Category: Action

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Game Ramblings #170 – Islets

More Info from Armor Games Studios

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

There’s a lot of solid Metroidvanias out there, but there’s very few that I think get into the same neighborhood as a 2D Metroid title. The difference between ones that are simply alright and ones that really make that reach are never in the core mechanics, but in the little details. Islets is one that gets the little things right, and because of that it’s a fantastic title.

The core of a Metroidvania isn’t really that difficult to envision. You’ve basically got a game that encourages you to re-explore areas as you gain new abilities, have some fun combat segments, and really push some fun boss fights. Where games in the genre typically stumble for me is that they’ll focus on one of those sections and ignore the rest. Maybe their boss fights are fun, but it’s a slog traversing the environment. Maybe there’s too many enemies in the overworld, so it feels like you’re constantly slowed down. Islets is a game that manages to strike a balance that worked for me in how it handles all its details. There’s a few key points I wanted to focus on and they all tie into how well the game really gets some small things right that end up benefiting the whole.

The first one is that upgrades almost universally enhance traversal as a priority rather than combat. That may sound like the game is focusing on traversal over combat, but it’s not. A double jump opens up a bunch of opportunities for traversal, allowing you to clear larger gaps or taller walls. It also allows you to simply avoid easier enemies. However, what it also does is opens up a new dodge opportunity that is heavily used for boss fights. The same could be said for things like wall run or a ground pound. It obviously opens up opportunities that make traversal faster and more fun while opening up new paths. However, it also opens up new avoidance and offensive capabilities, which enhance the combat. Rather than focusing purely on weapon upgrades, they’re adding capabilities for your total toolset, which enhances the entire game, making the entire experience better for it.

That’s not to say that all upgrades are purely tied to traversal. In fact, there’s a lot of upgrades that are purely combat focused but are more power curve enhancements instead of toolset enhancements. They may be increased HP, more arrows to fire, passive reflect damage when the player takes damage, etc. What they all generally have in common though is that they are enhancing rather than changing your move set. This leads to a situation where reinforcement of new mechanics happens all the time through traversal-focused ones, rather than getting a combat upgrade that you don’t use for a while and forget about. It’s a nice way to maintain a power curve without it being overcomplicated.

They also aren’t shy about giving you temporary mechanics purely themed around the environment. One rainy section of the game gives you an umbrella that opens up gliding mechanic, paving the way for a temporary set of puzzles only in that section. One area has a bunch of moving platforms that have you dodging through spiky obstacles that only exist in that one area, which gives the traversal in the section a deliberately slower and more strategic pace. A section around the midpoint of the game has teleportation volumes, seemingly just for the sake of making a cool section of the game. These types of small-section one off mechanics really break up the monotony of traversal by making the player change how they’re going about things just enough without breaking the core of what’s there.

It also helps that there are entire sections of the game that take place in a twin-stick style shoot em up. These come up as you travel between the game’s core island sections and effectively end up acting as a nice breather. Mechanically each one has a bit of typical 2D projectile avoidance and usually some core mechanic you have to deal with (ex: a boss focused on boomerangs, or a boss focused on grappling themselves across the arena). They aren’t necessarily difficult and they aren’t overly common, but they’re there just enough to be a change of pace battle before you get going back into platforming.

Difficulty is another one of those areas where I think they really played a nice balance. This game wasn’t one where I was immune from death, and I think for the most part I died to most of the bosses at least a couple times while I was learning mechanics. However, there were a couple things that really worked out well for me in that regard.

One of the keys was that death never felt like progress loss. It was simply a return back to the last save point. This is completely opposite of a game like Hollow Knight, where I felt like death runs were such a negative deterrence that I never wanted to take risks. Here, I didn’t mind it. Save points felt like they were spread out enough to encourage the challenge, but not too far as to be a slog. It was helped by the fact that any sub-boss fights never came back once completed, so if you got through a couple of them then died, you didn’t have to redo them. The frequency of combat along traversal was also low enough that it didn’t feel like I was constantly in combat, but instead being in combat in a way that made sense based on the particular room I happened to be in.

It was also incredibly helpful that every major boss fight had a save point immediately before the boss. This let the boss be challenging on its own, rather than being a challenge because of what you had to do to approach it. Each boss definitely had its set of mechanics that had to be learned, so being in a place where I could learn the mechanics and immediately be back in a fight if I died was an incredibly good way to quickly positively reinforce the learning, rather than having to spend a bunch of time between attempts doing a run back after death.

Ultimately this is just a very well made Metroidvania. It seems to understand what the genre should be for a lot of people. It plays a good balance between encouraging exploration and traversal, while still having a core combat base. It has enough difficulty to be challenging, but isn’t overbearing in negatively impacting the player. And frankly, it’s just fun to look at. This is an entry in the genre that is simply worth playing.

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Game Ramblings #163 – Trigger Witch

More Info from Rainbite

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Windows

This is one of those rare situations where two types of games mixed together actually works out. The best way I can describe this is Link to the Past if it was a twin-stick shooter. At face value it doesn’t make much sense, but when you add in multiple weapons with upgrade paths you get enough of a power curve that it really fits into what you’d expect out of a Zelda style game.

It’s not too difficult to write this off as just a violent twin-stick shooter given the above video and that isn’t necessarily inaccurate. If you ignore the sort of story/meta game aspects of this, that is certainly a lot of it. The core twin-stick aspects are done really well. The guns are varied enough that you can find a set of weapons that both feel good to the pace of gameplay you want but still fit a bunch of different situations. Movement is tight in a way that you don’t often feel cornered while still giving you a get out of trouble dodge that you can use in tough situations. Basically, on its own the game probably would have been fun enough.

It’s where it starts to lean into its ARPG roots where it really starts to shine though. It’s not necessarily that it’s Zelda and full of items and stuff, but it brings in the things that make total sense within the gameplay at play here. The main overworld is definitely there, and that plays into the overall metagame. Besides getting cash from killing things, you’ve got weapon upgrades hidden all over the world that really encourage exploration. Those weapon upgrades then take cash to apply, which gets you into the main meta upgrade loop that worked so well in Zelda. There’s always a reason to be out killing things, so it never feels like wasted time even when you’re retraversing.

The dungeon loop is also the same, which is to say that it’s not really original but it’s still pretty fun. You still get keys, you still get a dungeon map, you still have some light puzzles, you still end the dungeon in a boss fight. Where they do kind of bend to something unique at least to this type of game is that the dungeons generally also have some kind of flying broom segment, where rather than being a twin-stick shooter you’re playing a vertical scrolling shooter. Again, it’s not necessarily that it’s unique on its own, but it brings an unusual little change to the gameplay to keep it fresh as you’re getting through things.

This is just one of those indie games that hits the right positive notes. It’s not that it’s incredibly unique, but it blends a few genres in a way that feels interesting without needing to push too many boundaries. It’s fast moving, tight to control, and doesn’t take itself seriously (….I mean come on, Mecha Stalin.). It’s super easy to just jump in and enjoy without really worrying too much about fussy mechanics, and after some of the longer games I’ve been playing recently it felt like just what I needed.

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Game Ramblings #158 – Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

More Info from Star Wars

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, Switch, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series

It’s been a bit since my last ramblings. I decided to do carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists at once, as one does. What that does is makes videogames surprisingly not very fun to play. When I was figuring out what I wanted to play first after getting my sutures out, this one was sitting there ready to go. It feels like it’s been forever since The Force Awakens, but the full 9 episode saga is here and it’s a lot of fun.

The Lego games have always just kind of been collectathons, but it surprised me how much this felt like a complete game, and not just a Legoified version of the movies like a lot of past games. There were some pretty obvious changes to the core combat mechanics as well as a much better expansion to the metagame between story segments that really made the whole thing work.

The biggest obvious change is that there’s ranged weapons everywhere! You’ve got blasters of every flavor, bows of all sorts, you can chuck your light saber like a whooshing boomerang. However, unlike The Force Awakens, which sometimes had ranged weapons but clumsy aiming due to the fixed camera angle, we’re now seeing a full third-person game. You’ve got all your typical trappings of shooters, such as ADS on the left trigger and full camera manipulation on the right stick. In doing this change, the game now feels like a modern title along the lines of something like a simple Ratchet & Clank, rather than a sort of clumsy Lego-themed isometric platformer.

The metagame is also just a lot more free flowing in a way that encourages the use of the typical large character roster of the series. You’ll jump between segments of free roam where you can use any purchased characters and segments of story where you’re restricted to relevant characters. In allowing the free roam segments, the game is doing a great job of slowing down the pace of the game in a way that is still fun. Where a typical Lego Star Wars title was around 10 hours, this one is about 20. While that is much longer, it now covers all nine movies instead of just a handful, so the pace slowing down is definitely necessary.

What you end up doing is completing a specific story segment, then being unleashed into what is essentially a movie-themed playground. Scattered around are all sorts of miscellaneous rewards, so it becomes a game of finding out how to get them all. Some spots are simply puzzles of choosing the right person to get to the glowing spot. Some of them are mini races or combat segments for a reward. Some of them are side quests where you interact with characters from the movies in fun ways in order to unlock them for play. However, the important thing is that it’s varied and quick to do. You’ll spend a few minutes per-reward, then move on to the next thing. It keeps things fresh so you aren’t stuck in one spot for long periods of time, but also provides a nice change from the purely linear story segments that you’re doing the rest of the time.

It’s also worth a mention that space combat is another one of the things that acts as a nice pace change. Some of the areas are Star-Fox inspired – such as the Death Star trench run – and some of the areas are distinctly open flight. Mechanically these are definitely simple. You’re basically firing a relatively large angle auto aim machine gun or firing a very generously homing proton torpedo. However, in all cases it’s another place I can point at where the segments are used as a way to breakup the pace of the game and keep the overall flow fresh.

Ultimately that’s the biggest thing about this title that I could point at as an improvement over past entries. You’re running through a bunch of story very quickly to cover nine movies, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming or boring at any point. Because the specifics of what you’re doing change so much, you don’t really have time to become bored with any specific type of gameplay. You kind of do one type of gameplay for a few minutes in a story mission, then go into free roam, then go into another story mission with completely different gameplay, then back to free roam. Because everything has some currency being given that allow you to get more stuff, it also never feels like you’re doing something unrewarding.

If you’re a fan of past Lego titles this is an easy recommendation. If you’re a fan of Star Wars this is an easy recommendation. However, more than that this feels like a much easier recommendation to the general game audience. This is a much more complete game than past titles. Rather than being a game that leans on its IP to be good, this feels like a generally good game that is instead boosted by its use of the IP. While the reports of severe development problems put a bit of a black eye on things, this game is showing a bit of hope that the Traveller’s Tales Lego series can be a bit thing again going forward.