Tag: adventure

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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 #118 – Ghost of Tsushima

More Info from Sucker Punch

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

There’s no doubt that this is the feudal Japan Assassin’s Creed that everyone has been asking for, but I’m not saying that as a bad thing. This takes a lot of what’s made the past few AC games great with some clever changes to the overall structure. It also features combat that clicked for me way more than it ever did in those titles. Overall I was left playing a game that surprised me in how much I enjoyed it, despite its familiarity.

If there’s two main things that I think separate this one from AC, it’s that there’s generally less to do, and that combat is a bit more nuanced. The first one provides a greater focus on the overall meta game, steering you to do fewer activities, but ones that generally feel like they have a great impact on your character progression. The second provides changes to the moment to moment action as you go through. Combined with a high level of polish, this gives us what feels like the next step in this type of gameplay, and hopefully a bar for Ubisoft to hit with Valhalla.

Taking a look at the map, you get that immediate feeling of familiarity. There’s fog of war in areas you haven’t been to. There’s icons for quests and towns and activities all over that pop up. However, they all serve some sort of purpose. Rather than climbing towers to lift fog of war in an area, you have to invade Mongol camps and take out their leaders. Side quest aren’t just fun little story points – they also give rare resources to upgrade existing gear, and in some cases completely new gear. In many cases, you won’t even know what the icons on the map are for until you get up close to them.

However, there’s a lot of in-world hints as well to help steer your exploration. If you want to focus on gaining some health, you’ve got to keep an eye out for steam columns where you can use hotsprings. If you need to boost your resolve to have access to more special moves, you’ll be on the look out for banners marking the location of bamboo strikes. If you want to get some accessory charms, you’ll want to keep an eye out for small yellow-leaved trees to follow foxes around.

All of these little things do a lot to make that exploration focus just work. There’s always some visual clue to pull your attention and there’s always some tangible reward at the end of it. None of the things feel like a waste or a grind. You do a thing, you get an immediate reward, and you immediately know what it does. It all just feels really natural in practice. Where AC Origins and Odyssey started to shed some of their collection-heavy past, this one feels like it took the next step that Ubisoft was perhaps hesitant to do.

Combat has a similar thing where it feels like a logical next step in the process. Stealth is still in play, and is still super useful. Parries and dodging are there like in AC and are still your main means of avoiding damage. Combat still kind of breaks down when there’s large groups, largely because there’s only so many directions you can focus on at once. However, where things really clicked for me were in the duels.

Duels are effectively your boss fights for this game. Starting one off always has a great intro cutscene to establish the fight, then your camera comes in super tight and you’re off. The actual combat is still the same, but the one-on-one focus allows for a lot tighter overall action. Where dodging without care for timing will generally work well against trash mobs, mistiming your dodges here could put you in a spot where the opponent can immediately hit you with a second attack before you can respond. On the other hand, timing your dodge perfectly puts you in slow motion with the ability to quickly attack. The same thing also stands with parries. Time it well, and instead of just a simple parry you will break your opponent’s defense and have them lined up for a critical strike. It’s also hugely beneficial that parryable and dodgeable attacks are different and have obviously different visual tells. It puts the combat into a place where there’s no guessing and it’s all about timing and skill, then solid execution of attacks when you’ve put yourself in a place to go on the offense.

There’s also something to be said of the fact that there’s very distinctly strong stances in this game, and in that regard it feels like it’s pulling a lot from the Yakuza series. As a player you have 4 main stances, each good against specific enemy types – swords, shields, spears, and brutes. While you can definitely fight any enemy with any stance, the skill of identifying and fighting with the right stance is hugely beneficial to clearing out enemies as quick as possible, while also minimizing the damage that you end up taking. This ends up being the real saving grace for group combat, as using the stance switching can allow you to quickly clear up the easier targets, leaving you to focus on one or two of the more problematic ones.

It also dawns on me that I didn’t take any screenshots of me using either of the bows. That’s kind of a shame because they’re honestly very good. You have a short bow (quick draw, lower damage) and a long bow (slow draw, large damage, can pierce metal) that are both very effective at their role, especially in stealth situations when taking out sentry units. They’ve got a pretty solid impact feel to them, they’re generally easy to fire, but with gravity effecting the arrows they aren’t trivially easy. There’s also a bit of aim assist typical of gamepad, but it’s not overbearing. It ends up falling in a place where there’s enough skill involved to make using it feel fair, but enough assists in place to make it still feel natural with gamepad aiming.

I certainly won’t sit here and claim that this is generally an original title, but it didn’t necessarily have to be. It takes the framework established by the recent Assassin’s Creed titles, and iterates enough on it to feel like its own thing. What it does do is give me hope that we see it push Ubisoft to take that next step with Valhalla or Sony with the next God of War, because as a genre these open world action games just work very well. This one added a really well developed feudal Japan setting and interesting story to the overall game framework, and it hit really well as an end-of-generation title. It also served as a really interesting change in direction for Sucker Punch after wrapping up some of their Infamous story line early on in the generation. Now, admittedly I wouldn’t mind seeing them go back to Sly Cooper after this, but they did a hell of a job pushing the open world action game in a direction of continued improvement here.

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Game Ramblings #115 – The Last of Us Part II

More Info from Sony

  • Genre: Survival Horror / Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game. The only reason I finished it in the first place was because the story and setting for the game was so captivating. Mechanically, it otherwise reminded me a lot of Red Dead 2 – unnecessarily tuned towards realism, and generally clunky. For the sequel, it was again the story that kept me rolling on through, although I was surprised as I played how much the game had mechanically improved. That’s not to say I think that its mechanics are necessarily great, but it felt much better as a game, which allowed me a much smoother path forward through it.

If I look back at the original game, there were a number of mechanics that generally frustrated me that feel much improved here.

Gun combat in the first was pretty difficult, mostly because aiming felt made to be incredibly difficult on purpose. This one was somewhat more tuned to be a game. That’s not to say it was CoD aiming, but it was more forgiving. There were also some upgrades that provided significant boosts to your ability to quickly aim, have stability, etc that made things cleaner. It also just felt like the game was made to support gun-based interactions better. The original felt like guns were there for oh-shit moments. In this one, resources aside, I felt like I could legitimately play the game using gun combat as a primary path, even if I didn’t go that route. It’s better enough that I kind of wonder how much of it has actually changed, or if I just had a better feel for it this go through.

Melee combat was also significantly improved in a way that made me avoid combat significantly less than in the first. Dodging attacks is extremely fast and useful. Enemy tells are obvious without having huge timing windows. The melee combat in that regard is simple – basically dodge and swipe – but it feels fair, and it feels precise. The original game’s mechanics basically resulted in me avoiding combat entirely, because it felt like a death sentence. In this one, oddly large damage at times aside, combat didn’t feel like a reload – it just felt like a different kind of challenge.

However, the big thing that really changed combat for me is that the set pieces felt designed for combat. That’s kind of vague, but this is probably my best description of it. In the original, encounters with the infected were generally stealth sequences with guaranteed death traps. They were tight quarters, often had sound-based traps, and if you triggered the wrong infected, you were screwed. The infected areas in particular were terrible for gun combat, since they were generally winding corridors with no sight lines to shoot. That generally just exacerbated how rough the guns were for me to begin with.

In this one, things are just a lot more free flowing. The encounter areas are generally wider and more open, even when indoors. There’s a lot more escape spots – whether it be vaulting over something, escaping through a gap, or just generally having the horde go back into roving patterns if you kill your immediate target and hide. The same things you can use to vault over can also be used for peeking over and firing. Sight lines are much longer in almost all encounters, giving you more opportunities to shoot and save yourself when things do go wrong. There’s much better ability to even fire silent ranged projectiles like arrows, which greatly enhances your stealth capabilities. Overall, this one felt much better as a combat game, rather than combat being something that is a last resort.

That’s not to say that things always felt great. The picture above is from what is probably the largest boss-style encounter, taking place in the VERY dark and VERY tight abandoned basement of a hospital. This one felt straight out of the original game. I couldn’t see far, I couldn’t navigate well, and I was able to get stuck on things extremely easily. I probably died more in this single fight than the rest of the game, and generally speaking it felt less like mistakes I made, and more the game fighting against me. Luckily, this was far less common than the original.

There was also one early game surprise that really brought me into the game, but quickly and sadly went away. The first day of the first of the game takes place in a pseudo-open downtown Seattle. You get a map, you get to check off areas you’ve explored and pilfered for goods, you actually get to just randomly explore. They so heavily teased an open world experience, with all the side tracking exploration that I love out of that type of game. Then you get to the end of that chapter, and it’s completely linear for the rest of the game. It felt like a cock tease, and even worse is that it worked really well. It was fun to wander over to a big ruin, see if there was a path in, go in and sneak around the infected, and find some prize at the end. That’s not to say that the rest of the game didn’t have some semblance of side tracking, but from then on it was always incidental entering a building you were walking past anyway, and not giving the player the agency of wandering around a city just to explore. In the context of the story it made sense, but I was sad to see the mechanic teased then pulled away.

So then, that story:

Spoiler

I suspect I ended up liking the story a lot more than the general internet has, or at least, the internet seems really up in arms about it, and it’s hard to tell how much of that is noise or consensus. There’s no way to really avoid it – Joel came out of the first game looking like a real asshole. I sympathize with what he did, and I sympathize with Ellie being the only immune survivor, but there’s no doubt that Joel potentially fucked humanity. However, the story felt complete. It being complete is what made the start of this one so predictable. Joel was going to get killed by someone in an act of vengeance. There was no way that was going to be avoided, because there’s no reason for the sequel to exist otherwise. If Joel isn’t going to get killed, then him and Ellie are going to be living their best survivor life in Jackson, and this was not going to be a farming simulator.

That’s not to say that the predictability was bad, but it muted what was probably the opening shock moment to me, and it set an early tone for Ellie’s arc in this one. She was always going to come out looking like an asshole on her quest for vengeance. However, I had no problem with that. She had good reasons within her character arc to go out for vengeance, had a good path in doing so, and the payoff was gratifying within the expectations I had.

The big swerve for me in that regard ended up being Abby. Her connection to the first game as the daughter of the surgeon you murder right at the end of the game was incredible. It gave a second arc of vengeance that was definitely convenient in its appearance, but equally strong. Abby’s arc in particular felt more interesting and complete to me. Her arc started as one of completed vengeance, grew into a character learning to trust in others and not so blindly follow orders, and ended back at the beginning in vengeance after Ellie and her crew killed her friends. Of the two arcs, Abby’s felt like it had more overall growth, and wasn’t just fueled of blind rage. In doing so, it added to both of their arcs, and added interesting back story to the path of the original game.

That’s not to say that everything in the story felt great to me. Dina’s pregnancy in the game’s first arc felt a little too like a convenient plot device to give a reason for Ellie having a fixed base in Seattle, and felt too convenient of a way to provide tension in their relationship. Jesse’s character felt like a convenient pop-up helper in the first arc as well, then after he’s killed he felt swept under the rug entirely, as Ellie’s anger through the end of the game was still clearly around vengeance for Joel. The Scars also felt less like the intended “back to nature” rebel group, and more like another convenient way for the second arc of the game to have a large-scale enemy. It gave Abby some room for character growth, but it felt unnecessary when she could have also been rebelling against the group she was a part of with the same end gain.

However, the big issue for me was really the lack of player agency in the finale sequence. This is a similar problem I had with the first game. You had no choice but to escape with Ellie in the original, and you had no choice but to kill the surgeon. Without it, this game wouldn’t exist. This one had a similar problem. The Seattle portion of the game ends with Ellie and Abby facing off, and effectively fighting to a violent draw. They’ve both lost people at each other’s hands, and they’ve gotten to a point where Ellie has lost, and Abby no longer has the will to fight. As an ending, this felt appropriate. They’re both assholes, and neither of them are going to gain anything by killing any more. And then the game continued.

The end arc of Ellie tracking down Abby again to kill her felt forced, especially in how the result panned out. Abby is found imprisoned and at the end of her rope while trying to find any of her past life with the Fireflies. Ellie is emotionally and physically drained, and has abandoned her life with Dina to continue her path of vengeance. Given the rest of the game, it felt like one more unnecessary smack across both of their faces – giving them one more dose of suffering in an already shitty world. You’ve got no choice in the path that this takes, and it’s incredibly frustrating. You can’t help Abby not get imprisoned. You can’t have Ellie just enjoy her life in Wyoming. Hell, you can’t even go for a complete bad ending and have one of them die anyway. In the end, Ellie is alive and goes home. She lets Abby escape to Catalina Island to go to the Fireflies. Ellie has nothing to go home to, and the Fireflies have no ability to even provide her with the saving grace of being humanity’s savior anymore. It all ends in complete hopelessness, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Really, it feels setup in a way that provides a path for another sequel.

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I guess overall, this one fell on the more positive side of what I expected. Given the first game, I expected some mechanical roughness. I definitely got that, but mechanically it fell far more on the positive side that I went in expecting. On the story side, I expected a difficult story, but one that I enjoyed and I got that, even if a few things rubbed me a bit the wrong way. On the setting side, I expected a fantastic compelling setting, and I got that in spades. It’s interesting seeing where this one landed, and it’s a really fine example of what’s possible in game storytelling, despite the fact that the internet seems to be a little angry with the end result.