Category: Platformer

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Game Ramblings #219 – Yooka-Replaylee

More Info from Playtonic Games

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox Series, Switch 2

There’s a quote often misattributed to Shigeru Miyamoto that goes something along the lines of a delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever. This game is an example of why that quote exists in the first place. I didn’t particularly like the original Yooka-Laylee release, but this one was easy for me to sit down and just play. It was a huge transformation.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I couldn’t really point at many specific things that were improved. If I’m looking at the things in my other ramblings, I can definitely get a sense of where iteration occurred. I didn’t noticeably have problems with the camera this go around – it largely just worked and didn’t get in the way. I didn’t have problems with the writing, and frankly it felt minimally present compared to my recollection of the original. I didn’t have problems with odd mechanics in boss fights – they generally felt obvious and appropriately challenging, but without some of the oddities I saw in the original game.

I didn’t really have problems with how many pages were supposed to be collected or it feeling overboard. The pages that were there generally felt attached to some objective or getting to the end of a specific puzzle/platforming segment instead of simply being there. This one alone was surprising because there are double the page count from before, making this more in tune with how Mario Odyssey was handled. If I were to guess at what actually changed here for me is that the total sum of improvements elsewhere just made the experience of existing in the world more fun, so collecting more stuff happened naturally while I was having fun.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is that all of these things are signs of iteration done right. Every part of the original game has clearly seen some amount of work done to it to improve it from the original launch. Going back to the original quote, these were all things that felt bad and rushed that now are simply good, and when things are simply good they are out of the way of my interaction with them. What I was left with then is a game that was simply easy to play.

That said, there are two very specific things that I can point at that I know improved things. World expansion is gone and all platforming moves are unlocked from the start. These changes allow for open exploration from the start, removing what was a hugely frustrating progression blocker in the original. The original game was very obviously not meant to be a Metroidvania, so running into progression blockers was never a fun thing. Seeing a grapple point in the original without having the grapple power was a signal that I was going to have to come back later. Having to choose whether to expand the current world you are in or unlock another world was a sign that I was just going to have to do both anyway.

A lot of what ended up happening with these two changes is that the game just got rid of friction. I could certainly see arguments about games needing some friction to push players forward, and I largely agree. However, I also absolutely hate manufactured friction. In a 3D exploration platformer, both of those felt like manufactured friction. They both restricted the player from exploring in a way that felt negative in the genre. Not having explosives to take out specific doors feels appropriate in a Metroidvania where you’re starting from nothing and slowly building up your arsenal. Not having a grapple in a game where you play as a lizard with a very clearly extendable tongue that will be used for grapple felt out of place. Retraversing an area with new abilities to find more stuff feels appropriate in a Metroidvania. Unlocking an entire section of the world via magic pagies to find more stuff felt out of place.

This is probably as close to the game they intended to make as possible. Sure, it’s very clearly the culmination of a lot of effort on their part. However, it’s also the culmination of a lot of feedback. The changes made here are obviously targeted at things that reviewers and players of the original did not enjoy. They are changes clearly targeted at making the game better to play, easier to get through, and reduce negative friction for the player. This is now a game that should be celebrated for what it is, rather than a game that is negatively compared against the past. This is an example of the delayed game will eventually be good, even if there’s a slightly asterisk of it having been released once before.

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Game Ramblings #210 – Donkey Kong Bananza

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch 2

What a treat.

I know I’m a bit late on this one, but I finally got a Switch 2 so I had to hop on this immediately. As more information was revealed it became clear that this wasn’t just a Donkey Kong title, but instead a prequel to and continuation of the ideas originating in Super Mario Odyssey. In practice, it absolutely feels like that, but given some iteration to really solidify the core meta loop that solved a lot of what I felt was unnecessary grinding in the original.

I enjoyed the hell out of Super Mario Odyssey but I didn’t really enjoy that everything was so heavily gated to collecting large amounts of inconsequential moons all over the place. I simply don’t play games to that level of care for completion anymore. Going into this I dreaded having to find 40 shines hidden in spots for the hell of it to get to the next area. Lucky for me, that is all gone. There is now such an obvious distinction between main path collecting needs and collecting for the sake of it. The main path has goal locations and you happen to collect things between those locations, and maybe the main location has a goal to collect a specific banana or a piece of a record during it, but they are goals and you beeline straight to them and you move on with your life, and if you happen to collect things on the way then that’s generally fun and cool. What I’m not doing is what felt like grinding out a counter to move on.

And I’m very serious about beelining. The fundamental mechanic that the game is built around is the ability to just dig through the environment and make your own path. That is generally what solved my collection dislikes about Odyssey. In this case, most things that you can collect have a clever solution and a chaotic solution. There’s tons of clues all over the place about places to explore – changes in the ground texture showing possible caves, people standing around talking about the possible location of bananas, suspiciously placed objects that seem like they can only hide something. If you’re paying attention you will simply find a lot of things, and that isn’t different from how it worked in Odyssey.

However, there is now also the dumb ape solution. Your goal is 300m in a direction and there’s a town, cliff wall, and a bunch of people in your way? Punch in a straight line! I cannot tell you how many times I would be bashing my way through a cliff only to find that I ended up in a cave that done “correctly” would have required me to search out something like an explosive to blast through a metal wall blocking entrance to the cave. In those cases, being a dumb ape going “lol punch everything” got me a faster reward than playing correctly, and I loved the fact that game is literally built to allow this style of gameplay.

That’s not to say that some things didn’t require me to actually pay attention, because there are certainly core story segments that do require some care. Bosses generally required me to pay attention to specific mechanics and execute them well. Story-specific bananas generally required me to execute mechanics well. Optional challenge rooms (of which there are a lot) generally required me to carefully get through them. However, the balance of gameplay felt a lot more tuned to where I am in life now. There are a lot of moments where I can just shut off my brain, be a dumb ape punching things, and have fun. I can then save those moments of paying attention for specific times where the situation required it. If I compare this to my memory of Mario Odyssey, I feel like I had more relaxed downtime and better specific periods of excitement in a way that struck a better balance for post-work post-kids bed time sitting in a chair and playing.

The weird thing to me is that that change in how I was playing the game changed what to me was a negative about Odyssey – the sheer amount of collection – into something that I largely think is a positive here. Where in Odyssey I felt like I had to collect a lot of things, here I simply happened to collect a lot of things. Where in Odyssey I felt like I had to weave around and explore everything to collect what I needed, here I collected enough simply being a dumb ape and barreling through the environment. Ultimately the change is that instead of feeling forced to explore, I simply was exploring for the fun of it.

This is very much a classic Nintendo first party title. It’s relatively easy in the mainline path, has plenty of challenge when you go off of that, and concludes in a place that left me wanting more. They took what was already a solid foundation and passed it through iteration of core mechanics and adaptation to another part of the Mario IP. What came out of that is a game that is surprising in how well it worked and is almost certainly going to be seen as a much higher point than Donkey Kong 64 in terms of pulling this part of the universe into 3D. I don’t know if I could recommend buying an entire new console to play this game, but if you’re going to buy a Switch 2 anyway this is where you should absolutely start.

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Game Ramblings #209 – Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution

More Info from WayForward

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: GBA
  • Also Available On: Switch, PS4, PS5, Steam

It’s interesting playing a new GBA game that clearly benefits from lessons learned over 20 years of making games. While this is an “old” game revisited and completed it’s clearly been given a modern touch. This is simply a great game on GBA rather than a great GBA game and that modern feeling is surprising, even knowing how good this series has been.

Looking at this purely from a Shantae perspective, this leans a lot more toward the level focused gameplay of older titles than that of Seven Sirens but that makes a lot of sense. This was supposed to fall in between the original and Risky’s Revenge. It certainly has some Metroidvania elements like hidden treasures, upgrades, and small segments of paths that require revisiting areas. However, the focus is on core platforming gameplay and it is smooth.

The thing that I often find difficult about going back to a lot of older games is that they dealt with a lot of platform restrictions via brute force, and that often meant that there is jank or slowness built into the experience. You’ll sometimes see if with weird air control or slow movement in platforming gameplay. You’ll see it in slow usability of menus. You’ll see it in extreme levels of not explaining what the player should at least be trying to do. None of that is present here.

It’s a series of really small things, but movement here feels modern. In regular platforming movement is really fast. Normally I would expect that the limited screen space of the GBA would be a hazard here, but this is paired with what is really one of the best visual styles of any game I’ve played on the platform. Importantly, the thing that makes it work is that distinguishing enemies from the background at a glance is immediate so you don’t have to slow down to avoid danger. You run quickly, dispatch enemies quickly, and move on. This is paired with the movement being similarly smooth in transformations – climbing on spider webs is super agile, flying as a harpy is fast, wrecklessly dashing as an elephant removes a lot of danger – so that no matter what movement you’re in you just kind of intuitively go at it.

This bunch of little things also goes straight into overall UX. Transformations are linked to B+<something> combos and are super snappy, so you can switch to the right transformation quickly. Switching between magic types is fast and quick to use despite the overall lack of button options. There’s a whole upgrade path that you can steer your play time through, but they’re all obvious in terms of their use – some are power curve upgrades while some are simply ease of use, such as a purchaseable money multiplier. Talking to characters in the world is the primary way of getting clues about what to do, so it’s both not hand holding but also not vague. If you want to simply explore you can, but you can also be given instructions if you choose to dig for it. The primary meta game mechanic involves changing the background and foreground layers and moving between them, and that again is super fast but flashy enough to be impressive every time. Basically, it all feels like something that would be incredibly in-place in a modern retro-styled title, but as something played on GBA hardware is even more impressive.

That’s not to say that this is an all timer or anything though. While the original Shantae was unbelievably good for its time and this released 20 years ago would have been up there, we’ve seen a lot of progress since then. Where this falls is somewhere along the lines of really good game that is elevated by nostalgia and the reality of the platform it’s on, but on modern platforms it’s probably more of a curiosity for fans of the series. It doesn’t really do anything new or interesting now so separate from the story of its development delays and original cancellation it doesn’t necessarily stand out from the crowd.

But boy could I think of games that are far worse.