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Game Ramblings #74 – Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

More Info from WayForward

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • Strong continuation of the Shantae series.
  • Action/platformer gameplay is as strong as ever, and the DLC brings in interesting new gameplay styles in smaller segments.

The Shantae series has been one that’s always focused more on the action side of platformers, and this one is no different.  While it has little bits that read of Metroidvanias, its focus is still tightly constructed levels, use of different powers to traverse obstacles, and really big three cycle boss fights to cap a level.  Its all here like past games, but the quality is better than ever.  The introduction of DLC campaigns for other characters only enhances the total package, giving new gameplay styles within the framework of the Shantae universe to enjoy.

Powerups are definitely out in force in this game, once again tied to Shantae’s ability to use genie dances.

While the last game got rid of dances for story reasons, the core of the Shantae games has always been the use of power ups to get through levels.  The core platforming elements have always been there, but powerups are the driving force behind getting through the world.  In Half-Genie Hero, we’re back to using the genie belly dancing to activate these power ups.  These can range from the bat power above to fly over gaps to an elephant that can charge through walls to a spider that can walk on ceilings.  As you gain these powers, new areas in old levels become traverseable, and you go back through levels multiple times to both find story items, as well as find additional power ups.

If this is reading a lot like a Metroidvania, it’s because it definitely is to some extent.  Previous games in the series have definitely been fully open Metroidvanias, but Pirate’s Curse and this one both followed a more linear single-level experience, with the ability to go back to levels through a world map for quicker access.  What this really gains for the game over a typical Metroidvania experience is really speed of access.  You can hop into any unlocked level at any time, get to the power up or item you need, then immediately hop back into the world map to go to the next place.  There’s no slog of going back and forth through the same areas repeatedly to get to a specific area of the world.  It also means that the first-time entry into a level is really tailored to the story.  You get cutscenes about what’s going on, mini boss fights as a way to slow progress, and ultimately a big story boss at the end of each level.

The bosses are all universally a lot of fun, and generally speaking also huge.

The boss fights are also where some of the more interesting gameplay mechanics end up happening.  While there’s definitely simple bosses (it wouldn’t be Shantae without an appearance by the Squid Baron), you get a lot more experimental stuff going on in these fights.  The one above takes place in a circular arena that the player will wrap around, lobbing cannonballs back at the boss.  Another one of the bosses involves fighting against a giant mermaid, using hooks to make your way towards the boss’ face to land hits, a lot like old Donkey Kong Country gameplay.  By and large it is these segments that show some of the best growth in the core gameplay of the series.

The DLCs really start to change the gameplay in interesting ways, even if the level themes are shared.

The biggest change with Half-Genie Hero though has to be the inclusion of support for DLC campaigns, which are all now included in the ultimate edition release of the game.  These are fun mini-campaigns using other characters from the series.  One has you running around doing the Risky Boots story in a very tight platforming-focused campaign.  One has you playing as the three friends Sky, Bolo, and Rottytops using their unique abilities to get through heavy puzzle-focused levels.  There are even a few mini aracde campaigns with things like a gun-based police campaign or a stealth-based ninja campaign.

The end result of all this DLC is that you have a really solid main campaign that is really less than half of the experience at this point.  While you then go through and play through the same core level themes, the experience is always completely unique in each of the DLC packs, so you’re always learning fun new ways to replay the same content.  From a sheer value standpoint, the ultimate edition released recently with all DLC really can’t be beat.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this release, particularly if you wanted more variety than previous games.

The previous Shantae games were always really high quality examples of action platformer gameplay, and this one is no different.  The biggest difference here is that they simply went with the motto of “more”.   There’s more powers to use, more gameplay variety due to DLC, and more total overall time to spend in the game.  Despite all of the variety, the core gameplay hasn’t suffered at all.  This is still a really mechanically tight game, and one that fans of the genre really shouldn’t miss.

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Game Ramblings #73 – South Park: The Fractured but Hole

More Info from Ubisoft

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

TL;DR

  • Battle system is a phenomenal grid-based strategy system that heavily encourages the use of forced movement, ticking damage, and CC to eliminate enemies.
  • Like The Stick of Truth, does a fantastic job of integrating the player into the South Park universe, from the visual design to the way the story is written, especially when they straight up go at things they know will offend a lot of people.

I’m not kidding when I say they are not being shy about offending people, especially those worth offending.  For example:

This is a perfect example of why South Park as a multimedia franchise exists.  They’re crass, they don’t care about poking at things that others will shy away from, and they do it all with their own unique style.  Is it for everyone?  Not really.  However, if you’re a fan of this universe, The Fractured But Hole is another great entry that does more than just stand on its name for quality.

The visual style of characters is key to this universe, and this game absolutely nailed it.

South Park can be a lot of things, but one of the keys to the entire experience is the visual style that has existed since the first season of the show.  While past generations of games went with somewhat strange 3D representations of the world, the recent RPGs have gone all-in on making the unique style of the series work in real time in games.  Just the world alone is impressive, but the flexibility of the character creation system while fitting into this universe is a technical marvel.

The player character itself can be composed of a ton of different pieces: hair, facial hair, makeup add ons, multiple outfit pieces, etc.  They can all be mixed and matched with each other without limitation to create something that may or may not look good, but definitely is all your own, and definitely looks right out of the show.  Even more impressive is that all of this is done in a way that preserves the character’s appearance in all cutscenes.  You will always be seeing the character you wanted, and there’s no smoke and mirrors to keep it hidden in places where it would be inconvenient in a lot of games.  It’s phenomenally impressive to see in action, and a testament to how much the tech around this game was built to BE South Park.

While a lot different than the previous game, this game’s grid battles are a lot of fun.

None of the visuals would matter if the game’s core battle system wasn’t fun, and they definitely also nailed that.  While there’s some variety in size and obstacles, the core battle system is a turn-based system typically taking place on roughly a 5×10 play space.  Player turns are individually ordered, and that comes into play in some of the abilities at your disposal.  Abilities all have some grid space they can cover, whether it’s a 1×1 melee attack, a line ranged attack, or AoE grids that can be placed anywhere.  In a lot of ways it feels like placing magic attacks in the Disgaea series, and the strategy of where units are on the board is hugely important to maximizing each turn’s damage potential.

This is all backed up by some great effects beyond just simple damage.  You’ve definitely got your typical DoT type effects like poison, burn, bleed, etc.  However, this game places a heavy emphasis on relocation of enemies.  Knockbacks, pulls, location switches, and more are available to let you line up enemies for your future unit turns to really turn up the damage potential.  The turn ordering also comes in to play with some abilities causing turn loss or turn delay, allowing you to really lock down the enemy into not being able to take any actions.  It’s a fantastic set of functionality that all combines to add a ton of depth to what could have been a really simple battle system.  Despite all the depth, it’s also really easy to understand what’s going on, which allows the quick hitting battles to flow in a way that’s not typically of SRPG-style games.

Bosses play in the same battle system, but often have their own rules to throw things out of whack.

It’s also worth mentioning how much fun the bosses are in this game.  Generally speaking they live under the same rule set as normal battles, but throw their own curves.  Some of them are multi-space units that really change how the player has to position themselves both offensively and defensively.  One boss had you not actively attacking it, but instead using knockbacks to throw smaller enemy units into the boss’ eating range to cause damage.  Basically, while the core abilities are still there, the bosses throw enough curves to keep the player’s skill fresh in unique ways that aren’t just doing a battle with bigger numbers.

I’ll be the first to admit that the South Park wrapping on this game will definitely make this game a fairly niche product.  It is full of completely inappropriate humor that will make you burst out in laughter if you don’t take it too seriously.  Once you dig into it though, this game has a tremendously deep battle system that fans of RPGs in general will find a lot to love.  The rest of the wrapping on this, from the side quests to gearing to environment exploration provide the rest of the trappings that RPG fans expect, and give this game a level of quality that we’re thankfully starting to see common in many licensed games.

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Game Ramblings #72 – Owlboy

More Info from D-Pad Studio

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, macOS, Linux, PS4, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • High points are non-gameplay.  Story, visuals, audio are all top notch.
  • Mechanically does enough to get the job done, but is pretty standard.  Bosses are pretty simple, not too many upgrades, not much reason to back track.

Add this one to the list of Metroidvania games that I’m always a sucker for, and it was definitely solid enough to be worth playing through.  This was definitely an indie darling as it was in development, and it properly earned a lot of accolades, particularly for its visuals.  However, in being a game that did its non-gameplay elements so well, it’s a bit unfortunate in that the gameplay itself is pretty much hitting the minimum standard, and not really doing much to separate itself from the pack.

Right from the start this game has fantastic pixel art, and it compares well against the best of the Metroidvanias of recent years.

It’s pretty easy to see from the start where Owlboy earned its biggest hype from.  This game is drop dead gorgeous.  It’s easy for pixel art games to become difficult to play at times from overly busy visuals, but this one escapes all of those traps.  The backgrounds are high detail, but use muted color palettes to separate themselves from the foreground.  Characters are all fairly low-resolution, but have unique looks of their own so you can immediately tell who is who.  Even more important, the character animation is phenomenal.  There’s enough frames of animation for everything to look really fluid, whether in normal traversal or in combat situations.  Even little details like character facial reactions during cutscenes lend a lot of life to scenes where 2D games typically have to depend more on text.

This high attention to non-gameplay detail also extends to the story and music.  From a non-spoiler perspective, the story focuses on the growth of the main character in trying to learn to be an owl, and how the world around him has gotten to the state it’s in.  The characters he meets with throughout, and those that end up travelling with him are all well written, each with their own motivations as to why they’re joining the party.  As for the soundtrack, it’s a well orchestrated set of pieces, ranging from lighter pieces in town to high action pieces in battle.  Overall, I recommend giving it a listen.

Bosses are the high point of combat, even if they tend to be pretty simple.

The gameplay on the other hand is a lower point in the game.  It’s not that it’s bad – in fact, it hits pretty much all the expected notes for a game of this style.  It just doesn’t really do anything to stand out.

Out of all of this, bosses really are the high point.  They’re pretty standard sort of 2 – 3 phase fights, with damage being the phase trigger across the board.  For the most part, the bosses also introduce new mechanics as they phase transition.  However, the bosses themselves are still fairly simple.  Typically speaking, you get a new upgrade, and face a boss weak to that upgrade.  In the one above, you’d basically just been using a spin move to knock armor off enemies a bunch, then immediately get this boss.  Spin hit the armor off the turtle, shoot it a bunch, repeat.  This was pretty much the same thing across all bosses, and it basically meant that they were never really much of a danger.  You knew going in what you were going to be expected to use, you’d have been given an entire level before hand to learn the ability, and you just have to use it to finish.

But again, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that it went that way.  Upgrades are basically in two forms; characters that you can carry with you, and health upgrades earned by collecting coins.  The characters were a unique way to handle the typical weapon upgrade.  You only earn three – a standard gunner, a shotgunner, and a spider web launcher – but their integration into the story and gameplay as a whole was a unique way to give a voice to the upgrades, rather than them just being a pickup in the world.  It also gave much greater weight to them coming and going from the party based on the story, and ultimately made the story a lot more impactful.  Losing a party member due to something occurring in the world wasn’t just part of the story, it also meant that your combat strategy was about to drastically change for a while.

However, it also meant that you never really had a reason to back track.  While getting 100% of coins to get all optional upgrades is a back track path, the core upgrades were guaranteed along the main path, and I never needed to do the full collecting since I was rarely in danger of being low on health.  The end result of all this is that I treated the game less like a Metroidvania, and more like a typical linear action/adventure game, which probably got me through it quicker than was really intended.

Sometimes you just end up riding a boss upside down through a cave. It happens.Realistically, the game is pretty typical of a lot of top tier independent titles.  The things where it stands out are pretty high end, and the rest of the game kind of sits in decent but average shape.  It’s obvious that visuals and tech around it were going to be the focus of this game, and they really nailed it.  In nailing those things, gameplay looks to be the thing that suffered a bit from lack of development focus, but overall it worked out well.  Would I consider this in the upper echelon of Metroidvanias?  Not really, but I still have a pretty easy time recommending at least a play through.