Category: Adventure

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Game Ramblings #225 – Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

More Info from TT Games

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Xbox Series, PC, Switch 2

If Lego Skywalker Saga felt like a big leap forward for the series, I would now consider it a trial run. Lego Batman has completely removed a lot of the old grind of the Lego games and now feels like something that can stand on its own separate from the cute visuals. Given the abandonment of the Arkham series, this is probably the best continuation of that type of game I could have otherwise hoped for.

There are things where this feels like a clever blend of Lego and Arkham, but because of that this definitely feels less like a Lego game than in the past. The first spot that really hits is in characters. Past Lego games have had lineups of literally hundreds of characters that share specializations, allowing you to kind of mix and match. That is now gone. You have a core set of characters that you unlock from the hero side of Batman IP and that’s it. The gameplay that you get out of them is still core Lego. For example, Batman has his batarangs, Batgirl can hack things, Robin/Nightwing can connect things together to pull obstacles or build bridges, but it’s purposeful and not just collecting.

The combat is also much improved here. It’s not that it’s necessarily full action game, but it’s deep enough to be sufficient and fun. For the most part combat is core punching, but you have counters and dodging timed by visual cues to give it a little more flair. You have your traversal skills and items that can also be used in combat. An example would be Catwoman’s whip being used to spin screws out of doors to open the way, but in combat can be used to spin enemies in circles causing them to be stunned or pinball off other enemies.

The fact that the game takes place in a single open world area instead of tailored levels is also fairly new within the Lego gameplay, but it works well. Skywalker started leaning in that direction, with sort of core hub levels. However, it was still distinct areas for each movie that weren’t that far off of what existed in past Lego games. Batman is just Gotham, and it’s the same Gotham for the entire game even though it’s a blend of various bits of a bunch of the films all packed together. Story segments go into specific tailored levels but they feel appropriate and still living within the open world that you’re presented with.

This is all tied together with the open world having very Arkham-style activities to do. There’s your general crime fighting with random events popping up where you can take out bad guys. There’s generally collectable things to get in true Lego game fashion. However, the real meat of the activities are tied into things like story content for Killer Croc or an entire set of puzzle activities tied to Riddler or street racing and combat AR trials created by Lucius Fox. It makes it feel much more grounded in traditional open world territory than in pure Lego game territory.

However, this being a Lego game does mean that it knows to not take itself more seriously. The writing of the game is way more in line with 1960s Batman than Christian Bale Batman, and that is a really fun setup against the backdrop of the movie plot points. Mr. Freeze may be threatening to freeze the entire city, but when Batman gets disabled in the fight it’s because he gets turned into a Lego brick made of ice. Enemies don’t die but get blasted into the brick parts of their minifigs. Large enemies aren’t just buff, but instead are comically larger than Batman and are defeated by things like clapping cymbals on their head or trapping their head in a net. Catwoman doesn’t just cut a circle out of glass when she’s robbing places, she’s cutting a perfect 8×8 circle plate Lego out. There’s just a constant barrage of these little details all over the place that the TT Games team have built up as expected behavior in Lego games that work so well because it’s simultaneously the opposite of the more serious side of Batman while also just working perfectly against the slapstick nature of its past.

But it ultimately comes back to the love of the IP. All of the expected baddies are here so it isn’t surprising, but it is fun and it makes it clear that this is a game for Batman fans by Batman fans. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to call this game a game of the year candidate, but it certainly is making a good push at it. It is distinctly enough of a Lego game where most systems are not fully fleshes out in a way typical of a AAA game, but there’s nothing there that stands out to me as bad. What it ended up being the entire time was just fun, and it’s fun in the same way that the Lego games always have been but turned way more seriously. It’s clear that TT Games’ pace of output was pulled way back for Skywalker Saga and that certainly was a risk for them, but that game and Lego Batman have both shown that they can grow the fun and silliness of Lego in ways that push it into more traditional games without losing what brought me to play them in the first place.

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Game Ramblings #221 – Minishoot Adventures

  • Genre: Action/Adventure, Metroidvania
  • Platform: PC
  • Also Available On: PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2

Frankly I just needed a break from Pokopia and the new Warcraft expansion and this one was the winner. I’d seen it popping up a lot on social media as something that may be a hidden game of the year with its console releases, so it seemed like I shoudl at least give it a shot. Social media was absolutely right here.

I know that the genres up there and the screenshot don’t make any sense together. Just go with it. This is Link to the Past if Zelda was a twin stick shooter. It jumps back and forth between overworld and dungeon segments like that. Where it gets the Metroidvania aspect is that the upgrades are generally more tuned toward things that aid in traversal that allow you to go back through areas you’ve visited prior for more content in a way that feels more involved than was typical of 2D Zelda.

As an example, early on it becomes pretty obvious that you’re limited by things like gaps and water, both of which are blockers for the player traversal. The first few dungeons give you upgrades straight in this progression. First you get a basic boost to move faster, which you can use to clear gaps with ramps. You then earn a jumpy/teleporty/dodgy maneuver to clear gaps on your own. You then get an upgrade to allow you to hover on water. These are all things that are earned by completing dungeons, but unlike Zelda these aren’t things that you use to complete a dungeon. Frankly, the bosses are all generally able to be defeated without them – although dodging through bullets or using speed boost to get to weak points quicker is certainly recommended. However, the upgrades have their biggest impact in the overworld. Even the biggest direct offense upgrade – a charge-based overpowered set of bullets – is used more to break down walls than really push combat. It’s that use of upgrades as overworld capabilities that makes this feel more directly Metroid than I was expecting.

But none of that would matter if the combat wasn’t fun and that does keeps me drawn in. The combat is constantly fun to engage with. Overworld combat is quick and aggressive with enemies coming from all over as you’re running through the world between dungeons and small little reward areas. Stuff will pop in and come in from off screen, making you stay on your toes. Dungeons have much more controlled room-based segments where waves with specific patterns come in. Some force you to move around in ways to avoid bullet waves, some to avoid enemies charging you, some to force you to kill things fast or be overwhelmed. Bosses then lean full in to the bullet hell where it often becomes less important to quickly kill the boss, and more important to avoid damage as first priority. I could disconnect the Zelda/Metroidvania metagame aspects and this game would still be good and still be engaging to run through as just a straight boss sequence (…which they let you do in the post game!).

However, it all felt fair. I usually enjoy bullet hell style games in pretty small bursts because they are usually exhausting. I finished this one in two seatings. I died a few times here and there, but checkpoints were common so I wasn’t necessarily losing a bunch of progress. Health during fights helps give some padding when I simply couldn’t avoid everything, and health drops were common enough (and could be upgraded to be more common!) to allow dungeon wave fights to feel pretty isolated from each other in a way that allowed them to individually be harder, knowing I would come out the other side with enough drops to be near full again. This is perhaps where the game felt the most Zelda to me in a way where difficulty came out of individual challenges, and not in stringing together a long sequence of simply avoiding damage.

I suppose pleasant surprise is the best way to describe this for me, but frankly it was the breath of fresh air I needed. Pokopia is a ton of fun, but it’s specific and detailed and slow in a way that I kind of jump in and out of it. World of Warcraft is fresh from a new expansion pack but is a game I’ve been playing for near 20 years and something I need to disengage from after a couple hours of play. This fit right in the gap for me. It was fast and exciting and interesting and fair and low friction while still being challenging. It was the break I needed.

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Shelved It #22 – Spirit of the North 2

More Info from Infuse Studio

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Steam, Xbox Series

I so badly wanted to like this game more than I did. The first game is a perfect example to me of a sit and chill game. It had some puzzles along the way, but it was largely just a relaxing walking simulator that looked fantastic. This one made some major leaps in its iterative choices – it’s open world, it’s got a lot more lore to discover, a much longer length, and it even has some combat. The problem for me was that by and large the iteration just did not hit.

The first obvious change is the move to an open world. For the most part this didn’t really change how I approached the game that much since linearly wandering and completing puzzles doesn’t feel that different to me than aimlessly wandering and completing puzzles. However, there’s a few things that snuck in to compensate this design that really dragged the experience down for me, both of which are tied to needing to find things in the environment.

One of these was the collecting of soul wisps. These are dotted around the environment or purchaseable via shops and are used for other things. In some cases, it’s things like ancient trees for skill points or for unlocking gates to get into other puzzles. The problem I had with them is that they are not marked at all on maps like the puzzle areas are, so finding them is either luck of walking past them or a need to wander in a very precise manner to cover the whole area. This is compounded by your ability to carry a fairly limited stock of them (I was up to 7 by the time I shelved) so you could easily cap them out and not really be in a position to remember where new ones are to pick up later when you need them. It ends up being an incredibly tedious system where to really be smart with it, it made sense to immediately just go wander around dumping them into things when you cap out instead of taking the game at your own pace.

There’s also a number of situations where you have to carry things to specific places, and that almost always feels like a drag. Sometimes it’s a need to find a torch to light a thing to let you into a puzzle area. This requires you to a) find a torch, b) light the torch, then c) walk to the spot to use it. Sometimes this is crucial story items at the end of puzzles that you then have to carry to some temple and place down. Until you do that (often a pretty significant walk) you also can’t really pick up other things without the risk of losing the key item, so you can’t even always complete other puzzles along the way. In these cases it just feels like the game is dragging you down to slow the pace in a negative way. This is compounded by the lack of fast travel potential. The handful of portals and the ability to fast travel to your last den are not really sufficient given the scale of the environment.

What this really results in is that the game feels open world for the sake of open world with a lot of the design decisions compounding negative feedback for the player experience walking around completing puzzles. Compared against what was essentially really enjoyable linear wandering in the first game, it feels like a big step backwards.

The new boss combat also feels like an unintentional misstep. Where boss fights feel like a good idea on the surface to get a bit more of an action tie-in to the story, these fights end up feeling slow and unforgiving.

The screenshot above is an encounter where you have to avoid attacks while tethered to the center of the arena for 30-45 seconds before spirit walking to the pillars in the background to activate them. This fight had a few problems. One was practical – some attack tells were simply below the visuals of the arena making it impossible to see them. Another was balance – I could avoid getting hit for most of a phase, but then get hit once (see previous problem…) and I could easily be juggled from 100-0 health being bounced between attacks without an ability to get out of them. It never felt fun and finishing the fight was a relief instead of a triumph.

The last boss fight I did before shelving this was a set of two wolves. Each had their own attacks, but it was basically a very slow progression of them choosing a bite attack that I had to dodge, then a secondary attack that was a bit more randomized. Finally, they would move to a phase where they shot out rings of fire after which I could attack them. This was a case where I was able to again get through the fight completely unphased at full health, but a mistake in the last hit of the last phase of the fight meant that one of the wolves got its bite attack (which locked me in place) while the second wolf activated a fire beam (which I couldn’t avoid) and got knocked from 100-0 health without a chance to do anything.

As a developer this feels like a classic case of the team not compensating for their own skill at playing the game. Once you do a fight 5…10…100 times in development the fights become second nature to the point where it’s easy to forget what the experience will be like for a player getting to it for the first time. These are all cases of that for me. Stun locks are not fun. Being juggled without invulnerability after being hit is not fun. Randomized attacks that can flood the entire arena and sometimes just not allow dodging are not fun. However, these are things that are easy to miss when the fights are muscle memory, and that’s what it feels like happened here.

At its core this game didn’t really lose what made the first game enjoyable. The wandering and puzzle solving and beautiful visuals are all there. The problem I ultimately had was that that new things never felt like they stood up to the original game, so the experience kept feeling dragged down by them. The new things to support open world gameplay weren’t fun. The scale of wandering between things with nothing to do wasn’t fun. The boss combat, despite being well tied into the story, was not fun. It kind of just feels like a step to far for the series, where maybe a third title could have ultimately ended up here with a bit more of an iterative step in between.