Games Beaten List:
- Momodora: Reverie under the Moonlight (PC)
- Metro Exodus (PC)
- Tetris Effect (PC)
- Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut (PC)
DLC -
Shenmue III: Battle Rally (PC)Momodora - I probably had more to say about this a couple weeks ago. The gameplay ended up a little bit better than I initially thought it would be, but it's ultimately not very fun. The story didn't make any sense to me for a while, and then about 50% of the way through the game, I realized that it wasn't made by a Japanese developer, and switched the language to English. It was still fucking incomprehensible, though. Part of that is just really poor writing; as in, non-standard language, and some vague fluff. It looks decent, but the objective isn't really satisfying, and the path through the map is just unnecessarily, and stupidly circuitous. Also, and it seems to be a trend with all the metroidvanias I played recently, I don't understand why the warp points seem to be placed in such a way as to be as inconvenient as possible--that is, once you even get the ability to warp, which isn't until practically the end of the game. You can't even see which save point, out of the multiple in a particular area, the warp is going to put you at. Honestly, this game has the worst warping system I've ever seen. As an aside, it upsets me greatly that the game seemed to force me to essentially allow an innocent thing to die when it was begging for my help. That's seriously fucked up, but Momodora don't care. Overall, it was a bit better than I would have guessed, but it's not particularly memorable aside from some dikish design choices, and I would struggle to call it, 'good.' I finished the game with 98% map completion in only about 3h30m, though, so at least it doesn't require much of a time investment. Still, I think that time would be better served elsewhere, like with Risky's Revenge, probably (spoilers).
Metro - This is another one of those ho-hum experiences. I don't really know what compelled me to finish this game. I installed it initially just to test out the computer I built, and was happy to see that I was getting pretty rock solid 60fps with all graphical settings maxed, while just rolling through a fair amount of the intro chapter. I guess I figured that it probably wasn't a very long game, and would be worth finishing. It turned out to be much longer than I had anticipated (not for any really good reason), and unfortunately, the framerate did dip into the low-mid 50s in the Caspian and Taiga areas, in particular. What I also found, over time, is that Metro Exodus kind of looks bad. The lighting work is absolutely terrible. Most of the time the game just wants to completely strip you of any visibility, even in daylight. From that perspective, I found it to be a pretty terrible experience. What's kind of funny is that when the game first gives you night-vision goggles, it's in an area where you have to then fight mutated spiders that are most susceptible to light in the form of your flashlight, and also get worked over real good by incendiary rounds. Neither of those are really conducive to using night vision. So I hardly remember actually having a use for them, and in the next fucking chapter they get taken away from you (because everything does) never to return! So what the fuck was the point! Aside from that, character models can look fairly decent, until they're in certain lighting where they just look like garish, zombie freaks. Oh, but then there are the mouths. Oh my god, those horrifying mouths, and the crooked smiles. Environments, also, are quite detailed, but just really, really bland. The Taiga was probably the most visually interesting area, and even that's just your standard forest area, really--and I pretty much only saw it at night, which means I barely
saw anything.
The thing is, I loved Anna. I thought she was a great character. I hated what the story tried to do with her, but she was the standout element in an otherwise uninteresting game. The story is trite crap. It tries to string together some ideas about the thin divide between Man and Beast, but ultimately fumbles it with a canned ending, and an incongruous final objective. The gameplay loop is, well, boring for me, I guess. I don't play many FPS, in general, but the enemy AI seems kind of ridiculously stupid. I still died plenty, or was spotted when I didn't want to be, and needed to reload, but for fire-fights against human enemies, I was always able to just park myself behind cover, and take pot shots at mostly stationary enemies. Never once did one of them appear to think they might want to get around to my flank, or converge on my location, and flush me out of cover. The game also seems to demonstrate some weird perverted ideas of ethics and morals, that I don't really get. One thing that was kind of difficult for me was just the level of gore at times, particularly in the Yamantau area. It didn't really affect me in the moment, but after shutting the game off, the gratuity of it feels too unpleasant. Really, though, the bulk of the gameplay felt like pixel hunting for scraps of shit all over the place, in amounts that were barely a pittance, or ammo for weapons I wasn't carrying (in numbers that wouldn't be meaningful anyway). All the while just listening to the beeping of a shitty metal detector that's supposed to make this part of the game easier. Basically, if you missed the pixel hunting of old adventure games, and want that paired up with a really bare bones scavenging simulator, then oh boy is Metro Exodus the game for you.
Oh yeah, and for whatever reason, no one in this game knows how to shut the fuck up. They continue to just babble on and on, incessantly, for no good reason, and 90% of the time it's not even worth listening to. I shit you not, you could be standing there for ten minutes listening to a character just repeating things you already know about the circumstances of the crew, and every time it seems like they're going to finish, if you wait a few more seconds, they start talking again. It's insane. You don't actually engage them, though. They just start talking openly once you're nearby, so it actually feels rude when you want the conversation to just be over because you have to actually walk away from them while they just continue to flap their horrible, ghoulish gums behind you. Oh, and I forgot about the enemy dialogue.
So, those assholes, when they spot you suddenly, and continuously, shout the same profane shit:
Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over.... I get that it's Russian (although that aspect of the writing almost makes it feel like parody), but the thing that really bothers me is just how uncreative, and repetitive it is. Multiple enemies will just be shouting the same line in a chorus, as well. It really sucks.
So lets actually talk about some
good games for once, eh?
Tetris Effect - Everyone knows Tetris. Not everyone knows the different styles of Tetris, though. Tetris Effect pulls from the Sega line of Tetris, with T-spins, holds, instant drops, etc. It's basically "modern" Tetris, since even Tetris DS had most of those things. Speaking of Tetris DS, that's the last time I really played Tetris before picking up Tetris Effect a week or so ago. I bought it because I love UGA, and Q Entertainment's games; they're often such great multimedia experiences, while also being really fun games. Tetris Effect is really the marriage between Tetris and Lumines. The result is probably something more than Tetris, but less than Lumines, if I'm honest. Frankly, between Tetris and Lumines, Lumines is the superior puzzle game. It's much more elegant, creative, and fun to play. The irony is that, apparently, Lumines exists because, at the time, Mizuguchi was unable to make what would have essentially been Tetris Effect. Rankings of falling block puzzle games aside--by the way, the list goes Lumines, SPFII Turbo, Meteos, then Tetris--Tetris Effect is still Tetris, and it's also an experience. The Journey mode is fairly short. I'm not that great at Tetris (and severely out of practice) and it only took me two short sittings to finish (probably three hours total, according to my total recorded time of 4 hours, and the time I spent poking around the online mode). The thing that I found didn't really work for me with Tetris Effect was how the tetromino drop speed fluctuates with the music, after clearing a certain number of lines. At times the fluctuations can be wild (like from 1, to 7, to 13, to 8, and so on). That can be exhilarating, but I didn't feel like it was always fitting with the audio changes (tempo, and so forth), and may have impeded my enjoyment to a certain extent.
So there are different difficulty settings (three in all) for the Journey mode, and a number of time attack challenges in the online mode, but that's not a lot of content, I feel, given the $40 MSRP price tag. For some, any Tetris is going to be worth that much, and I enjoy the shtick Tetris Effect brings with it, but even at the $20 dollars I payed for it, it feels a little light. I am interested in eventually playing it with VR, but if you don't like Tetris, and you don't like Mizuguchi's soundscape stuff, then there's probably no compelling reason to drop the money on Tetris Effect. I do enjoy it, and think it's very cool, though.
Risky's Revenge - This one caught me a little by surprise. I've had the director's cut on Steam for a number of years, and probably figured I would play the original Shantae on the GBC first, but I've always been curious about the series, and the TR topic gave me a reason to give it a whirl. A lot of the presentation in Risky's Revenge, like the character portraits during dialogue, and the writing, to an extent, feel a bit like Cartoon Network 'originals' from the past decade. For me, that's not exactly a compliment, other than to say it's sort of competent. The character artwork is fairly good, but there's really no sugar coating it, the writing kind of sucks at times. I don't totally hate it, but the story is completely throw-away, and the dialogue can be kind of interesting at times, but also sort of awkward at others. The writer--who I believe is also the creator of the series--often seems to confuse common turns of phrase into something of a jumbled mess. So the dialogue takes on some very curious aspects in a number of places. Although, there were other times where I thought, 'Well that might almost be witty in Cartoon Network show from 2010, actually,' but by and large, the writing is a means to an end. I find that part of Risky's Revenge to be easy to overlook, though, when the rest of the game is as good as it is. What's interesting is that I like the characters, which is kind of weird to say. They're charming, in an affable sort of way, despite being poorly written. Also, while the character portrait art may not be anything to necessarily write home about, the sprite work, and artistry in the level design, are simply divine. It also helps the overall package to have such a bangin' soundtrack laying down the aural backdrop to the lush, vibrant environments in Risky's Revenge. From an overall presentation perspective, Risky's Revenge is the best 'throwback' 2D platformer, when that potentially wasn't even its goal.
From a gameplay perspective, Risky's Revenge's roots lie heavily in the Monster World lineage, which is pretty much my jam, so--. I did not expect great things, initially, though. Part of that was because, at the start, Shantae's attack speed
feels very uncomfortable. There are upgrades for Shantae's hair-whip, that can be purchased in the shop, but they only upgrade speed. What the game appears to do is essentially low-pass filter the attack button, and push the cut-off frequency out to higher frequencies with each new hair upgrade. In other words, if you mash too fast, the inputs will just be dropped. At the start, the timing is such that Shantae's hair almost has to fully whip around back behind her before she can whip again. That can be tricky to deal with at the beginning, but it gets more manageable with practice, and upgrades. The structure of the game is very much in the vein of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, where Shantae gains animal transformations with unique abilities to assist in progressing through the trials on her adventure. It's sort of a limited adventure, though, with only two true dungeons, but the 'overworld' is quite akin to Dragon's Trap, as well, in that a lot of the game takes place on it. Speaking of the overworld: Man, I really wish they had just put the first warp pedestal right outside the hub town. It's not the worst layout of warp points I've seen, though (refer back to Momodora). Overall, the gameplay was just the most solid part. The levels are detailed, and varied. The animal transformations are all very unique, and add a lot of variety to the challenges. The handful of bosses, and most of the enemies as well, are quite varied, and rewarding (aside from those fucking mermaids). It's some serious quality, if you put blinders on for most of the dialogue segments--just pretend they're speaking simlish, I guess, because they practically are.
What I feel like I'm gleening from Tetris Effect, Risky's Revenge (and actually Shenmue III upon checking it out again in a post Metro Exodus existence) is that what appears to be missing from a lot of more recent games (i.e. Momodora, et al.) is artistry. You can map pixels, or push polygons and particle effects 'til the cows come home, but it doesn't do squat without cohesive artistry behind it.
I guess one other possible knock on Risky's Revenge would be that it's pretty easy, actually. On my first playthrough, I got the achievement for completing the game without getting any health upgrades. It really never was any issue, and I didn't even start using healing potions until the final stretch of the game. You can hold nine potions that heal to full health, so there's rarely much serious danger in the game. I actually played through the Magic Mode, that gets unlocked after beating it, where enemies do double damage, but magic spells use less magic. It was actually really fun to play through that mode. I ended up getting the Ending 3 Achievement, by beating it in 3h22m with all items collected ("speedy and greedy," as it's called). I also went back to beat the final boss without using any potions for that achievement. I got all the achievement other than the second 'speedrun' ending for basically an any% time of under two hours. I may do it at some point, though. Getting the 100% speedrun achievement actually reminded me that I did something similar for another 2010 game: Limbo.
Anyway, Risky's Revenge is a good Time, and I look forward to playing the other games in the series. I have Pirate's Curse, too, but I'm just not sure if I'll jump right into it or not.
Shenmue III: Battle Rally - I put most of my impressions for this DLC in the Shenmue III thread. Suffice it to say it's about the best thing I've played all year.
It's basically seven courses through a village, running to the goal, and beating everyone who dares stand in your way into a pulp. Also there's a healthy level of Outrun 2 panache, with checkpoints, a start/goal circle with all your adoring fans, and a timer font that looks like it might be directly from Outrun 2. It is, quite simply, fantastic.
As if that weren't enough, there's a second mode that's essentially an Easter-egg hunt for little figures of a white dear mascot character, which represents the namesake of the village ('Hakkason,' or 'white dear village'). There are 120 in all; six sections of the village, with 20 in each.
I kind of feel like they should adapt the Battle Rally DLC as a mobile game to promote the series. I feel like it could do really well in that space, but maybe not well enough for the effort. I will be kind of disappointed if any future Shenmue releases don't have Battle Rally in them. So basically, I'm already about ready to declare this DLC my GOTY. If you ever thought you might want a 3D hybrid of Streets of Rage, and Outrun, you owe it to yourself to get Shenmue III for this DLC alone (the first of a handful that are planned).
