Category: Platform

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Game Ramblings #121 – Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

More Info from Activision

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One

I mucked around in the N-Sane Trilogy recently, and frankly it hadn’t aged well. The Crash series has always been on the far harder end in terms of difficulty, but that wasn’t really the issue I had going back to those games. There was just a lot of little things that caused a great deal of friction to the user in ways that no longer really fit in modern games. Crash 4 in that sense is a top example of a few little things going a long way. This game really isn’t that different from the original trilogy, but it’s such a drastically better experience anway.

If you haven’t played a Crash game before, there’s not that much to really explain. It’s a pretty standard platformer, but because it came out before the PlayStation had analog sticks, there’s a whole lot of side scrolling or running into/out of the screen, rather than an openness more typical of 3D platformers.. Where the Crash series really stood out was more in visuals and characters, and not so much in gameplay. Crash 4 is still basically that, but adds in a bit more of a loose sense of 3D space, as well as some masks that mess with the mechanics a bit. These aren’t usually big changes – a bit of gravity manipulation, maybe some time dilation – but they mix up the gameplay in fun ways.

Where this game also really hasn’t changed is that it’s still really fucking difficult. Some of that comes down to the camera – for example depth is often very not obvious and it feels like this is done on purpose. Some of that is in view restriction – for example traps like to be just off screen for you to fall into. Some of that is down to the timing window being really tight – for example if you don’t get on a wall run at the right height and don’t jump off just when you get the right sound effects you’ll fall to your death. Some of that is just physics being wonky – I died a number of times just to the jumps not really performing in a consistent manner, particularly on moving platforms. None of this is really new to the series. In the past this would be infuriating, and result in me shelving the games. However, this is where Crash 4 really shines.

That user friction from the original trilogy? It all came down to the lives mechanic. You had a small amount of lives, and when you ran out, it was game over. You lose progress in the level and have to start it over again. In a lot of cases, a game over would be followed by a game over where you didn’t even get back to the original point you were at. It was frankly a tired mechanic 25 years ago, and it’s even worse now.

Luckily, the real big change for this game was getting rid of lives. Ya, there’s technically a mode you can play where it uses the original lives system, but frankly I don’t see a reason to play it. However, they handle removal of lives in a way that works for all levels of users. Want to be that hardcore 100% run player that wants to finish levels without dying? Well, there’s rewards for that. But if not, you can die away and get through the level a checkpoint at a time until you reach the end. The challenge is now in simply iteratively progressing to the end of the level, not in being super careful to avoid losing lives. It reduces overall user friction and in many cases simply serves to improve the overall gameplay pace.

Speaking of checkpoints, those have seen some nice touches. Since lives are now removed, you can be dying a whole bunch of times and not making forward progress. The checkpoints that were there in the past are still there, and even more important now that you can die a lot. However, in a lot of cases you may get stuck in one area where maybe you have a long stretch between checkpoints or a specific obstacle blocking you. Part of the improvements here is that after a few deaths in a segment, you gain an Aku Aku at spawn. If you die a few more times, but have progressed far enough between checkpoints, you may gain a new dynamic checkpoint that replaces a crate. Again, it’s an improvement to reduce friction and allow you to perhaps take things a little less carefully, improving the overall pace.

The checkpoint work also extends to boss fights. In general I found these to be surprisingly easy in relation to the normal levels. That said, the checkpoints in place were well appreciated. The way those work in bosses is to put a hard checkpoint after each damage event, which typically would come as a result of some stretch of obstacle avoidance gameplay. It meant that seeing and losing out to a new mechanic in a new phase of the fight wasn’t a huge loss in time; it was just a reset to the beginning of the phase, and a chance to use what you learned to get through it. Again, another case of reducing friction.

Ultimately it’s that reduction in user friction that makes this one feel like a modern videogame. They didn’t have to fundamentally change the gameplay to be like Mario or Ratchet or A Hat in Time. They didn’t have to artifically make the game easier and leave their nostalgia blast behind. They didn’t have to change genres to appeal to a modern audience. They simply had to take friction points and get rid of them. I know that sounds easy to say, and I guess to some extent it is, but it’s not a choice without some level of care behind it. The points of friction that got removed are all things that have a very specific purpose – they allow people who are masters at the game to still earn rewards and have a sense of accomplishment for completing levels in a “perfect” manner, but allow the game to gracefully adapt to skill levels down the chain. It’s a shedding of tired things like lives and regression in progress in order to favor a less careful and higher pace of gameplay. It’s keeping simply what worked the best, and getting rid of things that worked the worst. In doing these things, what pops out is a game that is simultaneously retro and modern, and much better than the core trilogy that precedes it, despite largely being the same.

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Game Ramblings #120 – 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

More Info from Atlus

  • Genre: RTS
  • Platform: PS4

I know it’s weird that a game by Vanillaware is a strategy instead of a side scrolling action-focused combat game. However, it oddly works really well. This one combines Vanillaware’s history of good writing and branching narrative, their very distinct art style, and an RTS combat system that combines fast action with some clever tricks straight out of JRPG combat systems into a game that is definitely niche, but something worth exploring.

The first thing to really understand is that 13 Sentinels is to some extent two separate games. Narratively speaking, there’s an entire visual novel section that goes into the back stories of the title’s 13 sentinels and how the characters all came to be together. The RTS section of the game takes place largely after the game’s core narrative, serving as a way to finish the story. While that may sound confusing, narratively it works really well.

Part of why this all works is that in order for the combat to start, things before it have to be explained, and boy do they get explained in great detail. Each of the 13 main characters has their own back story that you work through in a branching fashion. Completing branches gives some back story, but also starts to unlock the stories of other characters. You then end up revisiting a lot of these story points with the other character, seeing how they got there and where they go from there.

For a story that should have been so confusing, it ends up working in a way that somehow didn’t lose me. Reinforcing a plot point from a different point of view really reinforces remembering the core plot. It also effectively fills in information gaps throughout. The way that you jump between characters and different plot branches then ultimately ends up dropping breadcrumbs in a way that gives you enough information to infer some plot points ahead of time, but not enough to avoid some of the big surprises from catching you off guard.

This is all helped by the fact that I wanted to know more about the plot of the game. If I didn’t care about the plot, I definitely would have been lost. However, this one really hit a sci-fi slice that I really find enjoyable. Without giving away too much, you’ve got giant hilarious mecha, you’ve got time travel paradoxes, you’ve got androids and future weapons, you’ve got self-replicating robotic enemies. It’s just such a core of things that I find enjoyable that it was easy to continue to hit the button to start the next story segment and just lose track of time. Ultimately this is Vanillaware’s narrative sense working at full capacity in a way that works far better than it should.

This is all backed by the visual style that Vanillaware is known for. It’s still got a gorgeous hand-painted aesthetic with fluid animation that just continues to work so well. If you’re played Muramasa, Odin Sphere, or Dragon’s Crown, you’re familiar with it. If not, well, there’s three more games I highly recommend…

The other half of the game is all about combat. Technically speaking, it is part of the narrative, but the connections to the story really don’t start to make sense until closer to the end. Luckily, the combat is fun in a way that allowed me to get to the end, and then some.

Good RTS games outside of PC are such a rarity, and a lot of that has always come down to odd control schemes compared to your normal PC keyboard/mouse setup. Games like Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings have worked by replicating that control setup on a touch screen. However, 13 Sentinels goes in a different direction, and is helped along by three main things.

The first real benefit is that control is down to single units. You aren’t trying to group select a bunch of things and move them around all at once. You move one unit, you attack with one unit, you use an ability on one unit. It reduces a point of complexity down to individual decisions that allow you to quickly hop around with cycling on the d-pad, rather than having to drag select a bunch of stuff.

The second is that attacks are not point and click, at least not in the traditional sense. Every unit attack or ability has some sort of AOE capability. Basic attacks may just be first-target or narrow cones. More costly abilities things may be circular AOE or long range line attacks. However, they all originate either from the unit itself and can be set by just pressing a direction on the joystick, or they originate from a specific location in which case you’re just dragging a targeter around on screen. It’s all incredibly effective, but also incredibly intuitive to just drop into. You start an attack, you move it with left stick, and you confirm. No fuss, no fighting controls. Your focus stays on the result of the attack.

However, the third thing is probably the most impactful. While this is technically an RTS, the combat system pulls some features from ATB-style JRPGs. Namely, it brings in meter charge to start a turn, and it brings in combat pausing when it’s a unit’s turn. These two add a nice sense of control the the combat pace which plays well with the general limitations of the platform. What this ends up meaning is that the game can also throw hundreds of enemy units at you without giving you a sense of being overwhelmed.

That said, the combat does have some rough points, particularly around overall balance as the game progresses. I got to a point probably around the 60-70% point where I’d upgraded a bunch of units that can spawn turrets, and it was basically an unbeatable strategy. ALWAYS have four turret guys, then add in two random units, and I was basically going to win with some small amount of effort. As the screenshot above shows, the turrets will shoot all over the place and hit everything, and when upgraded with more range and damage they got kind of ridiculous.

It didn’t ruin my sense of enjoyment of the game, and there’s definitely something to be said about trying out different strategies just for the hell of it, but if you’re a one-and-done clearing type, there’s distinctly optimal crews to use.

All that being said, this was a hugely enjoyable game. It hit a sci-fi plot that really worked well with me. It had the Vanillaware touches that I’ve always loved in their past titles. It had a unique RTS combat system that blended in some JRPG mechanics with some clever choices around console limitations. In general, it all worked in a way that surprised me, even given the studio’s storied history.

Is it niche? Yep, it sure is. Is it worth playing anyway? Also yes.

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Game Ramblings #119 – Super Mario 3D All-Stars

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch
  • Originally Available On: N64, Gamecube, and Wii

Replaying these three all at once is an interesting experience. They’ve each got their quirks, and to some extent some have aged better than others, but there’s still a lot to like here 15-25 years later. There’s a common mechanical thread that you can see through each of them and you can see the lessons learned in how the next game has improved. That process of iteration gave us three great games, and ultimately led to Super Mario Odyssey, which is arguably the best of the 3D series.

Of the three, Super Mario 64 has aged the worst. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but it definitely feels like a 25 year old game. Mechanically it ends up just feeling kind of stiff. All of the new 3D moves are there – your triple jump, side somersaults, wall jumps, ground pound – but they aren’t quite there yet. Jump distance is still a little too dependent on your speed, the threshold for side somersault is still a little too tight, the difference between diving forward and doing a jump kick is still a little too vague, but the thread is there to future games.

The biggest problem at this point for Mario 64 is the camera though. It’s just not good. It wasn’t particularly good when it came out, and compared to modern 3d platformers it’s pretty rough. The mix of some camera control for the player and some forced rotation from the level just feels really bizarre. The games that do it best today are ones that either go full player control or full level control and stick to making those feel smooth. To some extent though, I think it’s hurt by playing on a modern gamepad. Playing on the N64, the different levels of camera depth and direction at least felt correct in that you press a button and a single action occurs. On a stick, there’s a large mental hurdle to get over when holding the stick off to the side doesn’t just smoothly rotate the camera. I don’t particularly care that they didn’t go actual remake on this one from an aesthetic level, but having the camera redone as a modern camera would go a long way to improving on the game as it exists.

Sunshine is where things start to really age better. The mechanics are just that little bit tighter across the board to where actions do what you want consistently without being either too loose or too tight on their requirements. The level goals are a little bit more clear, with a nice introductory cutscene before you start off giving you some clue as to where to head. The levels themselves also have a lot more variety, since each goal is tailored to the specific star, rather than having a sandbox level to get any star at any time.

On the other hand, there are definitely some things where it hadn’t quite reached modern smoothness. Kicking the player out of a level into the hub when they die instead of resetting the star is a weird point of friction to the experience that carried over from 64. The lack of checkpoints is similarly unfortunate, especially given they have checkpoints at the start of the handful of areas where they take away your water pack. This one is especially weird because giving more checkpoints would have allowed them to increase difficulty throughout instead of having sort of low difficulty with longer segments. As a whole though, Sunshine is still a really fun and really playable game.

Galaxy is where it all comes together. If this game came out today instead of 10 years ago, it would still be an instant classic. Mechanically, it’s extremely tight, having reached the peak of iteration on the core 3D mechanics at that point. Lives became so abundant that the stale mechanic of game over became near impossible to hit, which ultimately led to lives going away in Odyssey. There’s checkpoints all over, letting each segment of a goal be more interesting on its own, rather than having to be smooth enough for the player to marathon through the entire thing. The gravity manipulation added on top of it is still engrossing, and it’s something I wish we’d have seen used more often in the years since. Playing through this is one of the few times in recent memory that I’ve played a remaster or emulated port that I simply fell into, rather than seeing the warts.

It was also surprising to me how easily the Wii pointer controls moved over to the Switch Joycon. The pointing isn’t 1:1, but it still feels extremely natural. Given they also have a reset button, it’s also comfortable, which is a huge change. You find a comfortable resting point, hit the pointer reset button, and you’re good to go. The sort of flicking motions you do to grab stars is extremely natural, and now that the spin jump is on a button, you don’t accidentally do that all the time either. It’s a minor change to the overall gameplay, but it goes such a long way to improving the experience over the original.

When playing these, it’s easy to see how much Super Mario 64 influenced the future for the Mario series. The move set alone is in everything Mario related at this point. Triple jump, wall jump, and side somersault are instinct moves in Mario games, and not just in 3D. The New Super Mario Bros games inherited just as much of the bloodline of Mario 64 as it did Super Mario Bros 3. These games were hugely influential on release, and are just as worth playing now.

Would I have liked to see Nintendo do something more than an emulated port for these? Sure. Am I disappointed that we got these anyway? Not at all. Playing through these games is still a treat, even with some of the age spots that are showing on them. There’s been a lot of 3D platformers in the 25 years since Super Mario 64 came out, and the three in this package are still right up at the top of the list in terms of their pure playability. Having them in one spot, and more importantly, having them easily on the go is a great package to have out there, regardless of how little things have changed.