Category: Adventure

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Game Ramblings #79 – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

More Info from Ninja Theory

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

TL;DR

  • Fantastic storytelling backed by a phenomenally good audio design
  • Combat is the obvious weakpoint for the game – it’s serviceable, but nothing special. Also not a reason to avoid the game.

Hellblade is a curious game to recommend. It’s technically an action game, but its action is not a reason to play it. It’s purposefully AAA in quality, but not in scope so it doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s also the rare game that I would highly recommend wearing ONLY headphones for, even if you’ve got a high end audio system purely based on the merits of its audio design. It’s proof that a high focus on a specific element can result in an extremely high quality title without the need to add unnecessary fluff to pad the experience.

The game is entirely based around Senua’s psychosis, and everything from the audio to world design focuses in on that.

I’m really regretting not pulling some video footage of the game’s audio design while I was playing, because that’s where I want to start here. Up in the TL;DR I mentioned that this game is worth playing with headphones, and it’s entirely because of the focus on Senua’s psychosis. Throughout the game, the player hears voices in Senua’s head that act as something of a narration. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to the narration that takes place in the game Bastion, but in this case is often telling the player the opposite of what they want to do. These voices are entirely spatialized, so you spend a lot of the game with voices floating around inside your hearing. It’s a simple audio trick, but it’s fantastically impressive in practice, and one of the few true good uses of stereo panning of audio that I’ve heard in a game in recent years.

The fact that you can’t see anything in this screenshot is very much on purpose – it’s the mechanic of an entire level.

The heavy emphasis on audio even becomes game mechanics on its own. One of the puzzle segments of the game from the screenshot above involves effectively removing the player’s vision. The entire level takes place in near blackness, with only things directly next to the player even being visible as a fog. Throughout this entire section of the game, the player depends on their sense of hearing, and to some extent sense of touch through controller vibration to get through the game. Within the context of the game’s story at this point, it’s a fantastic way to force the player into an uncomfortable position where they can’t depend on what they see to give them clues of where to go. Everything comes down to your ability to listen to what’s going on, and move towards the sounds that can lead you to the exit.

These kinds of use of strong technology also abound in how puzzles are solved. The little video above is one example in how they manipulate the environment through the use of portals to open up progress to the player. There’s a few variations of this type of mechanic around, and it plays a really nice balance between making the player pay close attention to what they are looking at without being a vague guessing game.

Combat was clearly not an emphasis, but the bosses themselves are still a lot of fun to face.

If there’s anything where the game could have used more time, it’s probably in combat. The combat that is there is effective, but it’s pretty simple and has its own share of problems that grow as the game nears its end. This game has the problem that I’ve seen in a lot of melee games where the combat is fun against one or two tough enemies, but not fun with a bunch of weak enemies. The sections with weak enemies near the end of the game end up being an effective dodge spam to avoid a bunch of attacks, then poke damage to kill the enemies. There’s never much danger from the enemies themselves but I ended up dying a few times simply from getting stuck in chains or other environment pieces that seemed like they weren’t really meant to be hazards.

That said, the simple nature of the combat does shine in boss fights. The handful of bosses have a pretty wide range in sizes and mechanics, so they end up being the satisfying nearly Souls-style fights, where you slowly face off against the boss to learn its mechanics, minimize damage, then really go on the attack as you learn the patterns. Because many of the boss attacks are one or two shot deaths, finishing off the bosses is always really satisfying due to the recognition that the difference between you winning and you dying was really down to skill.

Ultimately this is a game that is really easy to recommend. Just on its gameplay and story alone, it’s probably worth the look for a lot of people. It’s a relatively short game that takes place as a single continuous camera shot (about 6-8 hours in general) and will come in at an affordable price at this point. However, the audio design is above and beyond what almost any developer is doing at any level these days, so on that alone I give it a nod. Now that Ninja Theory is under the Microsoft umbrella, I’m hoping we see more experiences like this where a strong focus wins out over marketing bullet points.

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Game Ramblings #36.1 – Horizon: Zero Dawn – The Frozen Wilds

More Info from Guerrilla Games

Original Ramblings

  • Genre: Open World Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

Horizon: Zero Dawn – The Frozen Wilds does do a lot to generally continue what was great about the first one.  The setting is still fanastic and drop dead gorgeous.  The moment to moment combat is still a lot of fun with a lot of variety in ranged weapons.  Exploration is still always worth it, with things to find all over the place.  Basically, they didn’t screw up what was good.  Luckily, they also fixed my two biggest gripes with the base game, and that’s what I’ll talk about here.

This time around you’re running around Yellowstone and the surrounding areas. It’s definitely seen better days.

The end of HZD really annoyed the hell out of me, and it was because of two reasons.  The first was the lack of progression with the main melee weapon leaving the end hours of the game focused on much stronger ranged attacks, and the second was the design of many of the boss fights being an effective circular arena fight where you could generally stay safely at range the entire time.  While neither of these problems really ended up being a killer in the game’s overall result, they were definitely annoying problems that left me scratching my head a bit.

The melee weapon itself is definitely helped this time around by having an end game upgrade path.  One of the first side quests you come upon when entering the new area of the game ends with you upgrading your spear to support the modification system that the ranged weapons all had.  While I could definitely gripe about this being hidden behind a side quest, and I could gripe about the spear still not having inherent stat upgrades, this change alone is huge in changing how late game melee combat worked for me against higher level enemies.  Now I could build the staff to my play style, whether that’s a pure damage build, one focused on debuffs, or one focused on getting some ticking damage out on enemies.  While this was simply using a system that already existed for the ranged weaponry, gaining this system for melee was a huge change for the better.

While boss fights are still in relatively obvious arenas, they are much more varied landscapes, and the bosses themselves are significantly more aggressive against the player.

The handful of bosses in the expansion are also much improved over the base game.  While they still take place in relatively obvious arenas, there’s a much better variety in how the arenas are laid out.  In the example above, the player is sort of ducking in and around little outcroppings, giving a lot of line of sight breaking when fighting the boss.  In general, that is pretty common, allowing the player to fight in a much more stealth-based way.  This is really important based on a change in overall design of the boss AI.

The original game suffered from bosses that could generally be kept at range, letting the player just kind of tick away at them with the bow with very little danger.  The bosses here feel a lot more like large versions of the world machines instead.  They move around a lot to keep the player from being grounded.  They do a lot more melee and charge attacks, keeping the player’s dodging finger ready.  Even when the bosses are doing ranged projectile attacks, the danger of being hit and knocked down is a lot higher due to the ability of the bosses to close the gap and melee the player while they are down.  Overall the fights just feel a lot more dynamic, rather than the circle strafe grinds that the original game suffered from.

Since this is Yellowstone, lava is the name of the game. It looks even better in motion than it does in screenshots.

Overall this was really just a solid expansion.  It took what was great about the original and gave you more, and fixed a few of the larger problems while it was at it.  The new content was a lot of fun, the new weapons felt impactful and slid naturally into my arsenal (super bonus mention to the energy projectile cannon you get about half way through the expansion), and the handful of new enemies fit into the existing roster really well while giving some new mechanics to watch out for.  In general, this one leaves me wanting more of the series than the original game even did, and that leaves me excited for the future of the series going forward.

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Game Ramblings #75 – Watch_Dogs 2

More Info from Ubisoft

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

TL;DR

  • Really good open-world action game with a great take on the San Francisco Bay area
  • Emphasis on hacking-based stealth over combat is a nice change from the typical GTA-style combat mechanics

Generally speaking I’m more of a fan of RPGs over action games, but I definitely don’t mind hopping into the action genre from time to time.  When I do though, I usually prefer games that emphasize stealth and planning over run and gun action, and I think this is where Watch_Dogs 2 hit for me in the best way.  While this game definitely doesn’t lack action sequences, the pure action moments feel very tailored, leaving enemy interactions to focus more on the stealth and hacking mechanics that the story itself wants to push forward.  In doing so, this became a very different take on the GTA-style city game formula, and for me was a format that I enjoyed more because of this change in focus.

While this isn’t a 1:1 San Francisco, people that are familiar with the city definitely won’t feel lost driving around.

It’s easy to assume that open world games in general will take liberties with the cities they exist in, but this one definitely feels like San Francisco through and through.  It’s a bit compressed, but the main sights are all there and relatively in the right spots, whether you’re driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, watching sea lions at Pier 39, or driving around by the Transamerica Pyramid, this feels a lot like San Francisco.  While it’s not important to the fun of the game, it ends up doing a great job of getting you into the game at the start, and for folks that have been to the city, an immediate sense of familiarity with where they are.

That said, it’s the gameplay that makes you stick around, and this one was a lot of fun for reasons that aren’t necessarily typical of open-world action games.

Hacking is the name of the game, and you end up doing that a lot throughout, including going in to mess around with some rockets.

Looking at screenshots or videos of this game, it’s easy to assume that this game is a real-world rip of Grand Theft Auto, since the player is completing story quests, going around fighting people, and generally just ramping up chaos as much as possible.  However, that’s just one way to play the game, and I’d argue it’s the wrong way to play the game.

At its core, the story of this game is built around a group of hackers exposing governmental and private-sector secrets that are affecting everyday people.  That can run the gamut from data protection to facial tracking and more.  It’s a lot of things that are hot topics today, so it ends up being a really compelling narrative to tie the group’s goal together.  Where this really becomes important is that the hacking capabilities of the player become the forward focus for an entire stealth style of playing the game.

It’s pretty close to guaranteed that any story mission will end up bringing you into an area that requires interaction with guards of some sort.  You can definitely go in guns blazing, taking everyone out and getting away.  However, you can also go full-stealth and hack your way through the game.  The tools at the player’s disposal even give you multiple paths above and beyond just going stealth.  Want to stay entirely out of the area?  Send in a little robot to do the work for you.  Want to cause some chaos and sneak in behind as that’s going on?  Send a false report in to draw gangs to the area to fight the guards.  Want to use vehicles to your advantage?  Hack a crane and have it carry you over the top of everything.

Each situation gives you a bunch of different ways to achieve the end goal, and its the exploration of this set of skills that really gave Watch_Dogs 2 its legs.   The depth of possibilities allowed me to always be trying something new and something fresh to get to the end.  In a lot of cases it also brought side entertainment in just watching how the systems worked together to achieve a result.  There’s something just inherently entertaining about hacking a robot to chase guards, then sending in a gang to attack them, and watching the entire thing unfold while I’m perched above on a rooftop with really very little outright control of what’s going on.

The game is also not lacking in action sequences, such as controlling a killer robot spider.

That’s not to say action sequences don’t work well.  There were more cases than I care to admit where I screwed up, got caught, and had to go in shooting.  In these cases the game still works well, giving you a wide variety of fun to use weapons and a pretty satisfying regenerating health mechanic.  There are also some really good tailored pure action sequences.  The spider fight above was one great example.  One of my favorites though was a sequence involving stealing a KITT-clone and driving around San Francisco running from the cops.  You drive around with the car talking to you, hacking the streets to cause explosions, and generally just causing mayhem.  It’s pure action-movie stupidity, and the sequences that are tailored to it are even better off for having  strong standalone focus.

This series in general has been pretty easy to dismiss as a GTA clone, but I don’t really think that does it justice.  Is it the best of open-world action games?  No, and I don’t think Ubisoft is ever going to want to actually compete with the type of budget Rockstar throws around for GTA.  However, this is a really good game on its own.
The inclusion of stealth and hacking mechanics is a great way for them to differentiate themselves from the pack, and really pushes this game into the realm of something that you should check out.  Given Rockstar also doesn’t look real keen on doing single player GTA content any time soon, this will at the very least scratch the itch in the genre while we seemingly wait forever.