Category: Adventure

2017-09-142017-09-12

Game Ramblings #51 – Knack II

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PS4

TL;DR

Much deeper combat system than the original that significantly improves the overall experience
Use of size changing is clever, and done in a much more controlled fashion than the original
Still too many quick time events, and the game might as well not be a platformer for how little it takes advantage of the capabilities

I’ll be perfectly honest here; I bought this game simply because I didn’t believe the decent reviews coming in for this game. The original was a curious release from a tech-demo point of view, but calling it an unforgettable game is being pretty nice to it. At one point early in Knack II, they joke that the main character only knows three punches and a kick, and that really was the depth of the original game. This one adds significant depth to the combat systems, while smoothing out some of the more obnoxious difficulty problems with the original game, and makes the overall experience a lot of fun to play. It’s not perfect, but I’ll be damned if I’m not surprised with the end result.

Even if the environments are simple, seeing Knack full of pieces is still an impressive sight.

The core idea behind Knack is essentially the idea of a controlled power curve based on finding relic pieces and adding them to Knack’s body. You can instantly transform between tiny and full grown variants, leading to puzzle and platforming opportunities. As Knack grows, he gets stronger, typically leading to fights against increasingly strong enemies and generally speaking a boss or similarly large scale puzzle element to end most chapters.

Where the first game really failed to take advantage of this is that it really just kind of pushed the growth, took it all away mid-game, and never really reestablished a good feel to the growth curve. Knack 2 significantly improved that curve. Rather than being a more game-wide growth curve, each chapter typically had its own growth curve. Most chapters started you off in the 4-6 foot range, with various amounts of growth by the end of the chapter. This was also typically paired with a similar power curve in the enemies so there was always a feeling of progress in each area.

Not all of the combat is on the ground. Sometimes you just accidentally steal a giant robot.

Where this change would have fallen apart in the original game, the introduction of significantly deeper combat meant that there was a higher metagame to combat skill that was entirely separate from the growth mechanics. Just from a base skill perspective, there were grabs, shield break maneuvers, smooth dodging mechanics, ranged boomerangs that trap enemies, and the ability to parry projectiles back at their shooter. Add in a skill tree to augment skills, as well as add new optional skills, and the tool set available to the player is significantly better than the original’s three punches and a kick.

This all comes together with a significantly improved difficulty curve to make a system that was quite a lot of fun in general, let alone a significant improvement over the first game. Different strategies had to be made on the fly based on Knack’s current size, as well as the enemy count. Bunch of enemies that can be one shot? Try to round them up and do a jump smash to kill them all at once. Handful of larger enemies that require a few hits? Lock one down with the boomerang while you concentrate on the others. Boss that can very easily chunk your health away? Dodge as you move towards it, or parry back projectiles to do ongoing damage as you move closer. Basically, there’s a ton of options here, and the way they’ve set it up in conjunction with the character’s physical growth has gone a long way to making this a very fun game to play.

Platforming segments are there, such as this stealth segment with a tiny glass Knack, but they’re rare and don’t typically take advantage of potential.

Outside of combat is where the game still shows its biggest weaknesses. It’s pretty typical for there to be a big cutscene extravaganza in each chapter with a series of quick time events. These are just kind of boring, and I’d much rather they just play the cutscene back as intended. The platforming is also fairly non-present. While the tools are there, with the ability to double jump and hover, most platforming areas are basically small 30 second puzzles in between combat encounters. Once you’re in a combat area, it’s flat and the platforming gives way to pure action. There’s just kind of a lot of missed potential there, even if the focus of the game has leaned significantly more into the action side of things.

The end result here really is surprising. You still get the big wow moments of a significantly large Knack against giant bosses that the original game had. The improvement is that the time between those big wow moments is no longer terrible. The combat is fun, the moves you get are varied and cool to see, the enemies have a lot of variety to match the moves you learn. Now, this game isn’t going to make a run at game of the year or anything like that; it just doesn’t have the depth in its non-combat to really do that. However, what came out with this game is a sequel that is good in its own right, and even more so a shockingly large improvement over the original game that could best be described as a great tech demo with bad gameplay.

2017-09-10

Game Ramblings #50 – Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

More Info from Sony

Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PS4

TL;DR

Same ol Uncharted gameplay, over the top action sequences, and beautiful visuals
Short length meant the story didn’t drag out, which felt like a plus
First half showed some growth in their design w/ an almost Tomb Raider semi open world.

I’m not going to sit here and say that this is a hugely original title for the series. I’m also going to be straight here and say that the changes in The Lost Legacy feel a lot like copping some features from Tomb Raider. However, this very well might be the best Uncharted title I’ve yet played. It being a condensed experience certainly helped (about 6-8 hours I’d assume will be typical first play through), but a nice use of a large non-linear area to start the game went a long way to providing a fresh look at the series, and may just prove there’s life to be had in this universe.

Like previous Uncharted titles, this is another visual masterpiece.

There’s a lot to be familiar with here. The gunplay is still good, but nothing mind blowing, going for solid feel without too much difference between core weapon types. Combat sequences in the more linear segments are still at obvious points when you turn a corner and have a ton of crates around. Enemies are still decent but basic in their approach to flanking behaviors. The game’s finale (and a couple points in between) is still a wildly bombastic experience that would feel at home in any big budget Hollywood film. End of the day, this is still Uncharted at its core, but with a big difference in the first half that showed some progress.

Roughly the first half of the game takes place in a large open area, with a set of non-linear objectives to drive to, and a bunch of hidden collectibles to find in the area. This alone felt like a fantastic change to the series, even if it felt right out of the recent Tomb Raider games. Because of the layout of this opening area, combat also felt much improved relative to the standard single direction combat of the linear exploration areas typical of the series. Combat segments felt very free form, since you could approach from basically any direction, and enemies could do the same. In a lot of these areas, I’d be stealthing around to find a good entry point, then doing what I could to pick off enemies one by one without revealing my location. If things started to go awry, many of the areas also had a lot of swing points, so I could easily move around to find new hiding spots if enemies started to get a drop on me. In general, this was the best I’ve ever seen combat in the series, although it unfortunately went away once the more linear segments of the game started.

While not as complex as the Tomb Raider series, the side exploration in the opening area was a welcome addition to Uncharted.

The unfortunate thing though is that the opening area gave way to more traditional Uncharted linear mechanics. While this works fine in the general sense, it feels like they missed an opportunity to really make a special full entry in the series based around the gameplay changes of the first half. The puzzle areas of the linear temple portions worked great, but it was back to the more boring combat style and tiresome climbing areas. Realistically I can only do the same pattern of climb, jump to crumbling wall hold, fall down to conveniently placed grab spot, then finish climbing up so many times. On the other hand, the fact that this is a much shorter expansion-style game meant that the experience was fantastically condensed before I really wanted to just get through.

End of the day you kind of know what you’re getting into here when buying an Uncharted game, and this one doesn’t differ much. It shows some promising changes in the first half should Naughty Dog decide to continue with the series, but never really expands on the changes for the full length of this game, let alone makes a full game out of it. However, treated as an end of summer blockbuster experience, this is still just as worth playing as the previous entries and definitely left me entertained, and that’s about all I can ask for.

2017-08-312017-08-29

Shelved It #7 – Hollow Knight

More Info from Team Cherry

Genre: Metroidvania
Platform: PC
Also Available On: Mac, Linux, Switch

TL;DR

Solid mechanics, solid visuals, solid audio all put together a great base that can be built on.
Small bits of lack of polish, rather than anything egregious led to frustration, and eventual shelving.

This is going to sound weird for a game I’m shelving, but Hollow Knight is really quite good. It’s a pretty traditional Metroidvania in layout, using a solid short-range melee system and some occasional powerups to round out the move set. This is complemented by a solid visual style, and great audio and soundtrack to put together one of the best themed titles in this genre I’ve recently played. However, this was a case of a thousand cuts, where small lack of polish in the details led to a continuous pattern of one step forward, one step backward in my progress. This was combined with a somewhat questionable use of the Souls death mechanic, to where body runs began to feel like a slog, rather than a good balance of penalty and learning reward. In the end, the good couldn’t outweigh the bad for me to continue on.

Early example of some of the fantastic visuals you’d see in this game.

However, let’s start with the good. As with a lot of recent Metroidvania games, particularly in the indie scene, this one is a fantastic looker of a game. Like the recent remake of Wonder Boy 3, or other Metroidvania titles like Ori and the Blind Forest, this one has a fantastic visual style. Everything has a great hand-drawn appearance, with thick painterly lines. It’s a fairly distinct style, and works rather well. This is combined with great use of dynamic lighting to give some dramatic areas. The biggest problem with it all is that most of the areas share a similar color range, so things can begin to look rather samey as you continue on. On the other hand, it never got old running through the environment and having all the little blades of grass in the scene explode into similarly styled particles as I swung through them. As a whole, this was a part of the game that never really diminished in my time playing it.

The core combat is also really well put together. The base of the combat are melee strikes, which sounds simple at its core. However, there was a smart choice made specifically in the horizontal strike, giving some verticality outside of the swing’s hitbox, and allowing players to hit things both slightly above and slightly below without having to be super precise with jump heights. This was extremely nice for how small some of the hitboxes on armored bosses and enemies could be. This was backed up by a strong set of spells and abilities that are earned throughout the game to fill out the move set. Examples here include mid-air dashes and double jumps for traversal, or energy missiles and dive bomb spells for damage. Generally speaking, the game gives you a bunch of tools to use, and its up to you to then figure out what is most effective for each situation.

However, as I continued on, the little details that didn’t quite have the polish of the visuals and core combat started giving way to more frustration than fun.

The first big place this showed for me was in their use of the Dark Souls death mechanic. The basic system is that at death, your soul gets stuck in the world along side all currency you earned during that life. If you get back to the soul and defeat it in combat, you earn all the currency back. If you die before that, you permanently lose all of it.

Generally speaking, I’m pretty neutral on this system. There’s a fine line where this system works well, and to me it requires enough save points in place that are both close enough together, as well as close enough to where players will die so that the game doesn’t heavily discourage exploration, and keeps game pace post-death high. To me it feels like Hollow Knight fails on both of these counts. Many areas had a bunch of save points clustered near the center of the zones, but fewer out towards the edges where a lot of boss battles or more dangerous sort of side dungeons were. There were also hardly ever any save points actually immediately before or immediately after boss rooms, so deaths during bosses (which are extremely common) often resulted in a long run back to the boss. It just felt like a lot of wasted time, rather than a good chance to learn and retry the boss quickly. This was compounded by a number of times where my soul spawned out of reach, effectively ending my change to re-earn my lost currency, so I eventually just stopped exploring altogether, choosing to go the lower risk way of sticking to main paths and simply grinding out kills if I required more money or power for skills.

There were a bunch of other little details that also compounded on top of this core problem for me. First and foremost, jumping feels awkward. This is a game with purely digital left/right movement, and no in-air momentum. If you’re jumping and let go of the stick, you fall straight down. It just feels weird, and eliminates a lot of subtle movement flow that a lot of better examples of the genre have. There’s also a really obnoxious backwards impulse after hitting an enemy. This is combined with somewhat imprecise collision on platforms to put me in situations where trying to jump and hit enemies mid-air around small platforms was pretty much a death sentence if solid ground wasn’t below me.

The final sort of annoyance was in the mapping system mechanics. Rather than mapping out rooms when you walk through them, you had to clear a couple of hurdles first to map out a zone. First and foremost, you had to buy a map of the zone from a vendor within the zone, generally well within the zone and out of the way (see annoyance with losing currency when your body run fails due to spawning out of reach….). This only opened the ability to map the area. It then didn’t mark areas on your map until the next time you reached a save area (see annoyance with the location and frequency of save poiints….). Otherwise you were basically flying blind, and have to remember your path through areas until you hit both points above. Generally speaking, it just felt like an additional unnecessary money and time pit, where I’d rather be spending my currency on functional upgrades.

End of the day, the further I went into Hollow Knight, the more the small details outweighed the good of the core systems. Could I have grinded through it without too much trouble? Sure. Are the problems going to be something that bothers everyone? Nope. However, I’ve got plenty of other games to play, and seeing lack of polish in the details just generally distracts the hell out of me. However, for those with more patience than me can probably find a lot to love here, so if nothing else, I’d recommend taking a look the next time a Steam sale rolls on through.