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Tag: 2017

  • Behold The Kickmen (Size Five Games, 2017)

    Behold The Kickmen (Size Five Games, 2017)

    Developed/Published by: Size Five Games
    Released: 20/07/2017
    Completed:     6/08/2021
    Completion:     Finished the story mode!
    Trophies / Achievements: n/a

    If you’re familiar with me, this blog, or even any of my appearances on the Insert Credit Show you’ll be well aware that I consider Sensible World of Soccer one of the greatest games of all time and I wish it came out every year on modern consoles with updated rosters and everyone was playing it online against each other like what it was FIFA.

    Unfortunately, it does not. So, even though I boot it up every once in a while, I generally chase the dragon by playing other footy games, of which Dan Marshall’s Behold The Kickmen has been on my radar for a while and once I noticed it was on Switch [“Not a very good radar, then”–Ed.] I picked it up, what with the Switch being the indie handheld of choice (until the Steam Deck shows up, I suppose).

    Now. I’m pretty sure I remember reading a review of this where the reviewer got really annoyed at it for sneering at football. And I can see it, in that saying things like “foot-to-ball” or whatever is tedious and just about as boring to people who like football as football is to football non-likers, but Behold the Kickmen has a genuinely funny, absurd little story that you’d have to have quite the chip on your shoulder to take offence to, and the “wrong” football, even it actually came from an sneery, anti-football stance… creates a really interesting video game???

    Being annoyed at this because it offends the beautiful game is a big old waste of time. Behold the Kickmen is mostly played like football with a “bullet-time” like mechanic for aiming, shooting, and tackling, but what makes it interesting is that each action you perform while holding possession (or not losing possession for too long, anyway) adds to a multiplier that increases the amount of money you’re going to make when you score a goal. If the opposing team scores a goal or the half ends, you lose it all.

    It leads to a really remarkable game where it’s not really about goals–until it is. You’re much better pissing about in mid-field, passing and dodging, until you need to score or lose it all. I played on the default settings and to be honest the AI was nothing to write home about and I beat them handily, but maxing my multiplier (and scoring in time…) became the game, and I loved it.

    There’s issues with it–it’s technically “funnier” to have a round pitch but it’s a lot of wasted space and the slow-down is a bit stop-start and means there’s no multiplayer (which I think would work!)–but it does what any good “football” game should do in making every goal feel incredible. The daft story that you follow as you win games had me lollin’–although there’s several set-ups that don’t actually have any pay-off and I wished that there was more of it (I’d be tempted to play again to see if anything different happens if I make different choices, but I suspect not.)

    Anyway if you like sports games or games with interesting design twists this is worth every penny of the couple of bucks it’s going to cost you on Switch or PC. Pick it up!

    Will I ever play it again? If it had multiplayer I would. Just turn off the slowdown, see how that works.

    Final Thought: It includes a theming that parodies Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, the second greatest game of all time behind Sensible World of Soccer [“Steady on”–Ed.] but sadly doesn’t do anything with the theming like adding score pads on the side or slide attacks or something because, I guess, that would be a completely different game. But now I want to play Speedball 2…

  • Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)

    Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)

    Developed/Published by: Team Cherry
    Released: 24/02/2017
    Completed: 09/12/2020
    Completion: Finished the main story with a percentage north of 100%.
    Trophies / Achievements: 48%

    Kinda funny, but not that funny to be writing at this today [”months earlier”-Ed.] after listening to the Greatest Games Ever Insert Credit Show where Tim Rogers enthused that this was the best Metroidvania ever and Brandon Sheffield hated it very, very much.

    Might as well cut to the chase and say I like it far, far less than Tim Rogers but don’t hate it quite as much as Brandon Sheffield (but then, I played it more than an hour, and if I’d stopped at an hour I might have.) However, this is me falling headlong into “no, it’s the children who are wrong” territory because I’m going to say that is pretty much everything I hate in Metroidvania design (level design in general, even) and I’m truly, truly baffled by why this is so lauded. I mean, this is a game that opens with a short tutorial segment (fine, good) but then throws you into a level with multiple long pathways, no map unless you pick the right path quickly, and extremely samey graphics across the area meaning you just stumble around second guessing every move. I mean the whole “you don’t get a map in a section until you find the guy who has the map”… people like that? And don’t get me started on how the game doesn’t let you see yourself on the map unless you waste one of your equip slots. That’s honestly unpleasant.

    I mean the level design is bad enough on the macro level, but each area is also chock-a-block with blind drops, punishment drops, and enemies that take forever to kill because you have to engage with a punitive weapon levelling system that, frankly, you’ll won’t be able to engage with unless you literally look up where to get the materials.

    This kind of complaint, however, is the exact type of thing that breeds what has to be one of my most hated “extremely online gamer” takes, which to respond to a complaint something is just tediously hard or obtuse by telling folk to “Git gud”. Here’s my response: the game should get good. 

    Anyway, what I did with Hollow Knight was ignore everyone who says you shouldn’t look anything up because I ain’t got time for that and just start to actually roll through it using a map to find the traversal skills etc. While I never ever actually liked the level design basically ever, the game only really starts to become anything worth your time once you’ve unlocked dashing and even then it wasn’t until I unlocked the ability to dash through enemies and damage them that I gelled with it at all (especially because you can’t cancel the dash or backdash, meaning until the point dashing was safer I didn’t like it).

    Even at that, a bit like with Celeste, I didn’t ever really care for how the main character controlled, nor how battles felt or having to go and get your “shade” any time you died so you could get your money back (guess what! It was never hard to do that, my stomach only ever sank at the waste of time.)

    The problem is of course is that metroidvania design is so… more-ish? I played this wayyyy longer than I needed to because it’s actually fairly trivial to beat this if you “git gud” and just do the exact main quest, but instead I unlocked all the abilities, fully upgraded my sword, got all the equips… I mean, I basically dredged this because even if I wasn’t really having fun in the moment I was always so close to doing the next thing and so I did.

    Anyway I beat it and the spell was broken.

    Will I ever play it again? No, and no fucking way will I play a sequel or anything like that.

    Final Thought: Hollow Knight is… not good. There’s no excuse for lengthy, tedious mapping and no excuse for punishing, tedious level design. Or the terrible introduction to the game or pacing/planning of the unlocks (I mean come on, the first unlock being a spell instead of dash, which is so core to the experience; lol). That said, you’ll probably stockholm syndrome yourself into thinking it’s the bee’s knees because there’s just so much content. Plus, to be honest, there’s some charming animation and even if I didn’t like the setting or any of the world design (so bland! So samey!!!) I actually thought the soundtrack was nice. In conclusion: the children are wrong!!!