Category: Switch

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Game Ramblings #190 – Dave the Diver

More info from Mint Rocket

  • Genre: Action/Adventure/Sim
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, macOS, PS4, PS5

I’ll be 100% honest and admit that I took so long getting to this one purely because it didn’t have a physical copy and I had too many other games that did, but that problem was finally solved. What I was given a year after release was a game that surprised me in how well it blended a casual sort of roguelite and a sort of modern take on old arcade games like Root Beer Tapper. Played on the Switch it even really feet into a really good short session experience, with most game loops taking under thirty minutes in total. It really just hit all the marks for the type of experience I have time for right now.

The core of the game is really all about fishing, but it’s pretty easy to judge the entire game by that from an outside perspective. Luckily that part of the game is pretty solid on its own. It’s nothing complicated, but the small set of weaponry used to either harpoon or shoot fish is pretty varied and lets the player tune the experience to their liking. Confident with dodging? Go high damage close combat. Want some more safety? Build out as a sniper, but have less ammo as a balance point. Want to get higher quality meat? Build out sleep weapons, but potentially lose out on bigger targets that can’t be put to sleep as easily.

The nice thing about the entire result of the fishing is that it all feeds directly into the restaurant which feeds right back into fishing. Those fish you catch obviously become meat for sushi in the restaurant portion of the game, but shortly into the game it also becomes an avenue for getting fish eggs that you can farm, which opens up a new avenue for getting meat and lets you move on to new areas without worrying about a lack of supplies. Those supplies then become the avenue for sales, which gets you money to get upgrades for fishing gear – better weapons, more carrying capacity, more oxygen capacity, etc – which allows you to fish longer, which allows you to get more and better supplies for the restaurant.

If it was just that loop I probably would have been happy enough, but the game is broken up in a number of ways that really give nice breathing points at regular intervals. Every now and again you get big boss fights with unique mechanics. These come as parts of both the story and as just random events, so their cadence is that you get one every few in-game days. Besides generally offering unique items, they simply are just fun. These are the things that test your combat knowledge to the peak, requiring good dodging and good attack knowledge. Some of them are pretty standard gun fights but a few standouts used other mechanics. One used dodging as the core mechanic, with the player grabbing a weight to deflect punches that stun the boss. Another that really got my attention purely involved picking up and throwing rocks to cause damage as regular attacks were just not effective.

The breakup of mechanics also then extended to the restaurant experience. Every not and again you’d get restaurant objectives where you’d compete in an Iron Chef-style competition where the game turned into something akin to the Cooking Mama series. Other restaurant events involved getting specific ingredients to please VIP guests or getting a specific type of ingredient (ex: shark meat) to take on an entire party of guests. The nice thing about the restaurant side of things is that these more often than not opened up new mechanics. Early on it was things like the farm for rice and vegetables, but later on it even got to specific types of ingredients (ex: unlock eggs or specifically habaneros). These little things happening every now and again meant that I was never in a specific type of pattern of just going out and getting whatever, but instead going back and forth sometimes focusing on the story objectives and sometimes focusing on just fun little side things to then expand my repertoire with new and better recipes.

All of these mechanics combined to a place where it never felt like my time was wasted. Runs in fishing at least always got ingredients to feed back into the restaurant which then at least got money for upgrades. Deeper runs in the fishing portion would push me to find new areas to unlock new species and mechanics. New events in the restaurant would allow me to push for new mechanics. Every run felt impactful, which is a huge bonus on top of it being fun.

It’s all then a bonus that the DLC content is also fun. There’s things like playing as Godzilla above. There’s an entire set of night time events based on the game Dredge that add new items and types of fish that can only be caught on event nights. There’s an entire set of rhythm mini game sections expanded by a Guilty Gear Strive DLC that provide a fun musical interlude. Basically, this extends the entire game’s theme to this point – provide new ways for the player to have fun on any single run.

The consistency with which the game pulls that off is impressive, and it never wears off. I could do a single 20 minute dive run and do something useful. I could play for hours of multiple runs and just be engrossed by everything. It perfectly encapsulates how roguelites should work, with the player never feeling like their time is wasted and they’re always making forward progress. For that to happen in a game so inherently not tied to the usual death loop of the genre is therefore even more impressive.

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How’d It Age #10 – Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: Switch
  • Originally Available On: Gamecube

It’s been long enough since the original came out that I only vaguely remember the feeling of playing this game, but not so much the specifics of playing it. I can remember the feeling of the combat being good. I can remember the feeling of the characters and story being funny. What I remember more are the places where newer entries in the series felt like they “fell apart” for me. However, replaying Thousand-Year Door is making me realize that a lot of what I don’t like about modern entries already kind of existed in this one.

Now don’t get me wrong; the combat is this game is still fantastic and was really the driving force behind me playing the game. I would still argue that the core Paper Mario combat is one of leading examples of how to make turn-based RPGs heavily engaging to the player instead of a passive activity. Tying each attack to a different series of inputs for better damage gives the player that little bit of action to keep them involved in combat in a way that keeps their interest and allows it to feel more rewarding to not skip combat. Tying a defense boost to learning and remembering the various enemy attacks gives the player that little constant reward for being involved in combat that makes fighting an enemy for the tenth time more than just a chore.

It’s such a little thing but it makes the combat so much more fun. Other JRPGs have tried different things to get similar feelings. The Persona and SMT series have used type weaknesses to grant the players extra turns to achieve a similar result. The Bravely Default series allows the player to manipulate turn order to stack attacks and blow away enemies. Heck, the combat in Paper Mario was a direct evolution of the standard set by Super Mario RPG. Just giving the player something to do other than pick the attack and fall asleep is such a better result than the norm for the genre.

However, combat is one of those spots where doubt started to creep in. One of the things that really bugged me about more modern Paper Mario entries was how odd the power curve felt. It always felt like it was going in really weird jumps because the numbers were always inherently small. You’d kind of get to a new area, be beat up a bit, then be given a magic power upgrade and suddenly be effectively overpowered by only gaining one attack. That absolutely exists in TTYD, and wasn’t something I really remembered.

The places that I really started to notice it were when the jump and hammer upgrades were not in alignment. I’d suddenly be in areas where one of the two attacks effectively did 2-3 less damage, which meant that it took trash fights from one to two turns per-enemy or would do so much less damage with flower point attacks that the weaker one would be effectively useless on bosses unless mechanics of the fight required the specific attack. This was likely exacerbated by the way I was building, which was to go all-in on badge points so occasionally I would just get a HUGE upgrade swath because I would stumble upon a badge or two that added attack power that would totally change the way I tackled fights. When a boss has maybe 50 HP, suddenly being able to do 3 or 4 more damage per-turn is enormous. It felt off in a way that made me realize I honestly kind of prefer the larger numbers and slower power curve style of the Mario & Luigi series to this, because that at least feels like I’m making consistent growth throughout the game.

The other thing that I really forgot about was just how much walking there is. Holy hell do they like sending you across the same environments about 10 times per chapter for no reason. Sticker Star and Color Splash were somewhat guilty of this in that you’d be walking around a lot simply collecting the right cards for combat. Super Paper Mario was definitely guilty of making the player re-traverse areas way too often. Thousand Year Door just does it too a level that I don’t remember, or perhaps just shut out of my brain. It was so jarring at points that I’d literally put the game down for the night because I was tired of going through the same areas. The island chapter in particular was egregious for this where the hub town for the chapter and the goal for the story were on entirely different ends of the world and you had to cross it at least 4 or 5 times for different reasons.

I guess all that is to say that while this game is still good, it definitely has rough spots. The remake is definitely a strong product, and it brings the game to modern consoles in a visually gorgeous package. However, this is still a 20 year old games with 20 year old problems that at this point hadfaded from my memory. The thing is though, this came out within six months of the Super Mario RPG remake and that game has aged so much better. That one has the nice combat advantages of this series, but was a lot less quirky in the remainder of its JRPG tendencies and has much better overall environmental flow. Like the Mario & Luigi subseries, I think up against this game it ends up being the victor because its mechanics have just aged so much better.

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Game Ramblings #186 – Princess Peach: Showtime!

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Switch

I’m not going to claim that this game is a must play. I’m not going to claim that it’s even a great game. However, it has something to it that kept me playing it. To some extent it’s probably just that it worked generally well. To some extent it was absolutely that I just wanted to see the next costume change. A lot of it was honestly probably just that it wasn’t as serious as FF7: Rebirth was. At the end of the day it was just kind of consistently fun.

That’s honestly something that could be said about a lot of the past output from Good-Feel. Their projects with Nintendo are a who’s who of consistently fun experiences. Wario Land: Shake It was a fun platformer with incredible hand drawn visuals tied down with an obnoxious Wii Remote shake mechanic. Kirby’s Epic Yarn again had incredible visuals and solid platformers mechanics. Yoshi’s Woolly World again had a gorgeous unique visual style tied to fun platforming mechanics, and the same could be said about its followup Yoshi’s Crafted World. If you’re sensing a pattern here, that’s not an accident. Princess Peach: Showtime! follows the same pattern.

This game is just easy to jump in and play, which is made more impressive by the fact that each costume was different. They really took advantage of the core conceit of costume changing to keep the gameplay fresh. Every single costume can jump with the A button or take an action with a B button, so figuring out what to do is less about learning how to execute mechanics and more what those mechanics do. Swordfighter or Cowgirl? The action is a straight up attack. Detective or Patissiere? Neither of them attack so it’s a gameplay action button instead. It’s that variety of some things being really action focused and more things being slow puzzle focus that really keep the game fresh. It has a certain fast/slow back and forth that really works well. Some levels are higher stress combat and some are straight relaxation.

This is all backed by what is again a very unique visual approach. This is probably the game in Good-Feel’s arsenal that is the least unique since it’s inherently tied to modern Mario sensibilities. However, what it lacks in a unique visual theme it makes up for in pure flair. It takes the stage play Showtime! very seriously. Each level is tied to a stage play setting connected to the costume of the stage, and it’s super obvious that this is a stage play. Background elements are obviously made out of stage dressing like wood, cardboard, or stage curtains. Secret areas take you backstage behind the scaffolding. NPCs are all based around puppetry with moving hinged sections instead of organic bodies, as well as their control lines extending down from the ceiling. There’s even nice little touches here where friendly NPCs typically have white lines while enemies have glowing purple lines. This is all a company taking advantage of the theme to make an incredibly good looking experience.

However, like I mentioned – this game isn’t great and it has obvious issues that keep it in simply good territory. The most consistent problem is that a lot of the levels are simply too long for no reason. Each costume is broken into 3 levels. However, it feels like the pattern would have benefited from being extended to 5 shorter sections. The game also places a heavy emphasis on collecting, which is exacerbated by the level length. The game often blocks you from going backward, so missing a collectable can often be a 5-10 minute complete replay of a level. This would probably be fine if there was more variety, but again each costume has three distinct segments of one way to do things so there is no real replayability to any of this. It’s fun the first time and distinctly not the second. This is then wrapped into some real technical issues with low resolution and low framerate, and it’s pretty clear that this is more of a AA effort. It’s a fun one-time experience, but that’s all it is.

At the end of the day this probably hit the points I needed it to anyway. After finishing a game like FF7: Rebirth, I did not want a long or complicated experience. This is the kind of game you’ll fall into, hit your two buttons, have some fun, and be done. It’s fast and gets out of the way, so for me it was perfect. Just don’t expect an all-timer experience here, because that isn’t what you’re signing up for.