, but the effort definitely shows, and I’m hopeful that whatever comes next out of the team’s brains can be similarly positive in whatever genre they pick.

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Game Ramblings #100 – Indivisible

More Info from Lab Zero Games

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

I’m glad that this game was a milestone number for my ramblings, because it’s the kind of game I really live for. It’s both instantly recognizeable, but completely unique. It’s kind of an ARPG, kind of a JRPG, kind of a Metroidvania, but really it’s none of those things alone and all of those things together. It takes a bunch of pieces that shouldn’t work together, mashes them together, and spits something out that is phenomenal.

The first thing that really stood out was that the game was flat out gorgeous, though that isn’t much of a surprise. This is the team behind Skullgirls, which gameplay aside, was always known for its visual style. Right from the start, it’s a great mix of 3D backgrounds and 2D character art that pops like very few games do. Particularly in battle, the animation is all ridiculously well crafted hand-drawn art that really brings a bright and fun visual style to life. Amidst the chaos of battle, it’s all a joy to watch.

However, it’s that battle that really pulls you into the game. This is a bizarre mix of two RPG subgenres that somehow mash together. On the one hand, the battle system is very much an almost ATB-style system, where the characters charge up attack slots at different speeds up to a cap. However, those attack slots are not your typical menu slots – they’re instead button presses tied to each character, which can be comboed with directional inputs to do any sort of mix of functionality. This is expanded by different characters having different capabilities to really bring a simple but extremely deep combat system to life. It’s not unlike Valkyrie Profile in a lot of ways, but it definitely feels very much its own.

For example, Ajna can break enemies that are shielding with an up+down combo. I used a healer named Ginseng that built up power with straight attacks, then activated a power scaled group heal with their up attack. For flying enemies, I had an archer named Zebei that could shoot enemies out of the sky to be attacked by the rest of the party. At one point I even had a dog named Lanshi whose sole fight pattern was to bark at the enemy party, dealing large AoE damage. This is backed by a charged special attack bar that the entire party could use to do significantly large and flashy attacks to all enemies, like the one below.

On the defensive side, it’s all timing based. Correctly timing a button press when being attacked can block incoming damage, starting with partial block and growing all the way to character heals by the end of the game. This ability to block damage means that missing the button press is absolutely hazardous, as the game is scaled around the player preventing incoming damage as much as possible. A good player will basically never take damage, while a lesser player will likely need to grind a bit to become stronger, so this also works as a pretty solid built-in difficulty mechanic to allow better players to simply move forward.

In general, this battle system was just straight up fun. I spent a decent amount of time when grabbing new characters playing around to see how they felt, but over time settled on a party that really fit my preferred style. For me it was all about fast charging characters with good single target attacks, backed by Ginseng’s healing capabilities, and very little defense other than good timing. It fit a really fun sort of zerg rush pattern that I leaned hard into by the end of the game.

The Metroidvania aspect of the game is generally the weaker part of this mash of genres. It’s not that it’s implemented poorly – the levels all have a ton of side paths that are slowly unlocked as the player gains new abilities. It’s that the level layouts don’t really feel tuned to Metroidvania-style retraversal. It was pretty much without fail that I’d start on one end of a region map, get all the way to the far other side of the region map, and hit a story block with no new power helpful to the current region, requiring me to go completely back across the map to get to a ship and move to a different region. More often than not, the new paths opened with new abilities were typically smaller side paths that existed to collect upgrades, and not necessarily new paths for traversing the level in a different fashion. By doing this extreme side to side layout design, it really ended up making me retraverse the levels with nothing new to do, rather than the more Metroid-typical pattern of earning powers often, and traversing a region with full new paths. Things opened up a bit more by the end of the game, but by that point it kind of felt like too little too late.

That being said, the traversal not being great didn’t minimize my enjoyment of the game. This was ultimately one of my rare PS4 platinums, clocking in at a bit under 20 hours to get the full trophy set. Within that, I got to experience a bunch of great combat, some fantastically flashy and memorable bosses, and more than a few laughs at the party’s expense. For me this is even better, as I was a backer of their Indiegogo campaign, so watching this one come to life, and having it live up to my hopes is something that I’m always wishing for. At this point, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a proper non-mobile Valkyrie series entry out of Square, and if Indivisible is the way that someone runs with the gameplay, I’m certainly excited about the end result.

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Game Ramblings #86 – Yoshi’s Crafted World

More Info From Nintendo

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch

TL;DR

  • Classic Yoshi gameplay, accessible but deep with great replayability of the levels
  • Another fantastic visual style from the team at Good-Feel

This could be a really short ramblings from a practical perspective. If you liked any past Yoshi games, you’ll probably like this. The gameplay still revolves around heavy exploration of side scrolling levels, eating enemies to get eggs, and using those eggs to find things hidden around the levels. This one does a few things to separate from past titles though – particularly in the replayability of the individual levels – that really make this a solid new entry that plays well on the go.

This is a Yoshi game through and through, eggs, cute visuals, fun levels – it’s pretty familiar on the surface.

There really is a lot of familiarity at play here, but really that isn’t very surprising for the Yoshi series. The Island games and Woolly World were a lot of fun, but really all had similar mechanics. Manipulating the firing of eggs is still the real core skill here other than staying alive. The point of each individual level is still to basically collect everything, and the objectives are still largely the same – find flowers, find 20 red coins, don’t lose hearts. There are a few core differences here though. Each flower is an individual goal on its own, along with flowers gained from the coin/heart objectives, but there’s other ways to gain flowers that become more important. In addition, flowers are used as progression blockers in a way similar to stars in Mario games, though most players will never have trouble having an overabundance. The differences in star collection are what really drive replayability in this game though.

Back side levels are one of the replay options, and also serve as a way to lean into the Crafted World gimmick.

Replaying levels really becomes key to the core loop here. Back side levels are one of the big options, where the player runs through the level in reverse to find Poochy Pups. These serve a two-fold purpose; they’re an additional goal using the same content, and they also use a speedrun timer that forces the player to ignore exploration in favor of speed. In doing so, these levels really change how the player thinks about the core gameplay in a fun way.

From a visual perspective it also really pushes the crafted aspect of the game world. You see the labels on the back of cardboard boxes, the tape holding everything together, the enemies that are holding up stage props. It all serves to give a fairly adorable setting to the world and a reason for the way the game visually exists.

These aren’t the only replay tools though. In addition to the obvious goal of finding everything, each mini world has a series of collection tasks that also provide flowers to the player. These all involve finding one to a handful of a specific prop, and the player has to shoot eggs at them to collect them. They’re small goals, but act as an addition gameplay layer to complete.

All of these replay tools really serve to push the purpose that this is a game that works as well on the couch as it does on the go. If you’ve got a large chunk of time, it’s easy to run through a bunch of levels or spend a lot of time looking for every little detail on the front side run throughs. If you’re in a commute and only have a few minutes? Go ahead and do a quick back side run or one of the collection tasks. Either way you’re earning rewards and finding new things to do, and the game works phenomenally well in allowing you to tailor your minute to minute experience to the time you have available.

There’s also some neat non-traditional diversions to do, such as this level where Yoshi balances a kart to get it through the world as fast as possible.

Realistically there isn’t much new to be had here compared to other Yoshi games, but this one definitely does the best job of sitting somewhere in the middle of a home and on-the-go experience. The huge variety of different types of tasks to accomplish means you can do things that run from taking minutes to taking hours, and this is the same thing that some of the best Switch titles I’ve played have typically pulled off. It also helps that the core Yoshi gameplay was already a lot of fun to begin with. Although this doesn’t end up being your traditional platformer gameplay like a New Super Mario Bros game, I’d still have a pretty easy time recommending this one straight out for anyone looking for a game in that genre.