Category: Adventure

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Game Ramblings #108 – Control

More Info from Remedy Entertainment

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

So, this is a really fun game. Admittedly, I was a big fan of Max Payne and Alan Wake, so it’s not overly surprising that I also enjoy this entry from the team. Admittedly I’m also forgiving some warts in the experience, particularly in the gun play that is generally not that good. However, it’s got such a great setting, such great use of telekinesis, and such fun puzzle solving that I really didn’t care about the smaller problems at play.

Ultimately, this is a game of powers. There’s a bunch that you gain throughout the game, but there’s really two that I want to focus on – launch and seize. These two were the core of how I really built out my personal combat focus in the game.

Seize is simply the ability to take control of an enemy, and have them fight for you. You drop them down to low health and take over, and suddenly you’ve got some helper NPCs at play. This was the first part of my combat plans – distraction. Taking a few weak enemies, having them turn on their allies, and even get in some damage here and there was a good way to take the heat off of me. It provided opportunities for me to move and flank, and find better locations to take out the rest of the group. If I wanted to be aggressive, it provided ways for me to remove some damage and really go in for the kill.

Launch on the other hand does exactly what it sounds like, it launches shit at targets. You can basically pull chunks out of every floor, ceiling, and wall, and use them as built-in ammunition. Later on you can also start launching enemy missiles back at them. Because of this, there’s an endless amount of ammunition in the world, as long as you have energy remaining to use your powers.

Together, these two powers were the core of my encounter focus. I would start an encounter by finding a weak enemy or two, and take them out with either my gun or the Launch power. Once they were able to be Seized, I would do so. With that distraction in place, I could then reposition myself or move in for quick kills with subsequent launches. This all felt extremely good. Launch in particular has really wide aim assists, but also pretty inaccurate throwing, so in general it just causes hilarious chaos with pretty fair average damage.

The powers working well was great, because ultimately I didn’t find the gunplay all that good. It basically felt functional to me, but not overwhelming in quality. The guns had enough variety – you have your pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc. However, they don’t really feel that impactful in either their damage output or in their visual feedback. From a controller standpoint, their aim assists don’t really feel up to the modern expectations of something like Halo or Destiny. They kind of exist, and I made use of them, but I far preferred using powers as my main damage source, unless absolutely necessary.

End of the day, it was the setting that really kept me going. This is very much a story in the vein of Alan Wake, and some of the lore ties into it. The tl;dr is that you’re playing the head of what is basically a paranormal FBI, and are tasked with clearing out an extradimensional invasion that has warped the entire department. Some of the key points are presented in cutscenes, but a lot of it is presented in really well done passive content.

Some of that is things like audio recordings or projected videos that you can’t help seeing. However, a lot of it is stuff that as a player you have to actually search for, and that kind of thing is always a huge plus for me. I can really dig into games that have hidden lore, and this has literally hundreds of files to find. You’ll find folders and crates and tape decks all over the game filled with lore entries. Some of it is essential to expanding your knowledge of the game setting. Some of it is department bickering via memos. Some of it is history books telling of past paranormal events throughout the world, including the one from Alan Wake itself. It’s this kind of scattering of information that really drives me to explore, and it was all written in an extremely high quality fashion to really get me wanting more.

That pace change between combat sections and exploring is so typical of the genre, but it feels so much better crafted here. The entire setting being in a warped building caused by a paranormal event allows so much flexibility in building environments that are simply built to be fun to play in. Where turning corners in Uncharted leads to obvious combat rooms, this feels extremely organic, partly because weird shaped rooms are the norm but also because the rooms can warp back to a normal shape once combat is complete. Where Gears of War hides their dog tags around in corners just to give a reason to explore, this game has lore entries scattered around on desks and cabinets because this is an office building and of course they would be there. Where Halo has to keep inventing bigger baddies to elevate the sense of danger, this can simply throw a refrigerator at you with some demonic presence and not care that it’s ludicrous. It’s not that they’re doing anything particularly new here, but their setting being slightly off kilter allows so much flexibility for them to take the genre norms and get rid of that little bit that makes them feel so unnatural in other games, but completely expected here.

This game was a real surprise to me, and I guess in hindsight I’m surprised that it was a surprise. I’ve always liked Remedy’s work, and while I tend to gravitate towards RPGs, I’ve always been a huge fan of this kind of 3rd person adventure. I think more than anything, it was kind of a game that just fell off my radar. I’d heard a few friends and a few coworkers continue to recommend it to me, so I kind of just bit the bullet and picked it up, and I couldn’t be happier. This is the type of game that I ended playing wanting more, and after a few bigger releases get cleared off my plate, I suspect the DLC for Control is now not too far off in my future plans.

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Game Ramblings #107 – GRIS

More Info from Nomada Studio

  • Genre: Adventure/Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Switch, Windows, macOS, iOS

I’m honestly not going to spend much time talking about the game itself here. Mechanically speaking, it’s a super tight and really well constructed game. It hits a nice mix of platforming precision and intelligent level design to make a really relaxing experience. It’s also phenomenally gorgeous, especially with some of the improvements done for 4k support on the PS4. As a core adventure experience, it’s worth playing for that alone.

What I am going to hit on is where my brain was going as I was playing this. There’s not that many games that I recommend based on me thinking about things outside of the game – really the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are titles like Journey, Hellblade, or Firewatch. However, this one really hit on two main things that were really personal to me, and honestly really unexpected.

One of the things that I’m always trying to find as a developer is a way to ship a game that has an impact on my players. I’ve spent a lot of time festering on my jobs thinking on how to achieve that, but never really knowing where that thought leads. I’ve been lucky enough to work on games like Rocket League or Smite or Killing Floor, which have clearly had large enough audiences to be considered impactful in some way, but to me I’ve had various levels of enjoyment out of actually having been involved in those.

I’ve always looked at some of the indie darlings and thought “hey, I can pull that off easily enough, maybe I should just do that.” However, playing GRIS has kind of solidified what I actually want out of development. GRIS is ultimately a game that I really loved playing, and has had a heavy impact on players, but in hindsight, making a game like it was never going to be interesting for me. Mechanically speaking, it’s super simple and isn’t something that really needs much in the way of programmer help to achieve the gameplay mechanics that it has. What it does in really special ways are the visuals and story telling, both things that I’m not at all interested in from a development perspective.

The things that I’ve always gotten the most enjoyment out of from a development perspective have been the crazy mechanics that I get to work on as a gameplay programmer. It’s things like working on an open world spawn system in Maneater, even if I don’t think the game is that good. It’s working on things like predator stealth for Medusa in Smite, even if that didn’t end up shipping. It’s things like working on Star Fox-style ship movement in Arc Squadron or FF Tactics-style combat in Smite Tactics because I love both of those inspirations, even if both of those games were complete bombs. Working on stuff like that is why I stay up at 3am in Visual Studio; not the end result of shipping something off to players.

Combining those mechanics I love working on with a title that has an impact on players is kind of the ultimate goal, and while I’ve been pushing in this direction with my thoughts, GRIS definitely helped solidify that I want to focus on the smaller picture over the bigger picture for the sake of my own happiness, and if something more comes out of that? Fantastic.

This bird….

From a high level, GRIS is a travel through the five stages of grief. The bird section of the game ends up falling between Anger and Bargaining as far as the game’s travels go. It also hit really close to home.

Everyone’s got their issues with depression or anxiety, and I’m no different in that regard. Everyone’s also got their own ways to manage and deal with it. In the past I generally dealt with it by bottling it up until I got stressed out and lash out.

Which is exactly what that bird does.

That whole pattern comes in waves. I’ve gotten a lot better as I’ve gotten older at recognizing when it’s starting with me, and I’ve gotten a lot better at finding ways to mitigate whatever stress is causing me issues. However, I’m not entirely there yet, and I don’t really think I’ll ever truly solve it. Coworkers will probably recognize this as “Dan being grumpy”, and while there’s some truth to that being the public-facing outcome, it’s deeper than that for me. At this point it’s something that I usually work myself out of pretty quick through some quiet time or taking a bit of time off. However, seeing it in game form was entirely jarring.

I shut the game off after the level and didn’t come back to it for a couple days. It’s not that I’m particularly going through a period of stress right now, but seeing something like that level wasn’t something I was really ready for. In this case, fixing a lego kit was a good distraction until I could get back to it, and really the rest of the game matched coming out of any one of those periods. However, it was an unexpected reminder that I’m not there yet.

So ya, go play GRIS. Maybe you’ll simply play it for the experience and be better off for the enjoyment. Maybe it’ll hit some note for you like it did for me, and you’ll get further meaning out of the experience. In either case, it’s something positive on the other end.

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Game Ramblings #96 – Luigi’s Mansion 3

More info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Switch

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is where the gameplay of the series has really come together for me. The original had clever mechanics, but was a bit rough around the edges, particularly with respect to the grind of catching a high health ghost. Dark Moon went a bit more mission-based and improved the mechanics a lot, but ended up feeling like a grind. This one feels like it’s finally hit a nice middle ground, and in doing so has probably finally proven that going a bit off-base with Luigi was a good call.

At its core, this one is still the Mansion gameplay that’s expected. You find ghosts, you zap them with your flashlight, and then you vacuum them up. That hasn’t really changed. However, there’s been a bunch of little additions that significantly improved the core experience. There’s a new sort of mini burst AoE move that can be used as a stun mechanic, and is occasionally used as a way to make certain ghosts able to be captured. There’s some good use of motion controls to make more precise vertical aiming much easier to pull off.

However, the most important change is the new slam attack. After having a ghost in the vacuum for a period of time (typically around 20 health), you can slam the ghost into the ground for 20 health damage. On its own this exists as a nice mechanic to more rapidly catch ghosts. However, it can also damage other ghosts, including ones that aren’t visible. This single added maneuver greatly increases the speed of capture in a general sense, eliminating a lot of grind. It also means that there are a lot of situations in which there are a TON of ghosts in the room, simply because there are now fun ways to clear a ton of ghosts all at once. It ends up being a huge boon to the fun of capturing ghosts that I wasn’t really expecting.

Despite this being listed as action/adventure, Luigi’s Mansion is really a puzzle game at heart, and there’s a bunch of cool new mechanics around that as well. The previously mentioned AoE burst can be used as a way to uncover hidden items. There’s also a new black light function of the flashlight that can cause hidden paths to appear. A plunger item has been added to the vacuum as a way to grab on and tear down blocked paths throughout the environment.

Again though, there’s one big important change that ties this all together – Gooigi. The hideous green goo clone of Luigi. At its core, this is simply a second Luigi, allowing for some interesting mechanics around two active vacuums (as well as a great built-in co-op mechanic). However, Gooigi can also slip through grates, fences, and more, allowing for the player to get to new areas that are simply blocked off to the more solidified Luigi body. In a lot of areas this plays heavily into the puzzle solving, with the player having to open paths and hold hatches for one or the other to traverse through the world. This also plays into a lot of the boss battles, where the player will be swapping heavily between the two to set traps for bosses that only one of the pair can get to at any time.

All of these tools together bring the puzzle element to a really high level, and it all works because of the changes to the overall game structure. While this is a “mansion” title, it takes place in a large hotel. Each floor has its own mini theme, and as long as you have the elevator button to the floor, you can go to it. In practice, this has a really fun cadence to completing the game – you get a floor button, go through and complete the core puzzle and boss sequence for the floor (typically around 30-40 minutes), then go on and explore a bit based on any new mechanics that you unlock. There’s always new things to find, whether it be Boos, gems, or simply more money, and there’s always a new floor on the horizon. It ends up giving the game a really good rhythm where you learn some new tricks, apply them in a strong floor, then go back and reinforce the learning by going back to old areas. It’s a rhythm that Nintendo and its second party developers have continued to show it does better than anyone in the industry, and it’s brought this game to a high point for the series.

It would be as easy to dismiss this title as it was either of the previous games in the series. After all, these aren’t Mario games, and after Odyssey, there’s a lot to live up to. However, dismissing this as a second rate title would be a huge mistake. I’d argue that this title has shown as much improvement as we’d seen in past mainline Mario titles, and it can now easily stand on its own as something worth playing. There’s a ton of really fun puzzle solving to do, and it’s wrapped around a really fun core ghost/vacuum interaction to give moments of high action amongst the moments of heavy thinking. I totally get that folks wanting a pure action platformer aren’t going to want to get after this, but those looking for a bit of that typical Nintendo magic will find a lot to enjoy here.