Tag: ps5

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Game Ramblings #148 – Hot Wheels Unleashed

More Info from Milestone

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

This is just a stupid fun game. It’s not deep. It’s not going to hold your attention for long. What it is is stupid fun. You’re going to hop into an event, drift around like an idiot, probably fall off the track a few times, probably want to kick the rubberband AI in the dick, and keep going back for more. It’s just that kind of game.

This is as good a gif to describe the game as any. I spent a lot of time drifting and boosting in this game, and it’s kind of core to the experience. You boost to keep your speed up and you drift to get your boost up, so there’s a lot of time spent trying to alternate between the two and not really spend time simply driving. In a lot of ways it’s reminiscent of Ridge Racer, albeit with a weird visual scale. Like Ridge Racer, it’s helped by the fact that the drifting is distinctly fun. It’s got the right amount of looseness that makes it feel slightly out of control. However, it also gives you the ability to modify your drift mid-turn giving you some precision capability. That bit of flexibility really allows for long duration drifts through varied courses in a way that feels far more natural than I expected.

If it was just fun though, I don’t think I would have ever really picked up the game. There’s enough arcade racers that I really don’t need to jump into them that much. Through all of this I was generally just constantly baffled by the fact that the game exists in such a high quality form. There’s just so many things that mask the fact that this is ultimately hot a huge AAA production that are all extremely smart but also impressive to see in use.

Let’s start with the tracks themselves. There’s 5 main themes which may not sound like a lot but is more than enough. The themes themselves have a ton of useable space within them. As an example, there’s a construction theme with a ton of vertical space. Some of the tracks in theme have you at ground level, zipping around equipment and debris. Others have you up in the rafters going along beams and supports or using magnet tracks to zip around on the ceiling. In that regard, they get a ton of mileage out of a small amount of themes. The tracks have some background level of familiarity, but have a much different feel just based on how the track is sent through the environment. This is combined with a high potential to really find shortcuts via boosts and launches to make the racing feel extremely dynamic and different with each race.

The vehicles themselves also just have a ton of detail in them, both in gameplay and non-gameplay bits. The level of detail in the vehicles is astounding. The way they modeled the various surface materials is fantastic. Visually speaking, there’s a ton of difference between the plastics, metals, different paint types and more to where these just look incredibly realistically like their in-hand counterparts. However, at the eye level of a race, these look like they are driveable cars.

The detail extends to the gameplay level though, and the balance act here is impressive. The cars all run from the same general stat pool, so you would think that a high speed, high acceleration car is generally going to be the way to go. However, the slower cars are also generally the ones that have more boost availability, so they have a lot of potential to really keep up with the pack in the hands of a player comfortable with drifting. To some extent, the shape of the car is also a factor. I really fell in love with a wedge-shaped little roadster, and if I hit my boost right, I could go underneath cars in front of me and launch them off the track. It was a nice bonus to my selection that was inherent to the car, and not necessarily something obvious that came out of stats.

This is a game that punches far above its weight. It’s an inherently AA-priced licensed racing game, but it’s so much better than that. It has such an ability to just be picked up and played, then played for far longer than was intended without growing old. It’s got a great drift model combined with fun vehicles and even more fun track design. It’s got a light heartedness in its theming that really just comes out of it being based on a kid-focused license, but has such a quality that any fans of arcade racing – particularly drift focused racing – will be able to have a lot of fun. It’s just the surprise of the year for me.

Also…..that map design 😍

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Game Ramblings #147 – Tales of Arise

More Info from Bandai Namco

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

The Tales of series has always been one where the combat has always trumped any other problem I’ve had with the individual titles, and this one really isn’t that different. The stories of the various titles have always been fine to good but generally fall into pretty typical anime cliches, and this one isn’t really different. The presentation aspects have always been a bit behind the AAA curve and as much as this one is a huge step forward for the series, it’s still distinctly AA. Where this one again greatly succeeds is that combat is a lot of fun – and for probably the first time in the series for me, I’ve found a defensive style to actually be extremely fun while still being practical to play.

Games like Berseria started really pushing the game away from the mana-heavy skill usage of prior Tales games, and this one definitely kept that going. Where it kind of differentiates from that title is that basic attacks are split into their own chain separate from Artes. Functionally though, it’s very similar to Berseria. You attack, you try to break the enemy’s defense, and if you can break them you get a big attack and go AOE ham on the field. From an attack perspective, it still has a great flow in terms of chaining attacks with your team to keep the enemy in a hit chain and increase the chance of stunning them. In general I was able to quickly fall into a nice rhythm to where I could get in my attacks while keeping an eye out for the enemy’s incoming volley, then get out of the way as it came through.

Where this game really separates itself from the past is that it finally feels like 3D navigation is here to stay. General in-combat movement is more typical of recent action RPGs, with left stick being independent movement and right stick being the camera. It’s a small change, but it makes the game flow less like the generally fixed in/out movement of even 3D Tales games. This one also felt like it really had the biggest mindset towards defensive maneuverability in the series to me. Past titles had side stepping and that sort of thing, but the feel of it is much more natural to me. A heavy focus on dodging became part of my default toolset, rather than being an oh shit button that I used on big fights. Avoiding incoming damage and not relying on healing was a big difference for me, and it really encouraged active participation in the fights, rather than simply being a button spam with little damage mitigation.

Healing in general also went through some big changes here. Where Berseria encouraged character swapping to let characters heal out-of-combat, this one is kind of a more typical experience. You’ve got characters that are fairly traditional healer mage types. However, healing is tied to a single resource pool for the entire party. Having two healers has choice benefits, but it doesn’t have resource benefits. What it ended up doing was allowing me to bring in a dual-healer approach on bosses while using a more damage-focused party for regular combat, without really being able to cheese the game with a double mana pool for healing.

It’s an interesting change that had some ramifications on overall item and resource balance. Your typical orange+ potions that refilled MP in past games are now tied to that new resource, and given the stack limits (still 15 like past Tales titles…), double healers can burn through the resources incredibly fast. This ties all back into the damage mitigation, where reducing the need for your healers to actually use the resource becomes incredibly important.

Unfortunately, some of the negative parts of combat have been carried over as well. Put simply, the AI are incredibly stupid. They will not reliably dodge incoming attacks, even if there’s a giant obvious laser line tell going right at them. The healers will not first get away from the enemies to start the healing, even if it’s clear that they are in danger range. They do not have good target prioritization, and the tools to manage AI decision making don’t really do a good job of exposing this functionality to the player. It ends up in a situation where combat works great against single targets, then falls into chaos as more targets enter the fray. Luckily, bosses are largely party vs 1 affairs, so it’s generally not a big issue.

Some of the power curve decisions are also interesting, but I’m not sure I particularly liked them. There’s typical weapon/armor/accessory slotting, but there’s also now skill points tied into title trees. As you earn titles for doing things (ex: finishing specific character-focused side quests, doing specific activities, etc) you’ll earn the series typical titles. However, they’re now tied to four additional skills that can be purchased with SP. Earning all skills for a title will then unlock a larger passive stat boost that sums to the character.

Compared to the mastery stats on gear that Berseria used, this felt oddly boring to me. It’s an effective system, but it didn’t really encourage me to do anything. I kind of found the most useful next stat, then bought the skills for it as I could. The titles are kind of naturally gained by just playing the game normally, and you really don’t have to go that out of the way to get them all. The mastery stats in Berseria, despite being similar in practice, felt a lot more influenced by player completion than this. In that system I was still effectively building SP to get a skill but I was only getting one per piece of gear, so I was spending more time focused on making sure that I had backup gear ready when I left towns, and spent more time trying to make sure I wasn’t missing any chests that might have more gear. It’s a subtle change, but the title skills just got rid of a small stress factor that I feel really let the system down in Arise.

Overall though, this was a fantastically fun game to play. I could sit here and nitpick the story and make notes about how it was pretty cliche, but frankly I don’t play these games expecting a great story. I jump into them because I want JRPG math combined with an action-focused combat system and I got a heavy dose of that. 50 hours later, I was still enjoying jumping into battles, and if that’s the only thing I have to say coming out of a game, that’s a pretty good indication that they did it right.

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Shelved It #11 – Scarlet Nexus

More Info from Bandai Namco

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platfrom: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

This game sits firmly within the good but not great quality band. It does some things well; overall world building, base combat. It does some things poorly; longevity and balance curve, storytelling choices. Where it ends up fitting is that while I was having fun when I was playing the game, it ended up missing that thing that really grabbed me to keep playing the game, or even choose it over others. With Skyward Sword coming in yesterday and Diablo III on Switch back to filling a lot of smaller time gaps, it lost the battle.

Combat is where the game really continued to draw me in, but it’s also where the game ultimately caused me to back away, so we’ll start there.

The game is an action RPG that combines pretty basic controls (a couple of attacks and dodge) with a more complex backing system of powers. The powers are where the real interest lies. This runs the range from gravity manipulation to time manipulation to electric attack buffs. The gravity manipulation is also the player’s core ability, and it’s tied to a meter charged via attacks. What this ends up doing is causing a satisfying rhythm to form in combat. Do a few attacks up close, dodge out to range, then lay in with the telekenesis attacks.

Where this really gets fun is that you’re effectively borrowing and combining powers from your party members to activate and use to your advantage. Enemy goes into hiding when you get close? Combine time manipulation to slow them down with electric to stun them. Need to knock a flying monster out of the air? Use the duplication power combined with the player’s own gravity manipulation to huck some projectiles their way. The combinations are a lot of fun to learn.

However, that learning stopped far too early. By about the 10 hour mark, I was no longer seeing new enemies. Sure, their levels would be higher, and sure they may have some new wrinkles in terms of debuffs or actions, but the approach was the same. This was also met with an unfortunately common tactic of just adding more. More enemies, more debuffs, more ranged attacks being thrown your way. Rather than being rhythmic, the combat became chaotic. It was no longer challenging because of learning and using the right things, but challenging because the window to attack became so small. I’d run around dodging things until my powers came up (particularly the time manipulation and invisibility), get in a few attacks, then go back to dodging. It was slow and trudging, which is the opposite of the first 10 hours, which are fast and exciting.

Typically speaking that wouldn’t have been enough to run me away from the game, but the story side of things was similarly unbalanced in terms of how I liked it.

The world building side of all of this was something I really liked. The tl;dr is that this is a future Earth where some apocalypse event caused by an atmospheric belt has caused demonic monsters to invade and attack humanity. Humanity has managed to get to a point where people are basically part of two classes – those with powers and those without, and those with powers are effectively conscripted into the military to defend the remains of humanity, while those without are shunned. At its core, this is a fun potential setting, and in a lot of ways the first arc of the game is really enjoyable. I was able to sink into the setting while enjoying the way that the events around was presented.

However, again around the 10 hour mark things started to sour. At this point, the split character choice at the beginning of the game reared its ugly side. This point of the game put me in a place where the two main character’s stories diverged heavily. What this ended up resulting in as far as the first play through goes is that I was seeing one side of the game, then when the two stories intersected there was a big knowledge gap and a lot of “how the hell did you guys get here?”. Since seeing the other side of the story involves starting from scratch, it left a lot of confusion. It’s not that I inherently like games that hop you between two characters a lot, but it solves this issue particularly well, and it becomes pretty obvious why hopping characters in a split story is a better option. Ultimately I think the anime that’s currently running will do a much better job of keeping my attention since it will avoid this issue.

I guess the unfortunate thing is I’m left wanting to like this game more than I did. It has enough going positively for it that it doesn’t feel that far away from being a truly good game. The things that I find wrong with it aren’t egregious problems, but are polish issues that never happened. What it ended up being was a game that couldn’t keep my attention in long enough stints to allow me to finish it before something higher priority came out, and with so much coming out every month it’s hard for me to give it a boost above so many other things.

What I will say is that I would probably recommend catching the anime. It may not be the most original, but there’s an interesting core world here, and presented in a fashion that does a better job of making a coherent story path, I think there’s a lot to enjoy – just not quite in a game form.