Category: Third-Person Shooter

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Shelved It #23 – Saros

More Info from Housemarque

  • Genre: Third-Person Shooter
  • Platform: PS5

This is a somewhat unusual shelved it in that this is a really well made game and I really have enjoyed my time in it. The…problem as it were? I just don’t enjoy roguelite loops. I can deal with it to a certain extent if the loops are quick but I usually hit a point where the growth of the experience has either stopped because it’s out of new mechanics or because it’s at a wall and I grew bored. I’m more at the first for this one at the 6th boss. However, for me it’s a bit of a miracle that I’ve played a roguelite for 11 hours and counting to begin with, and I can see this one slotting into the type of game that I occasionally return to and eventually just get through via time.

The thing I will absolutely call out here is how good the combat is and I think it comes down to one specific thing – despite being a “shooter” I’m not often doing a lot of aiming. Saros recognizes that it’s first and foremost a game about dodging projectiles, and not so much about creating projectiles. The entire experience is then built around that. You have a rapid dodge that allows you to go through some projectiles. You have a shield that allows you to absorb other projectiles to return as attacks. You have a parry that allows you to block other projectiles. Choosing the correct defensive maneuver is by far the most important part of combat with offense then being a secondary consideration.

This only works because the attacks that are coming at you are very clear and give you enough time to react. Blue can be absorbed, yellow can be dodged through, red should be parried (and additionally, red shields should be hit with a melee attack with the same button). You constantly move to stay at a range where you can still attack but have time to react and never stop being in some form of fast action. It’s fast and relentless but always feels fair. In the classic roguelite pattern it also feels like I’m constantly learning and using that to reinforce the upgrades I’m getting to move further every time.

The lack of aim is completely built into the weapon system. Most weapons have auto-hit with large aim correction built-in, with some specific weapons being instead built and balanced around auto-hit being off. Despite not really aiming though, the weapons still had important variety in letting me build the way that I felt comfortable. There’s things like shotguns and chakram discs that I totally disliked using because their damage felt so inconsistent around how much I was playing a run and gun style. On the other hand there were rifles and pistols that were reliable damage dealers if I needed an upgrade. When I got particularly lucky I was getting one of the crossbow types which were universally a ton of fun for my preferred style, putting out slower shots but much larger damage at a time.

This is then backed by the stat upgrades typical of the genre that have interesting modifications when in the eclipse state. This morphs upgrades from simple stat increases to things with drawbacks. Sure you might get some resilience, but now you take fall damage. You might get increased weapon power, but now you can’t stay still. You may bet better shields and absorption, but now you may have decreased damage at low health. It adds the type of fun decision making typical of the genre in a way built very well around the core gameplay of Saros. I knew I could always comfortably take the penalties standing still or the fall damage penalties because avoiding those things was crucial to my more run and gun play style and tailoring my build to that always felt incredibly effective.

However, the roguelite part of the game caught up to me at around the 10 hour mark near the 6th boss. Each biome introduced new mechanics but over time they were becoming less important because they were starting to become minor modifications to combat instead of large changes. I started seeing fewer new enemy types, and those that were new started to be some clear combinations of existing enemy types. It’s typical of the roguelite meta loop, but for me it doesn’t really work unless the loop is fast, and here it isn’t.

The death loops here are typically 25-30 minutes and that is just far too long for me. It works fine when I feel like I’m making progress, but I just zone out when I get some bad RNG and make no progress in a loop of that length. But that’s the genre expectation and it just doesn’t typically work for me. Getting the 11+ hours I got out of this one is highly unusual. Getting that far was only because the core combat in the game really was simply that good.

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Game Ramblings #162 – Splatoon 3’s Single Player

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Third-person shooter
  • Platform: Switch

Splatoon 3 sits in a weird spot. It’s far more involved than the base single player of Splatoon 2 thanks to it taking advantage of the sort of Portal chamber setup from the Octo expansion. However, it’s not nearly as inventive as that was. Because of that it’s simultaneously a lot of fun but also predictable, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.

It’s easy to get drawn into a game when it’s this stylish, and that’s always been a mark for the series. They get a ton of mileage out of bright colors, the cool painting mechanic, and a great soundtrack. However, that’s all stuff that we knew we were going to get. The Octo expansion for Splatoon 2 showed a certain level of play that the series really benefited from in a single player setting. Having a level where you play Breakout is unexpected. Having a level where you are pushing a ball around a maze is cool. It felt like it was taking the playful aspects of the shrines from Breath of the Wild and putting them into a shooter.

Splatoon 3 has the same meta game aspect as that, but it feels like it leaned too hard into the shooter aspects. The levels are almost entirely one of two things – physics platform puzzles around your ink jumps or straight up combat segments. The handful of times that it leans into something a bit more playful, it often feels like it’s just replaying ideas from Octo. It’s not that the mechanics are bad, because honestly the levels are a ton of fun in isolation. However, it’s disappointing. We already knew the mechanics would be solid, and we already knew how they work because this is the third game. It didn’t need to lean into reteaching that core.

The boss fights end up being the real highlight of the single player as a result. Some of them are purely combat focused, but really play well into mixing ink movement and accurate firing. The one above is a standout, not because it’s original, but because it is a 100% riff on the same manta ray ink fight from Super Mario Sunshine. Ya, it leans way harder and leans way more unforgiving, but it was fun to see something so obvious being done to great effect. The final boss just ends up being a complete spectacle. It’s got multiple phases, some ridiculous robot fighting, and all the story spectacle of something that belongs as a game ender.

It was also nice to see some more lore. The previous games have fed some aspects of this being a post-human post-apocalypse world, but seeing the full scope of how the world got into its current state and how the inklings came to exist was a nice little bonus.

In the end though, I was just wanting more. I’m not necessarily looking for something open world or more traditional third-person shooter, because I’m not convinced that it would bring anything beneficial to the gameplay. Splatoon as a multiplayer experience is such a specifically crafted core gameplay that I don’t think translates to a larger experience. What I wanted was just more creativity in making interesting puzzle chambers. The thing that they benefited from with Octo was being able to just do silly things because they were crafting 2-3 minute long isolated experiences. This just felt like it leaned too safe, despite the quality of what is there.

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Game Ramblings #106 – Splatoon 2 Single Player + Octo Expansion

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Third-person shooter
  • Platform: Switch

I really enjoyed the original Splatoon, despite the fact that I was tragically bad at it in multiplayer. However, the thing that surprised me was how solid the single player experience was for a game where that was clearly not the focus. Some of that may have just been how fresh it was to play what is a third-person shooter in a very new way, but it really left a mark. For Splatoon 2, the initial single player was more of the same. While it was fun, it was a bit disappointing…..until I played the Octo expansion, which was an entirely ambitious push of single player content that I wasn’t expecting.

Mechanically speaking, this is still a fantastic game. This is one of the best shooter experiences I’ve had on console, thanks to it intelligently using motion controls to improve aim, rather than feeling ham fisted. It’s got your typical twin stick movement and aiming, but then you do little tilts of your controller for finessed aiming, and it all just clicks. Large motions go on the right stick, and kills come out of motion, and it’s as effective as any aim assists I’ve ever seen out of more traditional shooters.

The base single player is a pretty by the numbers copy of the original game. You’ve got a handful of worlds where you go through a series of puzzles and light AI combat levels, capped with a boss fight. What it ends up being is basically a tutorial for the core gameplay to lead you into the multiplayer. From that perspective, it’s super solid. From the perspective of a returning player, it’s repetitive. I’ve seen this content before, down to some of the bosses returning with only light mechanical changes. It was nice to see them pushing the lore of the series a bit, but it didn’t feel like something I needed to play again.

That feeling changed when I started the Octo expansion.

From a very high level, the Octo expansion is basically Portal. Like the screenshot above says, you’re literally doing a bunch of test chambers to prove your skill. After you pass through that section, you end up in a fairly linear sequence of levels to escape the facility. If that sounds familiar, it’s definitely intentional.

At its core, the thing that makes the Octo expansion work is the sheer amount of variety to play with. Each test chamber has its own little gameplay tweak to play with. Some levels are straightforward puzzles to get to the end of the level. Sometimes they get a bit cheeky and give you limited amounts of paint to use. Sometimes they force you into stealth segments. Sometimes they don’t give you any weapons at all, and make you traverse intelligently through.

However, it’s when things go off the rails that it’s really fun. There’s levels like the one above where you’re literally playing Breakout with paint. There’s some levels where you’ve got to push a giant billiard ball around the world without knocking it off the level. There’s some levels where you gain a jetpack instead of using the paint to traverse around. There’s even a level where you play Picross 3D to create a box fort shaped like a dog.

It’s the variety and jumps between traditional and fun levels that really give the expansion a really great pace. You’ll do something normal for a bit or hit a really high tension combat level, then be given a breather level to bring down your heart rate. You’ll go from using the typical shooter mechanics to using your paint gun to play tic-tac-toe. It’s all bite sized chunks that are the right length to want you to keep playing just one more level, until suddenly you’re 30 levels in and hours have accidentally gone by.

This is all capped by a fantastic escape sequence that culminates in a boss battle against the giant human statue above, combining all the skills you’ve learned in the single player game into a super intense and super fun sequence filled with platforming and firing.

The whole of the Octo expansion shows a level of creativity that is so typical of Nintendo, and yet was not present in the Splatoon series up to this point. The two games were both fantastically well crafted, but distinctly multiplayer-focused. What the expansion has done is shown that there’s a lot of room for this series to also have a single player tilt. Ya they’re sort of being tongue-in-cheek in riffing on the overarching Portal pattern, but there is so much more content here than that game brought to the table. At its core, Splatoon is an easy recommendation for me anyway just to experience what that multiplayer is like. However, with what I’ve played here, I think it may be worth getting Splatoon 2 + Octo expansion just for the single player experience alone.