Category: Platform

Posted on

Game Ramblings #73 – South Park: The Fractured but Hole

More Info from Ubisoft

  • Genre: RPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One, Switch

TL;DR

  • Battle system is a phenomenal grid-based strategy system that heavily encourages the use of forced movement, ticking damage, and CC to eliminate enemies.
  • Like The Stick of Truth, does a fantastic job of integrating the player into the South Park universe, from the visual design to the way the story is written, especially when they straight up go at things they know will offend a lot of people.

I’m not kidding when I say they are not being shy about offending people, especially those worth offending.  For example:

This is a perfect example of why South Park as a multimedia franchise exists.  They’re crass, they don’t care about poking at things that others will shy away from, and they do it all with their own unique style.  Is it for everyone?  Not really.  However, if you’re a fan of this universe, The Fractured But Hole is another great entry that does more than just stand on its name for quality.

The visual style of characters is key to this universe, and this game absolutely nailed it.

South Park can be a lot of things, but one of the keys to the entire experience is the visual style that has existed since the first season of the show.  While past generations of games went with somewhat strange 3D representations of the world, the recent RPGs have gone all-in on making the unique style of the series work in real time in games.  Just the world alone is impressive, but the flexibility of the character creation system while fitting into this universe is a technical marvel.

The player character itself can be composed of a ton of different pieces: hair, facial hair, makeup add ons, multiple outfit pieces, etc.  They can all be mixed and matched with each other without limitation to create something that may or may not look good, but definitely is all your own, and definitely looks right out of the show.  Even more impressive is that all of this is done in a way that preserves the character’s appearance in all cutscenes.  You will always be seeing the character you wanted, and there’s no smoke and mirrors to keep it hidden in places where it would be inconvenient in a lot of games.  It’s phenomenally impressive to see in action, and a testament to how much the tech around this game was built to BE South Park.

While a lot different than the previous game, this game’s grid battles are a lot of fun.

None of the visuals would matter if the game’s core battle system wasn’t fun, and they definitely also nailed that.  While there’s some variety in size and obstacles, the core battle system is a turn-based system typically taking place on roughly a 5×10 play space.  Player turns are individually ordered, and that comes into play in some of the abilities at your disposal.  Abilities all have some grid space they can cover, whether it’s a 1×1 melee attack, a line ranged attack, or AoE grids that can be placed anywhere.  In a lot of ways it feels like placing magic attacks in the Disgaea series, and the strategy of where units are on the board is hugely important to maximizing each turn’s damage potential.

This is all backed up by some great effects beyond just simple damage.  You’ve definitely got your typical DoT type effects like poison, burn, bleed, etc.  However, this game places a heavy emphasis on relocation of enemies.  Knockbacks, pulls, location switches, and more are available to let you line up enemies for your future unit turns to really turn up the damage potential.  The turn ordering also comes in to play with some abilities causing turn loss or turn delay, allowing you to really lock down the enemy into not being able to take any actions.  It’s a fantastic set of functionality that all combines to add a ton of depth to what could have been a really simple battle system.  Despite all the depth, it’s also really easy to understand what’s going on, which allows the quick hitting battles to flow in a way that’s not typically of SRPG-style games.

Bosses play in the same battle system, but often have their own rules to throw things out of whack.

It’s also worth mentioning how much fun the bosses are in this game.  Generally speaking they live under the same rule set as normal battles, but throw their own curves.  Some of them are multi-space units that really change how the player has to position themselves both offensively and defensively.  One boss had you not actively attacking it, but instead using knockbacks to throw smaller enemy units into the boss’ eating range to cause damage.  Basically, while the core abilities are still there, the bosses throw enough curves to keep the player’s skill fresh in unique ways that aren’t just doing a battle with bigger numbers.

I’ll be the first to admit that the South Park wrapping on this game will definitely make this game a fairly niche product.  It is full of completely inappropriate humor that will make you burst out in laughter if you don’t take it too seriously.  Once you dig into it though, this game has a tremendously deep battle system that fans of RPGs in general will find a lot to love.  The rest of the wrapping on this, from the side quests to gearing to environment exploration provide the rest of the trappings that RPG fans expect, and give this game a level of quality that we’re thankfully starting to see common in many licensed games.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #72 – Owlboy

More Info from D-Pad Studio

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, macOS, Linux, PS4, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • High points are non-gameplay.  Story, visuals, audio are all top notch.
  • Mechanically does enough to get the job done, but is pretty standard.  Bosses are pretty simple, not too many upgrades, not much reason to back track.

Add this one to the list of Metroidvania games that I’m always a sucker for, and it was definitely solid enough to be worth playing through.  This was definitely an indie darling as it was in development, and it properly earned a lot of accolades, particularly for its visuals.  However, in being a game that did its non-gameplay elements so well, it’s a bit unfortunate in that the gameplay itself is pretty much hitting the minimum standard, and not really doing much to separate itself from the pack.

Right from the start this game has fantastic pixel art, and it compares well against the best of the Metroidvanias of recent years.

It’s pretty easy to see from the start where Owlboy earned its biggest hype from.  This game is drop dead gorgeous.  It’s easy for pixel art games to become difficult to play at times from overly busy visuals, but this one escapes all of those traps.  The backgrounds are high detail, but use muted color palettes to separate themselves from the foreground.  Characters are all fairly low-resolution, but have unique looks of their own so you can immediately tell who is who.  Even more important, the character animation is phenomenal.  There’s enough frames of animation for everything to look really fluid, whether in normal traversal or in combat situations.  Even little details like character facial reactions during cutscenes lend a lot of life to scenes where 2D games typically have to depend more on text.

This high attention to non-gameplay detail also extends to the story and music.  From a non-spoiler perspective, the story focuses on the growth of the main character in trying to learn to be an owl, and how the world around him has gotten to the state it’s in.  The characters he meets with throughout, and those that end up travelling with him are all well written, each with their own motivations as to why they’re joining the party.  As for the soundtrack, it’s a well orchestrated set of pieces, ranging from lighter pieces in town to high action pieces in battle.  Overall, I recommend giving it a listen.

Bosses are the high point of combat, even if they tend to be pretty simple.

The gameplay on the other hand is a lower point in the game.  It’s not that it’s bad – in fact, it hits pretty much all the expected notes for a game of this style.  It just doesn’t really do anything to stand out.

Out of all of this, bosses really are the high point.  They’re pretty standard sort of 2 – 3 phase fights, with damage being the phase trigger across the board.  For the most part, the bosses also introduce new mechanics as they phase transition.  However, the bosses themselves are still fairly simple.  Typically speaking, you get a new upgrade, and face a boss weak to that upgrade.  In the one above, you’d basically just been using a spin move to knock armor off enemies a bunch, then immediately get this boss.  Spin hit the armor off the turtle, shoot it a bunch, repeat.  This was pretty much the same thing across all bosses, and it basically meant that they were never really much of a danger.  You knew going in what you were going to be expected to use, you’d have been given an entire level before hand to learn the ability, and you just have to use it to finish.

But again, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that it went that way.  Upgrades are basically in two forms; characters that you can carry with you, and health upgrades earned by collecting coins.  The characters were a unique way to handle the typical weapon upgrade.  You only earn three – a standard gunner, a shotgunner, and a spider web launcher – but their integration into the story and gameplay as a whole was a unique way to give a voice to the upgrades, rather than them just being a pickup in the world.  It also gave much greater weight to them coming and going from the party based on the story, and ultimately made the story a lot more impactful.  Losing a party member due to something occurring in the world wasn’t just part of the story, it also meant that your combat strategy was about to drastically change for a while.

However, it also meant that you never really had a reason to back track.  While getting 100% of coins to get all optional upgrades is a back track path, the core upgrades were guaranteed along the main path, and I never needed to do the full collecting since I was rarely in danger of being low on health.  The end result of all this is that I treated the game less like a Metroidvania, and more like a typical linear action/adventure game, which probably got me through it quicker than was really intended.

Sometimes you just end up riding a boss upside down through a cave. It happens.Realistically, the game is pretty typical of a lot of top tier independent titles.  The things where it stands out are pretty high end, and the rest of the game kind of sits in decent but average shape.  It’s obvious that visuals and tech around it were going to be the focus of this game, and they really nailed it.  In nailing those things, gameplay looks to be the thing that suffered a bit from lack of development focus, but overall it worked out well.  Would I consider this in the upper echelon of Metroidvanias?  Not really, but I still have a pretty easy time recommending at least a play through.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #71 – Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

More Info From Nintendo

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Wii U

TL;DR

  • Solid entry to the DKC series.  Doesn’t necessarily do new things, but does most things to a high level.
  • Difficulty takes awkward swings depending on whether or not you have a secondary character available.
  • One of the better pure 2D platformers available on any platform, and a great one to have on the go now that it’s moved to Switch

Admittedly, this isn’t the first time I played this one.  I got through a lot of it back on the Wii  U, but ultimately rage quit due to some of the weird difficulty swings.  This time around, I took a bit more measured approach to how I was playing the game, and realistically took advantage of knowing the sticking points, and got through it.  Ultimately this is a great game and a leading example of how classic platformers can move into modern times, even if it’s not without its share of balance issues.

DKC fans will recognize a lot, including your occasional old rhino friend.

The obvious thing to start with is the fact that this is very much a Donkey Kong Country game.  It doesn’t really do much new, does what is expected really well, and is a lot of fun.  Your move set is pretty basic, with roll jumps really being the only semi-advanced feature.  The only real addition on the newer games is the ground pound to stun enemies.  If there is any problem I’d point out there, having ground pound and roll on the same button led me to roll to my death by accident more times than I care to admit.  Given the Switch has 4 face buttons, it’s weird that they only use two of them (A/B for jump, X/Y for pound+roll).

However, beyond that input is as expected.  Movement is really tight, even with analog movement available.  Jumping is really predictable and as expected allows for some variance in height based on hold time.  Rolling off the edge of a platform and late jumping still works and is still crucial for speed runs, just as it has since DKC1.  That set of core functionality just feels good the entire time, and allows for the difficulty focus to be on not dying, rather than fighting mechanics.

Rockets are the start of things that look different from the past, with some of the changes working better than others.

By and large the things that are different still work just as well though.  On the ride front you still have your mine cart levels, but you also have levels with rockets that are just as fun, and provide nice distractions from straight platforming.  However, the biggest difference is that the secondary characters in the game aren’t playable.  They’re there to work as a backpack with a second ability, and it’s here that things start to work a bit less well.

On the secondary front, you’ve got Diddy with a short time jetpack, Dixie with her hair flip hover, and Cranky that acts as a pogo stick to avoid damage on some traps and allow for killing enemies with head protection.  There’s no easy way around this – Dixie is by far the most useful and should be the default option.  Cranky’s ability works fine but is extremely niche.  It’s just not that useful in situations where the additional jump protection provides a measure of safety.  Between Diddy and Dixie, Dixie is easily the obvious choice.  They both provide a built in amount of horizontal hovering, but Dixie’s provides the secondary help of either gaining height at the top of the jump, or allowing the player to jump under an enemy, then hover up to a platform.  It’s simply more versatile to do the same end action.

Difficulty can be rough if you don’t have a secondary character, but bosses really emphasize this issue.

However, it really feels like the game was balanced around having the secondary character at all times, and losing them is a punishing penalty.  While it’s not ideal in normal levels to lose a secondary, it will happen often and you’ll deal with it.  Most of the levels have fairly rare barrels available to get a new character, so you learn to deal with the limitations in Donkey Kong’s movement and simply slow down.  However, bosses exacerbate the issue.

The bosses are by and large 90s-era fights for better or worse.  They’re multi-phase fights, all 9 hits to win, and generally simple mechanics.  They’re definitely favoring a showcase of skill over spectacle.  However, they’re also full of one-shot death mechanics, questionable hit boxes, and having to learn untelegraphed attack patterns through repeated deaths.  For the most part it’s as expected, but it’s fairly frustrating.  Losing your secondary character just means that you go from a low threshold of danger to almost no threshold for danger.  Given how quick you can exit and re-enter the boss fights, it generally makes more sense to do just that when getting hit, and that’s probably not what the design team was going for.

This game is basically what the DKC series pulled straight into this era should be expected to be, visuals, gameplay, and all.

So end of the day this is a game that lives by the fact that it’s very much a 90s game.  Building off a series that was so mechanically fantastic as DKC puts you at a point where that will generally work fine, and Tropical Freeze doesn’t falter.  There’s definitely warts here because it doesn’t try to be something overtly modern, but at the same time I played and enjoyed it BECAUSE of that.  Do I think people that aren’t fans of 90s platformers will enjoy this? Not really.  However, that makes it pretty obvious who the target market is, and those folks will be happy again.