Developed/Published by: Taito / Square Enix Released: June 17th, 2008 Completed: 21st September 2015 Completion: Finished it on the easiest path, saw the final level of all the other paths. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Should I count this one? I’m not completely sure. I saw the credits, but the final levels of all but the easiest path (the game uses an Outrun-esque branching path… well, not that Outrun-esque, it’s performance-based) the final level is so annoyingly hard I just couldn’t be bothered. I saw them. I felt like that was enough.
Anyway. Space Invaders Extreme! A tribute for Space Invaders’ 30th Anniversary, it took the “modernisation” approach of things like Pac-Man C.E. (which, now that I think about it, was probably one of the only things like that about at the time) where the game is, you know, similar, but given a modern look that’s supposed to feel retro without actually being retro, and made faster and more intense in the meantime.
And for the most part, this works! There’s a fairly clean basic system at hand here. The game has your invaders slowly creeping their way down the screen the way they do, and you want to kill four of the same colour to get them to drop a power-up for your weapon, and basically keep doing that to keep yourself killing efficiently. There are some kinks, of course, with special flashing UFOs and so on that let you enter special little challenges and unlock “fever time” for even more points, and if you get down to it the scoring system is really, really complex, but overall it’s got that nice aspect where there are only a few things you really need to do to understand enough to challenge yourself on a higher level than “just survive” (and those things help you survive, anyway) that it’s pretty good!
I’m not completely convinced by it, though. It’s obvious that the designers felt that the main game wasn’t quite enough, and the mini-challenges that take you out of the main game (dumping you back in fever time) are jarring and pretty dumb (they feel unnecessary and flow-damaging) and the range of invader types isn’t quite as clever as you’d hope. Some invaders are pretty much impervious to the otherwise best weapon (the laser) with the other power-up weapons not having the same kind of handicap, which just feels like an irritating nerf rather than good design, and as the game gets harder, some invaders just bomb right down at top speed as soon as they’re hit once and kill you. You can prepare and work around this, but in some cases you’ll find yourself on the other side of some enemy fire as they’re bombing down, and you’re like “well, I guess I’m losing a life here.” Instant kill bullets hitting you is fine, instant kill enemies that don’t even need to hit you? Pretty bad.
It’s those, actually, that made the last levels so unpleasant and so give-uppy, because they’re outright unfair, and the game got down to that thing that I’m just not a fan of in shooters—memorisation. Unless you were willing to know to have this weapon here, that weapon there, to be in this place, which I wasn’t, I don’t think you can get through them.
So, yeah. Great game until they over-egg the design in the name of creating a stronger challenge. Not a bad game, just an unnecessarily flawed one.
Will I ever play it again? I have Space Invaders Extreme 2 on DS! I’m gonna play that one, maybe it’s an improvement?
Final Thought: This reminds me that I spent 500 Wii Points on Space Invaders Get Even even though I knew it was basically only a demo because I wanted to try it. It seemed pretty cool? But I really have no idea because there wasn’t anywhere near enough in the $5 demo to understand if I wanted to drop $15 on the rest. Alas.
Developed/Published by: Digital Extremes / D3 Publisher Released: March 25th, 2008 Completed: 11th September 2015 Completion: Finished it. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Played this for a few reasons, some of them faulty: firstly because developer Digital Extremes are based in Ontario, secondly because I thought they were defunct and I wanted to see what kind of stuff they did (but they’re not—they famously did the awfully-received Star Trek game, but it didn’t sink them.) Thirdly… because I heard it was vaguely ok? It’s got a Krull-esque “glaive” in it! (As we all know, glaives are actually a kind of polearm, not a throwing weapon.)
But yes, the glaive, the amazing looking spinny-blade that the forgettable hero of Krull gets right at the beginning, and he goes to throw it, but the wizard (or whoever it is) goes “no, you’re not allowed to throw it” so he doesn’t for basically the entire film and when he does it’s pure disappointing.
Krull’s shite.
Dark Sector however, is… kind of exactly a D3 game? It’s basically a Simple Series version of Gears of War, with more Resident Evil 4 all over its sleeve than even Gears, and it’s Simple Series-ey because it’s got several ideas and none are particularly deeply implemented and thought out, they’re just “there” and you can take or leave them. Consider the glaive, which is a decent idea, but the game has also got tons of guns, so you can pretty much play the game completely as a shooter. Or the way the game swings wildly between Gears of War-esque cover shooter sections (lots of spawning baddies, use cover, shoot them, repeat) and Resident Evil 4 swarm battles (mutants try and punch you in the head, or magic up your business) without either being particularly deep. Or the way your hero keeps gaining new abilities, but they never seem that important to the point where I kept forgetting them (the magic shield is real useful, but I never remembered it. I used the ability to “explode” the glaive straight after they told me about, but only actually remembered it while writing this…)
And the world is grey, repetitive, and large segments you get the sense more stuff was supposed to happen but doesn’t (some levels are long, some are short, and some huge areas you just run through, like they forgot to finish them.)
Plus: I could not tell you what this game is about. At all. There’s some sort of metal disease? Our hero is maybe a CIA operative, but it’s not clear what he’s doing? There’s an old man there? Sometimes a lady?
Despite all this, I didn’t mind Dark Sector. It’s kind of like one of those films you’d pull up on Netflix or from a petrol station bargain bin—not a “Mega Shark vs. Killer Bees” kind of winking twattery, but like one of those films that stars Scott Adkins with a generic title (you know, like Dark Sector.) Totally workmanlike and with some small thrills—shooting people and slicing their bits off with the glaive works well enough—so it passes the time pleasantly enough. I even quite enjoyed the weapon upgrade system, which is utterly half-assed but once I had my pistol and assault rifle all set up, it made me pretty happy? So there’s that.
Will I ever play it again? Life is too short.
Final Thought: Dark Sector is one of those “double A” video games from the last generation I honestly doubt we’ll ever see again as the resources needed to make something that’s “not quite AAA” are now beyond basically anyone except publishers pushing out crappy derivatives of their AAA games using the same engines and assets. Rather sad, I suppose—the ecosystem is in a weird place and I do wonder what the future holds.
Been trying to grind out a bunch of the physical games I’ve got so I can get rid of the clutter (I’ve got a “spring clean” that’s, as you can tell by the current season, somewhat overdue) and I remembered picking this up for about $5 a long-ass time ago, so it was next on the chopping block.
This isn’t, actually, the first Silent Hill game I thought I’d review here, because a while ago I started Silent Hill 2 (the poorly-received HD version, though) and after hours of wandering around a dark apartment complex trying every door I was like “fuck this” and decided to stop. In retrospect, I don’t think I went into it with the right mindset, but I have to be honest and say Origins has sapped any interest I had in going back.
Like, are all of the Silent Hill games 90% about wandering repetitive and dark places trying every door? Because that’s what this one is about. It’s actually sort of pleasantly OCD in that the map marks every door/dead-end you hit, so you get some tiny sense of accomplishment there. It’s also possible that the other Silent Hill games are actually pretty scary, unlike this one, where all the enemies are so dumb you can avoid them entirely, and you control any visits to the alternatives Silent Hill world (you know, the one inspired by that bit in Jacob’s Ladder) so it’s not even like that bit’s freaky. As close as it gets to an emotion is frustrating, because the camera is hilariously terrible—I defeated the first boss without ever seeing it.
This is one of those games where you struggle for something nice to say and resort to “well, it’s short?” but it is, at a deep level, one of those things that just does not need to exist. Even for a Silent Hill maniac there’s nothing here—the plot is slight, and as a prequel it’s totally unnecessary, adding nothing to the whole core story of the series that hasn’t already been covered in a few sentences. It’s like getting a prequel for Halloween where you watch Michael Myers shopping for his overalls. You’re like “ok, I guess this happened, but I don’t really see why this is important?”
Here’s the one thing I’ll say for it: I think it looks nice. It’s been long enough apparently that I’m nostalgic for low-poly textured graphics, and man, the PSP is an a real sweet spot where it’s all low-quality enough, but not so totally garbled it’s ugly (especially with the game’s noise effects and lighting.) That’s about it, I guess.
Will I ever play it again? Nope!
Final Thought: I’m concerned me and Silent Hill won’t ever get on. I enjoyed the plot and world of the first one but the intentional ammo scarcity boned me completely for the final boss, and I’m not sure how you make games where you make the player feel like ammo is scare while also allowing them to enjoy using the weapons they’re finding1. You probably know the experience—any RPG where you get to the end of the game having used none of the special items you’ve collected because what if you need them? I got to the end of Origins with the hero’s pockets unrealistically full of portable TVs and typewriters (one-use weapons) about three katanas and hundreds of bullets because I never wanted to use any of them. Would have I enjoyed the game more if I had? Probably not to be honest.
I suppose the solution is to look at, as always, rogue-likes and like-likes; if you have to survive at all costs, you’ll do what it takes rather than save it for later. But in story-based games like this no one wants to die permanently… I think it’s just another symbol of how these linear experiences are un-game-like and can be arguably insufficient for the medium. ↩︎
Developed/Published by: Japan Studio / Sony Computer Entertainment Released: June 23rd, 2006 Completed: 28th August, 2015 Completion: Beat all the levels. Didn’t collect everything though. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
LocoRoco is… I think this is illuminating. When I started working on Sound Shapes, I can’t remember how it came up, but I remember LocoRoco came up. Because I’d played, like, one world of it and hated it so much I put it down. In a conversation with Jess Mak, we agreed LocoRoco was an example of how not to do interesting/whimsical level design. Why?
Well, the game is about collecting 20 berries, while also finding three “Mui Mui” (wee guys that give you new LocoRoco house parts) and, if you want, collecting Pickories (coins, basically) and/or doing the level as fast as possible.The thing is though, 90% of these collectables, even the main ones, berries, are totally hidden. Not in a “this wall has a crack on it” way but in a Wolfenstein 3D-style “rub yourself against fucking everything bashing the space bar” way. There’s absolutely no joy in LocoRoco’s level design. It’s just horrible. Basically, everywhere you go you have to try all walls and potentially every bouncy pad or whatever to explore every single space of the screen or level you can. And, to make things better, levels are often designed so you can miss something and not be able to backtrack, usually by falling into a lower part of the level, or just straight up being moved to another part of the level via a feature (some blowing wind, or something.) With the “tilt the world” controls (you don’t control your LocoRoco directly) this is maddening—not to mention the enemies/spikes, who easily strip off your gained berry-weight in a way that, again, can never be fixed. You have to finish levels perfectly.
Getting to the end of a level with 20 berries is, if not impossible, so unfair that it’s just absolutely hateful. So, going back to this because I was like “man, I have a lot of PSP games” (and I just bought some more) I tried to play it properly for a while but just gave up and roasted through the levels as quickly as possible. And if you do that, they’re utterly dull!
Never play this.
Will I ever play it again? Fuck no, plus will never touch any sequel with a barge pole.
Final Thought: LocoRoco… it’s supposed to be really charming, you know? Like, you just like being with the LocoRoco, so wobbling through the levels is fun, really taking your time and “playing” around with the tilting. But it’s just frustrating and shit. If you want to play a charming Japan Studio game on PSP, it’s got to be Patchwork Heroes.
Developed/Published by: Sonic Team / Sega Released: February 16th, 1995 Completed: 22nd August, 2015 Completion: Finished all the levels! Trophies / Achievements: n/a
So… has anyone noticed that Ristar is basically Jesus? Faced with corrupt leaders and enslavement, the people in the universe of Ristar pray, and God sends his son to save them!
Like, he literally sends his son, it’s in the text of the intro and everything. Ristar doesn’t, uh, solve the problem with some cool preaches and then getting crucified, he solves it by using his big stretchy arms to grab enemies and ladders and things and then kill the big baddie. I don’t know if Jesus had big stretchy arms, they’re never shown in any paintings of him and I don’t think that they ever mention him having big stretchy arms in the bible. Actually, wait:
Matthew 21:12 “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that sold doves, using his big stretchy arms.”
The more you know!
Will I ever play it again? Nah. But I did beat it.
Final Thought: The thing with Ristar is that it was developed by Sonic Team, based on an idea they had before they went ahead with Sonic (though Ristar was originally a rabbit) and which was later returned to with a team you wouldn’t recognise (mostly new hires.) Either way, because of the whole Sonic relation, you kind of assume that it’s going to be a bit Sonic-ey, especially when the level title cards are really similar to the ones in the Sonic games. But it’s not at all!
Ristar is, despite being a star, really, really slow. He can’t run, and he can barely jump (I didn’t bother to measure it, but I feel like his jump isn’t even taller than his height.) In addition to the really different, detailed graphics, the whole thing has quite an unusual feel, that I honestly felt more akin to a Euro platformer, like something developed on the Amiga and then ported.
(Ristar does do some shooting star stuff; he’s got these special spinny things that he flies off at the end of the level or if he finds a secret level, but it’s rare.)
Ristar is definitely… fine. I mean, it’s… fine. The levels generally manage to be vaguely interesting with their individual gimmicks (though occasionally the gimmick can be hard to work out) bosses are sort of patchy (one, which involved throwing a hot meal into its mouth, was infuriating, and as always the final boss is a huge pain) and it passes the time.
Developed/Published by: Sega Released: April 1987 Completed: 17th August, 2015 Completion: Finished all the courses, including the world tour. And without any saving or anything like that. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Super Hang-On, guys. I know what you’re thinking, because it’s what I was thinking too. “Ugh, isn’t this the earliest of the Super Scaler games? I mean it’s really boring, right? Just racing on a two lane highway for ages. Barely any more evolved than Pole Position.”
What an idiot I was and what an idiot you are. This is the wrongest wrong, and I guess it took those wizards at M2 with their 3D Super Hang-On release for 3DS in 2013 to show me my wrong wrongieness for the wrongitudinal wrong it wring wrong wubba wran
(Sorry readers. Let’s take a little intermission here to listen to Super Hang-On’s super cool chilltimes music. Ahh, that’s better.)
Super Hang-On is fantastic. I don’t know why I believed we’d all decided it wasn’t very interesting. Maybe it looks a bit boring in stills, and likely, Outrun, with its wide roads, loads of cars and set dressing, just seems like it’s better. But here’s the deal with Super Hang-On: it’s an incredibly clever and subtle example of pseudo-3D racing. The game is about two things: 1) avoiding the many, many other racers on the narrow-ass road by carefully weaving through them, even as they attempt to murder you because they hate you 2) using “turbo” (which boosts your max speed by like 50km/h) carefully when you know you won’t fly off the aforementioned narrow-ass road or right into another racer who, also aforementioned, wants to murder you.
This is but two very simple mechanics. Together, they are perfect. Playing Super Hang-On on 3DS is almost painful, because you more or less death grip your 3DS with a brutal intensity as you try and edge through the field at the maximum speed you can manage. And you have to, because the time limits are absurdly strict.
Which is one of the reasons the M2 version is so great. There are a variety of settings which—and this is maybe the one real negative I have to give—are a bit obscure (I’m still not 100% sure what they all do) but with some fiddling you can get the game to “challenging” rather than “you will never finish this, puny humans.”
It’s possible this image doesn’t capture just how great the 3DS version of Super Hang-On is.
And the other settings are all great. Playing it using the gyro is actually really fun, the screen tilting is great (if you want to use it) and the 3D is fantastic even if it still doesn’t agree with me at all (I wonder if the New 3DS1 would fix that) so I sadly had to not really use it. It’s the perfect release, although if I was super greedy I’d want them to include the track from Hang-On too?
Maybe this one does? Wheee!
Super Hang-On is not optional. It’s an amazing example of a clear, simple game design that’s absolutely thrilling to play. I played this for hours and hours and hours and I’ll go back to it, to finish the “sit down” version of the courses probably (even if they’re only mildly different? I haven’t tried them yet.) It’s great.
Will I ever play it again? Yes.
Final Thought: And I must say: Super Hang-On looks great, too. It’s maybe hard to see that when everything is flying past at 324km/h, but if you sit and watch the credits you can see how intricate the level furniture and backgrounds and colour choices are. Super Hang-On might actually be one of those perfect things, you know? A flawless pearl for people who like a specific kind of pearl (I’m not saying everyone is going to love this pearl. It’s just as good at being a pearl as a pearl can be.) [“Stop saying pearl!”—Ed.]
Developed/Published by: Ubisoft Montreal (+Ubisoft Massive/Red Storm/Shanghai/Reflections) / Ubisoft Released: November 29th, 2012 Completed: 16th August, 2015 Completion: Finished all the story missions and did a fair smattering of everything else in the game. Trophies / Achievements: 635/1000
A few years ago, and it must be several because apparently this came out in 2012, I saw the writer of this game give a talk at the Montreal International Game Summit. I was actually pretty impressed. He talked about something which I completely agree with, which is that if you’re going to make a narrative video game, you have to treat the player as an actor, consider their interactions as diegetic to the story, and invite them to play the role, not merely cast them in it.
(I’m wildly paraphrasing, and probably even inserting my own ideas there. But you do that when you listen to someone you think you agree with.)
Anyway, Far Cry 3 came out some time later, and it got a lot of coverage based on what the writer said the story was about, and I thought “I should probably play that, see if he just talks a mean pie, or whether he can actually bake one.” (I don’t think that’s a saying.)
If I consider Far Cry 3’s story as a pie (let’s stick with this) our writer chum has essentially described a pie with a really interesting, even surprising flavour, and then given me something that looked ok from a distance, but as soon as I stuck a fork in it, a crow flew out smoking a huge blunt revealing absolutely nothing under the crust otherwise. Meanwhile, he’s going “you know, 4 and 20 blackbirds, man! Like… 420! GET IT?”
What I’m saying is that Far Cry 3’s story, even within the context of a talk that I thought was quite good, makes the person who wrote it look like an actual idiot.
But let’s stop picking at this poor guy who I don’t want to name because it’s mean even though you can google him in like, less time than it took me to write this sentence. Let’s talk about Far Cry 3.
Far Cry 3, the game, is fucking great. Like, super super fun if you’re looking for an open-world shooty mcstealth-me-do. Ignore all of the story guffins and you’ve got a great environment that’s stuffed full of things to do. Things like hunting animals, which I avoided almost totally, but most enjoyably loads and loads of enemy outposts to capture. There’s little to beat sneaking up on an outpost, marking all of the enemies, planning and executing how you’re going to take it, and then sneaking up on every enemy, one by one, and silently murdering them.
It makes me sounds like a psychopath, I know. But I haven’t played a modern stealth game in ages, and apparently Far Cry 3 nails it. By making it easy to see enemies by marking them, they get around that “not aware of my surroundings totally” FPS problem. Enemies react to deaths and hunt you down, but there’s so much foliage, and it works perfectly as a hiding spot, that as long as you keep moving, you can evade them. It feels right; like watching an 80s action film, the bit where they go into an enemy jungle camp and slit dudes’ throats. And as the game progresses, you get more skills (faster stealthy walking, new silent takedowns) that make you feel more and more powerful, so it’s always rewarding.
It’s so good!
Which makes it weird that most of the main game missions are awful mayhem with a million (sometimes spawning) baddies that you more or less have to grit your teeth through. Several missions, actually, I didn’t even get what direction to go in, I was so busy being shot to pieces. Ultimately, they were a slog, leading to me cheaping out on a lot of them (usually by going around the mission zone rather than through.)
And most of them don’t really make sense why you’re doing them, anyway. Lets go back to that blunt-smoking crow, the story.
Basically, Far Cry 3 says “I’m going to be really clever rumination on the nature of violence, ok. Like, all this violent shit you do in a video game, right? I mean what would happen if an actual normal guy had to do that stuff, right? I mean, what would happen then, right? I mean he’d totally go Colonel Kurtz, right? You’ve seen Apocalypse Now, right? Total classic.”
It does this by setting up that you’re some trust fund twat (Jason Brody) on an expensive holiday with his awful, shitty, garbage friends and brothers, they land on an island, all get kidnapped and when your capable military-trained brother (not super important but he does make a point of mentioning it in the first 5 minutes) bites a bullet you are rescued, given the “Tatau” (tattoos) by a magic kindly black man (yeah!) and set loose to rescue your friends. Which across time morphs into getting revenge and/or trying to become the Ultimate Warrior (you know, that guy from WWF) on the island at the behest of a sexy native princess, Citra.
To be honest, the story just made me angry, and not in a way where the guy who wrote it would be like “yes, it’s what I was trying to do” because if he was trying to make me angry by, for example, making his native leader a sexy barefoot woman who’s also wearing a crop-top and short skirt, well, fuck him. If he’s trying to in some ways critique the “white saviour” idea by arguing Jason Brody is a pawn, it doesn’t work, at all. Considering it barely comes up.
You see, there’s something interesting about the story in Far Cry 3, and it made me reflect upon what (apparently) I think game publishers think the player expects from their open world games. Basically, in Far Cry 3, you have a variety of “mission givers.” At first it’s the magical black guy, but then it’s like, some junkie white guy, then it’s a really, really bad and gross Australian guy apparently meant to engender homosexual panic in the player (probably a worse character than Citra) then it’s… look, basically it goes on. You get passed between these thin caricatures who you never really get to know.
And it’s apparently because, like, video games have a variety of mission givers? I mean, is this sort of thing literally because of Grand Theft Auto? Like, remember how in Grand Theft Auto 3, you’d do some missions for one gang, then you’d unlock the next island and do them for another gang? Like that?
All I could think was… why am I not just repeatedly dealing with the same small cast of characters? Getting to know them as time goes by? I mean, if you want a perfect, perfect example of this, it’s that the game sets up Vaas, the crazy pirate guy with the big scar, as your antagonist. They even heavily hint that he’s some sort of “other side of the coin” for Jason Brody. He keeps trying to kill you in (embarrassingly laughable) stupid ways (like seriously, he captures you like four times, and only on the last is he like “oh wait, put a bullet in him.”) And he’s a real dick. However, you murder him in a dream sequence halfway through the game because (of course) you’re going to a new island and so they need another baddie for the next island.
Why?
Why are you suddenly battling Hoyt, a flavourless South African baddie? With the help of yet another new mission giver (Sam, who I quite liked, to be honest, in his pleasing Germaninity.)
It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t make any sense, unless everyone has collectively agreed that in video games, you have to get a new mission giver in each new area, and if you unlock a big new bit of the game, well, you should have a different baddie.
This is stupid and it should stop.
Anyway! As a result, Far Cry 3 doesn’t take you anywhere. Your friends remain distant annoying wanks that you only save at the end because the sexy native princess is fucking mental and acts like an even bigger wank so you’re like “fuck you lady.” Jason Brody keeps sort of implying he’s going pure Colonel Kurtz (there’s some laughable end credits “I’m a monster now!” patter) but considering from the very beginning you’re literally shoving machetes in people’s guts and it’s not like you do much worse than that, it doesn’t ring true. And all the dream sequence stuff actually does the opposite of what it’s supposed to—it takes away the feeling of control over the key murders Jason commits, makes them unreal, so you don’t really feel them. In fact, I at points I was like “wait, is this going to turn out to be ‘it was all a dream…’???”
It doesn’t, and in the end you’re only not a classic white saviour out of happenstance, but you do get to be a guy who did lots of awesome murders and then escaped scot free apart from the mental trauma, which as a player you don’t feel at all so it’s fine.
Great shooting, though.
Will I ever play it again? No, and if you want an interesting fact I could have played it longer, finishing off all the outposts and stuff, but with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and 4 out there, I was like “If I want to do more of that, I’ll do it in one of those.” I’ll probably play Blood Dragon to mix it up, so that should make it clear just how joyfully playable this was despite the awful, awful writing.
Final Thought: Feel free to compare and contrast to my thoughts on Far Cry 2, a game which I think is utterly flawed (and definitely, totally, not fun) but which I think needed design changes to salvage the story. Here the game works so well that it slightly ruins the premise that this type of thing needs a narrative. To make it work at all you’d have to totally re-write it to make it a triangle between Vaas, Citra and the friends, making them all compelling, rather than confusing (Vaas), idiotic (Citra) and annoying (the friends).
Oh, did you know it turns out Vaas and Citra are brother and sister? There’s fuck all point to it, but it comes up. it’s so stupid.
Anyway, you can use fire arrows in Far Cry 3 while still rolling stealth and the fire is just as great as it was in Far Cry 2. 10/10 (for the fire.)
Developed/Published by: Hipster Whale, 3 Sprockets / Bandai Namco Entertainment Released: August 19th, 2015 Completed: 22nd August, 2015 Completion: I scored 12,583 points and I was like “ok, I get it.” Trophies / Achievements: n/a
First up, I’ve previously written up Crossy Road, and you might want to read that first, because it’s fairly obvious that Crossy Road is the design core of Pac-Man 256, which, when you think about it, is kind of weird. “Make a Pac-Man game based on Frogger.” (Actually, this could be kind of a cool jam idea: retro mash-up. I suppose people do this already, but legitimate design mash-up, not just slamming two games together without considering the game systems. It’d be easy to make Pac-Man Frogger where, I don’t know, it’s just Frogger, but the cars are ghosts! Or whatever.)
So. I played Pac-Man 256, immediately thought it was gash, and was prepared to put it down until Sage Solitare’s designer Zach Gage said it sounded like I hadn’t “really” played it after somemildquestionson Twitter, which was like a red rag to a bull honestly. I played it quite extensively for several days, and so I think I’m totally in a good position to critique this. Let’s begin.
Pac-Man 256 is… half a design. It’s a really good example of a game where they came up with the idea, said “why it practically designs itself!” and that was it. If you’re not familiar with it, and don’t want to download it and see, here’s the deal with Pac-Man 256: you’re Pac-Man. He’s on an endless isometric Pac-level. if he doesn’t keep moving forward, the “kill screen” glitch catches up with him and kills him. There’s all the usual stuff—ghosts, power pills, fruit—but there’s also a mechanic where you can use one continue each game (so you get one life, basically) and three optional power-ups, which you can pick up the same way you do power-pills, and which work in a similar fashion (it makes you invisible to ghosts! or a giant pac-man who eats ghosts!) but if you pick one of those up, you can’t pick-up a power-pill and vice versa. Oh, and fruit works as a multiplier for a while, not just a straight point-gain.
This all sounds good! There are some issues, however. You see, Pac-Man was a game about cleaning the whole stage, not about driving endlessly forward. Pac-Man 256 adds a dot-chain mechanic where you get a bonus for perfectly eating 256 dots in a row (with no missing/turning back, apart from on corners or something, there’s a weird quirk where certain missing dot spaces are fine?) but this is rather hard to do, especially as there can be serious clumps of ghosts, and big swathes without dots. As far as I can tell, this is to incentivise playing the game different ways; maybe this time you’re going for chains rather than just points.
Now, I’m going to claim something that might be talking out of my arse, but I think not even Pac-Man Championship Edition was about chaining individual dots (correct me if I’m wrong) but about clearing sides as fast as possible. Simply because the nature of Pac-Man is it’s a game where you have to navigate around the movement of the ghosts. Pac-Man CE designed the level sides to be eaten in a long combo, but very clearly so; I can’t see any similar pattern in the generation of Pac-Man 256, and it’s a flaw; the game really does put you into positions where you think “urgh, if I want to keep this chain going, I’ll have to avoid that fruit” which is really weird, but it seems intentional—fruit usually has large dot gaps around them. (Also, I’ve seen it implied power-up spawns are connected to dot-chains, so the risk/reward is to bypass fruit for power-ups… maybe. This may be true, but it’s not a great design, for reasons I’ll outline.)
Then, thanks to scrolling, you’re never clear on where ghosts are, or how many of them there are. taking any long straight route is often suicide; you’ll generally find yourself boxed in and have to use a continue. Unlike a Frogger-based game where this is fine, here you’re in tunnels, so you have zero wiggle room. You can’t dodge to the side unless there’s a path there. It’s easy—stunningly easy—to get yourself into a no-win situation that you couldn’t forsee, which is a fairly huge issue for a Pac-Man game.
So the game loses that cleaning mechanic for a survival one, with a dot-chain mechanic that doesn’t gel with its score mechanic, and scrolling that means you can often suicide. It also doesn’t, for some reason, measure distance; perhaps the dot-chain mechanic is meant to replace that, so there’s a conflict in the player’s aims that I feel is never satisfied, as “forward” is not always “higher score.”
Maybe they removed distance, due to an issue I had with Crossy Road (not that they know I had the issue, just that it also weighed on their minds.) Remember how I complained that it was boring to climb back to a distance you had reached in the aim of a higher score? Well, one of the absolute strangest things about Pac-Man 256 is that they came really, really close to solving it. As it stands, it’s the same situation. Once I reached 12,000+ points, I couldn’t stomach trying for higher…
Actually, wait, let me take a detour here. One way that I think they did intend to solve the problem is in the unlockable power-ups. If you just keep playing, you’ll unlock and pay for more powerful power-ups that can last longer and longer, so higher scores are easily achievable. It’s not so much a game design than a bit of microtransaction design (you can pay for coins, so if you pay to unlock everything you’ll be able to compete at the highest level). It actually managed to totally de-incentivise me (what’s the point in playing to earn the lower difficulty level that will grant me scores I can’t achieve now?) but the idea certainly seems to be that as you’re more powerful, the race to let’s say 12,000 points is quicker. (There are even three point-aiding power-ups, that take a long-ass time to unlock.)
The thing is, of course, is that’s a crap bodge of a solution for anyone who actually likes skill-based games. There’s a solution right under their noses, though. Playing the game, one of the weirdest and most unfair things is fruit. Sometimes you hit a 2x fruit. Sometimes you hit a 6x one. Maybe you hit a 6x one straight away and start tearing up! Maybe you don’t. I might be wrong (in fact, I just played it for a wee while there, and I’m pretty sure I’m not, but I’m open) but this has no connection to anything. It’s just random, and means that like a lot of randomly generated games, you’re just waiting for a good “seed” to get a high early score. If you’re going to have multipliers, why not connect them to something?
High multiplier fruit only appear once you’ve chained a certain number of dots. High multiplier fruit are difficult to get to (and not just “they break your chain”—fruit is consistently better). High multiplier fruit makes the game much harder—but the reward much faster.
I’d much, much rather be playing a game where I hit a 12x multiplier and died reaching 12,000 in a twelfth of the time than laboriously wait for a good “seed.” It’s just boring.
Pac-Man 256 is one of those things that looks genius, but doesn’t pay off at all. In comparison to the beautiful Pac-Man Championship Edition (not DX, that’s a dilution) it’s just horrible—if you just made Pac-Man CE endless it would still be better than this. The game simply never manages to gel moving forward and dot-chaining endlessly with the core Pac-Man of screen-clearing and performing skillful manoeuvres to chain ghost kills or collect fruit. It falls between two chairs, and if you’ve ever done that, it’s a pain in the arse.
Will I ever play it again? Doubt it. You don’t improve the design of a game like this after release, you just release hats for Pac-Man that people can pay for. Have they done that yet?
Final Thought: I’m not going to write about Sage Solitaire (though I could) but I’ll use it as an example to defend Pac-Man 256. Sage Solitaire has a lot of the “seeding” issues that you could say these games have (and, indeed, solitaire always does) but it’s mitigated by the fact that you’re playing with a known 52 card deck. A dedicated enough player can “do the work” to get the best result they can. However, the point of Solitaire, as far as I can tell, is not to min-max. You’re playing it to pass the time in an amusing diversion. it’s a time-waster. It’s entirely possible that here I’m a poker player in a room of solitaire fans. If you enjoy Pac-Man 256 (or Crossy Road) as a time-waster, you don’t really care how long it takes to get your high score, and in fact the unlockable power-ups are a great, fun incentive to keep returning. You’re just playing a modern solitaire.
I think there are so many more beautiful things to play than solitaire.
Developed/Published by: Sega Released: November 4th, 2008 Completed: 9th August, 2015 Completion: Finished the story mode, including the bonus missions. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Negativity is rubbish, isn’t it? I feel bad that the previous review topped the page for an extra week (I’m trying to stick to one update a week, every Tuesday, unless I ever have a huge, huge backlog) so I’m quite happy I now get to gush endlessly about Valkyria Chronicles. Because I loved it.
Valkyria Chronicles isn’t a perfect game—there are some issues with its tactical battle system, and I’ll get to that—but it’s a deeply surprising one. Set in an alternate universe going through a vague approximation of World War II (drawing design elements from WWI for good measure) it crosses real-time movement with turn-based tactics that removes grids and simplifies things like overwatch (as enemies and you just shoot on the opponent’s turn if they happen to be running past.) Oh, and it’s all done with a heavy coating of “anime”, with loads of cut-scenes and stuff that keep you up with the goings on of your militia troop. It’s not quite anime XCOM, but it’s close.
It’s an odd one this, readers. On one hand it was largely developed by the team that worked on the never-translated Sakura Wars series (the originator of anime x tactics, as a cross between robot battles and dating simulation) and you can tell—there are plenty of pretty anime ladies, the game is mostly seen from the lens of a “will they, won’t they” love story between the protagonists and it’s often light and even funny. On the other, it’s more mature than I’d generally expect from any video game. Being an allegory (of sorts) for World War II, it deals with racism against a specific group, goes as far as representing concentration camps, and even reflects upon the use of nuclear weapons (in an abstracted fashion, but it’s quite obvious what they’re showing.)
Indeed, Valkyria Chronicles managed something which I didn’t think I’d be susceptible to, which is that I was genuinely surprised when a main character died. In fact, I was stunned, couldn’t believe they’d do it. It’s the closest I can imagine to experiencing the “Aeris” moment (which I felt nothing for, like all cool video game dudes) and unlike that one it did actually make sense (as characters can die in Valkyria Chronicles).
Not to mention that by the “militia” nature of the player’s squad, the characters you use are a fair mix of gender and sexuality (if not race, as such, unless you count the game’s made up Darcsen race) all of whom are as capable as the other. To some extent it was probably to allow male players the “harem anime” feel of something like Sakura Wars, but for me it was… nice (?) to see men and women fighting in a war together as equals.
(Although, I do admit sniper Marina Wulfstan was 100% my waifu. Pretty much nothing better than selecting her and using her amazing sniper skills to wipe out most of the enemies on the map in the space of a turn if you can keep feeding her ammo. Maybe even better than using Banshee in Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. And anyway, I fancied her because of her amazing capability, not her nice hair and cold attitude. I think.)
(Although, to be honest, the game does include some bonus segments like a “Squad R&R” that’s absolutely, totally one of those “beach episodes” from an anime, in that it’s mostly an excuse to see the girls wear swimsuits.)
(Although, the one character that’s clearly coded as gay, Jann, is, let me say… stereotypical. I loved him and used him every mission, but I can totally understand people having difficulties with this.)
Basically what I’m saying is that there are definitely some things about Valkyria Chronicles that aren’t totally defendable, but there are also loads of things about it that make it more thoughtful than most other games out there, even if I’m pretty sure that’s sometimes entirely accidental. The game really does try and make you think about the cost of war, even when one of the character is, like, ranting about how much they love vegetables or something. It can be broad, but the characters and world draw you into it.
And it is great to play! The real-time/turn-based mix keeps you close to your troops rather than a distant overlord which increases your engagement, and upgrading your squad and tanks is rewarding (even if it is a little slower than I’d like.) If there are problems, it’s that certain game mechanics, like “potentials” (bonuses based on certain conditions) trigger so infrequently when they beg to be planned around, accuracy is too low across the board (outside of snipers, expect some frequent reloading if you need to hit something) and I’d have preferred more, shorter missions than the 20-odd often epic missions (expect them to take about 2 hours a piece). But those are all pretty quibbly, to be honest.
Valkyria Chronicles took me a while to beat—I took a big break in the middle for some reason, I can’t remember why—but I loved it and wouldn’t change anything. In fact I’m raring to play the sequel now. Couldn’t recommend it more if you have any interest in tactics games with a side of anime. Which I realise now is, uh, specific.
Will I ever play it again? Valkyria Chronicles has one of those classic, epilogue heavy Japanese endings where everything is wrapped up as tightly as possible (including, confusingly, telling the futures of a few characters who weren’t even that involved?) but which, as far as the main characters were concerned, made me go “ah, that’s nice” in a way where I’d put it down and just enjoy the memories. But I can see coming back to this as it’s got a “New Game+” mode and I didn’t actually fully level everyone up. So yeah, maybe, when I’m an old man.
Final Thought: I liked this enough I’m going to buy the art book, because apparently it’s got lots of stuff about the development in it. I have literally never done this before. Anyway, Valkyria Chronicles is regularly like $5 on Steam or whatever, you should buy it.
Developed/Published by: Wayforward Technologies Released: December 22nd, 2011 Completed: 21st June, 2015 Completion: Finished all main levels. Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Wayforward are my bête noire. I sincerely cannot think of a studio that more gets on my tits. Why? well because in pretty much every game they’ve ever made, they’ve got stunning, just stunning art. And yet playing their games is like… let me put it this way. It’s like Scarlett Johansson whispering in your ear that she’s absolutely gagging for it, and then you get her home and she explains she was gagging for you to throw a hotdog as far as you could in an empty warehouse. Repeatedly. Oh, and she won’t be there while you do it, but you do need to do it for about eight hours or so. (I genuinely wish I had a more gender-neutral idea of my disappointment of Wayforward, but them’s the breaks.)
They just make boring-ass games due to their incredibly uninteresting, generic level design. And yet, thanks to their lovely art (and, I’m told, hilariously low bids) they get basically every single brand that I think to myself “that would make a superb game.” Consider their Adventure Time and Regular Show games. Or, instead, just develop a machine that murders dreams, and murder your dreams!
(I tell you, when they’re announced as doing the Steven Universe game, it will the the true symbol that we as a species are unsaveable.)
“Hang on, Mathew,” you’re saying, “this is some insane hyperbole. It’s like you’re one of those types. You know who I mean.”
I suppose it is a bit over-the-top, but the missed opportunities are galling. Galling. However, bête noire or not, it’s not like I don’t live in hope! I’ve actually even got a copy of Aliens Infestation on my to-play pile, and when I saw this in the ol’ Humble Bundle, I thought “why not.” Especially as I’d been told by someone that it was good, right down to the level design.
So here’s what I have to say about Mighty Switch Force: it’s your usual boring Wayforward shite, but at least it’s only got sixteen levels.
Will I ever play it again? No.
Final Thought: Mighty Switch Force is a puzzle-platformer where the trick is that you “switch” the position of blocks in 3D space in 2D game—so basically pushing blocks forward and back. You use this to, for example, kill enemies in front of a block, or create platforms. It is, by all accounts, a decent idea! And as usual the art is nice, though notably it’s really samey (this is kind of a Wayforward thing, actually, once the shine has worn off in any Wayforward game) in that I never really noticed the level art changing. I’m going to be charitable here and say that the problem with Mighty Switch Force is that it can’t decide if it wants to be a true puzzle-platformer or an action-platformer with a twist. Some levels are puzzles, but it’s choked by the fact that the amount of screen you can see isn’t enough for a game where you’re searching for things and manipulating the level, and the levels that are straightforward action are killed by the fact that enemies have no inherent challenge. I mean, seriously, one just, like, floats there. So your main fun interaction is basically “jump, and do a switch before you land so there’s a platform there.”
Oh, and to emphasise the lack of commitment to the idea, the final level automates switching, changing the game more or less entirely and there’s even a final boss that doesn’t use any of the switching mechanic like, at all???
It just doesn’t work. It’s dull and unfocused. As I said: usual Wayforward shite.
