DWGames

2017-08-26

Game Ramblings #47 – Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap

Genre: Platformer
Platform: PS4
Also Available On: Switch, Xbox One, Windows, Linux, Mac
Original Version On: Sega Master System, Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16

Right from the start I could see that this game is a lovingly made remake of Wonder Boy III. This remake feels like the original, if the original was made in 2017 with fantastically drawn visuals. While that means that it doesn’t lose its original charm, it also means that it carries some finicky mechanics from the late 80s with it. However, the quality of the original still comes through, and being able to play it without having to break out the old consoles is still worth the experience, and the polish in place to transition between the old and new is absolutely impressive.

The hand drawn style is a standout, particularly against the original primitive pixel visuals.

The most obvious thing that’s been changed here are the visuals. Rather than going the easy route and sticking with an upgraded 8-bit Master System style, DotEmu went all out with a full visual refresh of the original game. Every character, NPC, and world area has been redrawn over the original geometry, maintaining the original gameplay space, but giving it a fantastically modern look. If it wasn’t for Cuphead finally being ready to release, this one would probably be a runaway winner for me in terms of flat out best looking pure 2D platformer.

Transition between styles is immediate, and can be done at any time.

However, the more impressive trick is that you can go between the original and modern looks at any time, and most importantly, the original sprites maintain the aspect ratio of the remake on modern platforms, giving a nice mix between the look of the old and the practical functionality between the two. You simply press R2, the screen wipes side to side, and you’re right in the old style without having to pause the game. This can also be done with R3, changing the music between the old and new, giving you the option to mix and match your preferred styles for sound and visuals at any time. This is particularly important, because it has some surprising gameplay ramifications as well.

The hit boxes in modern graphics are…vague.

One of the biggest issues I continued to have was that the hit boxes in modern style were not that precise to the actual visuals of the character. In some cases they matched pretty well to the general shape of the enemies, but in a lot of cases they were often much smaller than I was expecting. For single enemies this wasn’t a huge deal, but for packs of enemies, it meant I was often swinging and missing, then getting stuck in situations where I would take a lot of unnecessary damage. However, the hit boxes in the original game were generally much more precise, so by the tail end of the game, I was often switching to the old visuals purely for collision convenience, and minimizing my damage taken simply due to the more instinct-precise way of attacking.

Mechanically speaking, there’s also a few warts that were fine in the 80s, but at this point are kind of just moderate annoyances. There’s a lot of situations where enemies can stun lock you into corners and walls. While I wouldn’t take damage after a hit until I finally landed, it was annoying getting endlessly juggled into a corner until an enemy decided to finally turn around and back off. For the bosses, they were mostly fairly trivial as well, with each boss generally having one attack and a single hit zone that was generally placed in the most obnoxious place to attack, while trying to avoid relatively quick and low damage attacks. Jump physics are generally fairly precise, but mid-air control is definitely not as good as some more modern takes on the genre like Shovel Knight. Generally speaking, this was a pretty high quality game mechanically when it originally came out, and the remake benefits from being able to start with that solid base. While everything here is still pretty solid, it definitely plays like an 80s game, for better or worse.

All that said, this is a great take on an older title. In doing the port, they avoided the trap that a lot of remakes do in trying to reimagine an old title. This one is as straight a gameplay port as I’ve ever seen, particularly since the old title runs permanently emulated in the background. The modern visuals and audio, as well as the fantastic feature to switch to the originals in real time is a nice touch that I wish more remakes would take advantage of. End of the day, if it comes down to breaking out an old console, or playing this remake on a modern platform, I’d say throw out the few bucks and go this way, it’s worth it just for the visuals.

2017-08-172018-01-13

Game Ramblings #46 – Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

More Info from Prideful Sloth

Genre: Adventure
Platform: PS4
Also Available On: Steam

TL;DR

Fantastically gorgeous environment and great soundtrack
Main quest line that’s entertaining to play, and gives you the right amount of push to continue seeing the new environments
High end crafting and side quests are fundamentally problematic with the game loop as implemented

Yonder is a game that at its core feels like it was made by a group of artists. The attention to detail in the environment is up there with some of the best games available this generation. The soundtrack backing it is the right level of ambient orchestral music without getting in the way. All of this is tied into a fantastic implementation of a day/night cycle very reminiscent of its use in Breath of the Wild. However, once you go beyond the core story quest line, the lack of real depth to the game systems in place, and a crafting system that is more menu and resource frustration really shows the problems that come out in the game loop that’s available.

One of the first areas you see in the game.

Right off the bat, it’s clear that this is going to be a beautiful game experience. After an initial intro scene and cave crawl, you immediately get out into an open field that gives you a vista of a large part of the island the game takes place on, and it’s astoundingly beautiful. The characters and animals around have a simple but effective style, and everything is fairly recognizable right off the bat. Each area that you go to throughout the game then has its own core visual theme, whether it’s the snowy areas as you climb the central mountain, the palm trees near the beach, or the sparse rock formations in the desert. Each area is just as great looking as the one you just had left.

Things look just as great when you hit night time. The sky grows dawk, constellations fill it, and the player’s character breaks out a torch to give some local dynamic lighting around. At the same time, the music drops in intensity, and you really feel the encroachment of night time around you.

The core gameplay itself is built around an effective set of collection and crafting quests. The main line is pretty straightforward, with a series of quests that basically lead you into visiting each area, collecting Sprite creatures to clear off the Murk attacking the island, and collecting parts to fix the Cloud Catcher from the title. By and large these serve as a way to get you to the towns that hold the various crafting type masters, and allow you to expand your repertoire or skills, which lead into further use through side quests. While there are some systems in place on the side dealing with farming, it’s not deep enough to serve as a long term distraction. This along with the nature of the side quests really starts becoming the main problem in exposing the larger issues with the core of the game’s systems.

The side quests take the core collect/craft mechanic of the main story line, and ramp it up to 11. The problem is that the crafting system in general is just not that good, and the collecting of resources in the environment is kind of a hassle.

Materials used to craft a single bridge…

As an example, I created the above list to try and wrap my head around what I needed to craft a single bridge. At the highest level, this thing required somewhere around 300 stone, and a bunch of other various ingredients. The big problem is that stones can either be found solo on the ground, or in groups of 4 that can be mined out of a single boulder. Just from a length of time to collect, this then becomes rather time prohibitive. It also means hopping around to a ton of different areas in the crafting menu to craft individual pieces, then larger pieces, then larger pieces where each tab in was another level down in the crafting sequence. For me, there was also the fundamental problem of not really understanding why something that uses parts made out of stone then requires MORE stone. Even as it currently exists, being able to pick the high level item (say a stone arch), getting a total list of ALL resources needed to build it, then being able to one shot complete the project would have significantly improved the experience, as opposed to the current mess of crafting large items.

Scenes like this pushed me to keep playing.

End of the day, the main reason why this was not another entry into Shelved It has more to do with the fact that the game was abrupt in finishing, and I wanted to see what else the environment team had put together. While the base that is there has potential, there’s too many fundamental problems with the crafting and collecting systems that are the core of the game to really consider this one worthy of high praise. On the other hand, given the lack of content, a few changes to the way these work could fairly quickly elevate this one to a pretty entertaining and relaxing adventure title. However, if you really want to see a gorgeous game, it may be worth taking a look at anyway.

2017-08-142018-01-13

Game Ramblings #45 – Yakuza 0

More Info from Sega

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PS4

TL;DR

Excellent combat with multiple styles to fit different fights
Swapping between characters worked well due to how the story timeline worked between the two
Difference in tone between serious story missions and almost 100% non-serious side missions somehow didn’t cause issues

The Yakuza series has always been more of a Shenmue than a GTA, and Yakuza 0 doesn’t change any of that. This one provides a new starting point for the series, providing some back story to the events before the original entry in the series. It takes the same mix of combat, light puzzle solving, and high levels of drama, and modernizes it a bit as the first PS4 entry in the series, giving us another great entry to play. Despite being played across two characters, the story manages to send enough clues cross-character to weave together a fun narrative, with plenty of action and violence expected of the genre.

The combat in place is similar to past games, taking place in small areas walled off by onlookers, where enemy groups of varying size can be attacked. Combos of attacks can be grouped to knock down enemies, building up secondary resources to do more spectacular (and powerful) attacks. From a high level it’s fairly simple, but different variations of button holds, character placement, environmental interactions, and most importantly, multiple fighting styles add a lot of depth. Of note, the fighting styles all feel fairly different, and bring advantages to different fights. Both characters have a fairly standard brawling style and legendary fighting style, but the real fun is in one of each character’s other styles.

Kiryu’s Beast mode allows for slow but heavy attacks in a wide range, as well as a number of wrestling-inspired finishers. More importantly, it also allows for automated grabbing of environmental objects to swing at enemies, including things like motorcycles. On Majima’s side, the real standout is Break mode. This uses a series of breakdancing moves to quickly and heavily take out large groups of enemies through effective AoE attack and dodge maneuvers. In general, I was able to switch to a mode that made sense for each fight, whether I needed to do heavy damage to individuals, or keep it safe while whittling down a large group.

On the story end, there’s not too many surprises here, but it’s definitely entertaining. The more surprising thing for me was the mix of the serious story with incredibly non-serious side missions. The side missions typically had similar gameplay, but the characters you meet during them were generally absurd, whether it’s Mr. Libido being unable to contain himself, helping out fake Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg make Thriller, or Kiryu mixing up visas and pizza when helping an immigrant, I could pretty much expect side missions to go straight for the absurd. Given the seriousness and level of chaos that most of the main story had, it meant I could use the side content as a way to unwind between places where I knew I could get into big fights. This is backed by a surprisingly entertaining set of real estate content for each character to add even more depth to the things to do on the side; Kiryu runs a full real estate company and Majima runs a cabaret club.

Totally not Spielberg stares into your soul.

If there was anything I would directly point to as a severe negative here, it’s that at a number of points the story missions simply don’t tell you what to do. You’d be given a vague goal (find somewhere to hide!), with no map marker, and no obvious place to go, and be forced to wander around until you hit the magic trigger. More often than not these places would be triggered in areas where you had no NPC contacts, no reason to be in the area, and would never revisit the place for any other reason. While filling gap time between story missions doing side content allowed me to accidentally wander into these from time to time, I was still forced to effectively blanket the map covering all roads until I found the specific spot. Any sort of minimizing of the vague nature of these would have been a great help, but luckily these types of missions were the minority in place.

Overall though, Yakuza 0 was a ton of fun to play. The combat was solid, the story was enjoyable, and the side content had a lot of flat laugh out loud moments. If you’re wanting to play a Japanese GTA, this is not the right game, but if you’re looking to rekindle memories of playing Shenmue, this is a great place to start.