Tag: sports

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Shelved It #19 – Sports Story

More Info from Sidebar Games

  • Genre: RPG
  • Platform: Switch

I really enjoyed Golf Story quite a lot, so I figured this was going to be an automatic home run. However, it just never hit for me. It’s not that the core game is really that different from the original, but some minor changes cascade into a lot of unnecessary-feeling drudgery. This then gets combined with day-1 performance, stability, and bug issues to turn into an experience that really just made me tune out. To say it was a disappointment would be a massive understatement.

I could probably forgive a lot of things about this game if it ultimately didn’t just baffle me with a lot of what was going on when I did end up in the golf portion of the game. The previous one had some pretty wild gimmicky courses, but they were fun because of the gimmicks. In what I’ve seen of Sports Story, the gimmicks are way reduced, so the golf is just kind of normal. However, it’s wildly inconsistent. Take these two videos from a desert course:

This first one shows what is effectively a shot from the rough in this course going completely wild. Does it have something to do with the terrain I shot from? Maybe, but it’s not entirely clear why that would be the result of a pretty good shot. Even if that is intended, why is that a good idea? It’s incredible player friction to randomly penalize them for doing things correctly.

This second video shows me hitting a mine on my shot. Again, am I hitting it purely because I’m doing a relatively low driver shot? Probably. Does that make sense at all from a gameplay perspective to penalize a player that much? Not really. I was taking an allegedly safe fairway shot and just got hosed from it.

That sort of decision making is present everywhere in this game. Where the original had some amount of RPGish mechanics to lead you through some fun interactions, this one leans way too heavily on fetch quests. Worse, the fetch quests are generally vague and offer no actual direction, so you’ll find yourself wandering around trying to find the right target instead of simply playing the game. It’s simply increased player friction that does nothing to serve improving the player experience.

So then this gets into another point of frustration for me. The couple of times that the game leans into doing dungeon-style experiences, it’s a lot of fun. There’s the one from the pic above where you go through a Zelda-style top-down dungeon playing minigolf to complete puzzles. This is complete with your usual assortment of keys to find and a boss fight at the end. Another one of them is an NES Metal Gear style dungeon built heavily around stealth mechanics. Both of these are really well-crafted homages to past games, so seeing the rest of the game around it falter is hugely disappointing.

That’s to say nothing of the other sports involved here. Tennis is the biggest star, with its own entire academy side story. Unfortunately, as seen above, the actual tennis experience is wildly inconsistent with reality. The core rules of tennis aren’t respected. Who gets points is sometimes hard to guess. I also managed to break the quest line in the academy, so I was never actually able to finish it.

In terms of other sports, cricket and baseball are lightly represented but aren’t more than single button mash to hit with timing being loosely important. I played volleyball once and never came back to it. I played soccer penalty kicks a couple times, but it was pretty much ball will always curve left so aim correct to win. There is a neat Excitebike-style minigame that comes up once in each world, and that’s probably the best of the bunch. However, none of them ever truly live up to the promise of this being a bunch of well integrated sports. They feel like they’re there for the sake of being there, rather than for improving the game.

I’m cognizant of the fact that it probably sounds like I’m being incredibly harsh on this game and there’s certainly a lot of truth to that. However, I want to make sure that I’m getting across how disappointed I am. This is easily my letdown of the year. It’s not even that new things didn’t pan out, but the core of what made the previous title so good also feels like it’s taken obvious steps backwards. The RPG progression is not as fun, the golf game is inconsistent, the game is not stable and has framerate issues that come up during shooting. It just feels like a game that missed the mark and I’m sad for that fact because I’ve so been looking forward to playing this one all year.

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Game Ramblings #156 – Riders Republic

More Info from Ubisoft

  • Genre: Sports
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Windows, PS4, Luna, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

This is one of those games that just hits the right parts of my brain. It’s a lot like Forza Horizon in that respect. I can jump into it at any point, just go towards the nearest random icon, and have a fun time. I can play the normal “serious” racing events and get some good action. I can play the fun events and be barreling down a mountain in an ice cream delivery bike. Either way, I know that I’ll be enjoying the ride.

It’s kind of incredible how much mileage Ubisoft has gotten out of its open world formula, and this one isn’t any different. You have a big open world map, sections of it unveil as you go into them, new icons pop up as a result of that, the things you complete open up more things, etc. You know that getting to an icon will at least unlock something fun. Sometimes it’s a race, sometimes it’s a trick event, sometimes it’s cool loot. It’s pure Ubisoft, just as an action sports game. Everything that makes that style of game work still works here.

The important thing is that all of the event types work. Right now you’ve basically got three groups of things – snow, bike, and air – broken into some sub events. They all play a bit different, but the core is always the same – get through checkpoints, do stupid tricks, get rewards. The important part though is they all work well. In all cases the controls hit a perfect arcade mix of tight control vs floaty fun. Your jumps are absurdly large because gravity doesn’t really apply that much, letting you do 1080s and double flips with ease. However, you can also turn nearly on a dime with some power slide capabilities. You might be going 160mph in a jet-powered wing suit, then slam on the brakes to hit a tight corner going through some canyons. You might jump off a hundreds of foot high cliff and land without any damage. It’s all kind of outlandish and all kind of a lot of fun.

That said, the variety is also a big part of the draw for me. Bikes and snow events may appear similar on paper, but both the control of your avatar and environments allows for them to counteract as good breathers for each other. From what I’ve played so far, bikes in particular have a large number of lap-based events that are purely not downhill and snow has a larger number of purely arena-based trick events that really feed the difference between the two. If I was really feeling burned out on that, I’d do air events. Those in particular have a huge variety. The wingsuit events are pure adrenaline where you’re trying to build up points by getting as close to the ground as you can without crashing. The rocket suits on the other hand are pure racing fun, especially when you start to dive into canyons.

Even when I wasn’t really feeling like competing, there’s plenty of other things to do. My favorite side activity was easily the stunt challenges. These were spread around the environment and generally involved doing something extraordinarily stupid like riding a bike along a steel beam over a canyon or trying to use your wingsuit to fly underneath bridges covering a river. This is where your skills in staying on tricky lines was really tested in a fun way. On the other hand, it’s also extremely fun to simply exist in this world. SSX 3 has always kind of been my high point in terms of how good it felt to start at the top of a mountain and ride down it for the sake of it. Riders Republic really nails the same vibe. You can start at the top of any number of mountains and simply ride doing stupid tricks all the way down. You can jump off the top of huge cliffs just for the hell of it, nailing your wingsuit before you hit the bottom. It’s fun just for the sake of it, and it works spectacularly.

Normally, this is then where’d I’d be going hell ya play this game….but I can’t outright say that. This game is purely online only. Right now that works extremely well. Seeing everyone in the world map just doing their own thing is cool as hell. Screaming down a populated slope with dozens of other people is cool as hell. However, it also means this game has a shelf life. It’s not that I necessarily think Ubisoft is going to shut the servers off soon, but it’s going to happen eventually, and the game will be mostly gone. You can still free roam offline, which gets part of what I enjoy about the game, but none of the event stuff is playable offline at all. Once the servers are gone, the game is basically gone. As someone who’s worked on games that simply no longer exist, that sucks.

However, if that doesn’t bother you this is an extremely fun game. It hits a place that very few games really get to – fun for the sake of it. While this game is live and while it has a ton of players it’s definitely a sight to behold. The content that’s there just works really well across the board. The only thing to really cross my fingers about is that one day we see a patch allowing full offline play, because the game has everything already there to support it.

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Game Ramblings #54 – Golf Story

More Info from Sidebar Games

  • Genre: Golf / RPG
  • Platform: Switch

TL;DR

  • Charming RPG with gameplay reminiscent of Mario Golf on the GBC/GBA
  • Entertaining writing, good mix of quests, and a bunch of clever hints at games from the past.
  • Golf game is serviceable and fun, despite obviously not being the focus of the game.

Out of everything that surprises me about this game, it’s that I can’t figure out who the hell the development team is.  The game’s credits simply had their studio name, they have no website or Twitter beyond the game’s info, and I can’t find a damn thing on Google.  Yet despite it all, this is potentially the best of the so called Nindies to come out this year.  While the game owes a lot to Mario Golf before it, it leans heavily on the writing and questing RPG to make a game that ends up being one of the best non-combat RPGs I’ve played in a long time.

Sometimes you play golf, sometimes you have rap battles.

Given that this is RPG first, the writing was always going to be important.  While this definitely isn’t deep, and it definitely ends abruptly, the writing is lighthearted and entertaining throughout.  Each course has its overarching story that takes place through a couple main quests and a lot of optional side quests.  These run the gamut from a Caddyshack-inspired battle against (and with) moles to rap battles between an old country club and a rival invading course to a haunted course where you help create a zombie army.  While the main story line of rising into the pro tour provides the overall push to the end, the individual stories and the wide range of characters you meet throughout are easily the thing that kept me going back and digging into all the available quests.

Among others callbacks, you sometimes just end up playing Pac Man while invading a base Metal Gear style.

There’s also a very distinct sense of playing homage to games of the past.  The visuals are very clearly styled after SNES and Genesis era games, even if the quality is somewhat higher than would have been possible on those systems.  However, it’s the game references that really hit home.  The Pac Man example above is just one.  There were also side quests based on Micro Machines, NPC hints at the Mario

Tennis series, a built in recreation of NES Golf, and more.  There’s a lot of love shown in bringing in elements of the past in ways that really succeed in giving a lot of life to the RPG aspect of the game, elevating it significantly above the similar Mario Golf games in that regard.

Even playing golf itself, you get a lot of non-standard variety like this Par 1 only course.

Since this is a golf game that side also had to not suffer, and while it’s nothing deep it works pretty well.  It’s a pretty standard 3-click setup (start, set power, set aim) for shots.  It also has your standard mix of curving, spins, and wind effect on the ball flight path.  There’s a bunch of different clubs with various effects on shots as well, giving a bit of flexibility in the gear build out.  The RPG aspect also plays out here, with XP going into the golf stats.  Like Mario Golf, increasing power lowers the other stats, giving a balance between quickly increasing shot power vs. not throwing other stats out of whack.

However, there’s also a lot of depth at play here in the style of game available.  For the most part, there’s really no normal courses.  Even the first course with a standard layout has mole traps that can cause your ball to be carried all over the course.  From there you get courses with no greens, tar traps instead of sand, par 1 courses, turtles that bounce your ball down the course out of water, and more.  In general you basically have to be ready for anything and can’t settle into the typical pattern of a golf game where any course generally plays the same.  The only thing that really was consistent here is that I could aim smack at the flag and more often than not sink the shot, which admittedly is both highly satisfying and incredibly hilarious when hitting a 300 yard shot into the hole during a match play event.

If I made the rules, this would definitely be in there.

I think my big takeaway here is that Golf Story proves the value of making RPGs without combat, particularly in lieu of Nintendo abandoning the idea of the Camelot-developed mobile sports RPGs.  There’s enough golf here to still be considered a sports game, but the RPG aspects pulled in bring so much to the game that non-fans can also find a lot to enjoy here.