Tag: adventure

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Game Ramblings #108 – Control

More Info from Remedy Entertainment

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One

So, this is a really fun game. Admittedly, I was a big fan of Max Payne and Alan Wake, so it’s not overly surprising that I also enjoy this entry from the team. Admittedly I’m also forgiving some warts in the experience, particularly in the gun play that is generally not that good. However, it’s got such a great setting, such great use of telekinesis, and such fun puzzle solving that I really didn’t care about the smaller problems at play.

Ultimately, this is a game of powers. There’s a bunch that you gain throughout the game, but there’s really two that I want to focus on – launch and seize. These two were the core of how I really built out my personal combat focus in the game.

Seize is simply the ability to take control of an enemy, and have them fight for you. You drop them down to low health and take over, and suddenly you’ve got some helper NPCs at play. This was the first part of my combat plans – distraction. Taking a few weak enemies, having them turn on their allies, and even get in some damage here and there was a good way to take the heat off of me. It provided opportunities for me to move and flank, and find better locations to take out the rest of the group. If I wanted to be aggressive, it provided ways for me to remove some damage and really go in for the kill.

Launch on the other hand does exactly what it sounds like, it launches shit at targets. You can basically pull chunks out of every floor, ceiling, and wall, and use them as built-in ammunition. Later on you can also start launching enemy missiles back at them. Because of this, there’s an endless amount of ammunition in the world, as long as you have energy remaining to use your powers.

Together, these two powers were the core of my encounter focus. I would start an encounter by finding a weak enemy or two, and take them out with either my gun or the Launch power. Once they were able to be Seized, I would do so. With that distraction in place, I could then reposition myself or move in for quick kills with subsequent launches. This all felt extremely good. Launch in particular has really wide aim assists, but also pretty inaccurate throwing, so in general it just causes hilarious chaos with pretty fair average damage.

The powers working well was great, because ultimately I didn’t find the gunplay all that good. It basically felt functional to me, but not overwhelming in quality. The guns had enough variety – you have your pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc. However, they don’t really feel that impactful in either their damage output or in their visual feedback. From a controller standpoint, their aim assists don’t really feel up to the modern expectations of something like Halo or Destiny. They kind of exist, and I made use of them, but I far preferred using powers as my main damage source, unless absolutely necessary.

End of the day, it was the setting that really kept me going. This is very much a story in the vein of Alan Wake, and some of the lore ties into it. The tl;dr is that you’re playing the head of what is basically a paranormal FBI, and are tasked with clearing out an extradimensional invasion that has warped the entire department. Some of the key points are presented in cutscenes, but a lot of it is presented in really well done passive content.

Some of that is things like audio recordings or projected videos that you can’t help seeing. However, a lot of it is stuff that as a player you have to actually search for, and that kind of thing is always a huge plus for me. I can really dig into games that have hidden lore, and this has literally hundreds of files to find. You’ll find folders and crates and tape decks all over the game filled with lore entries. Some of it is essential to expanding your knowledge of the game setting. Some of it is department bickering via memos. Some of it is history books telling of past paranormal events throughout the world, including the one from Alan Wake itself. It’s this kind of scattering of information that really drives me to explore, and it was all written in an extremely high quality fashion to really get me wanting more.

That pace change between combat sections and exploring is so typical of the genre, but it feels so much better crafted here. The entire setting being in a warped building caused by a paranormal event allows so much flexibility in building environments that are simply built to be fun to play in. Where turning corners in Uncharted leads to obvious combat rooms, this feels extremely organic, partly because weird shaped rooms are the norm but also because the rooms can warp back to a normal shape once combat is complete. Where Gears of War hides their dog tags around in corners just to give a reason to explore, this game has lore entries scattered around on desks and cabinets because this is an office building and of course they would be there. Where Halo has to keep inventing bigger baddies to elevate the sense of danger, this can simply throw a refrigerator at you with some demonic presence and not care that it’s ludicrous. It’s not that they’re doing anything particularly new here, but their setting being slightly off kilter allows so much flexibility for them to take the genre norms and get rid of that little bit that makes them feel so unnatural in other games, but completely expected here.

This game was a real surprise to me, and I guess in hindsight I’m surprised that it was a surprise. I’ve always liked Remedy’s work, and while I tend to gravitate towards RPGs, I’ve always been a huge fan of this kind of 3rd person adventure. I think more than anything, it was kind of a game that just fell off my radar. I’d heard a few friends and a few coworkers continue to recommend it to me, so I kind of just bit the bullet and picked it up, and I couldn’t be happier. This is the type of game that I ended playing wanting more, and after a few bigger releases get cleared off my plate, I suspect the DLC for Control is now not too far off in my future plans.

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Game Ramblings #107 – GRIS

More Info from Nomada Studio

  • Genre: Adventure/Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Switch, Windows, macOS, iOS

I’m honestly not going to spend much time talking about the game itself here. Mechanically speaking, it’s a super tight and really well constructed game. It hits a nice mix of platforming precision and intelligent level design to make a really relaxing experience. It’s also phenomenally gorgeous, especially with some of the improvements done for 4k support on the PS4. As a core adventure experience, it’s worth playing for that alone.

What I am going to hit on is where my brain was going as I was playing this. There’s not that many games that I recommend based on me thinking about things outside of the game – really the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are titles like Journey, Hellblade, or Firewatch. However, this one really hit on two main things that were really personal to me, and honestly really unexpected.

One of the things that I’m always trying to find as a developer is a way to ship a game that has an impact on my players. I’ve spent a lot of time festering on my jobs thinking on how to achieve that, but never really knowing where that thought leads. I’ve been lucky enough to work on games like Rocket League or Smite or Killing Floor, which have clearly had large enough audiences to be considered impactful in some way, but to me I’ve had various levels of enjoyment out of actually having been involved in those.

I’ve always looked at some of the indie darlings and thought “hey, I can pull that off easily enough, maybe I should just do that.” However, playing GRIS has kind of solidified what I actually want out of development. GRIS is ultimately a game that I really loved playing, and has had a heavy impact on players, but in hindsight, making a game like it was never going to be interesting for me. Mechanically speaking, it’s super simple and isn’t something that really needs much in the way of programmer help to achieve the gameplay mechanics that it has. What it does in really special ways are the visuals and story telling, both things that I’m not at all interested in from a development perspective.

The things that I’ve always gotten the most enjoyment out of from a development perspective have been the crazy mechanics that I get to work on as a gameplay programmer. It’s things like working on an open world spawn system in Maneater, even if I don’t think the game is that good. It’s working on things like predator stealth for Medusa in Smite, even if that didn’t end up shipping. It’s things like working on Star Fox-style ship movement in Arc Squadron or FF Tactics-style combat in Smite Tactics because I love both of those inspirations, even if both of those games were complete bombs. Working on stuff like that is why I stay up at 3am in Visual Studio; not the end result of shipping something off to players.

Combining those mechanics I love working on with a title that has an impact on players is kind of the ultimate goal, and while I’ve been pushing in this direction with my thoughts, GRIS definitely helped solidify that I want to focus on the smaller picture over the bigger picture for the sake of my own happiness, and if something more comes out of that? Fantastic.

This bird….

From a high level, GRIS is a travel through the five stages of grief. The bird section of the game ends up falling between Anger and Bargaining as far as the game’s travels go. It also hit really close to home.

Everyone’s got their issues with depression or anxiety, and I’m no different in that regard. Everyone’s also got their own ways to manage and deal with it. In the past I generally dealt with it by bottling it up until I got stressed out and lash out.

Which is exactly what that bird does.

That whole pattern comes in waves. I’ve gotten a lot better as I’ve gotten older at recognizing when it’s starting with me, and I’ve gotten a lot better at finding ways to mitigate whatever stress is causing me issues. However, I’m not entirely there yet, and I don’t really think I’ll ever truly solve it. Coworkers will probably recognize this as “Dan being grumpy”, and while there’s some truth to that being the public-facing outcome, it’s deeper than that for me. At this point it’s something that I usually work myself out of pretty quick through some quiet time or taking a bit of time off. However, seeing it in game form was entirely jarring.

I shut the game off after the level and didn’t come back to it for a couple days. It’s not that I’m particularly going through a period of stress right now, but seeing something like that level wasn’t something I was really ready for. In this case, fixing a lego kit was a good distraction until I could get back to it, and really the rest of the game matched coming out of any one of those periods. However, it was an unexpected reminder that I’m not there yet.

So ya, go play GRIS. Maybe you’ll simply play it for the experience and be better off for the enjoyment. Maybe it’ll hit some note for you like it did for me, and you’ll get further meaning out of the experience. In either case, it’s something positive on the other end.

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Game Ramblings #101 – Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

More Info from EA

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

I’m honestly a bit surprised that I really enjoyed this game. In general, I’m not a huge fan of the Souls games. I generally don’t have the patience for the slower methodical combat style that those games have, and just end up getting my ass handed to me. This game isn’t really much different in that regard, but it played just enough into the power dream of being a Jedi to push the Souls combat into a slightly quicker and twitchy pace to a point where that balance between speed and patience really clicked for me.

At its core, combat in this game is fairly similar to Souls. Attacks and movement have a significant amount of heft to them, and poorly timed attacks or lack of defensive maneuvers can result in a whole lot of your health bar disappearing in one hit. However, you do have some fun Force helpers at your disposal. Force push and pull are there to mess around with enemy balance, and in some cases throw them straight off of cliffs. Some Force-based heavy attacks provide a nice burst of offensive output at key times. However, it was the combination of Force slow and a very lenient dodge that gave the combat the feel that I needed.

In general, if I were to pick between parry-based and dodge-based combat in an action game, I will always go dodge-based. Something about the physicality of moving the character to defend feels more intuitive to me than trying to grok the timing of parries. Fallen Order definitely followed that pattern. There were some fights where I was able to parry fine, but something about the scale of the fighters combined with the camera angle really screwed with my ability to time parries a lot through probably the first half of the game. While I was able to be decently effective with it by the end of the game, dodging was still the way I generally played.

Not that that always went as planned…

Luckily for me, that was also a way that the game was tuned. There’s skill tree bonuses in place for properly timed dodges. There’s some skills around doing quick dodges with secondary kicks to knock enemies off guard. With hard lock in place, dodge rolls keep you in range of the enemy, allowing for a consistent way to circle around to the side or back of enemies to lay in some attacks. In general, the dodge was also much more lenient than Souls around the dodge being triggered quickly within the window after my attack. It just ended up feeling slightly more gamey than Souls, but in a way that felt fairly believable BECAUSE you’re playing as a Force-wielding Jedi.

In general, the exploration aspect of the game also gave me a lot of leeway to grow my character in a way that made the game a lot more safe. There’s a bit of a Metroidvania aspect to the game, where going back to worlds that have been completed still offers new paths and new secrets to collect as your power set grows. A lot of these are cosmetics, but some of the secrets are really part of the player’s power curve. There’s your upgrades for the player’s health and Force meters. However, the most important one is the health stim upgrade. Health stims are basically the health potions of the game, but they automatically recharge when meditating at save points. For a player looking for a real challenge, these can be easily avoided. However, for impatient jackasses like me, these are invaluable.

The health stim upgrades provide both important health for getting through bosses in a more safe manner without having to do a bunch of redos, but they also gave me a lot more freedom to explore for long periods of time without worrying about where my next save point would be. They’re also tied into some helpful skills, where their effectiveness can be improved, and their ability to also heal the force meter can be added. This specific upgrade path was probably the single factor in my enjoyment of the game, as it provided an optional way for me to tune the overall difficulty of the game in a way that I enjoyed, without the game really having to simply be balanced around babying players like me.

That’s not to say that combat always entirely worked out well. There were a number of spots where the combat arenas were simply too small against some heavier enemies, so I would spend a bunch of time fighting the camera instead of fighting the enemy. Overall, the combat in place also felt like it started to really fall apart when I started getting above more than 2 or 3 people. This is a great 1 on 1 combat system, but trying to fight multiple melee people while also trying to deflect blaster beams back at ranged enemies just feels like a hectic chore, rather than a cool Jedi power trip. Where it probably wanted to be something akin to the Arkham games, it definitely fell flat. It doesn’t really have the enemy AI attack queuing or the good parry timing tells of that game to really handle a multi-enemy combat scenario in a clean fashion.

The rest of the experience was simply the fun of being a Jedi. The force powers used in combat are also used for traversal. It will always be fun to force pull a rope at me, do a double jump over some gaps, and land light saber down in a Stormtrooper’s skull. It will always feel badass to deflect blaster rounds back at a ranged guy trying to take you out from a ledge. It will always be incredible to fly into Kashyyyk and have a Wookie yelling indecipherable things at you. It was also always fun to try and spy out the little secret areas and find out what might be hiding in that crate around the corner. In general, the game plays a really good balance in being in-combat and being in-traversal, so I was generally able to get the down time I really wanted, while still being able to play that experience of being a ridiculously cool Jedi running all over.

This was definitely a game that I went in expecting the worst, and came out being pleasantly surprised given my history of not really liking the Souls experience. It definitely is a Souls game, but it leans away from the crazy difficulty and crazy combat precision enough to find a balance that I was able to get through in a lot more pleasant way. The set dressing of being a Jedi definitely helped keep me engaged, but I kept coming back for the gameplay. End of the day, this game gives me a bit of hope that there may just be more Souls experiences out there for impatient idiots like me to still play.