Category: Genre

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Game Ramblings #169 – Haven

More Info from The Game Bakers

  • Genre: RPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Windows

This is a game that for me stretched how far one mechanic could work for me to carry the game. Sure, this game has some JRPG-ish combat. It has a bunch of crafting in place to handle items and upgrades. However, it was the overworld gliding that kept my attention, and oddly that was enough.

Looking at some reviews after the fact, it feels to me like I had the opposite experience of a lot of reviewers. I’ve seen a lot of places praising the combat and saying the overworld collecting was a drag. However, it felt like the opposite to me. I dreaded being in combat instead of just flying around the world – not because it was necessarily challenging, but because it just felt slow.

Combat in Haven is sort of a FF-lite. It’s effectively an ATB-style JRPG turn-based system. You have a couple attacks to choose from, you can combo them with your partner, or you can activate a shield to reduce damage. It works well enough, but you get all of it immediately and it never really feels….different. Every enemy type is basically a system of figuring out which attack they are weak to, recognize when attacks are coming up to shield, and then getting through it. The only real differences between early and late game are that a couple enemies require waiting until they attack to hit them while they’re dazed and most late-game enemies basically require you to always have one of your party members shielding.

As a core combat system it’s fine, but it left me wanting more. I wanted to have to use better strategy to defeat enemies. I wanted to be able to more rapidly mix attack types instead of waiting for the relatively slow attack gauge charge ups. Frankly, I wanted it to be easier to heal my party instead of having to always be crafting bandages and healing capsules at my base.

I suppose that’s another part of the game feeling slow to me. Even with shielding, you end up taking so much incidental damage over time that you have to find a camp or return to base to heal. The game requires you to eat to have the fastest combat pace which requires you to find a camp or return to base to cook. You often find items required for upgrades or plot reasons that require you to return to base to activate. You basically spend a bunch of time just having to return to base, and it all feels like padding for the sake of extending time played.

However, I kept pushing because it was fun just to glide around. The gliding is fast, but weighty. There’s a strong sense of momentum when leaning into turns, rather than just turning on a dime. There’s little flow lines all over that have you flying in the air following them that somehow bring on a sense of nostalgia of something like a Tony Hawk game, despite being clearly sci-fi. Some reviewers pointed out that all the collecting was a chore, but I often found it fun gliding around new zones simply to find all the flow lines and figure out where they went. I was having fun for the sake of gliding around, and forward progress in the game was often just incidental to that.

For me, that was enough. Gliding around was fun for the sake of being fun, and the rest of the game was there to happen when it happened. I expect most people will enjoy the combat more than I did and I also suspect that most people will be a little more streamlined with the overworld stuff than I was. So long as you can deal with the fact that story is often outwardly horny, I think there’s a surprising little gem to play here.

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How’d It Age #3 – Metroid Prime

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: FPS
  • Platform: Switch
  • Originally Available On: Gamecube, Wii

Under normal circumstances, this would be a very short ramblings. Yes, this aged well. Yes it’s still an incredibly good and fun game. Yes you should buy it. The end.

But I have some thoughts here on the various versions, with a bit of a wild card. I’ve played all the versions of this that have come out, whether it’s the original release, the Wii update for Trilogy, or what is now the remastered version on Switch. If I look at the versions side by side, I don’t think there’s a real clear winner in terms of which one is the best. There’s things that the last two do that I think are interesting and better, so the real question is, which one should you play?

The Switch version is a pretty easy recommendation, especially if you’re a typical console FPS player. The dual-stick controls drastically modernize the game, making general traversal much better than other versions. It allows the game to just flow better, which is a bit of a surprise to me. It also drastically reduces the benefit of aim lock, which is something that surprisingly makes the game quite a lot easier. It’s also easy to recommend it because of the updated visuals, which really do a surprising amount to modernize the experience.

However, I don’t think that’s the best control scheme. I actually think it’s pointer controls, and unfortunately I don’t think that the Switch pointer controls feel as good as they do on the Wii. I noticed that they were occasionally getting out of sync which is something that I’ve seen on other pointer-style Wii ports, as well as with motion-assisted games like Splatoon. This is where the Wii version via Metroid Prime Trilogy really shines. The pointer input scheme on that version is as close to mouse-focused aiming as I’ve ever seen on a console game, and it shines in this experience. It makes boss fights in particular incredibly precise to fight, and again is something that reduces the need to really use aim lock. Combined with a heavier reliance on strafing compared to the original, this is as PC-styled as the series gets.

That said, I do have a wildcard and that comes in the form of PrimeHack. This is a fork of the fantastic Dolphin emulator that adds in support for traditional PC keyboard/mouse controls to Metroid Prime Trilogy, assuming you have a legal way to rip your discs down or feel like sailing the high seas. This can be combined with things like the Dolphin supported for HD texture packs to transform the PC experience into something closer to the remaster’s visual styles with an even better control scheme. The first time I played Prime in this way was a revelation. It transforms into a PC game so easily that I can’t believe more shooters aren’t trying to fill the adventure game niche that this series did. At high framerate and resolution combined with keyboard/mouse controls, this just feels like a modern PC game, despite being 20 years old.

I suppose I never really answered the question of which version you should play, and I think my answer really comes down to any of them. Play the Switch if it’s the easiest to get at. Play the Wii version if you want consistent shooting input. Rip your disc and play it on PC with a texture pack if you really want a surprising experience. However you play this game, you won’t be disappointed. It really does still hold up.

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Game Ramblings #168 – God of War: Ragnarok

More Info from Sony

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4

Being perfectly honest, you could read my ramblings on the previous game and have a pretty good idea where I fell on this one. This is every bit an iterative sequel instead of the revolutionary change that the previous entry was. However, that’s not to say that’s a bad thing. This definitely does a lot to clean up some rough edges in the series’ transition to action RPG, but more importantly it shows a drastic amount of growth in the characters. It’s for that reason that I wanted to get through the game.

The lack of core gameplay changes did end up with this one being a bit long in the tooth. Combat felt like it reached a point towards the end of the game where they kind of just ran out of ideas and started throwing more targets at you, which wasn’t particularly fun. Side quests started to get a bit samey, which meant that I was doing them purely for rewards instead of any narrative enjoyment. Despite having a lot more environments to wander through than the original game, I just kind of felt like I was at my limit. That’s the curse of sequels I guess. You’re going to have to be somewhat samey or risk alienating your audience. Unless you’re doing a years later reboot like the previous title, you are where you’re at. However, I wanted to see the end of the story.

That push to want to see the end of the story is the most important thing to me about this game. I didn’t really need or want a challenge by the end, because it wasn’t important to my enjoyment anymore. I could turn the difficulty all the way down, hammer through the repetitive combat segments, and get what I wanted out of the game.

The previous game had me in a place where I absolutely hated Atreus, and that was a huge point of celebration for the quality of the writing in place. He was a little shit of a kid that needed to learn patience and care. Kratos was a completely impatient and untrusting father that wasn’t really prepared to be the sole caretaker for his son. It was a dynamic that worked wonderfully as a reintroduction to the series after years off.

This game instead shows a lot of growth in the characters across the board. Atreus still has his little shit moments, but he’s got such a strong growth arc throughout the game that ends with him at a point where he is clearly becoming an adult. He’s more careful in his decision making throughout the game. He shows patience when he isn’t immediately getting his way. Importantly, he is able to provide a level of care to others that allows them to also grow. Kratos on the other hand is an increasingly patient individual. He shows deference to his son’s wishes while still providing growth lessons to him. He shows a clear wish to avoid war but is also willing to engage when it becomes necessary. The growth in the dynamic between the two of them is the thing that made it easy for me to push through to the end of the game, and on its own I think is a clear reason to play this.

The rest of the game is kind of take it or leave it. The combat is as solid as the previous game, but effectively unchanged if you ignore the inclusion of a spear weapon. Atreus’ role in combat is a little more flexible with some arrow powers, but in practice it acts as more of a spam when practical button than much in the way of planning. I again enjoyed the dodge/parry focus on defense that I could play with, but found enemy tells and timing of tells to be incredibly inconsistent, which could be pretty frustrating in multi-target combat. Basically, they were similar gripes I had with the original and I’m not surprised that hasn’t changed.

I guess my tl;dr here is play it if you know you liked the previous game or play it on story mode if you just want an enjoyable narrative experience. There’s really not going to be a lot of surprises here otherwise. It’s an incredibly solid first-party title for Sony that has the same strengths and weaknesses as the previous title, with just that important bit of iteration involved, leaving us with a game that is predictably great.