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Game Ramblings #123 – Bugsnax

More Info from Young Horses

  • Genre: Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PC, Mac, PS4

I know this is kind of a weird first game to play on the PS5, but it was the perfect storm. I was in the middle of moving into a house, so games were getting delivered there. However, I was still working remote from my apartment, so I delivered the PS5 there to be safe. I wasn’t going to have the PS5 plugged in long term because it also had to move, but I needed something to test the system out, and this was free on PS+. I also knew that I was starting the dive into Yakuza: Like a Dragon, so I didn’t want to start something that was going to take long or require me to remember a ton of information.

That would all seem to indicate that this was a complete chance play through, and to some extent it was. I’ve been looking forward to playing this one for a while since I was a fan of Young Horses’ previous game – Octodad – and I have the physical release on preorder whenever it decides to come out. However, like that one, Bugsnax is not really a system seller, and it’s really not meant to be. Ultimately what it ended up doing was filling the same slot that the previous title did – be a mechanically quirky but interesting puzzle experience, have an absolutely absurd story, but end in a way that left me absolutely satisfied with the experience that was put in front of me.

That pic feels like as good a place to start as any, as it really encompasses a lot of the absurd aspects of the game. Yes that’s a giant living maki roll. Yes it’s something that you have to suss out the mechanics of catching. Yes, it’s core to moving the story forward for one of the side quest chains in the game.

Bugsnax works the best when you’re solving puzzles in order to catch things, and the handful of boss battles really nail the feeling of that. The general individual creatures you catch act as a sort of training method to get through the harder stuff. You generally use one trick in order to catch them. Sometimes it’s using the right sauce to lure something out of hiding. Sometimes it’s using the launcher to toss a thing at them. Sometimes it’s using a trip line to stop something running around at full speed. However, the boss fights tie it all together.

In the case of the sushi roll, it’s the recognition that you need to scan its path to figure out where it’s going to be moving, then setting up your zipline to trip it, then when it breaks apart, running around to catch the pieces until you have them all. In another example, it’s using a trap type that a creature hates to lure it into a specific location where you can then use the hook shot stand-in to pull a rock down on its head. For a game with only a handful of specific tool types, they get a lot of mileage out of their inventive use and combinations possible to really push what you learn against smaller creatures into clever capture mechanics on the larger ones.

Of course, it helps that you want to capture everything. To some extent, you’re drawn in by the clever and very groanable naming and visual scheme of the creatures, such as the crab apple – named after the plant, but very obviously a crab made out of apples, or things like the mothza supreme – a giant flying supreme pizza. You’re also drawn in by the behaviors of the creatures themselves. They emote out of fear when you’re chasing them, out of happiness and anger when you send their favored sauces their way, out of shock when something gets the drop on them.

However, the PS5 version definitely gets some unique touches that are already starting to show the promise of the new controller. Catching a creature does little audio cues of the creatures yelling their names in a way very reminiscent of the Pokemon TV show. It’s something that’s been done in the past on consoles like the Wii, but the quality of audio coming out of the DualSense controller is a marked improvement. Different tools do different things with the modifiable triggers, with custom click points that make it act like the old double action Gamecube analog trigger. It’s also worth noting that the quality of haptic feedback available here is a marked improvement over the last generation’s implementation on the PS4 and Xbox One and being more in line with what we’ve seen done with Nintendo first party titles on the Switch, with feedback on things like creatures walking into the player trap having obviously distinct feedback, allowing you to catch creatures just based on feel while you hide out of sight. It was surprising to see how much these little feedback changes improved the experience, but it’s a level of polish that I’m now hoping to see happen more often throughout this generation.

It definitely also helps that the NPCs and story play a nice balance between lighthearted and absurdist. From a non-spoilery perspective, the core of the story is that you’re a journalist documenting an expedition researching and cataloguing the Bugsnax, which when eaten change the character’s limbs into that snack. The expedition folks seem entirely unconcerned that they slowly turn into fruits and vegetables that you force feed to them, which is hilarious and absurd, and incredibly dark as you roll through the story. It lasts long enough to have its own set of twists and turns, but also doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s also a nice balance of core story and side quest content, giving you an obvious golden path to go through, but plenty of options to venture out and learn more about the townsfolk if you want to, all while catching more new things to turn them into.

So is it a next-gen showcase? Nah. Do I think it’s better on PS5 because of the controller? Yes. Do I think it’s worth playing? Depends. This one falls into a niche where I would easily recommend it to fans of games like Pokemon Snap or Slime Rancher. It’s distinctly an adventure/puzzle game, and it’s casual enough to get through but offers some nice range of easy to difficult content that fits into a lot of skill ranges. It was also the PS+ title for November for the PS5 launch, which right away puts it into the “why not” range. If nothing else it did exactly what I needed out of it – it entertained the hell out of me while giving me a way to test my PS5 and gets me started for the next generation.

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Game Ramblings #122 – Star Wars: Squadrons

More Info from EA

  • Genre: Space Flight Sim
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One

Now I’ll be honest – I didn’t spend a single second in the multiplayer here. By all accounts it’s pretty fun and well made, but that was not at all what I wanted out of this game. What I wanted was a pretty specific thing – a quick hit of space flight in the vein of the Rogue Squadron or Starfighter games, and this really hit the mark there.

Compared to those two series I mentioned there’s really two main things that make Squadrons work so well as a modern game, and the first of these is perspective. The entire game is absolutely designed as a first-person experience and it makes the games work far better. I know that sounds silly, but it’s the same reasoning why I vastly prefer first-person views in racing games. The immediacy of input when you have a fixed perspective gives much better feedback to the player when they’re changing directions. That sort of immediacy in third-person more often than not feels awkward, so you get things like drag and delays on camera booms of third person cameras, which works well to smooth out the camera but gives the feel of delay on input.

It’s a fairly subtle change on the surface, but it results in a much better pace of gameplay. You see the results of input faster, so your reactions are faster, your dodging is faster, your kills are faster. However, that doesn’t just mean everything can just be faster – it means there can be more. Avoiding enemy fire effectively means there can be more enemy fire. Killing enemies fast means there can be more enemies. Quicker controls means there can be tigher spaces and debris that aren’t annoyances – but actual interesting gameplay opportunities. It all works well to ramp the spectacle at the same time as ramping the gameplay, and feels far more interesting than what came before.

The second real change is around handling of AI. It’s not so simple as to say they’re competent, but that they’re controllable. In a way it reminds me a lot of another Star Wars title – Republic Commando. The AI on their own can do a fine job, but where the real benefit comes in is in telling them what their focus should be. Have a guy on your tail that you can’t seem to quite shake? Direct the AI at them. Want the AI to focus on the main target while you take out TIE Fighters? Direct the AI at them. Again, this is a pretty subtle change, but its impact is immense. The battles become less about one-on-one or going after a specific target, and more about managing the flow of battle as it comes to you. If there’s only a main target left, you can all pile onto the target and take it out, but for larger battles you have a lot more flexibility to direct both yourself and your team in a way that pays the most benefit to you.

There’s some smaller systems that also work into this, but are more loadout based. On the surface, the loadout option to add a rechargeable repair droid to your ship seems like a safety valve for less skilled players. However, when I used it it allowed me to play extraordinarily aggressively, often to a stupid level, running right at larger ships and running through their shields while laying in damage. There were also options for main guns and missiles that allowed me to disable enemy ships, giving me options to disable and move on while sending my AI folks in for the cleanup. It’s things like this that add that touch of customization that modern games really lean into. It’s a level beyond merely picking your ship, and leans into making the game work for you instead of you fitting into the game.

I guess all of that is a long way of saying that this was fun and it really felt like it pushed the space flight Star Wars gameplay in a nice direction. You can feel hints of the Rogue Squadron and Starfighter games in there, but this is definitely a more modern approach. It’s also focused in its execution. Ya there’s single and multiplayer, but it’s not trying to be something it’s not. There’s no open world, there’s no overarching metagame, there’s no distractions. It’s space flight done well that doesn’t overstay its welcome. In that, it did exactly what I wanted it to do.

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Game Ramblings #121 – Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

More Info from Activision

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One

I mucked around in the N-Sane Trilogy recently, and frankly it hadn’t aged well. The Crash series has always been on the far harder end in terms of difficulty, but that wasn’t really the issue I had going back to those games. There was just a lot of little things that caused a great deal of friction to the user in ways that no longer really fit in modern games. Crash 4 in that sense is a top example of a few little things going a long way. This game really isn’t that different from the original trilogy, but it’s such a drastically better experience anway.

If you haven’t played a Crash game before, there’s not that much to really explain. It’s a pretty standard platformer, but because it came out before the PlayStation had analog sticks, there’s a whole lot of side scrolling or running into/out of the screen, rather than an openness more typical of 3D platformers.. Where the Crash series really stood out was more in visuals and characters, and not so much in gameplay. Crash 4 is still basically that, but adds in a bit more of a loose sense of 3D space, as well as some masks that mess with the mechanics a bit. These aren’t usually big changes – a bit of gravity manipulation, maybe some time dilation – but they mix up the gameplay in fun ways.

Where this game also really hasn’t changed is that it’s still really fucking difficult. Some of that comes down to the camera – for example depth is often very not obvious and it feels like this is done on purpose. Some of that is in view restriction – for example traps like to be just off screen for you to fall into. Some of that is down to the timing window being really tight – for example if you don’t get on a wall run at the right height and don’t jump off just when you get the right sound effects you’ll fall to your death. Some of that is just physics being wonky – I died a number of times just to the jumps not really performing in a consistent manner, particularly on moving platforms. None of this is really new to the series. In the past this would be infuriating, and result in me shelving the games. However, this is where Crash 4 really shines.

That user friction from the original trilogy? It all came down to the lives mechanic. You had a small amount of lives, and when you ran out, it was game over. You lose progress in the level and have to start it over again. In a lot of cases, a game over would be followed by a game over where you didn’t even get back to the original point you were at. It was frankly a tired mechanic 25 years ago, and it’s even worse now.

Luckily, the real big change for this game was getting rid of lives. Ya, there’s technically a mode you can play where it uses the original lives system, but frankly I don’t see a reason to play it. However, they handle removal of lives in a way that works for all levels of users. Want to be that hardcore 100% run player that wants to finish levels without dying? Well, there’s rewards for that. But if not, you can die away and get through the level a checkpoint at a time until you reach the end. The challenge is now in simply iteratively progressing to the end of the level, not in being super careful to avoid losing lives. It reduces overall user friction and in many cases simply serves to improve the overall gameplay pace.

Speaking of checkpoints, those have seen some nice touches. Since lives are now removed, you can be dying a whole bunch of times and not making forward progress. The checkpoints that were there in the past are still there, and even more important now that you can die a lot. However, in a lot of cases you may get stuck in one area where maybe you have a long stretch between checkpoints or a specific obstacle blocking you. Part of the improvements here is that after a few deaths in a segment, you gain an Aku Aku at spawn. If you die a few more times, but have progressed far enough between checkpoints, you may gain a new dynamic checkpoint that replaces a crate. Again, it’s an improvement to reduce friction and allow you to perhaps take things a little less carefully, improving the overall pace.

The checkpoint work also extends to boss fights. In general I found these to be surprisingly easy in relation to the normal levels. That said, the checkpoints in place were well appreciated. The way those work in bosses is to put a hard checkpoint after each damage event, which typically would come as a result of some stretch of obstacle avoidance gameplay. It meant that seeing and losing out to a new mechanic in a new phase of the fight wasn’t a huge loss in time; it was just a reset to the beginning of the phase, and a chance to use what you learned to get through it. Again, another case of reducing friction.

Ultimately it’s that reduction in user friction that makes this one feel like a modern videogame. They didn’t have to fundamentally change the gameplay to be like Mario or Ratchet or A Hat in Time. They didn’t have to artifically make the game easier and leave their nostalgia blast behind. They didn’t have to change genres to appeal to a modern audience. They simply had to take friction points and get rid of them. I know that sounds easy to say, and I guess to some extent it is, but it’s not a choice without some level of care behind it. The points of friction that got removed are all things that have a very specific purpose – they allow people who are masters at the game to still earn rewards and have a sense of accomplishment for completing levels in a “perfect” manner, but allow the game to gracefully adapt to skill levels down the chain. It’s a shedding of tired things like lives and regression in progress in order to favor a less careful and higher pace of gameplay. It’s keeping simply what worked the best, and getting rid of things that worked the worst. In doing these things, what pops out is a game that is simultaneously retro and modern, and much better than the core trilogy that precedes it, despite largely being the same.