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Game Ramblings #118 – Ghost of Tsushima

More Info from Sucker Punch

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

There’s no doubt that this is the feudal Japan Assassin’s Creed that everyone has been asking for, but I’m not saying that as a bad thing. This takes a lot of what’s made the past few AC games great with some clever changes to the overall structure. It also features combat that clicked for me way more than it ever did in those titles. Overall I was left playing a game that surprised me in how much I enjoyed it, despite its familiarity.

If there’s two main things that I think separate this one from AC, it’s that there’s generally less to do, and that combat is a bit more nuanced. The first one provides a greater focus on the overall meta game, steering you to do fewer activities, but ones that generally feel like they have a great impact on your character progression. The second provides changes to the moment to moment action as you go through. Combined with a high level of polish, this gives us what feels like the next step in this type of gameplay, and hopefully a bar for Ubisoft to hit with Valhalla.

Taking a look at the map, you get that immediate feeling of familiarity. There’s fog of war in areas you haven’t been to. There’s icons for quests and towns and activities all over that pop up. However, they all serve some sort of purpose. Rather than climbing towers to lift fog of war in an area, you have to invade Mongol camps and take out their leaders. Side quest aren’t just fun little story points – they also give rare resources to upgrade existing gear, and in some cases completely new gear. In many cases, you won’t even know what the icons on the map are for until you get up close to them.

However, there’s a lot of in-world hints as well to help steer your exploration. If you want to focus on gaining some health, you’ve got to keep an eye out for steam columns where you can use hotsprings. If you need to boost your resolve to have access to more special moves, you’ll be on the look out for banners marking the location of bamboo strikes. If you want to get some accessory charms, you’ll want to keep an eye out for small yellow-leaved trees to follow foxes around.

All of these little things do a lot to make that exploration focus just work. There’s always some visual clue to pull your attention and there’s always some tangible reward at the end of it. None of the things feel like a waste or a grind. You do a thing, you get an immediate reward, and you immediately know what it does. It all just feels really natural in practice. Where AC Origins and Odyssey started to shed some of their collection-heavy past, this one feels like it took the next step that Ubisoft was perhaps hesitant to do.

Combat has a similar thing where it feels like a logical next step in the process. Stealth is still in play, and is still super useful. Parries and dodging are there like in AC and are still your main means of avoiding damage. Combat still kind of breaks down when there’s large groups, largely because there’s only so many directions you can focus on at once. However, where things really clicked for me were in the duels.

Duels are effectively your boss fights for this game. Starting one off always has a great intro cutscene to establish the fight, then your camera comes in super tight and you’re off. The actual combat is still the same, but the one-on-one focus allows for a lot tighter overall action. Where dodging without care for timing will generally work well against trash mobs, mistiming your dodges here could put you in a spot where the opponent can immediately hit you with a second attack before you can respond. On the other hand, timing your dodge perfectly puts you in slow motion with the ability to quickly attack. The same thing also stands with parries. Time it well, and instead of just a simple parry you will break your opponent’s defense and have them lined up for a critical strike. It’s also hugely beneficial that parryable and dodgeable attacks are different and have obviously different visual tells. It puts the combat into a place where there’s no guessing and it’s all about timing and skill, then solid execution of attacks when you’ve put yourself in a place to go on the offense.

There’s also something to be said of the fact that there’s very distinctly strong stances in this game, and in that regard it feels like it’s pulling a lot from the Yakuza series. As a player you have 4 main stances, each good against specific enemy types – swords, shields, spears, and brutes. While you can definitely fight any enemy with any stance, the skill of identifying and fighting with the right stance is hugely beneficial to clearing out enemies as quick as possible, while also minimizing the damage that you end up taking. This ends up being the real saving grace for group combat, as using the stance switching can allow you to quickly clear up the easier targets, leaving you to focus on one or two of the more problematic ones.

It also dawns on me that I didn’t take any screenshots of me using either of the bows. That’s kind of a shame because they’re honestly very good. You have a short bow (quick draw, lower damage) and a long bow (slow draw, large damage, can pierce metal) that are both very effective at their role, especially in stealth situations when taking out sentry units. They’ve got a pretty solid impact feel to them, they’re generally easy to fire, but with gravity effecting the arrows they aren’t trivially easy. There’s also a bit of aim assist typical of gamepad, but it’s not overbearing. It ends up falling in a place where there’s enough skill involved to make using it feel fair, but enough assists in place to make it still feel natural with gamepad aiming.

I certainly won’t sit here and claim that this is generally an original title, but it didn’t necessarily have to be. It takes the framework established by the recent Assassin’s Creed titles, and iterates enough on it to feel like its own thing. What it does do is give me hope that we see it push Ubisoft to take that next step with Valhalla or Sony with the next God of War, because as a genre these open world action games just work very well. This one added a really well developed feudal Japan setting and interesting story to the overall game framework, and it hit really well as an end-of-generation title. It also served as a really interesting change in direction for Sucker Punch after wrapping up some of their Infamous story line early on in the generation. Now, admittedly I wouldn’t mind seeing them go back to Sly Cooper after this, but they did a hell of a job pushing the open world action game in a direction of continued improvement here.

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Game Ramblings #117 – Paper Mario: The Origami King

More info from Nintendo

  • Genre: JRPG-ish
  • Platform: Switch

This one was surprising to me, but only in ways that are relevant to the recent history of the series. If taken by the original game and Thousand Year Door, this being good isn’t a surprise. Even with Super Paper Mario, we saw some capability of the series to have spinoffs that are still quality. However, Sticker Star and Color Splash introduced combat focused on really obnoxious collectibles, and it felt like the series had gone off the rails. The Origami King in that regard is an oddity. It’s sort of an RPG, or at least feels closer to one than the last couple of titles. However, its progression isn’t based on XP, it doesn’t really have turn-based battles, and to some extent battles aren’t typically all that necessary. However, the systems in place – while not working great 100% of the time – still work well enough to make this one a really fun experience.

Being realistic, I guess the place to start with these ramblings is with combat. Combat has been the major downfall of the last couple of titles. In this one, it’s at times a blessing and a curse, but it’s at least unique and not surrounded by obnoxious collection anymore. The main catch for combat is that everything is based on setting up patterns in a ring. At the start of a turn, you’re presented with enemies pseudo-randomly placed on a ring, and with a limited set of moves you’re meant to slide and twist them into either a column for jump attacks or a 2×2 for hammer attacks. Do it right and you get a big damage boost. Do it wrong and you don’t.

That little detail though ends up being a blessing and a curse for combat. You want the damage boost because it lets you avoid taking damage yourself. It also results in you gaining a significant amount more coins in finishing. The reason you want more coins is so you can buy better items, since the upgraded attack items break every few battles. However, there’s no reason to need to buy a ton of items if you aren’t really battling. If you aren’t battling, then you won’t use the items and won’t need to battle to get more coins. It’s a weird sort of pull where combat for the sake of combat often feels super rewarding, but because your goal is to one shot everything it also ends up feeling inadvertently easy. Because you don’t really need to battle, you end up avoiding battles. Because you end up avoiding battles, combat feels inconsequential.

That said, there is something to be said for how satisfying combat feels when you do engage in it. Getting your board pattern right is a big positive gameplay boost. Seeing the big damage numbers is really gratifying, and even better when you see enemies explode in a flurry of coins and particles. This is enhanced by the typical timing-based bonuses from past Paper Mario titles where timing things just right gives you damage or defense bonuses in active combat.

However, bosses flip this all around. Rather than being in the middle of the board fighting outward, you’re starting on the outside of the board and moving inwards. You push and spin the board to line up a series of arrows and attack pieces to attempt to move you into the right position for maximum damage in a turn. Everything I’d read in previews of this game seemed to indicate that these fights could be grindy and boring, but honestly I found them anything but.

Admittedly, yes they can be long fights. However, they’re generally only grindy if you make them so. Each boss has a handful of core mechanics that really give you a ton of damage. Figure these out and you’re getting through the fights in a small handful of turns. Don’t figure them out, or don’t do your board setup right in a turn, and you could be in for a world of pain, or a turn with no damage output. From that perspective, I can see where some of the criticism comes from. In some cases, the mechanics at play are probably more vague than they should be. However, it’s incredibly rewarding to figure out one of these mechanics and really lay into a boss. Seeing a third of a health bar disappear in one turn will never feel bad, and this one definitely has that happen if you’re playing your cards right.

There were also a handul of real-time combat bosses that caught me off guard in the best way. The Blooper fight above is one example, where I’m dodging and jumping over different attack patterns trying to hammer the tentacles. Another example had me fighting a gigantic Papier-mâché Pokey while driving around a desert in a boot. These little real-time segments were never necessarily a core focus of the game, but had a habit of turning up at just the right time to let the game breathe a bit. They acted as a fun little challenge to tie into some portion of the story without forcing a turn-based fight. They stretched the overworld mechanics a bit to provide something the player could hop right in without a tutorial, but still be challenged in new and interesting ways.

As far as the rest of the RPG-ish stuff goes, it’s there in small ways that provide a power curve, but remove complexity from the genre. There’s no built-in XP system, but you’re provided fairly regular health and damage upgrade bonuses to give regular power growth. There’s no real gear system, but you can buy accessories to provide battle and world bonuses. There’s no weapon upgrades, but there’s an ever increasing strength of weapon items that you can buy, which do break, but cost far less in practice than the amount of coins you gain in winning a bunch of regular battles. It’s in an interesting place where they kind of take the RPG elements that work for the game, but don’t push into all the expectations of the genre. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have preferred something more akin to Thousand Year Door here, but for what it’s worth it ends up working out well, and at the very least doesn’t end up getting in my way.

The rest of the experience is core Paper Mario, and if the battle system doesn’t scare you off, you don’t need to know anything here to know you’ll enjoy it. The origami visual style is phenomenally gorgeous, and they strongly use that to differentiate the paper people from the origami enemies. The writing is top notch and often laugh out loud hilarious. You’ll see creatures and characters from all walks of the Mario life, and you’ll see them in ways that are often very different from how they’re presented in the core platformers, but again that’s no big surprise here.

End of the day there’s really just one thing here to be said about this game – pleasantly surprising. The previous two games in the series really lowered my expectations coming into this one. As much as I was being cautiously optimistic about the combat, seeing another non-traditional turn-based system had me pretty nervous about the state this one would land in. Luckily, it landed pretty well. There’s definitely some oddities around how necessary combat ever is in this game, but engaging in combat is at least fun on its own. Even better, the boss fights are super interesting with some twists on the core mechanics at play within them. Again, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I would have preferred a more direct sequel to Thousand Year Door, but for the time being this one still leaves me pretty happy.

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Game Ramblings #116 – Ovivo

More Info from IzHard

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: iOS, Android, Steam, Xbox One, Switch

Ovivo is the perfect kind of indie experience for me. It takes a single mechanic, polishes it to a brilliant shine, and lasts as long as it needs to. It doesn’t start adding a bunch of cruft. It doesn’t add 20 hours of extra shit purely meant to extend gameplay. It doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. In focusing on what makes it special, it ends up being better than games that push higher and fall hard.

This is an early level that I was playing, but I figure it’s a good place to start. The only mechanic available to you is the ability to switch between the white and black gameplay spaces. As you go further in the game, there’s some amount of nuance there, but it really is that simple. You can move left and right, and you can press the one button to switch between color planes. However, it’s the nuance that ends up giving the game a lot of depth.

Early on they give you those curved platforms and elevation changes. In swapping planes, you start to see a bit of momentum from the swap. It intuitively pushes you to preload your swap, which then teaches you about really using that momentum change to get to new spots. Meanwhile, this is all being taught in complete safety. Later levels start adding little pits that you have to use momentum to get around, giving you a spot to experiment with. It then proceeds to moving platforms and moving traps, giving another layer of depth to the interaction.

It’s that little step at a time push forward in complexity that works really well. You hit a new wall, have to experiment a bit, learn a little bit more, and move on. You see it in games like Super Mario Bros – can’t run left, always move right; jump before the first Goomba and hit your head on a question mark block – where new mechanics are introduced in a spot where you intuitively learn something, rather than being hand fed something. In the case of Ovivo, they do it extremely well. The complexity they get out of the one simple mechanic is astounding.

This is all helped by the fact that the game is visually stunning AND the visuals are core to that single gameplay mechanic. The entire game is presented in black and white, and everything you see is part of the gameplay space. The transition in colors literally acts as the collision boundary. Things that rare visually spiky and dangerous looking are literally dangerous and will kill you. Nothing is wasted in the layout of the levels, and it’s all important to the experience.

The fact that it is visually interesting leads to the one other sort of mechanic, which ends up being the light collection aspect. There’s two types of collectible items to find in the levels, and they’re a mix of on the core path and off of it in unique side areas. They end up playing a nice role in forcing you to pay attention to what’s going on around you to find those little side spots. In general, the ones off the path are also the ones that have the most interesting puzzle and momentum tricks, so it ends up being fun to find them anyway.

Each level is followed by a zoom out, showing both the entirety of the level you went into, and the art theme around it. It’s always impressive.

These kinds of short indie experiences are the type of game that I really like playing, and also the type of game that I’m glad to see coming to physical releases. In this case, I got this one from Red Art Games. These types of indie releases usually have a pretty small audience, so seeing them on disc is always a nice treat. Despite the small release number, it’s still getting it out to an expanded audience, and in a way that it will continue to be preserved. This definitely fell on the positive side for me. They really took their core mechanic to a polished state that isn’t common in many games, and it results in a game that feels truly unique in execution.