RedBackLoggd
2012
Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review.
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Fez was one of three titles popularized by Indie Game: The Movie, and arguably ended-up the most famous of the bunch. Why was that? Well, I’m so glad you asked as it had to do with its co-creator and media representative Phil Fish. Now, Fish’s rise-and-fall among the gaming community is its own rabbit hole worth looking into (though please stave away from the laughably apologetic This Is Phil Fish video that went viral years ago+); however, I bring him up because, even as his popularity fell, there remained a strong advocacy on behalf of his baby - that, no matter how much you hated the guy, his art merited consideration purely out of innate quality.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but the truth is Fez ain’t all that great. It features an absolutely fascinating concept, and is certainly far better than anything I could ever create; yet it can’t help escaping from the fact that it’s just boring. As a neo-platformer, the gimmick here revolves around the ability to turn your screen on its horizontal axis four different ways, theoretically yielding 4 different variations of each level: and yeah, that seamless perspective shifting is definitely amazing, but the issue is it’s rarely used towards anything beyond basic navigation quandaries. Oh, is that ledge out of reach? Well, flip clockwise and bam, now you’ve got grassy hooks to climb on. Are those twirling boards leading out to the middle of nowhere? Well, just change directions and you’ll see they actually ascend upwards!
That’s literally the extent of Fez’s imagination -- it takes your conventional side-scrolling formula, reels it vertically, and swaps obstacle solutions between dimensions and doors (more on that later). Sure, the ploy is fun at first, but once the novelty wears off you’re left with a very flat experience that drags and drags to the point of being unfun. The most diversity I ever saw involved matching external objects to some background effigy, and triggering explosives at specially-marked areas, but their solutions, again, entailed no creativity - just whirl-and-haul until things set in place. The problem isn’t even that it’s easy, but moreso that it’s repetitive -- imagine if twisting resulted in kinetic changes in the world? Or were tied to triggering power-ups? I know I’m spitballing here, however, that’s the kind of advice I wish had been imparted on Fish and company during development.
Unlike most platformers, the goal of Fez is to collect yellow cubes located amidst a myriad of interconnected stages, and while darting between areas is pretty cool, it ultimately harms the game by spacing things out too much - what should’ve been singular realms are broken-up into multiple skotas you can only access via specific doors, and as finding said doors fills the bulk of Fez’s gametime, the endeavor gets tepid very fast. I’m not lying when I say you’ll be spending 90% of your time locating hidden enclaves, with these enclaves, in turn, being nothing more than barren islands or, worse case scenario, empty rooms. There’s no discovering new mechanics or happening upon some hidden lore, just chamber upon isle of prolonged blandness.
The continual need for fresh cubes means you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking as well, and the lack of a quick travel option to individual lands consequently adds insult to injury - if you want to return to a previously-absconded area, be prepared to go piece-by-piece-by-piece as you waste time re-netting your way there (the devs not even bothering to mark each door++).
To Fez’s credit, it has a fine map system equipped with dynamic motion, but rather than waste time programming it, I feel the Polytron Corporation would’ve been better off sticking with closed-off levels that players would have had to complete in-full before moving on to the next place. As it stands, there’s just nothing special about Fez beyond the initial 5 minutes of bliss your average gamer will get from experiencing its new mechanics. Even the side content, involving the use of cryptic pictorial riddles to solve puzzles, is hampered by the sheer distance between said clues and their accompanying location.
Graphically, Fez got a lot of praise for its presentation, and I’ll definitely agree that it’s the best aspect of the game, combining pleasant colors and calming aesthetics into a pixelated masterpiece - the kind of title I could see someone running around in purely to replicate 5th century Buddhist meditation techniques. Most of the backdrops and environs take clear inspiration from Mayan-based architecture, combining stoney ruins with colored blocks, grassy covered exteriors, looming trees, and an abundance of overflowing water; however, there are a fair amount of locations where Fish and his team dip into transcendent territory, whether it’s the World 1-2 inspired sewers, a storm-ridden manor, or the blood-flooded eeriness of the hub plane.
That same effort was carried over to the interior chambers, which could be really bizarre depending on the abode. In my abridged playthrough, for example, I caught sight of map carvings, robot idols, bathroom pumps, dorm room bedding, and even a witch’s pot. Perhaps there was some thematic message Fish intended, but if there was I was too dumb to discern it.
One of the stranger decisions Polytron makes is the incorporation of wildlife, other NPCs, and a dynamic day/night cycle. I say strange because, outside of two puzzles(+++), they don’t serve any purpose in the game and accordingly feel like a waste of money. You could at least make an argument for the presence of humans out of explaining the protagonist’s existence, but given the sheer amount of unique animations programmed for each animal (worms, rats, birds, frogs, butterflies, etc…), I was expecting them to occupy a role in-game besides standard window dressing. Don’t get me wrong, the artisans absolutely deserve credit for their modeling and aptitude, it’s just a case of Chekhov's Gun being violated.
Fauna aren’t the only entities who got specially-coded movements - your anonymous hero may look like a 2D Sackboy, but he’s actually quite versatile in terms of his scripted actions: idle away too long from the keyboard and he’ll fall asleep; hop in water and he’ll paddle like a fish; stand near the edge of a ledge and he’ll teeter over ala DKC.
Unfortunately, the sound editing stumbles too much to be worth a listen, particularly with regards to the music cues. Your basic SFX is all well-and-good, if a bit soft-mixed; however, I found almost every jingle to be obnoxiously loud: opening treasure chests sprouts a Zelda-esque ripoff, jumping into portals triggers a booming vibration, and fully-assembling cubes yields you a disparaging synth-beat.
That obsession with synth carries over to the score, composed by a guy appropriately called Disasterpeace. Peace indulges in a subgenre of the matter known as chiptune, which, as the name suggests, renders every other melody in the OST like something between the NES and SNES generation. It’s a theoretically-solid concept (Kirby’s Adventure did something similar after all), but the problem is Peace’s compositions end-up sounding more akin to early-2000s electronica than synthetic instruments, resulting in a lot of extended flat notes filtered through an e-piano. It’s outdated, it’s misophonic, and most importantly contrasts with the placid visuals.
There’s really nothing else to say about Fez. While I’m always happy for indie games that break through the zeitgeist barrier, Fez ultimately doesn’t live-up to any of the notoriety surrounding it or its creator.
NOTES
+Since that video is (sadly) popular, I’ll flesh out my opinion of it in the event of potential fan backlash -- Danskin does raise good points about the nature of the Internet and the tendency for users to project general sentiments onto a singular persona for the sake of a homogenized rebuttal/attack; however, his brushing-off of Fish’s behavior under the argument of Internet celebrities not needing to be held to higher standards is preposterous to say the least. Yes, some of Fish’s quotes did get blown out of proportion by the media, but Fish himself did no favors as far as adapting to criticism or changing his public image. And no Mr. Danskin, it doesn’t matter if he was always this way - when you’re put into a position of power and influence, you’re obligated to be professional lest you contribute to the normalization of toxic behavior par for the course for such authority figures.
++Standing in front of a previously-entered door will bring-up a projection of the next place, but given that you have to match this with the corresponding map image, it’s fundamentally a two-pronged process that would’ve been better off with conventional naming.
+++The first is nighttime revealing a hidden door; the second is a giant owl statue puzzle, though from what I understand both are completely optional anyway.
-There’s a mining section with a bunch of Mjolnir-looking hammers.
-There’s a track here that I swear was all but recreated in Evan’s Remains.
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Fez was one of three titles popularized by Indie Game: The Movie, and arguably ended-up the most famous of the bunch. Why was that? Well, I’m so glad you asked as it had to do with its co-creator and media representative Phil Fish. Now, Fish’s rise-and-fall among the gaming community is its own rabbit hole worth looking into (though please stave away from the laughably apologetic This Is Phil Fish video that went viral years ago+); however, I bring him up because, even as his popularity fell, there remained a strong advocacy on behalf of his baby - that, no matter how much you hated the guy, his art merited consideration purely out of innate quality.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but the truth is Fez ain’t all that great. It features an absolutely fascinating concept, and is certainly far better than anything I could ever create; yet it can’t help escaping from the fact that it’s just boring. As a neo-platformer, the gimmick here revolves around the ability to turn your screen on its horizontal axis four different ways, theoretically yielding 4 different variations of each level: and yeah, that seamless perspective shifting is definitely amazing, but the issue is it’s rarely used towards anything beyond basic navigation quandaries. Oh, is that ledge out of reach? Well, flip clockwise and bam, now you’ve got grassy hooks to climb on. Are those twirling boards leading out to the middle of nowhere? Well, just change directions and you’ll see they actually ascend upwards!
That’s literally the extent of Fez’s imagination -- it takes your conventional side-scrolling formula, reels it vertically, and swaps obstacle solutions between dimensions and doors (more on that later). Sure, the ploy is fun at first, but once the novelty wears off you’re left with a very flat experience that drags and drags to the point of being unfun. The most diversity I ever saw involved matching external objects to some background effigy, and triggering explosives at specially-marked areas, but their solutions, again, entailed no creativity - just whirl-and-haul until things set in place. The problem isn’t even that it’s easy, but moreso that it’s repetitive -- imagine if twisting resulted in kinetic changes in the world? Or were tied to triggering power-ups? I know I’m spitballing here, however, that’s the kind of advice I wish had been imparted on Fish and company during development.
Unlike most platformers, the goal of Fez is to collect yellow cubes located amidst a myriad of interconnected stages, and while darting between areas is pretty cool, it ultimately harms the game by spacing things out too much - what should’ve been singular realms are broken-up into multiple skotas you can only access via specific doors, and as finding said doors fills the bulk of Fez’s gametime, the endeavor gets tepid very fast. I’m not lying when I say you’ll be spending 90% of your time locating hidden enclaves, with these enclaves, in turn, being nothing more than barren islands or, worse case scenario, empty rooms. There’s no discovering new mechanics or happening upon some hidden lore, just chamber upon isle of prolonged blandness.
The continual need for fresh cubes means you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking as well, and the lack of a quick travel option to individual lands consequently adds insult to injury - if you want to return to a previously-absconded area, be prepared to go piece-by-piece-by-piece as you waste time re-netting your way there (the devs not even bothering to mark each door++).
To Fez’s credit, it has a fine map system equipped with dynamic motion, but rather than waste time programming it, I feel the Polytron Corporation would’ve been better off sticking with closed-off levels that players would have had to complete in-full before moving on to the next place. As it stands, there’s just nothing special about Fez beyond the initial 5 minutes of bliss your average gamer will get from experiencing its new mechanics. Even the side content, involving the use of cryptic pictorial riddles to solve puzzles, is hampered by the sheer distance between said clues and their accompanying location.
Graphically, Fez got a lot of praise for its presentation, and I’ll definitely agree that it’s the best aspect of the game, combining pleasant colors and calming aesthetics into a pixelated masterpiece - the kind of title I could see someone running around in purely to replicate 5th century Buddhist meditation techniques. Most of the backdrops and environs take clear inspiration from Mayan-based architecture, combining stoney ruins with colored blocks, grassy covered exteriors, looming trees, and an abundance of overflowing water; however, there are a fair amount of locations where Fish and his team dip into transcendent territory, whether it’s the World 1-2 inspired sewers, a storm-ridden manor, or the blood-flooded eeriness of the hub plane.
That same effort was carried over to the interior chambers, which could be really bizarre depending on the abode. In my abridged playthrough, for example, I caught sight of map carvings, robot idols, bathroom pumps, dorm room bedding, and even a witch’s pot. Perhaps there was some thematic message Fish intended, but if there was I was too dumb to discern it.
One of the stranger decisions Polytron makes is the incorporation of wildlife, other NPCs, and a dynamic day/night cycle. I say strange because, outside of two puzzles(+++), they don’t serve any purpose in the game and accordingly feel like a waste of money. You could at least make an argument for the presence of humans out of explaining the protagonist’s existence, but given the sheer amount of unique animations programmed for each animal (worms, rats, birds, frogs, butterflies, etc…), I was expecting them to occupy a role in-game besides standard window dressing. Don’t get me wrong, the artisans absolutely deserve credit for their modeling and aptitude, it’s just a case of Chekhov's Gun being violated.
Fauna aren’t the only entities who got specially-coded movements - your anonymous hero may look like a 2D Sackboy, but he’s actually quite versatile in terms of his scripted actions: idle away too long from the keyboard and he’ll fall asleep; hop in water and he’ll paddle like a fish; stand near the edge of a ledge and he’ll teeter over ala DKC.
Unfortunately, the sound editing stumbles too much to be worth a listen, particularly with regards to the music cues. Your basic SFX is all well-and-good, if a bit soft-mixed; however, I found almost every jingle to be obnoxiously loud: opening treasure chests sprouts a Zelda-esque ripoff, jumping into portals triggers a booming vibration, and fully-assembling cubes yields you a disparaging synth-beat.
That obsession with synth carries over to the score, composed by a guy appropriately called Disasterpeace. Peace indulges in a subgenre of the matter known as chiptune, which, as the name suggests, renders every other melody in the OST like something between the NES and SNES generation. It’s a theoretically-solid concept (Kirby’s Adventure did something similar after all), but the problem is Peace’s compositions end-up sounding more akin to early-2000s electronica than synthetic instruments, resulting in a lot of extended flat notes filtered through an e-piano. It’s outdated, it’s misophonic, and most importantly contrasts with the placid visuals.
There’s really nothing else to say about Fez. While I’m always happy for indie games that break through the zeitgeist barrier, Fez ultimately doesn’t live-up to any of the notoriety surrounding it or its creator.
NOTES
+Since that video is (sadly) popular, I’ll flesh out my opinion of it in the event of potential fan backlash -- Danskin does raise good points about the nature of the Internet and the tendency for users to project general sentiments onto a singular persona for the sake of a homogenized rebuttal/attack; however, his brushing-off of Fish’s behavior under the argument of Internet celebrities not needing to be held to higher standards is preposterous to say the least. Yes, some of Fish’s quotes did get blown out of proportion by the media, but Fish himself did no favors as far as adapting to criticism or changing his public image. And no Mr. Danskin, it doesn’t matter if he was always this way - when you’re put into a position of power and influence, you’re obligated to be professional lest you contribute to the normalization of toxic behavior par for the course for such authority figures.
++Standing in front of a previously-entered door will bring-up a projection of the next place, but given that you have to match this with the corresponding map image, it’s fundamentally a two-pronged process that would’ve been better off with conventional naming.
+++The first is nighttime revealing a hidden door; the second is a giant owl statue puzzle, though from what I understand both are completely optional anyway.
-There’s a mining section with a bunch of Mjolnir-looking hammers.
-There’s a track here that I swear was all but recreated in Evan’s Remains.
NOTE - there are two versions of Gothic that come with the Gold Edition -- the vanilla release as well as Night of the Raven, the latter being a lite-remaster that adds a new chapter/area called Jharenkar whilst concurrently upping the difficulty. If you get the Gold Edition, please understand that you can only play one version of the game over the other as they are treated as separate titles without carryover files. Obviously, based on my rating, you can tell I don’t recommend either, but NOTR even less due to it making an already challenging game pointlessly difficult
Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.
Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.
I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.
In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.
Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).
Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.
Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.
On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.
The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t as framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.
As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).
It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).
Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).
Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.
In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.
If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.
Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and the vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra versus individually-composited objects (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.
Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repetitive interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statutes with glaring red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.
SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy resounds like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: expect to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a french horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.
When you’re in towns, the soundscape fares better despite its volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.
Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.
Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could have been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy a memorable protagonist of early-2000s gaming. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.
Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get grating, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).
So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance that those games are better worth your time than this one.
Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.
NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.
++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.
-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).
-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.
-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?
-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.
-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.
-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.
-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.
Gothic 2 is the kind of game I feared the original Gothic would wind-up being: an outdated CRPG ripe with fetch quests and pointless loot galore. Granted, I obviously had enough problems with the first to abstain from a full-on endorsement; however, I can’t deny its end product was vastly different from those initial worries: occupying a revolutionary Eurojank format chock-ful of unique systems.
Unfortunately, the sequel forgoes all those interesting tidbits in favor of a relatively-standard release that would’ve been fine had it not been for the presence of defects in almost all its major facets, beginning with the overworld. Gothic 2 is arguably twice as big as its predecessor, yet makes the genius decision to not only undercut your speed, but deny you access to quick travel options well until the third chapter. True, the first game did this as well, but because its realms were much smaller, it never felt excessively impeding - you could dart between the three major camps without ever worrying about the 24-hour cycle looming past you. Gothic II, au contraire, is far more triple-spaced, meaning you’re liable to getting lost in places you most definitely don’t want to be in when night rolls over. And look, that by itself isn’t a bad thing (the hallmark of most open world games is the freedom to wander about aimlessly after all), but when you’re forced to backtrack for tens of minutes on end just to reach the safety of a town or find the next big civilization, it gets frustrating very quickly, and I consequently have no regrets about exploiting waypoint commands.
I mentioned earlier that your velocity has been undercut this time around, and while slower walking does exacerbate those distance qualms, the real issue with it is it forces you into combat scenarios. In the first Gothic, you couldn’t harm a Blood Fly without getting one-hit-KOed, but that was at least mitigated by the ability to outrun 99% of foes until you got stronger.
In developing Gothic II, though, Piranha Bytes have swapped to a combat-focused schema that fails to make the necessary adjustments for such a genre, opting for this weird in-between wherein your weaknesses are contrasted with the ability to dodge, parry, and critical hit. There’s a bit of a FromSoftware motif here in the form of enemies, both human and nonhuman, having unique attack patterns; however, it’s not been ironed out, leading to a lot of good and bad. On the plus side, you get armor early-on and can pretty easily block-spam most humans, but on the negative side, critical hits are haphazard and monsters so erratic, the bulk are impossible to “figure out”. This is a game where you constantly have to save scum because you just never know when someone or something will gain the RNG upper hand and knock your health bar down with a single blow (and when those moments occur, it’s beyond frustrating). Be prepared to hoard a bunch of food for post-battle recovery as every 1v1 skirmish turns into a pyrrhic victory.
Speaking of 1v1, Gothic II once again thrives on this approach to fighting, and once again is deliberately obtuse about it. You’re rarely going to encounter a single enemy by itself: whether it’s bandits, goblins, scavengers, or orcs, they’re always going to be in groups of 3 or more, and I don’t understand why the devs thought this would be a good idea when they blatantly geared their combat system towards personalized duels. Even when you get sufficiently strong, you’re literally forced to cheese the game because your character is simply incapable of fighting multiple foes at once - your stepbacks are too short for evading, you autolock onto singular enemies, and sword strikes only slice one entity/each. So yeah, be prepared to engage in such annoying tactics as inching closer-and-closer to trigger a lone monster’s vision cone, or humping boulders & tree trunks in the hopes of exploiting enemy pathing issues (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, the game deliberately undercuts your damage output when facing parties compared to isolated foes).
Now you may be thinking, well Red, you’re just speaking about the melee - surely players are meant to combine this skill with archery and magic for success? Well no. While archery is more useful this time around (if only because there’re less-ranged foes), it’s hampered by three factors: one, limited skill point acquisition that prevents sufficient investment in both paths; two, the necessity of a secondary skill called dexterity for arrow damage increase; and three, swapping between tools being a decidedly-elongated process hostile to dual-tactics.
Magic, on the other hand, has been completely upended this time around via Piranha Bytes opting for outdated class specialization. See, if you don’t join the Fire Mage Guild in the first chapter (more on that later), you lose access to most offensive spells: like literally, you’re unable to use them, even if you have sufficient mana and the requisite scroll. Sure, you can still do summons, but, outside of demons (which are hard to come by), they aren't a huge help against those aforementioned hordes.
On the topic of guilds, Gothic II further peeved me by not properly outlining the presence of the other factions. In the first Gothic, you were explicitly told by Diego about the different camps and how you were meant to choose one. Here, though, you’re made highly-privy to the Paladin Way via Xardas mandating you deliver a message to their head regent - when you arrive there, you’re informed that the only to pass on this missive is to join the City Guard and become a citizen of Khorinis. The Mages are briefly mentioned if you talk to one of the adjacent representatives, but considering the dangerous distance to the location (as well as the nonsensical entrance fee of 1000 gold + a sheep), it’s not exactly an open path compared to being a Guardsman.
The Mercenaries are a bit easier to join given Lares’s offer to escort you to their leader; however, unlike Gothic 1, where Mordrag took you directly to the New Camp, Lares leaves you behind a good ways away from the mercenary headquarters, and I consequently was unable to find the man until well-after I had joined the Khorinis Militia. But even if I hadn’t, I don’t see why I, as a player, would’ve considered joining them when the militia being at odds with the mercs implied that doing-so would’ve made it impossible to dispatch the letter for story progressment. Yes, I know now that there would’ve been some avenue for success, but the point I’m trying to make is that Gothic II just isn’t as framed as well as its predecessor, with these obscurity methods coming across like goaded attempts at encouraging multiple playthroughs.
As a result, I can’t give an accurate assessment about the narrative in terms of how it differs in that initial act. With regards to the consequent chapters (assuming the story beats remain the same), though, I can tell you that Gothic II is an utterly boring, fetch quest extravaganza. I hate making constant comparisons to its predecessor, but to see such a noticeable drop can’t help begetting these mandates- before your Nameless Hero felt like he was forging his own arc amidst the brave new world he was trapped in. Gothic II, on the other hand, is content with having you play errand boy for almost every single figure you come across: you’re first doing the bidding of Xardas by delivering his memo to the Paladin Commander, then are forced to do arduous tasks for the merchants within Khorinis in order to obtain citizenship, then are tasked with doing MORE bidding for the Commander by conducting a scouting mission to the previous game’s area , then have to do, you guessed it, another set of chores for the Paladins and mages, then rinse-and-repeat until the last saga wherein your protagonist finally grows a pair and takes initiative into his own hands (though by then it’s obviously too little too late).
It’s a shame because there was so much potential here with regards to what could’ve happened following the fall of the barrier and all these criminals and gangs running free, but no, the writers evidently thought it better to forgo that in favor of a generic fantasy yarn (which, on its own, might’ve been fine were it not for the whole indentured servitude schematic). Some of the NPCs you meet are kind of interesting, you finally get a decent reason for why your Hero isn’t named, and it was admittedly cool seeing what happened to your allies/nemeses from the first game. But overall the endeavor was just very forgettable (and yes, this applies to the sidequests too).
Gameplay, despite the flaws I touched on earlier, has seen some improvements from Gothic 1. For starters, the useless skills of sneaking, lock bumping, and pickpocketing have been converted into singularly-learned talents that actually serve a purpose in certain quests. Secondly, 1h and 2h weaponry are equally-useful methods for dispatching foes, with upgrades to one partially carrying over to the other (at a ratio of I believe 5:1 skillpoints). Thirdly, as I alluded to in my rant above, you can actually take more than one-strike now without dying, which SIGNIFICANTLY helps in leveling-up quicker compared to before. Finally, the revamped combat is quite fun, occupying a fencing-style of play that risks/rewards lunges-and-retreats. As you upgrade your swordwielding, the game also provides visible feedback via faster drawing, swiping, and new combos.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the praise I got as everything else is either mediocre or an infringement upon the game’s fun factor. To run down the list: there’s no quick save/load option, you can only cook & brew one item at a time, leaves & foliage outright block your vision during combat, executions have been removed(+), you can’t dual-wield swords with torches for night fights, and you’re unable to sync the attack and action buttons to the same prompt (something that genuinely makes no sense given that you can’t even do actions when you have your blade out).
Worst of all, there’s no sense of difficulty scaling in the narrative - in G1, yeah every enemy was annoying on some level, but they were at least restricted to their respective areas of influence, and the story appropriately structured your mandatory encounters with them.
In the sequel, though, you can happen upon a troll or skeleton medley, or find a swarm of blood flies right next to a pack of snappers, all in the most random of places. One of the worst decisions has you in the second chapter, let me repeat, in the second chapter, sent off to maneuver around the Orc Army, and it honestly stands as one of the most vexing experiences I have ever had in a video game - to be forced to run around these behemoths spammed everywhere with no method of fighting back(++). There had to have been some cut survival horror elements as I just don’t see why anyone at Piranha Bytes believed this would be a good idea in the slightest - imagine encountering the Trigen within the first third of Far Cry and you’ll get an idea of my frustration.
If all that weren’t enough, exploration is rendered worthless as, just like in the first Gothic, the only things you’re privy to finding in the open world are lone caves ripe with repetitive loot. On that note, expect a cluttered inventory due to the sheer amount of pointless garbage you're liable to discovering on corpses and chests alike, from gems to various meats. True, G1 also had similar problems, but there was at least a unique bartering schematic wherein you could trade this stuff for an item you wanted - Gothic 2 reverts to a standard monetary system that ultimately requires you to sell this stuff for cash to then use for purchasing, turning a simple back-and-forth enterprise into a padded-out middle man approach.
Graphically, Gothic II continues to stumble as it’s just not at the level of its contemporaries, let alone something that’s aged well. Now look, part of me actually appreciated the aesthetics due to them blatantly resembling RuneScape right down to the font-type (I wouldn’t be surprised if Jagex and Piranha Bytes’ artists came from the same school of design), but objectively the modeling is pudgy, animations stilted, shadows circular blobs, and the vast majority of monster designs either rehashed or uninspired. Most of the texture work is admittedly pristine, with castles, villages, mountains, and ponds rendered quite well; however, there’s nothing about their surrounding biomes that makes them stand apart from your usual fictional settings, and a fair amount are unfortunately adorned with blatantly painted-on simulacra versus individually-composited objects (stone veins, floor bones, door locks). You also have a ton of repetitive knickknacks and buildings plastered in the majority of locations: expect to see the same farmhouses, Shadowbeast mounts, treasure chests, flowery lion busts, and Angel/Demon paintings despite their presence in varied locations.
Gothic II also suffers from a few minor, yet noticeable, technical issues you’ll have to contend with, namely the poor draw distance, animation lags (for candle flames, large oceans and at-distance NPCs), as well as incessant clipping. They won’t bring down the experience by any means, but are worth noting for the sake of knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing feats like the phenomenal textiles, moving clouds, dynamic lighting, presence of raindrop/snowflake impacts, and how looking up at the sun turns the screen yellow. And for all my complaints about the repetitive interior layouts, the artisans went all out for that final dungeon wherein you’re privy to some gorgeously-grisly details ala torture chambers with displaced skeletons, walls laden with chiseled runes, and giant knight statutes with glaring red eyes. I just wish that same effort had been put into the preceding locales.
SFX is a bigger letdown, containing some of the worst noises for monsters I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear in gaming. Orcs and dragons are decent, but every other enemy resounds like a conventional noise bumped up several decibels: expect to cover your ears when facing scavengers (roosters), lurkers (snorting pigs), blood flies (bass drums), and goblins (literally like someone farting through a french horn). In addition, footsteps are heavily muffled and grass rustling clearly recreated via a candy wrapper being rubbed against the boom mic.
When you’re in towns, the soundscape fares better despite its volatility - I loved hearing the workings of a smithery, mixturing of alchemists, and liveliness of taverns. Outside the walls, things like the flow of water, crashing of waterfalls, wavering of rope bridges, diverse footstep dins, and even varied food eating crunches were also great. However, as an overall enterprise, the game is too crowded with those aforementioned beastly wails that get very grating very fast.
Voice acting, at the least the English dub I played, wasn’t very good either, with Piranha Bytes (or whoever handled the localization) not only recasting some of their previous characters with worse VAs (Lares, Diego), but also going TES route via having a select few actors do every single voice. This would’ve been fine had there been proper ADR direction, but the lip syncing is terrible and performances fluctuating - the more talented people are obviously solid; however, because the parts were clearly handed-out haphazardly, you get a scattershot inconstancy similar to Horizon Zero Dawn wherein some random joe will sound more immaculate than a major character.
Prince Charming returns as the Nameless Hero, and he’s one of those thespians I imagine could have been great with proper direction as he actually has the right chording for the script, yet flounders around way too much to render the guy a memorable protagonist of early-2000s gaming. What I mean is he does a fair job granting the Hero an everyman cadence, but the second he tries acting tough (particularly against the dragons), oh man, cringe doesn’t even begin to describe things.
Lastly, there’s the music by Kai Rosenkranz, and it’s satisfactory to a fault. A large chunk of it comes across like elongated overworld themes (your typical hodgepodge of horned melodies interrupted by guitar chords or vice-versa), but because of all the backtracking, you’ll be hearing the same tunes on-repeat, and while they never get grating, it serves to hammer in the point that the music is inherently lacking any kind of grandiosity. It doesn’t sound like you’re on a big adventure, but instead a small-scale journey with occasional strife (and yeah, I guess that makes the OST technically accurate to the game, but my point is it could have elevated things).
So in the end, Gothic II is not worth playing. It’s a step-down from its predecessor in almost every major venue, a title that, itself, was too flawed to be worth recommending. There are things I admire, and I can definitely see where the influence on later RPGs came from - there’s just a good chance that those games are better worth your time than this one.
Take this as a forewarning - when a non-Metroid game opens up with your character literally being stripped of their abilities for no other reason than a lazy respec, it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.
NOTES
+You’re able to execute certain NPCs, but not everyone like in G1. You have the option to flip to Gothic 1’s combat system, but I doubt this would’ve granted the ability.
++The worst part is the average player would have no way of knowing that you require speed potions to outrun the orcs as the game gives no indication of such (worse still, I don’t even know how you’d obtain the chemicals due to both higher-level alchemy apprenticeships being locked off and there being very few vendors on site [thank the Lord for console commands!]). The slew of apologists out there will claim you’re meant to use specially-marked pathways to avoid the orcs, but I can tell you there are no such things minus the initial entryway into the Valley of Mines. And even if there were, the fact that you’re granted no freedom to traverse the place willy-nilly whilst having to continuously look over your shoulder is just not fun in the slightest (at least in an action video game). I’ve also heard claims that you’re meant to employ sleeping spells, but as far as I could tell, these don’t have a huge range and would be futile against a clan of brutes + shamen.
-One of my favorite Eurojank moments occurs whenever you try to long-jump at a wall corner as it results in your character flying over it (and then some!).
-You’ll encounter a number of crates sparkling with that shimmer effect Disney used to employ in their cartoons back-in-the-day.
-Speaking of Disney, tell me the JoWooD Productions animation logo wasn’t inspired by the classic Disney World castle one?
-Gothic II boasts a few solid CG cutscenes.
-NPC patterns are pretty varied: you’ll see them chat, go about their workday, eat food, enjoy the nightlife, relieve themselves, and of course sleep. It’s a shame their convos with each other are so dang repetitious.
-If you reload a save file, any spell you’ve cast or torch you were wielding doesn’t return. The reloads themselves are very quick, though in some ways too quick - you can literally see the NPCs easing back into their walk/sit pattern upon booting.
-There are times where the script doesn’t match what is being said by the characters.
Quality superhero films may be the norm these days, but in hindsight it’s strange how little we’ve gotten in the way of narratively-equivalent video games. Sure, there’s the occasionally great movie tie-in(+), but outside of the Arkham and Spider-Man series, you could count on one hand the number of solid story-driven titles out there.
It’s a shame, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy reportedly underperformed as it’s the kind of game I felt the industry really needed with regards to the comic book genre, and what makes it particularly amazing is how it manages to craft its own path whilst still staying true to the characterizations of the eponymous film. See, compared to Batman and Spider-Man, where their numerous iterations have made audiences open to new versions, Guardians is different in that most people are liable to only knowing the characters from James Gunn’s flick, and so the writers at Eidos-Montréal had a tough task before them: how do we create our own version of the team that concurrently pays homage to the comics without alienating any cinephiles?
Well, I’m not sure what their thought process entailed, but the end result was taking the core personalities personified in the movie and combining it with an original backstory, namely one in which every Guardian was a veteran of a conflict known as the Galactic War. Each member played a different role during the war, and the way such information is divulged over the course of the game goes a long way towards distinguishing its cast from their cinematic interactions. Yes, Quill is still comedic, Drax a literalist, Rocket a loudmouth, etc…etc…, but their experiences have led to them developing varied demeanors towards society as a whole. Gamora, for example, seeks some form of redemption for her support of Thanos; Rocket & Groot are purely about surviving, and Drax hunts for honor over his inability to protect his clan.
Found familyhood was cited as a major inspiration behind the tale, and I can safely say the writers successfully accomplished this task via the sheer amount of dialogue they crafted for the game. Seriously, fans of the Mass Effect or Red Dead series may find themselves in awe at the innumerable conversations typed-up for every chapter; convos that go a long way towards establishing relationships, lore, scenarios, and general camaraderie. Hearing Drax repeatedly call Gamora an assassin, seeing everyone snicker at Quill’s attempts at self-aggrandizement, or catching Rocket’s reactions to Groot’s various statements truly render the Guardians as three-dimensional people who’ve had a lot of laughs & cries along the way. No matter their disagreements, there’s a basic-level of respect amongst each peer, and while you occasionally have the option to interject with a unique response, both choices ultimately contribute to that looming amity.
I’m not exaggerating when I say GOTG has a ton of impromptu chatter -- your main hub of a ship spouts the lion’s share of these, with characters either speaking to each other out of their own volition, or engaging in ones triggered by unique items found during missions. Both moulds give-off a big Mass Effect vibe, and I was constantly amazed whenever I discerned some new interaction, whether it be petty, dramatic, or (in most cases) downright amusing.
None of this is even taking into consideration the outside convos in which characters often shout unique battle cries or make special observations should you be standing in a specific place. One of the best things GOTG does is resolve TLOU Problem I’ve had with certain narrative-driven games wherein your hero is meant to progress forward in stark contrast to the gameplay encouraging dicking around; it breaks the game’s immersion to see your next objective or companion kindly wait on you as you do whatever it is you feel like doing. By having the other Guardians actually remark on Quill’s strays off the beaten path, it goes a long way towards maintaining GOTG’s atmosphere.
In some ways, all the dialogue can get a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who suffer from FOMO: there’s a solid chance you’ll unintentionally cut-off or outright miss at least 15 percent of the optional scripting here, and that’s just something you’ll have to contend with should you wish to play the game.
Of course, no one would’ve cared about these palavers had the voice acting not been good, and that’s thankfully not the case here. Guardians of the Galaxy is interesting in that it opted for an entirely unknown cast -- I consider myself pretty well-versed in the voice acting industry, and I honestly only recognized a single name here (Andreas Apergis, and even then that was mainly because of his recurrent roles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise). That said, their unknownness doesn’t impede the project in any way as they are all terrific, embodying their characters fully as they wander amidst a full spectrum of emotions. Like I noted with the script, there was a difficult balancing act required in terms of making sure these takes on the Guardians were both similar and dissimilar from their movie counterparts, and all the actors proficiently did-so whilst rendering their characters their own. All cards on the table, I actually preferred most of these takes over the celebrityhood of James Gunn’s enterprise: Jason Cavalier grants Drax far more tragic introspective depth than Bautista ever did; Alex Weiner removes that atrocious Gilbert Gottfried inflection Cooper gave his Rocket (RIP Gottfried, but I was not a fan); and even Robert Montcalm manages to provide Groot a more-variegated personality than the one Diesel was limited to.
Given the strong vocal bounce between the characters (Rocket & Groot standing out as the best), GOTG deserves further acclamation for its robust ADR direction. See, there’s a good chance the actors did not record their lines together, and so their ability to resound like they had good chemistry owes a lot of fealty to the narrative directors for providing the appropriate context for each delivery.
There were only two voices I had issues with, the first being Jon McLaren’s Star-Lord. This may come as a surprise given that Quill is the lead protagonist and only playable character, but I did not like the inherent stoner-esque gravel McLaren provided him. Don’t get me wrong, the performance is otherwise solid; however, more often than not, I found myself thinking of a Seth Green character over a Marvel superhero.
The second is Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez’s Mantis, though I don’t hold this against her as it’s evident the writers were going for this crazed NPC wrought with constant knowledge: the problem is, rather than do a Dr. Manhattan-type performance, they opted to portray her like Omi in that episode of Xiaolin Showdown where he gets infused with factoids from the Fountain of Hui (and yes, for the uninitiated, that’s a bad thing when done in spades).
Regardless, everyone’s performance was successfully transposed into the game via top-quality facial capture, rendering their squints and frowns through phenomenal animations. When you visibly see pain and happiness on your characters’ faces, it does a lot for the execution of the overarching story.
On that note, the narrative has its pros and cons. As I harped on earlier, the scribes do a phenomenal job developing the relationships between the Guardians: while this version of the team is already well-acquainted, it still takes place in the early part of their formation, meaning this is where you see them go from world-weary associates to the makeshift family we all know-and-love. In terms of the grand adventure you’re set out on (i.e., the campaign those interactions fall under), your mileage is going to vary. The entire game is full of heart, and there are some emotional moments that genuinely touched me to my core, but getting to those moments means engaging in standard superhero schlock wherein you’re charged with saving the universe from despair. Yes, other comic book games like Arkham Asylum and Shattered Dimensions indulged in similar premises, but I’d argue the difference is those titles were carried by their villains and a sense of mystery towards uncovering said villain’s plot. GOTG’s problem is that it’s upfront about its secrets from the get-go and, more importantly, lacks memorable antagonists: the main one, in particular, being a generic evil shroud akin to such classics as the Rising Darkness from Constantine, Galactus from Tim Story’s Fantastic 4, and Smallville’s version of Darkseid (yes, this is sarcasm). A couple of the secondary adversaries like Lady Hellbender fare a bit better, but, as they’re not a constant presence, this is a game you’ll largely be playing for the protagonists.
For the record, I had a good time with the story -- it’s well-told, has minimal pacing issues (save the end++), and would’ve worked well as an officially-published graphic novel. It’s just, post-completion, you won’t recall the majority of the chapters (the interactions within, yes, but not the events).
Thanks to James Gunn, the GOTG franchise is also permanently associated with comedy, and on that front the game works quite well. Whereas Gunn’s films were more about gags and one-liners, Eidos goes for a more situational style-of-humor wherein you’re witnessing how a coterie of charismatic individuals with sharp comportments would behave when placed in an enclosed dwelling. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud, but more-so chuckle humor: you’ll smile and giggle like a schoolgirl, yet rarely twist your stomach out from hooting, and I think the tactic works great. There are times when the game tries to mimic the Gunn route; however, those scenes fall very flat and are thankfully few-and-far between(+++).
Of course, Arkham and Spider-Man didn’t get popular solely from their narratives or witticism: they had phenomenal gameplay systems to back everything up, and on that note, Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty dang good. It’s interesting that I made the comparison to Mass Effect earlier as the similarities between the two even extend to combat: you control Quill while his comrades are AI-guided, each of whom can be called upon to use a special attack against a foe or foes. Quill himself is equipped with his fists, dual blasters (primed with elemental shots obtained during set story beats), and a batch of special moves ranging from electro mines to the iconic jet boots. Much like the original Mass Effect, ammo for every tool has been replaced with a cooldown period, and there is no cover: if you’re not on the run, you’re likely to get swamped quickly (similar to Control).
With the exception of the final slot (garnered through story progression), every Guardian’s super attack has to be unlocked by way of good old-fashioned experience points gathered from combat scenarios, lending the game a bit of a lite-RPG schematic. Supplementing this are a heap of 15 additional perks players can add to Quill’s stockpile via select work benches scattered throughout most chapters, the only catch being that you have to scavenge the requisite components in the world (akin to TLOU).
Overall, fighting is fun if a bit repetitive - not every Guardian attack is practical, and their icons (save the final one) weren’t distinguished enough to avoid confusion between the useful and the useless. It also suffers from being too easy for its own good due to a number of mechanisms present even on the hardest difficulty: the option to do a one-hit KO team combo(++++) once an enemy’s health has been whittled down enough; the Huddle -- a unique feature wherein Quill can pause the skirmish, call over his team, and give everyone (including himself) an attack boost/HP recovery; and a third one I’m going to avoid stating for fear of spoilers(+++++).
Besides brawling, you’ll be conducting basic exploration involving simple puzzles that solely come down to figuring out which Guardian to employ against which obstacle. It’s a shame more wasn’t (or wasn’t able to be) done as the novel abilities specific to each alien could’ve led to some really cool environmental enigmas. In fact, part of me wonders if that was the original plan as there’s an immersive sim aspect here in the form of Quill being able to leap around and ascend most structures, only for it to not lead anywhere.
That said, the minimal scavenging didn’t bother me too much in light of how gorgeous everything is. This is one of those titles where you can tell no expense was spared, and that probably had to do with Square and Eidos’s well-intentioned belief that the GOTG IP was fertile enough for mass profit.
Well, we’ll talk about the reasons why the game faltered later, but for now, let’s at least appreciate the sheer production value on display. Guardians is interesting in that it occupies that same Jim Lee aesthetic Arkham Asylum imbibed apropos to toeing the line between photorealism and comic book poppiness (i.e., the game is liable to aging better than some of its eighth gen brethren). When it comes to the graphics, their beauty originates from three major areas: clothing, character modeling, and texture streaming.
With the first, GOTG arguably has the greatest textile work I have ever seen in a video game -- courtesy of the camera mode, I was able to zoom-in on various suits, and not a single one was shortchanged as far as detail or composition. From the individual stitches on Star-Lord’s jacket to the wear-and-tear knee creases of security guard latex to the overlapping of plate metal & linen on Gamora’s byrnie, there were so many wonderful subtleties in the wardrobe department that to list them all would drag this review out by several pages.
That same effort was continued over into the modeling, where humans and aliens alike boast pores, wrinkles, and follicles upon closer inspection. Ironically, though, it’s Groot and Rocket who deserve the most acclaim if only for the virtuosity of their respective hides: being able to glean splintered bark and singular bristles of fur on each member’s skin respectively was absolutely mind-blowing when you consider just how much easier it would’ve been to draw a single layer (what TellTale did back in 2017).
Environments maintain this quality by matching the diversity with appropriate texturization. Eidos leaned heavily on the comics and their imagination when devising the areas to throw players into, and while some of them are admittedly a bit standard (the red deserts of Lamentis; the frostbitten scape of Maklua IV), the majority do take you to some pretty sweet locales ripe with filled-in gubbins and walling. The golden-lacquered Sacrosanct and magenta-strewn matter of the Quarantine Zone are predisposed to being fan favorites, but for my own tea I personally adored the cyberpunk vibes of Knowhere where sleaze, soft lighting, neon signs, and lite-smog blended together into an evocative site.
My last major bastion of praise goes towards the personalization facets, and not in the usual sense of the term. In the past, I’ve praised devs for crafting unique spaces you could tell were tenanted by a standalone persona -- what GOTG has done is take that template and extrapolate it for the mainline species here. Heading into a Kree ship, for instance, gifts you a shelf of books with Kree rune titles, clean pipes with the Nova Corp insignia, and a general sense of orderliness. Compare this to Lady Hellbender’s gladiatorial planet, chockful of broken glass, spilled beer, and cobbled food. As you explore alien terrain, you really get a sense of prior lives and civilizations that mysteriously vanished over the course of evolution, leaving behind such remnants as hulking monoliths, structures, and carvings. It’s all superbly done.
Other miscellaneous graphical feats include unique lunge animations for each Guardian when jumping gaps, cold air breaths in subzero climates, natural finger movements when rotating examinable objects, Quill putting his hands up when approaching fiery pits, reflective surfaces from puddles, gold tiling, and tiny mirrors; the pose algorithm during 1-on-1 counsels being very organic (compared to Valhalla’s constant arm-crossing), character subtitle names boasting different colors, how Quill turns his head towards the current speaker, and, most vivid of all, the entirety of Kosmo -- this is a psychic dog you’ll infrequently run into during the course of the game, and I have to imagine someone at Eidos either grew up with golden retrievers or put mo-cap dots around a real one as, as any dog owner will tell you, everything about his canine behavior was pitch perfect: the constantly darting stare, twirling of his tale, twitching of his eyebrows, the effervescent panting -- for all his ESP, he may ironically go down as the most accurate dog in video game history.
I did have some complaints, but they concerned relatively minor stuff like the lack of footprints on powdery exteriors, Groots root bridges clipping the ground, and Quill occasionally acting jittery during dialogues.
SFX, unfortunately, was the sole area undercompensated by the devs in that it’s inconsistent to a trained ear. For starters, not much went in the way of footstep differentiation, with ice & metallic platforms, and beds & tile floors bearing the same din as their paired twin. There were times where I’d hear the crunch of snow pellets on surfaces they were minimally scattered on, while the bulk of each Guardian’s abilities (save Quill’s) were sonorously indistinguishable. Effort did go into individuating every team member’s movements, and jumps did come programmed with that distinctiveness I sought; however, it was otherwise rather basic for a game of this caliber. Don’t get me wrong, nothing’s distracting, you just won’t be immersed in any planet’s auralscape.
Finally, the OST by Richard Jacques (which, by the way, was much harder to find than it should have been courtesy of Eidos opting to promote the licensed mixtape instead) is solid, if a little derivative. Let me explain so I don’t come off as pretentious or condescending: ever since Alan Silvestri pioneered that massive symphonic sound in The Avengers, a lot of Marvel-based composers have incorporated aspects of that into their scores. It’s certainly a wise decision with regards to maintaining a familiarity to audiences, but it does come at the cost of that uniqueness we used to get in superhero music pre-Avengers. As a result, you’ll hear a lot of recognizable motifs despite the soundtrack being its own set of arrangements -- I’m talking electric guitar riffs, Greek-inspired choral harmonies, pounding brass, and crescendos galore. Thankfully, Jacques does give us one of the best comic book themes to come out in a while; however, in respect to the rest of his compositions, they’re good at the expense of not rising to that same level of memorability.
Per my earlier remark, Eidos spent a lot of money licensing popular 80s hits that you can either manually play on the ship or randomly hear during those aforestated Huddles. I know there have been, and will be, a lot of people who enjoy the substance, but part of me wonders whether or not it was a good idea. As I keep harping on, GOTG was clearly an expensive game to make, and considering how little you’ll hear the music (being off-ship/infrequently using Huddles), it begs the question of how much money could’ve been saved instead by hiring a band to create 80s-inspired tunes.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have helped much considering most critics blame the poor reception of the Avengers game for GOTG’s financial disappointment. It’s a tragically valid connection, and combined with the game not releasing adjacent to any of the mainline movies, it sadly wasn’t able to stand on its own. Zack Snyder got a lot of sh!t for his flavor of the week comment years ago, but the fact of the matter is he was right to an extent: certain characters only achieved profitability because they were specific versions crafted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of that ecosystem, it was always going to be a struggle for any hero not named Batman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine to succeed.
It’s been almost three years since GOTG released, and with no signs of a sequel, we have to accept the game for the unique specimen it was. It’s rare we get superhero games of this quality, and will be even rarer as the MCU goes through a post-Bubble period, but let it be known that, for all my complaints, this was an exquisite product well-worth your money.
NOTES
-Before addressing anything else, I should mention that there is a choice system in the game, but it’s more akin to the first Witcher or Deus Ex wherein it impacts the flow of events rather than causing multiple endings. When it involved hard gameplay, I was fine with it; however, there was an instance in one of the story climaxes where it ruined the moment (you’ll know it when you see it).
+Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, and, heck, I actually liked the Iron Man one.
++Without spoiling, basically it indulges in the cliche fake-out tactic that’s been overdone by this point. You don’t even get a proper end boss, though not that it would’ve mattered as the boss fights here are mediocre: not Arkham Asylum bad, but arguably lower than Insomniac’s first Spider-Man.
+++The worst involves a scene where Quill has to do improvised karaoke (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it).
++++The finishers themselves aren’t that exciting, being a series of hard cuts of each Guardian doing an attack on the target. A little strange considering standard melee combos often result in your Alien brethren actually conducting a coordinated strike alongside Quill.
+++++All I’ll say is it involves Groot’s final unlockable power, its essence simultaneously diminishing a certain “emotional” story beat.
-Similar to Metroid Prime, Quill’s visor enables him to examine enemies and environs for pieces of supplemental data, but the game unfortunately doesn’t pause background conversations for the latter, meaning you’re forced to read them quickly lest you get interrupted.
-The writers created their own profanity for the characters to gleefully indulge in.
-Why does Mantis have Hela’s garb?
-Tell me Gamora’s VA doesn’t sound like Leela from Futurama?
-There’s a glowing red digital billboard in Knowhere that displays ads for a McDonald’s rip-off. I bring this up because I actually saw a similar hoarding in Shinjuku albeit for a Wendy’s, making me wonder if it was inspired by that?
It’s a shame, then, that Guardians of the Galaxy reportedly underperformed as it’s the kind of game I felt the industry really needed with regards to the comic book genre, and what makes it particularly amazing is how it manages to craft its own path whilst still staying true to the characterizations of the eponymous film. See, compared to Batman and Spider-Man, where their numerous iterations have made audiences open to new versions, Guardians is different in that most people are liable to only knowing the characters from James Gunn’s flick, and so the writers at Eidos-Montréal had a tough task before them: how do we create our own version of the team that concurrently pays homage to the comics without alienating any cinephiles?
Well, I’m not sure what their thought process entailed, but the end result was taking the core personalities personified in the movie and combining it with an original backstory, namely one in which every Guardian was a veteran of a conflict known as the Galactic War. Each member played a different role during the war, and the way such information is divulged over the course of the game goes a long way towards distinguishing its cast from their cinematic interactions. Yes, Quill is still comedic, Drax a literalist, Rocket a loudmouth, etc…etc…, but their experiences have led to them developing varied demeanors towards society as a whole. Gamora, for example, seeks some form of redemption for her support of Thanos; Rocket & Groot are purely about surviving, and Drax hunts for honor over his inability to protect his clan.
Found familyhood was cited as a major inspiration behind the tale, and I can safely say the writers successfully accomplished this task via the sheer amount of dialogue they crafted for the game. Seriously, fans of the Mass Effect or Red Dead series may find themselves in awe at the innumerable conversations typed-up for every chapter; convos that go a long way towards establishing relationships, lore, scenarios, and general camaraderie. Hearing Drax repeatedly call Gamora an assassin, seeing everyone snicker at Quill’s attempts at self-aggrandizement, or catching Rocket’s reactions to Groot’s various statements truly render the Guardians as three-dimensional people who’ve had a lot of laughs & cries along the way. No matter their disagreements, there’s a basic-level of respect amongst each peer, and while you occasionally have the option to interject with a unique response, both choices ultimately contribute to that looming amity.
I’m not exaggerating when I say GOTG has a ton of impromptu chatter -- your main hub of a ship spouts the lion’s share of these, with characters either speaking to each other out of their own volition, or engaging in ones triggered by unique items found during missions. Both moulds give-off a big Mass Effect vibe, and I was constantly amazed whenever I discerned some new interaction, whether it be petty, dramatic, or (in most cases) downright amusing.
None of this is even taking into consideration the outside convos in which characters often shout unique battle cries or make special observations should you be standing in a specific place. One of the best things GOTG does is resolve TLOU Problem I’ve had with certain narrative-driven games wherein your hero is meant to progress forward in stark contrast to the gameplay encouraging dicking around; it breaks the game’s immersion to see your next objective or companion kindly wait on you as you do whatever it is you feel like doing. By having the other Guardians actually remark on Quill’s strays off the beaten path, it goes a long way towards maintaining GOTG’s atmosphere.
In some ways, all the dialogue can get a little overwhelming, particularly for people (like myself) who suffer from FOMO: there’s a solid chance you’ll unintentionally cut-off or outright miss at least 15 percent of the optional scripting here, and that’s just something you’ll have to contend with should you wish to play the game.
Of course, no one would’ve cared about these palavers had the voice acting not been good, and that’s thankfully not the case here. Guardians of the Galaxy is interesting in that it opted for an entirely unknown cast -- I consider myself pretty well-versed in the voice acting industry, and I honestly only recognized a single name here (Andreas Apergis, and even then that was mainly because of his recurrent roles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise). That said, their unknownness doesn’t impede the project in any way as they are all terrific, embodying their characters fully as they wander amidst a full spectrum of emotions. Like I noted with the script, there was a difficult balancing act required in terms of making sure these takes on the Guardians were both similar and dissimilar from their movie counterparts, and all the actors proficiently did-so whilst rendering their characters their own. All cards on the table, I actually preferred most of these takes over the celebrityhood of James Gunn’s enterprise: Jason Cavalier grants Drax far more tragic introspective depth than Bautista ever did; Alex Weiner removes that atrocious Gilbert Gottfried inflection Cooper gave his Rocket (RIP Gottfried, but I was not a fan); and even Robert Montcalm manages to provide Groot a more-variegated personality than the one Diesel was limited to.
Given the strong vocal bounce between the characters (Rocket & Groot standing out as the best), GOTG deserves further acclamation for its robust ADR direction. See, there’s a good chance the actors did not record their lines together, and so their ability to resound like they had good chemistry owes a lot of fealty to the narrative directors for providing the appropriate context for each delivery.
There were only two voices I had issues with, the first being Jon McLaren’s Star-Lord. This may come as a surprise given that Quill is the lead protagonist and only playable character, but I did not like the inherent stoner-esque gravel McLaren provided him. Don’t get me wrong, the performance is otherwise solid; however, more often than not, I found myself thinking of a Seth Green character over a Marvel superhero.
The second is Emmanuelle Lussier-Martinez’s Mantis, though I don’t hold this against her as it’s evident the writers were going for this crazed NPC wrought with constant knowledge: the problem is, rather than do a Dr. Manhattan-type performance, they opted to portray her like Omi in that episode of Xiaolin Showdown where he gets infused with factoids from the Fountain of Hui (and yes, for the uninitiated, that’s a bad thing when done in spades).
Regardless, everyone’s performance was successfully transposed into the game via top-quality facial capture, rendering their squints and frowns through phenomenal animations. When you visibly see pain and happiness on your characters’ faces, it does a lot for the execution of the overarching story.
On that note, the narrative has its pros and cons. As I harped on earlier, the scribes do a phenomenal job developing the relationships between the Guardians: while this version of the team is already well-acquainted, it still takes place in the early part of their formation, meaning this is where you see them go from world-weary associates to the makeshift family we all know-and-love. In terms of the grand adventure you’re set out on (i.e., the campaign those interactions fall under), your mileage is going to vary. The entire game is full of heart, and there are some emotional moments that genuinely touched me to my core, but getting to those moments means engaging in standard superhero schlock wherein you’re charged with saving the universe from despair. Yes, other comic book games like Arkham Asylum and Shattered Dimensions indulged in similar premises, but I’d argue the difference is those titles were carried by their villains and a sense of mystery towards uncovering said villain’s plot. GOTG’s problem is that it’s upfront about its secrets from the get-go and, more importantly, lacks memorable antagonists: the main one, in particular, being a generic evil shroud akin to such classics as the Rising Darkness from Constantine, Galactus from Tim Story’s Fantastic 4, and Smallville’s version of Darkseid (yes, this is sarcasm). A couple of the secondary adversaries like Lady Hellbender fare a bit better, but, as they’re not a constant presence, this is a game you’ll largely be playing for the protagonists.
For the record, I had a good time with the story -- it’s well-told, has minimal pacing issues (save the end++), and would’ve worked well as an officially-published graphic novel. It’s just, post-completion, you won’t recall the majority of the chapters (the interactions within, yes, but not the events).
Thanks to James Gunn, the GOTG franchise is also permanently associated with comedy, and on that front the game works quite well. Whereas Gunn’s films were more about gags and one-liners, Eidos goes for a more situational style-of-humor wherein you’re witnessing how a coterie of charismatic individuals with sharp comportments would behave when placed in an enclosed dwelling. I wouldn’t call it laugh-out-loud, but more-so chuckle humor: you’ll smile and giggle like a schoolgirl, yet rarely twist your stomach out from hooting, and I think the tactic works great. There are times when the game tries to mimic the Gunn route; however, those scenes fall very flat and are thankfully few-and-far between(+++).
Of course, Arkham and Spider-Man didn’t get popular solely from their narratives or witticism: they had phenomenal gameplay systems to back everything up, and on that note, Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty dang good. It’s interesting that I made the comparison to Mass Effect earlier as the similarities between the two even extend to combat: you control Quill while his comrades are AI-guided, each of whom can be called upon to use a special attack against a foe or foes. Quill himself is equipped with his fists, dual blasters (primed with elemental shots obtained during set story beats), and a batch of special moves ranging from electro mines to the iconic jet boots. Much like the original Mass Effect, ammo for every tool has been replaced with a cooldown period, and there is no cover: if you’re not on the run, you’re likely to get swamped quickly (similar to Control).
With the exception of the final slot (garnered through story progression), every Guardian’s super attack has to be unlocked by way of good old-fashioned experience points gathered from combat scenarios, lending the game a bit of a lite-RPG schematic. Supplementing this are a heap of 15 additional perks players can add to Quill’s stockpile via select work benches scattered throughout most chapters, the only catch being that you have to scavenge the requisite components in the world (akin to TLOU).
Overall, fighting is fun if a bit repetitive - not every Guardian attack is practical, and their icons (save the final one) weren’t distinguished enough to avoid confusion between the useful and the useless. It also suffers from being too easy for its own good due to a number of mechanisms present even on the hardest difficulty: the option to do a one-hit KO team combo(++++) once an enemy’s health has been whittled down enough; the Huddle -- a unique feature wherein Quill can pause the skirmish, call over his team, and give everyone (including himself) an attack boost/HP recovery; and a third one I’m going to avoid stating for fear of spoilers(+++++).
Besides brawling, you’ll be conducting basic exploration involving simple puzzles that solely come down to figuring out which Guardian to employ against which obstacle. It’s a shame more wasn’t (or wasn’t able to be) done as the novel abilities specific to each alien could’ve led to some really cool environmental enigmas. In fact, part of me wonders if that was the original plan as there’s an immersive sim aspect here in the form of Quill being able to leap around and ascend most structures, only for it to not lead anywhere.
That said, the minimal scavenging didn’t bother me too much in light of how gorgeous everything is. This is one of those titles where you can tell no expense was spared, and that probably had to do with Square and Eidos’s well-intentioned belief that the GOTG IP was fertile enough for mass profit.
Well, we’ll talk about the reasons why the game faltered later, but for now, let’s at least appreciate the sheer production value on display. Guardians is interesting in that it occupies that same Jim Lee aesthetic Arkham Asylum imbibed apropos to toeing the line between photorealism and comic book poppiness (i.e., the game is liable to aging better than some of its eighth gen brethren). When it comes to the graphics, their beauty originates from three major areas: clothing, character modeling, and texture streaming.
With the first, GOTG arguably has the greatest textile work I have ever seen in a video game -- courtesy of the camera mode, I was able to zoom-in on various suits, and not a single one was shortchanged as far as detail or composition. From the individual stitches on Star-Lord’s jacket to the wear-and-tear knee creases of security guard latex to the overlapping of plate metal & linen on Gamora’s byrnie, there were so many wonderful subtleties in the wardrobe department that to list them all would drag this review out by several pages.
That same effort was continued over into the modeling, where humans and aliens alike boast pores, wrinkles, and follicles upon closer inspection. Ironically, though, it’s Groot and Rocket who deserve the most acclaim if only for the virtuosity of their respective hides: being able to glean splintered bark and singular bristles of fur on each member’s skin respectively was absolutely mind-blowing when you consider just how much easier it would’ve been to draw a single layer (what TellTale did back in 2017).
Environments maintain this quality by matching the diversity with appropriate texturization. Eidos leaned heavily on the comics and their imagination when devising the areas to throw players into, and while some of them are admittedly a bit standard (the red deserts of Lamentis; the frostbitten scape of Maklua IV), the majority do take you to some pretty sweet locales ripe with filled-in gubbins and walling. The golden-lacquered Sacrosanct and magenta-strewn matter of the Quarantine Zone are predisposed to being fan favorites, but for my own tea I personally adored the cyberpunk vibes of Knowhere where sleaze, soft lighting, neon signs, and lite-smog blended together into an evocative site.
My last major bastion of praise goes towards the personalization facets, and not in the usual sense of the term. In the past, I’ve praised devs for crafting unique spaces you could tell were tenanted by a standalone persona -- what GOTG has done is take that template and extrapolate it for the mainline species here. Heading into a Kree ship, for instance, gifts you a shelf of books with Kree rune titles, clean pipes with the Nova Corp insignia, and a general sense of orderliness. Compare this to Lady Hellbender’s gladiatorial planet, chockful of broken glass, spilled beer, and cobbled food. As you explore alien terrain, you really get a sense of prior lives and civilizations that mysteriously vanished over the course of evolution, leaving behind such remnants as hulking monoliths, structures, and carvings. It’s all superbly done.
Other miscellaneous graphical feats include unique lunge animations for each Guardian when jumping gaps, cold air breaths in subzero climates, natural finger movements when rotating examinable objects, Quill putting his hands up when approaching fiery pits, reflective surfaces from puddles, gold tiling, and tiny mirrors; the pose algorithm during 1-on-1 counsels being very organic (compared to Valhalla’s constant arm-crossing), character subtitle names boasting different colors, how Quill turns his head towards the current speaker, and, most vivid of all, the entirety of Kosmo -- this is a psychic dog you’ll infrequently run into during the course of the game, and I have to imagine someone at Eidos either grew up with golden retrievers or put mo-cap dots around a real one as, as any dog owner will tell you, everything about his canine behavior was pitch perfect: the constantly darting stare, twirling of his tale, twitching of his eyebrows, the effervescent panting -- for all his ESP, he may ironically go down as the most accurate dog in video game history.
I did have some complaints, but they concerned relatively minor stuff like the lack of footprints on powdery exteriors, Groots root bridges clipping the ground, and Quill occasionally acting jittery during dialogues.
SFX, unfortunately, was the sole area undercompensated by the devs in that it’s inconsistent to a trained ear. For starters, not much went in the way of footstep differentiation, with ice & metallic platforms, and beds & tile floors bearing the same din as their paired twin. There were times where I’d hear the crunch of snow pellets on surfaces they were minimally scattered on, while the bulk of each Guardian’s abilities (save Quill’s) were sonorously indistinguishable. Effort did go into individuating every team member’s movements, and jumps did come programmed with that distinctiveness I sought; however, it was otherwise rather basic for a game of this caliber. Don’t get me wrong, nothing’s distracting, you just won’t be immersed in any planet’s auralscape.
Finally, the OST by Richard Jacques (which, by the way, was much harder to find than it should have been courtesy of Eidos opting to promote the licensed mixtape instead) is solid, if a little derivative. Let me explain so I don’t come off as pretentious or condescending: ever since Alan Silvestri pioneered that massive symphonic sound in The Avengers, a lot of Marvel-based composers have incorporated aspects of that into their scores. It’s certainly a wise decision with regards to maintaining a familiarity to audiences, but it does come at the cost of that uniqueness we used to get in superhero music pre-Avengers. As a result, you’ll hear a lot of recognizable motifs despite the soundtrack being its own set of arrangements -- I’m talking electric guitar riffs, Greek-inspired choral harmonies, pounding brass, and crescendos galore. Thankfully, Jacques does give us one of the best comic book themes to come out in a while; however, in respect to the rest of his compositions, they’re good at the expense of not rising to that same level of memorability.
Per my earlier remark, Eidos spent a lot of money licensing popular 80s hits that you can either manually play on the ship or randomly hear during those aforestated Huddles. I know there have been, and will be, a lot of people who enjoy the substance, but part of me wonders whether or not it was a good idea. As I keep harping on, GOTG was clearly an expensive game to make, and considering how little you’ll hear the music (being off-ship/infrequently using Huddles), it begs the question of how much money could’ve been saved instead by hiring a band to create 80s-inspired tunes.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have helped much considering most critics blame the poor reception of the Avengers game for GOTG’s financial disappointment. It’s a tragically valid connection, and combined with the game not releasing adjacent to any of the mainline movies, it sadly wasn’t able to stand on its own. Zack Snyder got a lot of sh!t for his flavor of the week comment years ago, but the fact of the matter is he was right to an extent: certain characters only achieved profitability because they were specific versions crafted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Outside of that ecosystem, it was always going to be a struggle for any hero not named Batman, Spider-Man, or Wolverine to succeed.
It’s been almost three years since GOTG released, and with no signs of a sequel, we have to accept the game for the unique specimen it was. It’s rare we get superhero games of this quality, and will be even rarer as the MCU goes through a post-Bubble period, but let it be known that, for all my complaints, this was an exquisite product well-worth your money.
NOTES
-Before addressing anything else, I should mention that there is a choice system in the game, but it’s more akin to the first Witcher or Deus Ex wherein it impacts the flow of events rather than causing multiple endings. When it involved hard gameplay, I was fine with it; however, there was an instance in one of the story climaxes where it ruined the moment (you’ll know it when you see it).
+Spider-Man 2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, and, heck, I actually liked the Iron Man one.
++Without spoiling, basically it indulges in the cliche fake-out tactic that’s been overdone by this point. You don’t even get a proper end boss, though not that it would’ve mattered as the boss fights here are mediocre: not Arkham Asylum bad, but arguably lower than Insomniac’s first Spider-Man.
+++The worst involves a scene where Quill has to do improvised karaoke (trust me, you’ll know it when you see it).
++++The finishers themselves aren’t that exciting, being a series of hard cuts of each Guardian doing an attack on the target. A little strange considering standard melee combos often result in your Alien brethren actually conducting a coordinated strike alongside Quill.
+++++All I’ll say is it involves Groot’s final unlockable power, its essence simultaneously diminishing a certain “emotional” story beat.
-Similar to Metroid Prime, Quill’s visor enables him to examine enemies and environs for pieces of supplemental data, but the game unfortunately doesn’t pause background conversations for the latter, meaning you’re forced to read them quickly lest you get interrupted.
-The writers created their own profanity for the characters to gleefully indulge in.
-Why does Mantis have Hela’s garb?
-Tell me Gamora’s VA doesn’t sound like Leela from Futurama?
-There’s a glowing red digital billboard in Knowhere that displays ads for a McDonald’s rip-off. I bring this up because I actually saw a similar hoarding in Shinjuku albeit for a Wendy’s, making me wonder if it was inspired by that?
TBD
Note - game received for free as part of a review code
Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.
As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.
Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.
The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.
Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.
This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.
Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.
Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.
Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.
Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.
NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.
Ressifice is an indie throwback to the Splatterhouse games of yore wherein you were tasked with killing scores of ghouls in atypical gory fashion. Question is, how well does it hold up to its progenitors? Well, as someone who never played them, I can’t say, though, on its own merits, it’s a nice enough diversion for the $1.00 asking price.
As it’ll literally take you less than an hour to beat Ressifice, I won’t frolic around too much. Graphically, this is a superb structure, combining early-2000s pixel art with some bloody Halloween aesthetics. This is a dark, hematic place, chock-full of monsters ready to rip apart unwary teenagers too cool for their own good, and while there are only three-or-so beasts in the entire game, each are excellent crafted, boasting an executioner’s hood and piercing maroon eyes (the bigger ones even holding visual throwbacks to such classic entities as Cthulhu and Jason). I was particularly impressed by the unique death animations, their intricacy showcasing some quality (though twisted!) artwork ala self-hanging suicides.
Backgrounds are plain yet foreboding, their compositions also bearing throwbacks to popular horror settings like Camp Crystal Lake and Burkittsville Forest. On top of this, the game, as a whole, features some surprisingly organic lighting that periodically shows up via fireflies, candlesticks, and good old-fashioned electricity. The human models, particularly your protagonist, are arguably the low-point in terms of their plainclothes appearance, but given that this was obviously the intention, that’s not saying much.
The only thing that kind of bothered me were the purple smears which accompanied your bat’s swinging, as the color felt out-of-place amidst the backdrops as well as the bat itself; however, as you guys can tell, this is a heavy nitpick -- the truth is Ressifice is a superbly-crafted title that successfully evokes grody nostalgia.
Music and SFX are pretty limited, though what you hear is trusty enough. The haunting melody cues that play every time you successfully complete a puzzle (more on that below) are particularly memorable, and while I would’ve liked a stronger crackle behind your club’s impacts, the minimized impingement won’t distract you as you’re mowing down scores upon scores of demons.
This brings me to the gameplay. As stated in the first sentence, Ressifice plays like a sanguine Namco beat’em up wherein you’re tasked with killing everything that stands between you and the exit. It’s a simple system of swinging & dodging, and though you’ll die frequently courtesy of the low health bar, the abundance of autosaves essentially provides you with nigh-immortality. In fact, I kind of wish the game had gone all-out with the power fantasy aspect: spam more monsters, increase your attack power, and do away with all HP. It wouldn’t have hurt the gameplay given the plethora of save states, and might’ve actually made things more fun considering how frustrating the three-hit health bar could get.
Outside of killing, your real quest is to escape this spooky world, your method of doing so being the assemblage of several painted skulls. There are some light puzzles involved as far as unlocking certain abodes to acquire them, but they won’t take-up much brainpower to resolve.
Honestly, the biggest problems I had with the game design were two-fold: one, the amount of respawning enemies -- they’re not only annoying to deal with, but inconsistently generated (some appear in specific spots, others will pop-up several blocks down); and two, the lack of a quick load function, forcing you to manually click the restart button each time with the mouse.
Storywise, Ressifice isn’t going to win any awards, taking the typical man vs. gothic monster template and doing little to mould it. The writers did try and shove some tongue-in-cheek humor into the script; however, the short length of the game combined with the lack of a real mythology prevents these from being anything more than cornbread comedy. I was also irked by the font projection, it often being too wide, too crunched, and too quickly generated for pleasant reading.
Overall, Ressifice is a case of what you see is what you get. If you grew-up with the Splatterhouse series (or its many scions), you’ll absolutely enjoy your time here -- all others, best look elsewhere.
NOTES
-Dialogue in the beginning of the game is rendered through a beat system that sounds like Japanese in reverse.
1990
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion
These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.
If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.
ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.
To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.
The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.
Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.
On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.
Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.
You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).
Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).
I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).
Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!
ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).
Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.
Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.
The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).
Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.
NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.
++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.
+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.
++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.
Yes, I technically had to abandon the game because I couldn't beat the end boss rush, but having completed every other aspect, I feel this review stands as a qualified opinion
These days you’re liable to seeing video game mash-ups from different genres, but back in the 90s, a then-new company called Quintet seemingly pioneered this tactic with their debut title ActRaiser(+). Shoving city building and godhood systems into an action platformer schematic, ActRaiser stood as a unique first-year release for the SNES, one that concurrently launched Quintet into mainstream discourse.
If you’ve been a part of any retro community, chances are you’ve read skyrocketing praise for ActRaiser over its various elements, and while they definitely do warrant respect, I feel the lack of a genuine sequel may have boosted the base game’s reputation into abnormal parameters. What do I mean by this? Well, as you guys have no doubt experienced by now, the best sequels are the ones that take the good from their predecessor and make it even more exemplary: they iron out the kinks, chisel new systems, and smelt the entire product into a revolutionary package: ACII, Half-Life 2, Arkham City, DKC2 -- we still look fondly upon the original, but recognize that significant improvements were done in the follow-up.
ActRaiser’s problem is that it didn’t get a true sequel(++), meaning any lauding it’s garnered from 4th gen enthusiasts smacks of the kind of superior advancements fans would’ve physically seen in a theoretical ActRaiser 2. This isn’t out of disingenuity or anything of the sort, but more-so nostalgia combined with the admittedly-novel concepts bolstered by the game.
To illustrate what I’m alleging, let’s start with the city building: it’s entirely linear. Each area has you start off with a giant piece of land that you then have to direct your worshippers towards industrializing (an activity they consequently conduct square-by-square). There’s no strategy, no worrying about environmental or economic factors, no catalog of dwellings to select from, nothing. Once your people seal off the adjacent monster lairs, you don’t even have to concern yourself with their safety (not even from such phenomena as natural disasters or surprise incidents). Throughout your tenure, you’re occasionally hit with a scripted dilemma, but almost all of these have to be resolved instantly in order to progress further.
The god prayers are handled a bit better insofar as you’re actually given agency whether to grant them or not (i.e., not smiting the requested mountain), but these don’t result in any noticeable consequences outside of your character not gaining a power-up or extra magic scroll (more on those later). Regardless, the lion’s share of scenarios ultimately demand completion for the sake of unlocking the hidden boss cave in the region, meaning they’re just as mandatory as the obligatory city ones.
Don’t get me wrong, these aspects provide a lot of that simple dopamine gamers have come to love from modern-day releases -- seeing each village get constructed from the ground-up, in particular, reminded me of the renovation system from the Ezio games wherein you’d instantly behold the fruits of your labor. I liked the interactions that came about between the citizenry and your protagonist: how they’d treat you reverently, make earnest requests, and offer alms in your honor. Despite the limited dialogue, it’s a relatively-accurate representation of how faith operated in older civilizations, and while ActRaiser doesn’t really address any deeper themes on the topic (save a blurb at the end), I do think this part has contributed to the game’s continued fervor.
On that note, what exactly is the premise of ActRaiser? Well, in the original Japanese script, you were literally the Abrahamic G-D trying to save humanity from the influence of Satan and his 12 minions. Of course, that kind of on-the-nose storytelling wouldn’t have flown back in the day, and so western markets renamed him The Master, and his opponent Tanzra.
Regardless, the gist is your typical good vs. evil scheme. One of the things I appreciated about ActRaiser was how you never actually see your persona: during the action scenes, he inhabits a gold guardian, while the town simulations have him directly interact with an anonymous Cupid. The former decision, in particular, end-ups being an unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) wise integration as it subsequently explains how your deity is able to be “defeated” by lesser enemies.
You’ll be conducting these fights during the platforming sections, which is arguably where ActRaiser succeeds the most. Quintet would later garner fame for their trilogy of ARPGs, and it’s clear they cut their teeth working on ActRaiser as it is absolutely solid: you have a jump, slash, duck, and magic attack, all of which you’ll need to employ should you wish to beat the various enemies and bosses thrown your way. The jump, in particular, works really well, with Quintet having mastered the precision, weight, and height factors that go into 16-bit springing (that is to say, it’s easy to learn and do without feeling like you’re at a disadvantage).
Honestly, there are only two real problems here: first, side bounding and attacking is very inconsistent to pull off (and outright impossible for vertical jumps), and two, the game is way too bloody easy, that simplicity largely coming down to a single spell you acquire in the third world: Stardust. At the click of a button, your avatar can call down a hailstorm of galactic pellets, and man do these babies do a significant amount of damage: so much so, that bosses are rendered cakewalks. To try and counter this, the game puts a cap on the amount of times you can cast a spell/per a run (NOT per/a life; die and any previously-depleted slots remain empty), but the thing is, if you’re fully developing your cities, chances are you’re going to find the majority of magic scrolls (ammo) out there anyway, thus ensuring you’re well-armed prior to most battles (this isn’t even taking into account the number of temporary extra scrolls you can loot in-game).
I’m not sure who on the dev team thought this would be a good idea, but it ends-up undermining a lot of the programming that no doubt went into the craftsmanship of these bosses. Perhaps realizing this too late, the game forcibly reverses course during the final act wherein Tanzra is preceded by a punishing boss gauntlet that’s so frustrating, you’ll see below why it caused me to drop the title(+++).
Thankfully the levels themselves are quite stunning, taking place over a variety of locales ranging from indigenous-inspired forestry and frosty ice caves to even a Tatooine-influenced abode (no seriously, it’s got its own Sarlacc Pit). The bosses themselves exemplify this virtuosity to a tee, often being conventional monsters wrought out with gorgeous colorwork and gargantuan proportions. Enemy design, on the other hand, could be hit-or-miss: some levels throw uniquely-crafted creatures at you like forest ents, orc-like wasps, and lizardian knights, while other times you’ll find yourself scratching your head at the presence of floating eyeballs, conventional gargoyles, and even swole women!
ActRaiser, as stated before, came out early in the SNES’s life, and while the visuals for the abovementioned levels are top-notch, unfortunately the bird’s eye map for the city building isn’t quite at the same level, often looking one-step removed from Oregon Trail’s graphics. If that weren’t enough, you’re often forced to partake in this discount schmup schematic via your little Angel shooting arrows at an ever-breeding(++++) source of minions (till their grounds are sealed for good). The critters themselves are even more generic looking than their earthly compatriots and do little more than destroy structures and carry away the occasional batch of humans (as I keep saying, it’s an underdeveloped part of the game that ultimately gets repetitive in light of the lack of differentiation between continents, as well as the relative shortness of the platforming stages).
Part of me does wonder if more was originally intended with the city-building as you’re granted elemental powers (earthquakes, lightning, wind, etc…) that can theoretically affect the landscape, but which are only ever utilized during the, you guessed it, scripted events. As it stands, unless you wish to destroy your own creations Sim City-style, you’re not going to find much use for these abilities.
Ironically, the sound design operates oppositely to the visuals in that more effort was put into the aerial arrangements than their platforming equals: from the creature growls to each of your god powers, you’ll hear a distinct din compared to the ground wherein everyone is silent save their projectile attacks. Your sword literally swipes like someone breathed a hot air “ha” on the microphone, and the dialogue scroll is so awfully-screechy, I implore prospective buyers to choose the fast text speed for the sake of your ears.
The music was strung together by Yuzo Koshiro, a man who’s, of course, acquired a strong reputation amongst the RPG community. Unfortunately, he simply wasn’t given enough money here to do what he could, meaning there are a lot of repeated tracks chock-full of their own repetitive loops. Sometimes this works, as in the case of the soothing town-building tune, but other times it comes across as unintentionally lazy, such as every boss sharing the same beat. That said, I will give him credit for morphing his tracks depending on the individual theme of the stage (i.e., the pyramid has a more Egyptian horn accompaniment whereas the lava motif wouldn’t sound out-of-place in Bowser’s Castle!).
Regardless of my complaints, I still recommend playing ActRaiser by any legal means necessary. For starters, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, being completable in 1-2 sittings, and for all the downsides of its supplementary genres, the fans have a point -- there really is no other game like it.
NOTES
+For the record, I don’t know if ActRaiser was the first video game to combine multiple types of games into one cartridge. Also, does anyone know what happened to Quintet? It’s a very sketchy story when you read about their disappearance from society.
++There technically was an ActRaiser 2, but it abandoned the town sim aspects entirely in favor of pure platforming. A spiritual remake called Renaissance was released semi-recently, but, as pointed out by SNESDrunk, it failed to do any kind of innovation on the formula minus adding a Tower Defense-schematic.
+++So basically you have to beat six of the previous 12 bosses before facing Tanzra who, in turn, comes in two stages. The problem is, you aren’t given any kind of health or mana replenishment throughout the ordeal, meaning you need to beat it one-go. Oh, and to top it all off, the game strongarms you into using-up several mana shots on the first thug, a sped-up version of the Minotaurus, due to said speed-up making it near-impossible to hit him with conventional attacks. It’s a shame because an easy work around to this difficulty spike (in addition to granting replenishments) would’ve been to just save the meteor spell for this moment, allowing players to beat the bosses as they were originally intended during the vanilla run.
++++Strictly-speaking, there is a limit to the number of spawns, but it’s so high you’re better off closing the portals as soon as possible.
Should I even write a review? Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk will take you, at best 20 minutes to complete, meaning anything I say will inherently emit spoilers.
As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.
The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.
There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.
As someone who isn’t a big fan of VNs, I found myself strangely drawn-into the world crafted by Nikita Kryukov, and it’s really saying something when a short indie title does a better job tackling mental health issues than some of the bigger games I’ve played.
The mucky claret art style works towards the game’s psychedelic nature, though I wish some images were less blurry (the in-game explanations coming across as much like excuses as legitimate rationale). Likewise, I would’ve appreciated a little more SFX despite the writers, again, technically providing a reason for the reliance on music. That said, the tunes Kryukov has assembled here befit his moody product quite well.
There’s honestly not much more I can, or rather should, say - at a $1.00 asking price, you’ll get your surreal experience for sure.
2020
This review contains spoilers
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher, even after you present him with the necessary ID. And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity with the real world, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses indicative of a high school essay. One scene boasts a prolonged conversation between Nathan and this sketchy dealer wherein the two suck each other off about their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm over human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of nuance, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts and jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher, even after you present him with the necessary ID. And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity with the real world, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses indicative of a high school essay. One scene boasts a prolonged conversation between Nathan and this sketchy dealer wherein the two suck each other off about their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm over human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of nuance, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts and jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
1996
Note - as I did not beat this game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Farm simulators may be a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 90s they were actually pretty risky: as Toy Story, of all things, duly-showed, agrarian aesthetics were dying in the public eye -- the Internet was growing, Space Camp rising, and even Clint Eastwood had finished his cowboy tenure with Unforgiven.
Yet in 1996, a little company called Amccus burst onto the scene, debuting the first entry in what would eventually be called the Story of Seasons franchise. Dubbed Harvest Moon (or Farm Story in Japan), the premise was somewhat similar to popular JRPGs at the time in that you played as a blank slate tasked with restoring a piece of the world, that piece, here, being your family’s dilapidated ranch.
Unfortunately, despite not featuring an experience system, Harvest Moon feels too adjacent to those aforementioned role-playing games, its contents regurgitating their grindy schematic into a unique, though ultimately elongated, reskin. See, instead of levels, you’ve got monetary thresholds; instead of fighting, you’ve got ploughing; and instead of journeying across a foreign land, you’ve got backtracking galore along the same routes.
Anyone who’s played the myriad of spiritual successors out there knows how things go: you start off with a big plot, till the soil, plant seeds, water them till ripe, sell ‘em, use the profits to either buy more seeds or animals, and rinse & repeat. The problem is, whereas those aforementioned sequels built upon the formula and added diversity, you get no such changes here - progression is built on repetition, meaning you’ll end-up going through the same motions as though you’re grinding for exp ala Final Fantasy/Pokemon/insert_JRPG_of_your_choice. And I know it isn’t fair to criticize a game for lacking something its sequels have, but in determining whether or not a classic holds-up, such comparisons are necessary for deducing if those subsequent additions were common sense supplements or outright genuine innovation (the former, of course, being derogatory in nature towards the progeniting classic in question).
But even on its own merits, Harvest Moon stumbles due to its deliberately-lethargic scheme: you’re all but made to start out with crops because they’re the cheapest commodity available (chicks are $1000; cows $5000!), and after planting them you’re forced to hydrate them square by square by square -> after they maturate, you got to pluck them square by square by square and drop them into the shipping crate piece by piece by piece -> once you get animals that yield produce, you’ll need to pick each egg up yolk by yolk by yolk, or milk every cow, udder by udder….by udder.
Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, this is tedious work. On the plus side, I suppose Amccus successfully recreated 19th century rural farm-life; on the negative side, though, it doesn’t make for a fun time. Harvest Moon has frequently been described as relaxing, but I often found myself more bored than serendipic throughout my 10+ hour runtime, and what’s particularly grating is how the game goes out of its way to make things worse than they should be: you can’t navigate through plants because apparently stems are as thick as stone; you can’t water your middle crop (harvests are grown in a 9x9 grid) until the rest have been reaped, you have limited stamina that can only be replenished through protracted trips to a hot spring ayonder, there’s no rucksack for storing more than one-good at a time, dropping something insta-destroys it, you can’t put stuff for shipping overnight lest it auto-rots, and, perhaps worst of all, you can’t upgrade most of your tools manually. With the exception of the watering can, you’ll have to wait for pre-scripted events in order to acquire your next gear, and arriving at those points requires trudging through hours-and-hours of content: content that I’m not sure many people will willingly stick with.
None of this is even getting into the shortness of the days, which is egregious even by abridged standards: it’s not 5 or 4 or even 3, but 2.75 measly minutes. That’s right, in the time it takes you to microwave a burrito, you’ve got to complete all your daily chores, which yes becomes problematic the larger your grange grows. True, you’re not going to be handling crops every day, but treating(+) your animals, selling their staples, running to town to purchase/peddle additional goods, and successfully serenading your date (more on that later) all take time that the game simply doesn’t give you enough of.
Now, to be fair, some alleviants have been thrown-in to help make things more palatable: you’re able to purchase a horse that acts as a mobile shipping box, grass (in non-winter seasons) constantly regrows/doesn’t need water, chicken eggs can be used to conceive an unlimited supply of hens without needing to procure new ones, chicks don’t have to be fed, wood (for upgrading your house) is auto-stored, you don’t collapse from exhaustion, and, best of all, you’re not penalized for nighttime labor: so long as you irrigate your land and put feed in the stables before heading to bed, the game will count it as having been conducted for that day. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re basically strong-armed into working consecutive nights is doubly indicative of the excessively-swift pacing of the days.
There’s more I could harp on, like how slight movement resets the breakage counter on a boulder/log, how you only have two spaces on your tool belt, or how chickens are automatically killed by wolves if you leave them outside (defeating the whole purpose of setting-up a pen), but to go into all that detail would drag out this review pointlessly. I get that some of Harvest Moon’s prolixity was purposely implemented for the sake of realism, but when taken in conjunction with everything else, it ultimately brings down the product as a whole.
As stated earlier, Harvest Moon incorporated a bit of a dating sim into its framework via the ability to charm a girl and get married (sorry hetero-women, no choices for you), and, in fairness to the writing team, they actually crafted a decent amount of dialogue (granted, a lot of it has to be unraveled over the course of the game, but it is there). Sadly, this aspect is even more simplified than Mass Effect’s due to it purely coming down to you talking to them and giving them gifts tied to their personality. Such a quid pro quo system would be tolerable on its own merits, but the problem, once again, comes down to that everlooming hourglass: with less than three minutes, it becomes a pain in the @ss to balance your duties whilst concurrently running down to the village, talking to them, and/or bringing them a present, a task you have to repeat near-everyday should you wish to (eventually) have a spouse.
Graphically, things are pretty outstanding. Being a SNES release, Harvest Moon naturally boasts sharp pixel art, with NPCs textiles, in particular, doing a phenomenal job conveying their respective characters’ personality (your MC’s farmerwear, Ann’s tomboyish attire, Nina’s more-modest churchgoing garb, etc…). Seasons, as I said before, exist in the game, and effort was thankfully put into their visualization beyond a standard repaint ala Super Mario Bros: footprints in the snow, dead leaves in Autumn, brighter fields in summer, etc….etc….
The real standout, however, has to be the animations programmed for each action: from tools to golden tools to even dancing, you’ll discover a series of special movements coded exclusively for your character.
My only complaints had to do with three foibles: one, your main character’s eyes look permanently dead and depressed (no seriously, at first I thought he was just tired, but that’s his default visage); two, rainfall and extraneous cows in the barn (I believe more than 4) result in a noticeable framerate drop; and three, there’s this ugly yellow/brown filter they put over the camera lens. I get that family-owned farming is often associated with the past, but this discount sepia aesthetic felt unnecessary and honestly diminished the inherent vividness Harvest Moon’s canvas otherwise possessed.
Sound falls along the same wavelength as those aforementioned animations due to the engineers at Amccus synchronizing each with an appropriate din. 2D-based games never invested heavily in sound, but what you get here is a solid auralscape even by those standards. That said, there is a defect in the form of a screechy robot beep donned for the text bubbles (I have no idea what Amccus was thinking with this annoyance, but you’ll be glad to speed through it).
Music is where the game truly drops the ball as, much like A Link to the Past, there’s an insufficient amount of it. You’ve got a single tune for each season, in addition to the town, mountains, and festivals. There are some miscellaneous ones crafted for certain areas (like the chapel), but given that you’ll barely spend any time in those places, you’re liable to primarily hearing the other songs again and again and again. Having a single track/season, in particular, was boneheaded because the game allocates 30 days/quadrant, meaning you’ll hear the same music on repeat for an extended period of time. Composer Tsuyoshi Tanaka is a talented musician as, with the exception of Spring, I liked every leitmotif he crafted here (especially the town’s), making me wonder what led to him shortchanging the score as a whole.
Ultimately, I gave-up on completion due to the grind for cash being too much. I fully concede I may have been playing the game wrong as Harvest Moon is often cited as a relaxing enterprise by most fans; that said, its formula has, objectively-speaking, been improved upon by succeeding ventures (most notably Stardew Valley), meaning you won’t get anything here that you can’t garner from other ventures.
NOTES
+Treating = feeding, selling their bodily products, and (in the case of cows) brushing them.
-It’s pretty interesting to see how little information there is about Amccus online: not only do they lack a Wikipedia page, but they didn’t even go on to develop any of the other Story of Seasons entries, making me wonder if they were absorbed by publisher Natsume or simply fell apart like (tragically) so many other indie devs.
-This game allows you to go skinny-dipping with a girl….I promise I’m not kidding.
-Cutting grass and hoeing acres has the chance of sprouting a frog or mole respectively -- pretty cool additions.
-Sometimes your character will pause to observe a flock of birds ascend from his front yard upon opening the door in the morning.
-You get a dog at the beginning of the game, but he honestly appears to serve no discernible purpose besides generic companionship (was more originally intended for Fido that had to be dropped during development)?
Played on the Wii U Virtual Console
Farm simulators may be a dime-a-dozen these days, but back in the 90s they were actually pretty risky: as Toy Story, of all things, duly-showed, agrarian aesthetics were dying in the public eye -- the Internet was growing, Space Camp rising, and even Clint Eastwood had finished his cowboy tenure with Unforgiven.
Yet in 1996, a little company called Amccus burst onto the scene, debuting the first entry in what would eventually be called the Story of Seasons franchise. Dubbed Harvest Moon (or Farm Story in Japan), the premise was somewhat similar to popular JRPGs at the time in that you played as a blank slate tasked with restoring a piece of the world, that piece, here, being your family’s dilapidated ranch.
Unfortunately, despite not featuring an experience system, Harvest Moon feels too adjacent to those aforementioned role-playing games, its contents regurgitating their grindy schematic into a unique, though ultimately elongated, reskin. See, instead of levels, you’ve got monetary thresholds; instead of fighting, you’ve got ploughing; and instead of journeying across a foreign land, you’ve got backtracking galore along the same routes.
Anyone who’s played the myriad of spiritual successors out there knows how things go: you start off with a big plot, till the soil, plant seeds, water them till ripe, sell ‘em, use the profits to either buy more seeds or animals, and rinse & repeat. The problem is, whereas those aforementioned sequels built upon the formula and added diversity, you get no such changes here - progression is built on repetition, meaning you’ll end-up going through the same motions as though you’re grinding for exp ala Final Fantasy/Pokemon/insert_JRPG_of_your_choice. And I know it isn’t fair to criticize a game for lacking something its sequels have, but in determining whether or not a classic holds-up, such comparisons are necessary for deducing if those subsequent additions were common sense supplements or outright genuine innovation (the former, of course, being derogatory in nature towards the progeniting classic in question).
But even on its own merits, Harvest Moon stumbles due to its deliberately-lethargic scheme: you’re all but made to start out with crops because they’re the cheapest commodity available (chicks are $1000; cows $5000!), and after planting them you’re forced to hydrate them square by square by square -> after they maturate, you got to pluck them square by square by square and drop them into the shipping crate piece by piece by piece -> once you get animals that yield produce, you’ll need to pick each egg up yolk by yolk by yolk, or milk every cow, udder by udder….by udder.
Yeah, if it isn’t obvious, this is tedious work. On the plus side, I suppose Amccus successfully recreated 19th century rural farm-life; on the negative side, though, it doesn’t make for a fun time. Harvest Moon has frequently been described as relaxing, but I often found myself more bored than serendipic throughout my 10+ hour runtime, and what’s particularly grating is how the game goes out of its way to make things worse than they should be: you can’t navigate through plants because apparently stems are as thick as stone; you can’t water your middle crop (harvests are grown in a 9x9 grid) until the rest have been reaped, you have limited stamina that can only be replenished through protracted trips to a hot spring ayonder, there’s no rucksack for storing more than one-good at a time, dropping something insta-destroys it, you can’t put stuff for shipping overnight lest it auto-rots, and, perhaps worst of all, you can’t upgrade most of your tools manually. With the exception of the watering can, you’ll have to wait for pre-scripted events in order to acquire your next gear, and arriving at those points requires trudging through hours-and-hours of content: content that I’m not sure many people will willingly stick with.
None of this is even getting into the shortness of the days, which is egregious even by abridged standards: it’s not 5 or 4 or even 3, but 2.75 measly minutes. That’s right, in the time it takes you to microwave a burrito, you’ve got to complete all your daily chores, which yes becomes problematic the larger your grange grows. True, you’re not going to be handling crops every day, but treating(+) your animals, selling their staples, running to town to purchase/peddle additional goods, and successfully serenading your date (more on that later) all take time that the game simply doesn’t give you enough of.
Now, to be fair, some alleviants have been thrown-in to help make things more palatable: you’re able to purchase a horse that acts as a mobile shipping box, grass (in non-winter seasons) constantly regrows/doesn’t need water, chicken eggs can be used to conceive an unlimited supply of hens without needing to procure new ones, chicks don’t have to be fed, wood (for upgrading your house) is auto-stored, you don’t collapse from exhaustion, and, best of all, you’re not penalized for nighttime labor: so long as you irrigate your land and put feed in the stables before heading to bed, the game will count it as having been conducted for that day. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re basically strong-armed into working consecutive nights is doubly indicative of the excessively-swift pacing of the days.
There’s more I could harp on, like how slight movement resets the breakage counter on a boulder/log, how you only have two spaces on your tool belt, or how chickens are automatically killed by wolves if you leave them outside (defeating the whole purpose of setting-up a pen), but to go into all that detail would drag out this review pointlessly. I get that some of Harvest Moon’s prolixity was purposely implemented for the sake of realism, but when taken in conjunction with everything else, it ultimately brings down the product as a whole.
As stated earlier, Harvest Moon incorporated a bit of a dating sim into its framework via the ability to charm a girl and get married (sorry hetero-women, no choices for you), and, in fairness to the writing team, they actually crafted a decent amount of dialogue (granted, a lot of it has to be unraveled over the course of the game, but it is there). Sadly, this aspect is even more simplified than Mass Effect’s due to it purely coming down to you talking to them and giving them gifts tied to their personality. Such a quid pro quo system would be tolerable on its own merits, but the problem, once again, comes down to that everlooming hourglass: with less than three minutes, it becomes a pain in the @ss to balance your duties whilst concurrently running down to the village, talking to them, and/or bringing them a present, a task you have to repeat near-everyday should you wish to (eventually) have a spouse.
Graphically, things are pretty outstanding. Being a SNES release, Harvest Moon naturally boasts sharp pixel art, with NPCs textiles, in particular, doing a phenomenal job conveying their respective characters’ personality (your MC’s farmerwear, Ann’s tomboyish attire, Nina’s more-modest churchgoing garb, etc…). Seasons, as I said before, exist in the game, and effort was thankfully put into their visualization beyond a standard repaint ala Super Mario Bros: footprints in the snow, dead leaves in Autumn, brighter fields in summer, etc….etc….
The real standout, however, has to be the animations programmed for each action: from tools to golden tools to even dancing, you’ll discover a series of special movements coded exclusively for your character.
My only complaints had to do with three foibles: one, your main character’s eyes look permanently dead and depressed (no seriously, at first I thought he was just tired, but that’s his default visage); two, rainfall and extraneous cows in the barn (I believe more than 4) result in a noticeable framerate drop; and three, there’s this ugly yellow/brown filter they put over the camera lens. I get that family-owned farming is often associated with the past, but this discount sepia aesthetic felt unnecessary and honestly diminished the inherent vividness Harvest Moon’s canvas otherwise possessed.
Sound falls along the same wavelength as those aforementioned animations due to the engineers at Amccus synchronizing each with an appropriate din. 2D-based games never invested heavily in sound, but what you get here is a solid auralscape even by those standards. That said, there is a defect in the form of a screechy robot beep donned for the text bubbles (I have no idea what Amccus was thinking with this annoyance, but you’ll be glad to speed through it).
Music is where the game truly drops the ball as, much like A Link to the Past, there’s an insufficient amount of it. You’ve got a single tune for each season, in addition to the town, mountains, and festivals. There are some miscellaneous ones crafted for certain areas (like the chapel), but given that you’ll barely spend any time in those places, you’re liable to primarily hearing the other songs again and again and again. Having a single track/season, in particular, was boneheaded because the game allocates 30 days/quadrant, meaning you’ll hear the same music on repeat for an extended period of time. Composer Tsuyoshi Tanaka is a talented musician as, with the exception of Spring, I liked every leitmotif he crafted here (especially the town’s), making me wonder what led to him shortchanging the score as a whole.
Ultimately, I gave-up on completion due to the grind for cash being too much. I fully concede I may have been playing the game wrong as Harvest Moon is often cited as a relaxing enterprise by most fans; that said, its formula has, objectively-speaking, been improved upon by succeeding ventures (most notably Stardew Valley), meaning you won’t get anything here that you can’t garner from other ventures.
NOTES
+Treating = feeding, selling their bodily products, and (in the case of cows) brushing them.
-It’s pretty interesting to see how little information there is about Amccus online: not only do they lack a Wikipedia page, but they didn’t even go on to develop any of the other Story of Seasons entries, making me wonder if they were absorbed by publisher Natsume or simply fell apart like (tragically) so many other indie devs.
-This game allows you to go skinny-dipping with a girl….I promise I’m not kidding.
-Cutting grass and hoeing acres has the chance of sprouting a frog or mole respectively -- pretty cool additions.
-Sometimes your character will pause to observe a flock of birds ascend from his front yard upon opening the door in the morning.
-You get a dog at the beginning of the game, but he honestly appears to serve no discernible purpose besides generic companionship (was more originally intended for Fido that had to be dropped during development)?
2009
This review contains spoilers
I’m sorry, I thought I could write a review without spoilers, but quickly found that to be an impossible task. That said, the story is so godawful (pun intended) you aren’t missing out on much learning about the presence of certain characters/events beforehand
NOTE - though a direct sequel to God of War 1, this game references events that occurred in Ghost of Sparta, and while not necessary to play it, you may end-up confused by one scene
Played as part of the God of War Collection for PS3
Every now and then, you’ll come across a work of fiction that really annoys you: whether it’s a video game, movie, or TV episode, I guarantee you’ll find a project so vexing, you’ll want to nitpick every bone in its body till it’s laden on the ground in a puddle of splinters: deadly to the touch to anyone who would dare follow-up your diatribe.
Yes, God of War 2 provoked that kind of response in me. While I had enjoyed the first one quite a bit, it’s clear Santa Monica took the wrong lessons from its success: the end product here doubling-down on all its worst aspects, most notably the story. In the first game, Kratos was, without a doubt, one of the most unlikeable a$$holes ever conceived in gaming: a sociopathic, screaming dipsh!t who was so unpleasant, I genuinely didn’t know if I was meant to be rooting for or against him. Still, there was an element of Greek Tragedy to his arc, and the idea of someone successfully subverting the oppression of the gods had a tinge of deconstructionism to it.
Unfortunately, you don’t get any such nuances here. God of War 2 had the perfect opportunity to tell a cogent tale about the wrongdoings of the Greek Pantheon, yet opts to forgo that in favor of a highly-generic revenge story made all the more worse by its protagonist being a reprehensible piece of sh!t. The premise is Zeus has betrayed Kratos out of fears the man will usurp him on Olympus, castigating him to the depths of the Underworld whilst taking away his divinity in the process.
Right off the bat, this synopsis reeks of plotholes, its conception indicating not a single second was spent on basic script oversight. For starters, why does Zeus suddenly feel this way? And if he was so scared of Kratos’s potential, why let Athena turn him into Ares's replacement in the first place? Worse yet, Kratos’s whole plea at the end of GoW1 was to die so his nightmares could end, so why not just approach the man and offer him the relief he desires?
But no, to answer these questions would require, you know, effort, something the team at Santa Monica evidently wouldn't learn until 2018.
Oh we’re not done yet - heeding the words of the Titan Gaia, Kratos climbs out of the Underworld to begin his journey towards vengeance….only, hold-up, how in the world did he accomplish this? We just saw Zeus take away his godhood, yet you’re telling me he’s still capable of clawing his way out of a (literal) hellish pit like it's a casual Sunday? This is a problem you’ll see constantly plagues the game: the notion that Kratos is capable of accomplishing inhuman feats despite being rendered a mere mortal by Zeus. During your odyssey, you’ll consistently come across a situation or monster that should have the upperhand on the deposed god, yet falter for reasons that can only be described as @sspulls.
Now I know there’ll be two counterarguments to this, the first that Kratos is granted blessings by the Titans akin to the ones he received from the Olympians (the same ones that allowed him to beat Ares), and that’d be a valid point were it not for a couple of setbacks: one, Kratos does a fair amount of crazy stuff before he even gets his first power; and two, some of the bosses he faces should be insurmountable even with such gifts. During the fight with the Sisters of Fate, for example, they repeatedly state how they can easily sabotage his past, so WHY THE F#CK DON’T THEY (one of them literally spends the game bitch-slapping Kratos like a silly nanny instead of using her “vast” power)? Another moment sees Kratos reencounter the barbarian nemesis who bested him before (and who claims to have gotten much stronger since), so why is this brute casually riding around on his horse instead of fighting mano y mano? Don’t even get me started on the final scrum with Zeus, nor the game’s comical (plot hole-ridden) take on time travel. Seriously, the amount of nonsense you have to put up with to justify Kratos’s “badassery” here is beyond laughable at times.
The second argument pertains to a twist reveal at the end, and no, it doesn’t resolve anything either (+).
Of course, overpowered protagonists aren’t inherently bad - we’ve all played titles that indulged in the power fantasy, and God of War certainly gained fame for popularizing that motif for western audiences. However, the MC needs to be somewhat affable; have a trait that makes them worth investing in for the long haul, and not only does Kratos not have that, the writers literally went out of their way to make him insufferable. There are several instances where he’ll just kill an innocent person without remorse, or do some heinous action(++), and what’s amusing is how it’s all played straight. Like, if the game had at least adopted a darkly humorous tone towards its violence ala Quentin Tarantino I could maybe see myself enjoying the man’s antics, but no, everything’s treated like Oedipus Rex and rendered worse as a result.
I think what makes GoW2 particularly irksome is there was so much potential here for a better tale. The idea of a human witnessing the horrors of the gods and choosing to do something about it could’ve been the source for an invigorating yarn. One scene early-on, for instance, has you meeting Prometheus (the Titan who gave mankind fire), and beholding the excruciating fate Zeus deemed fit for him was tough to stomach (no pun intended): imagine a game where such incidents formed the backbone for Kratos’s motivation over the stupid sh%t he brought upon himself (that’s right, never forget, Kratos is responsible for his own nightmares). But no, you don’t get that, the writers instead preferring to concoct ridiculously idiotic scenarios that genuinely feel like someone had a bone to pick with Greek Mythology.
No seriously, what’s up with sheer venom on-display towards the Greek World? Such lore has been home to some of the most powerful myths in human history, yet the lion’s share of them here have been stripped of their bearings in a pathetic attempt to provide Kratos with fodder to chew on: classical heroes like Theseus and Perseus are rendered lame boss fights (more on that later), the Phoenix needlessly tortured, and Typhon literally turned into a worse version of Temari from Naruto. When you put even a modicum of thought into things, the macro events underscoring every beat become thoroughly unpleasant.
And that’s really the perfect word to describe God of War II’s narrative as a whole - unpleasant. I didn’t feel like an antihero on a semi-justifiable excursion, but a complete jack@ss acting out like a toddler on steroids. While I’ll never judge anyone for liking something I don’t, Kratos’s rise to popularity does say a lot about the kind of pop culture we’ve cultivated in western society.
But look, it’s the gameplay everyone will care most about, and on that front God of War II is still a step down from its predecessor. One of the things I enjoyed most about the first game was its incorporation of puzzles - yes, a few were outright frustrating (the collapsing floor comes to mind), but overall they were nice and helped break-up the pace of the game.
Well, in designing the ones here, the artisans at Santa Monica evidently thought it better to indulge in pure annoyance -- do you guys remember that scene in GoW1 where you had to kick that stupid box across the ship deck? Well, not only does God of War II have its own version of it, but they somehow managed to make it worse via spamming the field with fire and enemies who can counter you. Another moment saw me wasting a good 10 minutes trying to deduce how to redirect light to this flame-spewing effigy, only for the solution to be to climb up a specific section of the wall to free loose sunbeams from the roof (and no, there was barely any visual distinction between the ascendable & unascendable sections of said wall, with the final icicle being hidden in a lanky corner).
I’m not saying everything is bad (there was a time puzzle later on that I kind of enjoyed), but when the quality, as a whole, is at a diminished value, it makes these moments aggravating to partake in.
Luckily, the combat remains as fun as ever, with Santa Monica programming so many new combinations, you can literally button mash to your heart’s content and STILL come away with a fresh move each time. God of War popularized the modern hack-and-slash template back in the day, and I’m proud to say it more than holds up here amidst its countless inspirees.
That said, no improvements were made to the base formula, with Santa Monica, in many cases, outright doubling-down on its prequel’s worst elements: magic attacks remain sharp bursts inorganically woven into the mainframe, executions are the same rehashed finishers you saw aplenty in 1, heavy enemies still boast vexing stunlocks, and, worse of all, quicktime events galore have been shoved into every major encounter. I genuinely don’t understand who thought these minigames would be a good idea as they are incredibly infuriating - you often only have a second to hit their respective prompt, and failing to do so will result in heavy damage (or, in the case of the final fight with Zeus, death). While nowhere near as intrusive as Fahrenheit’s, they definitely took away from any on-screen action, and I guarantee they’ll be the cause of your demise every now-and-then (ESPECIALLY during that Zeus brawl).
Speaking of Zeus, bosses make a return and they’re as mediocre as I hinted at above. True, the first game’s weren’t the greatest thing ever, but they still had a sense of grandeur and logic to their composition. GoW 2’s, au contraire, are tedious and boring, their tactics largely coming down to avoiding a stunlock-inducing attack as you wear down the enemy health bar in order to trigger a, you guessed, QTE! Out of all the clashes, the only ones I truly ended-up enjoying were Lakhesis and Atropos during the third act.
Minibosses, to their credit, fare much better, but one thing I disliked in II was whenever the game would introduce a brand new version, have you slay it, only to then immediately follow-up said encounter with the SAME boss x2 or 3 or 10(!). It begged the question of why they even designed a unique wrangle if they were just going to subvert it with a repetitive montage the second it was complete.
Lastly in the gameplay department, II brings over the upgrade system from afore at the expense of my favorite weapon the Blade of Artemis, replacing it with two slow-swinging clubs you're better off ignoring in favor of the default chains. Ditto with the magic -- sure, you're given a fair amount of spells to play with, but you're better off saving your orbs for the lighting-based Chronos Rage.
For all my harping, the one area God of War II has unilaterally improved upon its forebearer in is the graphics. Once again, I played the PS3 remaster, and once again I was blown away by the sheer crispness of the visuals: you got non-blocky 3D models, top-notch anti-aliasing, reflective surfaces that actually bend light, and some of the best artistry I’ve ever witnessed in gaming. When Santa Monica began development, I have a feeling they really wanted to take players to places they had never dreamed about before, and on that front they more than succeeded: from the fiery heat of the Great Chasm’s interiors to a sprawling flesh-composed dungeon to the streams of blue thread that adorn the Loom Chamber, this is a diverse and thoroughly-awesome treat for your eyes. Even places commonly-used in video games like marshlands and lavapits are often transfused here with some additional element that bears them apart from the crowd, such as blood red swamp water and spiderweb meshing respectively. And for all my harping about the story, the artists clearly did their research on Greek architecture, resulting in those gorgeous columns, bricks, and painted murals commonly-associated with said culture (every temple is a stunning masterwork).
Unlike GoW1, where the developers were unable to boost the cutscene files, here Santa Monica must’ve found the corresponding folder cause these babies look consistent with the base game, their resolution easily rivaling early-7th gen prospects whilst providing expansive grand spectacle….in some cases too grand. See, like I said in my review of the first game, the God of War series was always used by Sony to push the boundaries of their console, and while they certainly achieved this task, a lot of the cinematics you’ll witness on-hand can’t help coming across as self-indulgent to a fault: each scene seemingly showcasing a new physics-rendering capability of the Kinetica. You’ve got the naturalistic flow of liquids, collapsing of buildings, movement of the Titans, surging of velocious air -- one of the best feats I ever saw entails you witnessing the actual regrowth of Prometheus’s innards as he heals overnight. And yet, such pageantry can’t help coming across like someone at Santa Monica did this purely out of an initiative to pat themselves on the back.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I liked included the Chains of Athena changing color as you upgraded them (more on that later), the lightsaber-hued orbs found in chests, and the incredibly-fast loading times.
The only derogatory hit on the whole system has to do with any depictions of penetration. The PS2 simply was not capable of accurately generating this for weapons, and given that many of Kratos’s executions rely on it, you’re going to be noticing a lot of haphazard merging that walks the line between clipping and blended simulacra.
Sound is where the game dips the most in stature, starting with the music - it is bombastic to a fault. Once again the work was outsourced to a bunch of composers, yet unlike before where they managed to create something unified and cohesive, here it’s just loud for loudness sake. 90 percent of the tracks employ horns and vocals to mimic that stereotypical brashness typically associated with Greek Hymns, but the boisterous volume combined with the repetitive melodies ends-up making it all unnecessarily overbearing. This is the only time I’ve had to constantly pause an OST while listening to it, and that speaks to the score’s inherent obnoxiousness.
Voice acting continues that trend, with TC Carson giving a headache-inducing performance as the titular character. Yeah, as if I needed to tell you guys, God of War II emphasizes Kratos’s angrier-side, meaning you get A LOT moreb!tching yelling from the ousted deity than before, and it is painful to listen to. It truly is a shame because Carson is a talented actor: there’s a part in the back-half that lasts all of 10 seconds, but which showcases the kind of dramatic delivery the man is capable of doing, yet the simple fact is he’s just not granted many chances to do so. To pour salt in the wounds, the devs rehashed some of his dumber grunts instead of re-recording them, meaning you’ll be hearing a lot of mooing while moving stuff.
Despite his limited screen-time, Zeus is somehow worse, and just like with Ares, you’ll be shocked to learn his voice actor is a noted thespian in the form of Corey Burton. Fans of DC-based works know Burton’s given plenty of wonderful performances elsewhere, yet here comes across like a senior resident whose cords have been clogged from smoking too much weed.
The others are fine, serving their roles well-enough, but the overarching quality does feel like a step down from 1 where it truly came across like a cast of Royal Shakespeareans doing their best job according credence to the project.
SFX has its good-and-bad: slicing enemies never gets tiring, and I appreciated the spark-chinking that resounded whenever you hit boulders and walls, but none of the non-singing monsters were memorable, and there were times where the developers outright faltered in terms of synchronizing appropriate noises. For example, one scene has you walking along a giant chain that sways like a fiber rope; another has you facing dog-like beasts that bark like a regular ole hound. Overall it’s sufficient, but could’ve been more.
Unfortunately, that sentiment isn’t applicable to the entire game as I did not enjoy it. It’s a technical marvel done at the expense of the most important tenets of a video game, and while it did a lot for the industry and PS2’s legacy, it’s best left forgotten.
NOTES
+Kratos is revealed at the end to be Zeus’s son and, consequently, a demigod. This is no doubt an instance of the writersripping-off paying homage to other popular figures like Herakles, but the problem is they clearly didn’t do their research as even those individuals with divine heritage were severely handicapped compared to their Olympian parent.
++Using the Argonaut to stop the cog, torturing/murdering the Priests, tearing off Icarus’s wings (honestly, can we just take a second to observe how stupid it was to turn Icarus of all people into a boss fight? This is a guy whose wings were famously burned to a crisp and died, yet here he’s somehow alive and actually able to hold his own against Kratos? There are so many discourses throughout the game which indicate the writers studied past Greek myths, so why they outright sabotaged them with worse retellings is beyond me).
-There is a challenge mode for you completionists out there.
-No subtitles (again), but at least they sped-up the orb procession.
-Thank the lord they moved the door opening button to O instead of the right bumper! It alleviated my fingers tremendously.
-There’s an awful sex minigame early-on that’s both narratively-intrusive and built on QTEs (worst part is you don’t even get to see any of the action).
-Hated how slow Kratos became whenever he carried bodies. I get this was done to make some of the boss fights artificially-hard, but the man is literally capable of moving giant cinder blocks yet somehow gets encumbered by a mere corpse?
-There’s a track from the OST that literally sounds like a Diet Coke version of the famous trailer song Preliator by Globus.
NOTE - though a direct sequel to God of War 1, this game references events that occurred in Ghost of Sparta, and while not necessary to play it, you may end-up confused by one scene
Played as part of the God of War Collection for PS3
Every now and then, you’ll come across a work of fiction that really annoys you: whether it’s a video game, movie, or TV episode, I guarantee you’ll find a project so vexing, you’ll want to nitpick every bone in its body till it’s laden on the ground in a puddle of splinters: deadly to the touch to anyone who would dare follow-up your diatribe.
Yes, God of War 2 provoked that kind of response in me. While I had enjoyed the first one quite a bit, it’s clear Santa Monica took the wrong lessons from its success: the end product here doubling-down on all its worst aspects, most notably the story. In the first game, Kratos was, without a doubt, one of the most unlikeable a$$holes ever conceived in gaming: a sociopathic, screaming dipsh!t who was so unpleasant, I genuinely didn’t know if I was meant to be rooting for or against him. Still, there was an element of Greek Tragedy to his arc, and the idea of someone successfully subverting the oppression of the gods had a tinge of deconstructionism to it.
Unfortunately, you don’t get any such nuances here. God of War 2 had the perfect opportunity to tell a cogent tale about the wrongdoings of the Greek Pantheon, yet opts to forgo that in favor of a highly-generic revenge story made all the more worse by its protagonist being a reprehensible piece of sh!t. The premise is Zeus has betrayed Kratos out of fears the man will usurp him on Olympus, castigating him to the depths of the Underworld whilst taking away his divinity in the process.
Right off the bat, this synopsis reeks of plotholes, its conception indicating not a single second was spent on basic script oversight. For starters, why does Zeus suddenly feel this way? And if he was so scared of Kratos’s potential, why let Athena turn him into Ares's replacement in the first place? Worse yet, Kratos’s whole plea at the end of GoW1 was to die so his nightmares could end, so why not just approach the man and offer him the relief he desires?
But no, to answer these questions would require, you know, effort, something the team at Santa Monica evidently wouldn't learn until 2018.
Oh we’re not done yet - heeding the words of the Titan Gaia, Kratos climbs out of the Underworld to begin his journey towards vengeance….only, hold-up, how in the world did he accomplish this? We just saw Zeus take away his godhood, yet you’re telling me he’s still capable of clawing his way out of a (literal) hellish pit like it's a casual Sunday? This is a problem you’ll see constantly plagues the game: the notion that Kratos is capable of accomplishing inhuman feats despite being rendered a mere mortal by Zeus. During your odyssey, you’ll consistently come across a situation or monster that should have the upperhand on the deposed god, yet falter for reasons that can only be described as @sspulls.
Now I know there’ll be two counterarguments to this, the first that Kratos is granted blessings by the Titans akin to the ones he received from the Olympians (the same ones that allowed him to beat Ares), and that’d be a valid point were it not for a couple of setbacks: one, Kratos does a fair amount of crazy stuff before he even gets his first power; and two, some of the bosses he faces should be insurmountable even with such gifts. During the fight with the Sisters of Fate, for example, they repeatedly state how they can easily sabotage his past, so WHY THE F#CK DON’T THEY (one of them literally spends the game bitch-slapping Kratos like a silly nanny instead of using her “vast” power)? Another moment sees Kratos reencounter the barbarian nemesis who bested him before (and who claims to have gotten much stronger since), so why is this brute casually riding around on his horse instead of fighting mano y mano? Don’t even get me started on the final scrum with Zeus, nor the game’s comical (plot hole-ridden) take on time travel. Seriously, the amount of nonsense you have to put up with to justify Kratos’s “badassery” here is beyond laughable at times.
The second argument pertains to a twist reveal at the end, and no, it doesn’t resolve anything either (+).
Of course, overpowered protagonists aren’t inherently bad - we’ve all played titles that indulged in the power fantasy, and God of War certainly gained fame for popularizing that motif for western audiences. However, the MC needs to be somewhat affable; have a trait that makes them worth investing in for the long haul, and not only does Kratos not have that, the writers literally went out of their way to make him insufferable. There are several instances where he’ll just kill an innocent person without remorse, or do some heinous action(++), and what’s amusing is how it’s all played straight. Like, if the game had at least adopted a darkly humorous tone towards its violence ala Quentin Tarantino I could maybe see myself enjoying the man’s antics, but no, everything’s treated like Oedipus Rex and rendered worse as a result.
I think what makes GoW2 particularly irksome is there was so much potential here for a better tale. The idea of a human witnessing the horrors of the gods and choosing to do something about it could’ve been the source for an invigorating yarn. One scene early-on, for instance, has you meeting Prometheus (the Titan who gave mankind fire), and beholding the excruciating fate Zeus deemed fit for him was tough to stomach (no pun intended): imagine a game where such incidents formed the backbone for Kratos’s motivation over the stupid sh%t he brought upon himself (that’s right, never forget, Kratos is responsible for his own nightmares). But no, you don’t get that, the writers instead preferring to concoct ridiculously idiotic scenarios that genuinely feel like someone had a bone to pick with Greek Mythology.
No seriously, what’s up with sheer venom on-display towards the Greek World? Such lore has been home to some of the most powerful myths in human history, yet the lion’s share of them here have been stripped of their bearings in a pathetic attempt to provide Kratos with fodder to chew on: classical heroes like Theseus and Perseus are rendered lame boss fights (more on that later), the Phoenix needlessly tortured, and Typhon literally turned into a worse version of Temari from Naruto. When you put even a modicum of thought into things, the macro events underscoring every beat become thoroughly unpleasant.
And that’s really the perfect word to describe God of War II’s narrative as a whole - unpleasant. I didn’t feel like an antihero on a semi-justifiable excursion, but a complete jack@ss acting out like a toddler on steroids. While I’ll never judge anyone for liking something I don’t, Kratos’s rise to popularity does say a lot about the kind of pop culture we’ve cultivated in western society.
But look, it’s the gameplay everyone will care most about, and on that front God of War II is still a step down from its predecessor. One of the things I enjoyed most about the first game was its incorporation of puzzles - yes, a few were outright frustrating (the collapsing floor comes to mind), but overall they were nice and helped break-up the pace of the game.
Well, in designing the ones here, the artisans at Santa Monica evidently thought it better to indulge in pure annoyance -- do you guys remember that scene in GoW1 where you had to kick that stupid box across the ship deck? Well, not only does God of War II have its own version of it, but they somehow managed to make it worse via spamming the field with fire and enemies who can counter you. Another moment saw me wasting a good 10 minutes trying to deduce how to redirect light to this flame-spewing effigy, only for the solution to be to climb up a specific section of the wall to free loose sunbeams from the roof (and no, there was barely any visual distinction between the ascendable & unascendable sections of said wall, with the final icicle being hidden in a lanky corner).
I’m not saying everything is bad (there was a time puzzle later on that I kind of enjoyed), but when the quality, as a whole, is at a diminished value, it makes these moments aggravating to partake in.
Luckily, the combat remains as fun as ever, with Santa Monica programming so many new combinations, you can literally button mash to your heart’s content and STILL come away with a fresh move each time. God of War popularized the modern hack-and-slash template back in the day, and I’m proud to say it more than holds up here amidst its countless inspirees.
That said, no improvements were made to the base formula, with Santa Monica, in many cases, outright doubling-down on its prequel’s worst elements: magic attacks remain sharp bursts inorganically woven into the mainframe, executions are the same rehashed finishers you saw aplenty in 1, heavy enemies still boast vexing stunlocks, and, worse of all, quicktime events galore have been shoved into every major encounter. I genuinely don’t understand who thought these minigames would be a good idea as they are incredibly infuriating - you often only have a second to hit their respective prompt, and failing to do so will result in heavy damage (or, in the case of the final fight with Zeus, death). While nowhere near as intrusive as Fahrenheit’s, they definitely took away from any on-screen action, and I guarantee they’ll be the cause of your demise every now-and-then (ESPECIALLY during that Zeus brawl).
Speaking of Zeus, bosses make a return and they’re as mediocre as I hinted at above. True, the first game’s weren’t the greatest thing ever, but they still had a sense of grandeur and logic to their composition. GoW 2’s, au contraire, are tedious and boring, their tactics largely coming down to avoiding a stunlock-inducing attack as you wear down the enemy health bar in order to trigger a, you guessed, QTE! Out of all the clashes, the only ones I truly ended-up enjoying were Lakhesis and Atropos during the third act.
Minibosses, to their credit, fare much better, but one thing I disliked in II was whenever the game would introduce a brand new version, have you slay it, only to then immediately follow-up said encounter with the SAME boss x2 or 3 or 10(!). It begged the question of why they even designed a unique wrangle if they were just going to subvert it with a repetitive montage the second it was complete.
Lastly in the gameplay department, II brings over the upgrade system from afore at the expense of my favorite weapon the Blade of Artemis, replacing it with two slow-swinging clubs you're better off ignoring in favor of the default chains. Ditto with the magic -- sure, you're given a fair amount of spells to play with, but you're better off saving your orbs for the lighting-based Chronos Rage.
For all my harping, the one area God of War II has unilaterally improved upon its forebearer in is the graphics. Once again, I played the PS3 remaster, and once again I was blown away by the sheer crispness of the visuals: you got non-blocky 3D models, top-notch anti-aliasing, reflective surfaces that actually bend light, and some of the best artistry I’ve ever witnessed in gaming. When Santa Monica began development, I have a feeling they really wanted to take players to places they had never dreamed about before, and on that front they more than succeeded: from the fiery heat of the Great Chasm’s interiors to a sprawling flesh-composed dungeon to the streams of blue thread that adorn the Loom Chamber, this is a diverse and thoroughly-awesome treat for your eyes. Even places commonly-used in video games like marshlands and lavapits are often transfused here with some additional element that bears them apart from the crowd, such as blood red swamp water and spiderweb meshing respectively. And for all my harping about the story, the artists clearly did their research on Greek architecture, resulting in those gorgeous columns, bricks, and painted murals commonly-associated with said culture (every temple is a stunning masterwork).
Unlike GoW1, where the developers were unable to boost the cutscene files, here Santa Monica must’ve found the corresponding folder cause these babies look consistent with the base game, their resolution easily rivaling early-7th gen prospects whilst providing expansive grand spectacle….in some cases too grand. See, like I said in my review of the first game, the God of War series was always used by Sony to push the boundaries of their console, and while they certainly achieved this task, a lot of the cinematics you’ll witness on-hand can’t help coming across as self-indulgent to a fault: each scene seemingly showcasing a new physics-rendering capability of the Kinetica. You’ve got the naturalistic flow of liquids, collapsing of buildings, movement of the Titans, surging of velocious air -- one of the best feats I ever saw entails you witnessing the actual regrowth of Prometheus’s innards as he heals overnight. And yet, such pageantry can’t help coming across like someone at Santa Monica did this purely out of an initiative to pat themselves on the back.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I liked included the Chains of Athena changing color as you upgraded them (more on that later), the lightsaber-hued orbs found in chests, and the incredibly-fast loading times.
The only derogatory hit on the whole system has to do with any depictions of penetration. The PS2 simply was not capable of accurately generating this for weapons, and given that many of Kratos’s executions rely on it, you’re going to be noticing a lot of haphazard merging that walks the line between clipping and blended simulacra.
Sound is where the game dips the most in stature, starting with the music - it is bombastic to a fault. Once again the work was outsourced to a bunch of composers, yet unlike before where they managed to create something unified and cohesive, here it’s just loud for loudness sake. 90 percent of the tracks employ horns and vocals to mimic that stereotypical brashness typically associated with Greek Hymns, but the boisterous volume combined with the repetitive melodies ends-up making it all unnecessarily overbearing. This is the only time I’ve had to constantly pause an OST while listening to it, and that speaks to the score’s inherent obnoxiousness.
Voice acting continues that trend, with TC Carson giving a headache-inducing performance as the titular character. Yeah, as if I needed to tell you guys, God of War II emphasizes Kratos’s angrier-side, meaning you get A LOT more
Despite his limited screen-time, Zeus is somehow worse, and just like with Ares, you’ll be shocked to learn his voice actor is a noted thespian in the form of Corey Burton. Fans of DC-based works know Burton’s given plenty of wonderful performances elsewhere, yet here comes across like a senior resident whose cords have been clogged from smoking too much weed.
The others are fine, serving their roles well-enough, but the overarching quality does feel like a step down from 1 where it truly came across like a cast of Royal Shakespeareans doing their best job according credence to the project.
SFX has its good-and-bad: slicing enemies never gets tiring, and I appreciated the spark-chinking that resounded whenever you hit boulders and walls, but none of the non-singing monsters were memorable, and there were times where the developers outright faltered in terms of synchronizing appropriate noises. For example, one scene has you walking along a giant chain that sways like a fiber rope; another has you facing dog-like beasts that bark like a regular ole hound. Overall it’s sufficient, but could’ve been more.
Unfortunately, that sentiment isn’t applicable to the entire game as I did not enjoy it. It’s a technical marvel done at the expense of the most important tenets of a video game, and while it did a lot for the industry and PS2’s legacy, it’s best left forgotten.
NOTES
+Kratos is revealed at the end to be Zeus’s son and, consequently, a demigod. This is no doubt an instance of the writers
++Using the Argonaut to stop the cog, torturing/murdering the Priests, tearing off Icarus’s wings (honestly, can we just take a second to observe how stupid it was to turn Icarus of all people into a boss fight? This is a guy whose wings were famously burned to a crisp and died, yet here he’s somehow alive and actually able to hold his own against Kratos? There are so many discourses throughout the game which indicate the writers studied past Greek myths, so why they outright sabotaged them with worse retellings is beyond me).
-There is a challenge mode for you completionists out there.
-No subtitles (again), but at least they sped-up the orb procession.
-Thank the lord they moved the door opening button to O instead of the right bumper! It alleviated my fingers tremendously.
-There’s an awful sex minigame early-on that’s both narratively-intrusive and built on QTEs (worst part is you don’t even get to see any of the action).
-Hated how slow Kratos became whenever he carried bodies. I get this was done to make some of the boss fights artificially-hard, but the man is literally capable of moving giant cinder blocks yet somehow gets encumbered by a mere corpse?
-There’s a track from the OST that literally sounds like a Diet Coke version of the famous trailer song Preliator by Globus.
2009
Played as part of the God of War Collection on PS3
ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.
Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations
Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.
As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.
Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.
Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.
Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.
There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).
Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.
By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.
Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.
If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.
Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.
The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.
Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.
SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.
For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).
Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).
NOTES
-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).
-No subtitles
-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).
-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.
+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.
++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.
+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.
++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.
ALERT - if interested, please play this game through any [LEGAL] method but the HD Collection as this port contains 1-2 game breaking bugs that occur after obtaining Pandora’s Box wherein the MacGuffin either goes missing or wherein the cutscene of Kratos bringing it out of the dungeon doesn’t load and consequently freezes up the game. I experienced the latter and, as a result, was unable to complete God of War (and I have no intention of buying and replaying it in its entirety at a later date). As a result of this annoyance, I have knocked down .5 star from the final tally.
Despite playing the vast majority of the game, my inability to finish it does mean you should not take this as a serious review, but more-so a set of observations
Long before the 2018 reboot(+), God of War was best known as a pioneer in the hack-and-slash genre: a hyperviolent excursion built around fluid combat, epic visuals, and a loosely mythological story.
As such, when I booted it up, I went in expecting another poorly-aged release from the PS2’s dark-and-edgy era best left forgotten by contemporary audiences. And yet, to my delight, the opposite nearly happened; God of War won’t win any awards for its storytelling, however solid frays and a surprising amount of gameplay variety make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
As stated earlier, God of War was instrumental in the mainstreaming of slash ‘em ups, and it should thus come as no surprise that its melee fighting, to this day, remains the strongest facet. Kratos only has access to two weapons (the famed Chains of Chaos for long-range hits and, later, the Blade of Artemis for close-quarters dicing), yet both are excellent, equipped with unique animations in addition to their own set of hard/light combos. However, where God of War truly excels is in its enemy gravitation, or the movement between thugs. What I mean is, we’ve all played games where it was a bit of a chore to swap between multiple foes, and a lot of that has to do with the game having trouble recognizing player input vs camera direction. Well, whatever spell Santa Monica worked has done wonders as you’ll never run into that issue here whilst slaughtering monster-upon-monster.
Unfortunately, I can’t say everything is great, starting with the airborne wrangles. Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but I found most attempts to transition from ground-to-aerial combat to be especially cumbersome as Kratos would often not move in-sync with any bodies sent up for dispatching. Next, God of War throws in quick-time events for a number of finishers that not only distract from what is occurring on-screen, but can be unnecessarily vexing by way of short margins for error, either time or input-based (regular creature QTEs may be ignored, but the same leeway is not available for bosses). Third, the integration of spellcasting is sloppy: the powers themselves are pretty sweet, however, they don’t lend themselves organically to whatever dance you’re engaged in, forcing you to awkwardly discharge any in the midst of a combo. Finally, I was not a fan of the stun lock that occurs whenever a bigger enemy knocks you over- I get this was done to discourage, you know, getting hit, but I felt the damage inflicted should’ve been enough of a deterrent.
Like I mentioned before, God of War surprised me with its implementation of other genre fare, namely platforming and puzzle elements. If you’re going into this game wanting a pure action romp you’ll be sorely disappointed as at least one third of the final product involves Kratos having to deftly maneuver his way through a mini-course and/or resolve some long-dormant enigma. The quality of them definitely varies: some can be excellent, others exercises in tedium -- one of the worst parts of the game, for example, occurs in the very beginning wherein you’re tasked with kicking a fragile box across a deck whilst being swarmed with arrows; yet one of the best has you rebuild a wall using specially-carved columns.
Regardless, I ended up enjoying each version to one extent or another due to them breaking-up the combat monotony that flooded every other part of the story. Seriously, as much fun as it is spilling senseless blood, God of War can get really tiring courtesy of the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way, and while a fair chunk of these sparrings are optional(++), it doesn’t stop their cretins from being potential hindrances on your path to victory -- you’ll frequently run into foes on stairways, in front of ladders, scrummaging on climbable walls, etc….and it becomes annoying having to cheese around them just to avoid a pointless fight.
There is a bit of an RPG system here in terms of gathering experience orbs to funnel into your numerous offensive schemes, though, all cards on the table, I found swords to be the only rewarding investment as your mana meter runs out too quickly to make sorcery worth relying on (+++).
Regardless of my qualms, God of War was a thoroughly-addicting affair: for the first time in a while, I found myself wanting to do multiple sessions in a single day, and I recommend playing it solely for those gameplay quirks as the story itself is not very good. On the surface you’ve got a typical Greek tragedy involving a mortal’s manipulation at the hands of the Twelve Olympians, yet even this premise is botched through an easily-avoidable mistake: making Kratos an @sshole. I don’t know who on the development team thought this was a good idea, but it boggles my mind that it ended up being accepted as standard operating procedure. The idea of an anti-heroic or even outright evil protagonist isn’t inherently wrong, but it requires charisma and affability, two things far removed from the Ghost of Sparta. Kratos is definitely a victim of the gods, but not once did I feel sympathy for him on account of his vile backstory and present-day immoral actions. Throughout your quest you’ll either kill innocents and/or let them die, and without a proper justification for such transgressions (or at least a sense of remorse), Kratos is left inherently unlikable; an ugly vessel for the player to indulge in hapless violence.
By ugly, I’m of course speaking in metaphorical terms as, visually, God of War is a stunning title. Although I only played an HD port, such a remaster demonstrates the vast power gap that existed between the PS2 and PS3 eras via its sharpened polygons, looming vistas, limited loading screens, and fully-realized models. Gone are those awkward triangles/blocks you’d often see on sixth generation appendages/material respectively, rendering the innumerable sites you visit, from Athens to the Underworld, gorgeous hollows. In particular, I was especially impressed by the sharp shadow mapping for weaponry, as well as the incorporation of reflective surfaces on marble floors: two aspects that were reportedly hard to program back-in-the-day.
Cutscenes are hit-or-miss in quality; similar to Darksiders, any pre-rendered cinematics remain pristine; however, the original in-game ones do look overly grainy owing to the inability of the devs to boost them (meaning the standard gameplay honestly appears better). Besides that, though, it’s hard to find faults in God of War considering the hardware the OG version was built-on. You can tell Sony put a ton of money into this exclusive on the basis of the sheer amount of mileage Santa Monica stretched from its Kinetica Engine: the suffocating winds of a desert, lumberings of the titan Kronos, spawning of multiple enemies/large devices on a single screen (with little lag!)- all remain points of awe for what is ultimately a 2005 release.
If I had to harp on one negative, it’d be the minimal amount of finishers. Enemies are beautifully designed, yet generally only have 1-2 methods of pre-scripted execution, the second only opening itself up mid-flight (a tactic that, per the aforestated complaints, is hard to achieve), meaning you’re going to be seeing the same scene per a monster type again and again and again. More particular effects from strikes would’ve also been welcome as you primarily get the same generic blood splatter whenever an enemy (or Kratos for that matter) is gored.
Speaking of the leading chump, he’s brought to life by Terrence C. Carson, a man who does a mixed job (and who would go on to be screwed by Santa Monica during their reboot++++). When Kratos is vocalizing softer speech or subtle anger, Carson excels; when he’s being a loud pr!ck, Carson can’t help sounding like a stereotypical angry black man over vengeful hellenist.
The rest of the voice acting is surprisingly good; a game like God of War could’ve easily fallen prey to hackneyed portrayals of thespian actors, but Santa Monica evidently wanted to go the serious route here and they largely succeeded courtesy of some solid castings for all the bit parts. Tragically, where they dropped the ball is with Ares, and it’ll come as a great shock when you learn the person behind the titular antagonist: the great Steve Blum. I don’t know what Blum was going for here, but his choice of accent/inflections is half-growly/half-stereotypical angry white man, making the God of Courage sound like a garbled Wolverine. It brings me no pleasure to state this given my love of Blum, but let’s just say you’ll be glad he only speaks in the final part of the game.
Luckily, the music has no such pitfalls, with the seven(!) credited composers filtering Greek-styled melodies (lutes, lyres, drums) through an adrenaline junkie motif endemic to action titles of this nature. It’s not an OST you’ll be listening to post-game, but it does befit Kratos’s adventure as a whole.
SFX is hard to discern in a title like God of War due to its indulgence in loud dins that mask the micro sonority. For instance, a lot of the spells and puzzle-based machinery are vividly aural, as beseems their deific origins; however, I honestly couldn’t tell you whether there were any audible differences programmed into your weapons on enemy impact.
For what it’s worth, nothing was distracting and I had a good time, which is a great way to summarize God of War as a whole. This is a really fun game that’s aged uncommonly well, both visually and playably. It’s a shame I experienced that game-breaking bug as I would’ve loved to have completed Kratos’s peregrination towards revenge (and experienced the infamous Spiked Columns!).
Don’t mistake me- there are times when you will get frustrated and want to bite your controller to bits! But with an astute checkpoint system and sense of progression, they weren’t enough to bring down the product as a whole (particularly on easy mode!).
NOTES
-Speaking of easy mode, there is no way to change the difficulty. When you die enough times, a prompt appears allowing you to switch to said easy mode; however, you cannot change back. A bizarre decision, as was the one where upgrade orbs are slowly siphoned into their respective port instead of all-at-once (like most normal video games).
-No subtitles
-Whoever decided to map opening doors to mashing the right back bumper on the DualShock 3 deserves a swift kick in the groin. For the uninitiated, the DualShock 3 had notoriously awful bumpers, which made one puzzle, in particular, infuriating (you’ll know it when you see it).
-The absence of armor for Kratos is pretty disappointing, especially given his Spartan background and the consistent emphasis on him being a mere mortal (though even that wouldn’t have mattered considering Greek Gods could be hurt by manmade weapons, at least in the Iliad). While the physics for the loin cloth are on-point, I do feel his model is an example of hypocritical male objectification that wouldn’t have been tolerated had it been a female MC instead.
+To clarify, it was a soft reboot, meaning the events of the previous games are canon.
++Yes, I know killing anyone yields the aforementioned upgrade points but, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties (which I do not recommend), you really don’t have to go out of your way to farm them.
+++Yes, I know you can upgrade it through collecting feathers. However, not only will most gamers not find them all, but the majority of spells still drain a significant chunk of mana, leaving a few outright unusable even with a decently-filled bar.
++++Kratos was recast with Christopher Judge, which was fine given the mocap cinematography Santa Monica wanted to go with. However, to not grant Carson a cameo, let alone inform him he was being recast, is completely disrespectful.
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Metro: Last Light is a case of one step forward, one step back: it makes a lot of improvements to its predecessor at the expense of some of its more unique elements, and while I ultimately enjoyed things more, I can definitely see said changes being viewed as derogatory by ardent fans.
Let’s start with the good, though: anyone who’s read my thoughts on 2033 knows my biggest gripes with it were the pseudo-sandbox schemes. See, much like Mirror’s Edge, 2033 boasted long-open playpens that ended up being fraudulent window dressing -- what originally appeared to be a wide array of opportunities quickly outed themselves as a glorified round of Minesweeper wherein any wrong move off the predesignated path landed you in hot water. It was annoying, it was cumbersome, and most importantly it made no sense- I remember once veering towards an adjacent tunnel only to get swallowed up by a vine critter, and it begged the question of why the devs even bothered granting such agency if they were just going to punish players who exercised it?
Well, luckily, Last Light has done away with this format, replacing things with fully linear-levels chock-full of soft and hard blocks. There are times where you can wander off a bit, but I always found these led to some enclosed barrier ripe with hidden caches rather than a secret death spring drummed up by some sadistic coder (and yes, this applies to the surface as well).
Another issue that’s been fixed is the lack of environmental variety. In 2033, you were tasked with traveling to a number of metro stations that didn’t look dissimilar from the other in spite of their ideological variance (this homogeneity, in turn, making you wonder whether you were actually progressing forward in the story). Now, however, 2A’s artisans have really kicked things into gear, drawing sharp lines amongst the Nazi and commie-inspired divergents, as well as all other factions in-between. Whether it’s the prisoner-of-war machinery of the Reichland, crimson-hued propaganda of the Red Line, or pleasure-district vibes of Venice, your travels will verily come across as continuous in-scope.
Finally, the plot is a lot more nuanced -- whereas 2033 occupied the Man vs. Monster schtick of B-Movie fame, Last Light strives to provide greater characterization to not only its humans, but also its forebearer’s antagonists. That’s right, to recap for those who forgot, the Dark Ones who assaulted Artyom’s compound are back, a member of their race having somehow survived his missile barrage. Because of this, Artyom’s boss orders him to eradicate it once and for all, and as you may expect, things don’t quite go according to plan: there’s more to this Survivor than meets the eye, and the other Metro sectors have a vested interest in capturing it too.
Unfortunately, this is also where I have to start bringing in those aforementioned “step back” motifs as Last Light’s story carries as many flaws as it does pros. For starters, there’s no real ethical grayness to any of the situations: yes, the Stalinists wanting a more unified Metro for easier rebuilding is admirable; however, their methods quickly render them mustache-twirling banditos morally-indistinguishable from their neighboring Reichsters. In addition, given that Artyom’s primary obstacles are Nazis and Communists, Last Light, as a whole, can’t help feeling like a conventional US military game at times (I know Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who helped with the game’s script, is Russian, but I stand by this claim).
More importantly, though, I just did not like the complete role-reversal of the Dark Ones(+). While 4A’s expansion of their inner mythology and origins is cool, you’ll be hardpressed to find their motivations consistent with what Artyom underwent in his first title. Don’t get me wrong, the writers did a good job balancing this plotline with the discovery of the aforestated Red Line shenanigans, but because it consists of so many retcons, you’d think the game had a different scripter from 2033.
For my part, however, the biggest chink in Last Light’s story has to be its sufferance from TLOU problem of narrative impetus being at odds with world events. As you may expect, Artyom, objectively-speaking, has no time to rest-or-stop lest tragedy befalls his people, yet the writers concocted SO MANY optional conversations and situations for him to listen in on/participate in, that it makes you wonder whether there was a disconnect between the assistant and head writers: if the former were told to pen to their heart’s content whilst the latter secretly conspired to ascribe their work purely to player discretion. One of the worst moments, for example, sees Artyom find these targets he’s after, only to then be offered a lap dance by some stripper when, logically-speaking, he would’ve F%CKING FOLLOWED the bad guys he FINALLY found (and yes, I did partake in it, but tu quoque my dear).
You may retort, well Red, if it’s not-mandatory, what’s the big deal? Well, because the vast majority of eavesdroppable convos expand on the lore of the series, you’ll be missing out on a ton of stuff by avoiding them: whether it’s soldiers reflecting on a haunted situation that occurred earlier or civilians relating their immediate histories to their peers, these genuinely go a long way towards making the setting feel filled-in. The Metro series has always been universally praised for its atmosphere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if such banter played a part in that praise, especially given that the first game had moments where you’d be allowed to take a break and just explore the various hubs. Here, though, to see Artyom just dick around whilst his compadres and mission patiently wait for him to continue….I don’t know, it really affected my OCD. But, for those of you who care for a more tangible reason to be upset, know that rubbernecking apparently plays a role in the ending you get (more on that later).
Compounding these issues is the annoying fact that Artyom, once again, remains a pointlessly-silent protagonist, and I seriously don’t understand what the rationale behind this decision was. Not only is he an explicit character with his own thoughts and feelings, but 4A already went through the freaking process of casting a voice actor for the opening level scrolls, so what was the issue? I’m not saying Artyom had to speak constantly; however, there were so many instances where a few simple words would’ve gone a long way towards making his progression more organic than the hackneyed-nonsense you witness on hand(++).
And it’s a shame because there are collectable diary entries strewn throughout that highlight his keen intellect/observations regarding current events: how he interprets the Dark Ones as possibly deific; how he sees the continuing conflict between surviving humans as futile. Yet because it’s shoved into dispensable material and not explicitly-depicted, the man is fundamentally rendered a mute imbecile too ball-less to cogently express himself ala Link. To add salt to these wounds, those same journal scraps often contain vital story revelations & explanations, meaning if you missed out on any, there’s a chance you’re going to come away from a scene outright confused.
I don’t want to sound overly-negative as Last Light can get pretty compelling at times, but because its interesting philosophy was stripped from the mainline narrative, what you’re left with are a bunch of standard wartime thrills that end-up dragging the pace.
Furthermore, fans of the first game will be disappointed to learn of the diluted horror here in favor of generic Call of Duty-inspired action. Now look, as someone who didn’t find 2033 particularly frightening (and outright disliked its action beats) I actually consider Last Light’s newfound approach to be for the better: not only did it result in the diminishment of gimmicky suspenseful moments, but it also led to a number of finely-crafted missions entailing Artyom duking it out with some foe or foes. Don’t mistake me, there are a few spine-tingling jiffs here-and-there, but if you’re going in expecting a stage akin to the Library from Metro 1, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Gameplay as a whole is largely the same as its predecessor’s, albeit with two major fixes to the stealth. One, vision cones have been completely tempered, meaning enemies are now capable of actually seeing you if you’re within a light source. And two, compared to Metro 1 where killing vs knocking-out thugs were indistinguishable actions, Last Light adds a noise appraisal differentiation wherein killing has a greater chance of alerting adjacent foes (reportedly, it also contributes to the type of ending you get, though, again, more on that later).
My only real continuing complaint has to do with the human AI whenever they’re alerted: I’m not sure if this was intentional or a case of the game code breaking, but upon getting frenzied, they start to dash about a 4x4 grid as though injected with amphetamines, this heightened state permanently preventing them from returning to a pre-alert manner. Now you may be thinking, well Red, isn’t that more realistic than most conventional games wherein thugs act like a buddy of theirs wasn’t haphazardly offed ala Assassin’s Creed? Sure, but the problem is they don’t switch to a search-and-destroy mode either: it’s literally as though their pathfinding has collapsed, preventing them from roving away and you from being able to outmaneuver them amidst the fever. Compare this to Arkham Asylum, a game that came out four years prior, wherein goons swapped-up patterns the moment they realized Batman was after them, and you’ll see what I mean.
Interestingly, despite, as I said before, Last Light tossing out most of its horror atmosphere, it does semi-double down on its survivor aspects: on the one hand, masks and filters can only be scavenged from the world; weapons need to be upgraded for tougher enemies, and vendors are much more expensive. On the other hand, though, finding new guns and ammunition (at least on Survival - Hardcore mode) isn’t an arduous task, and while you could just amp up the difficulty, this has the side effect of making Artyom pathetically-vulnerable to damage, which is not something you’ll want to deal with in light of the boss fights….
Yes, that’s right; in addition to your standard waves of enemies, Artyom will occasionally come across specially-designated foes that pack a greater punch, and though the gunplay is solid, the movement system simply isn’t up-to-par to accommodate these faster beasts: Arty has a short jump, limited sprint, and no strafing of any kind, meaning you’ll probably have to repeat these encounters through no fault of your own.
Besides that, 4A’s ability to craft a HUD-less display remains a superb feat, and, best of all, I really liked the subtle sense of Artyom growing stronger as you get used to the world, its fauna, and the types of situations you’ll encounter.
Graphically, I’m not going to go too in-depth due to 4A reusing their proprietary engine (as well as every asset) from the first game. This is an absolutely gorgeous world baked in Nuclear Winter dread, the titular tunnels a conglomerate of musty contraptions as protective as they are claustrophobic. While humans have successfully staved-off extinction, the presence of viridescent water, run-down interiors, and eerie volumetric fog indicate the fight for survival is far from over.
In my review of the first game, I noted the developers didn’t do much to spruce-up the surface beyond your usual post-apocalyptic candor. Well, this time around, the outside is a LOT more versatile courtesy of them indulging in extensive flora decor, scripted weather sequences, as well as good old-fashioned grey-scale. Whereas in 2033, you were primarily stuck with urbicidal cityscapes plucked out of your standard dystopian templates, Last Light opts to show the ecological-side of things, and it truly is admirable witnessing Mother Nature try and reclaim what man took from her: elements pelt everything indiscriminately, plants concurrently look dead-and-alive, and buildings are semi-biotic specimens seemingly wrought out of the ground. Combined with the player spending less time there compared to 2033, and you can bet the virtuosity continues to be persistently fresh with each “resurfacing,” the visuals on par with the best of fictional post-nuclear wastelands.
Even the more faulty aspects tend to have some counterpunch which partially alleviates them. For example, monsters occasionally glitch out and teleport, but at least their death animations are more organic compared to the jerky switcheroos of 2033; fire sprites appear 6th generation-ish, but man does their autumnal blaze light up the subway interiors; bricks are improperly texture-streamed, yet every other veneer is excellent; the top halves of faces manifest as paralyzed, but their bottom halves stand as crisply-synchronized.
For me, the only inexcusable defects were threefold: one, hair modeling is noticeably-unfinished compared to the gorgeous textile and skin work (you’ll be glad the majority of characters wear a buzz cut/hat); two, cutscenes hold a stutter to them (at least on PC), and three (and most importantly) the amount of overly-dim areas. I understand the Metro is underground, but there were times where I literally had to turn-up the brightness just to see my way around, and while you are given a flashlight and lighter, such tools are impractical during stealth portions where the player (obviously) needs to stay hidden. Night vision goggles do technically exist, but unlike the first game where you get them as part of the story, here they’re only obtainable during a certain section, meaning if you missed out on them (like I did), you’re SOL.
The sound trifecta, unfortunately, is worse-off, beginning with the voice acting, which is truly hit-or-miss. On the one hand, all the major NPCs sound quite good, with Khan (JB Blanc), Pavel (Mark Ivanir), Anna (Anna Graves), and Moskvin’s (Dimitri Diatchenko [RIP]) VAs, in particular, giving solid performances (their acting, in turn, proving the stupidity of Craig Mazin’s theory that actors who use a foreign accent are incapable of focusing on their craft adequately). On the other hand, though, nearly all the NPCs (as well as Artyom himself) can be cringy to listen to as they clearly spout-off lines half-heartedly (children being the WORST, a problem you’ll learn is particularly grating in Last Light for reasons I’ll leave vague).
Much like Portal’s OST, the score by Alexei Omelchuk is one of those compositions that’s terrific to hear in-game, yet loses its fervor when placed outside that box. It’s built around two concepts: level ambience and in-game events, both of which are heavily-reliant on the specific layouts, actions, and scripted proceedings you experience in game. Don’t get me wrong, Omelchuk is a maestro when it comes to accentuating such atmospheres, it’s just nothing in particular stands out when all is said-and-done.
Finally, the SFX has its pros-and-cons. Regarding the former, you’ve got a variety of impact noises contingent on the item material you’re shooting at or knifing (metal, glass, stone, flesh, even bone!) in addition to this being the first game I’ve ever played to have realistic “squishy” noises for mud stepping. Enemy sonority has been kicked up a notch significantly, and I always found myself tensing whenever I’d discern the howl of a Watchman or the flapping of a Demon’s wings! Lastly, I absolutely adored any reloading din (especially the Duplet’s!).
On the negative side, though, echoes are surprisingly diminished in spite of your subterranean surroundings, and, more importantly, the game is really weird about sound cues. There are three you’ll recurringly hear, and I genuinely never understood what they were programmed for: a set of piano keys, the blaring of a horn, and something that can only be described as a high-pitched version of the Head of St. Denis from AC Unity. Presumably these are tied to your level of awareness/exposure, but there were so many times in the game where I wasn’t seen yet got hit with one of them (or vice-versa, was seen and heard nothing). If it were a one-off, it’d be fine, but because this inconstancy persists, you’re going to have to deal with it from beginning-to-end.
Unlike its predecessor, Last Light came out with a lot of post-launch content, and having (mostly) played them all, here are my thoughts. First-up is the Faction Pack, consisting of three missions adjacent to Artyom’s journey, starting with Heavy Squad, a glorified reskin of the base game’s last chapter wherein you control a Nazi soldier (yay!) defending his base against an onslaught of Soviets. It’s okay, but fails to provide any unique set pieces minus spamming the area with snipers.
Next is Kshatriya, a roguelite mode wherein you’re tasked with making periodic trips to the surface in order to find rare artifacts for this collector, doing so granting you in-game currency (military grade ammo) that you can then use to procure better weapons and/or replenish supplies. All cards on the table guys, I didn’t have the patience to see this DLC to its completion, but from what I did play, there were one too many enemies thrown your way in contrast to the limited supplies on hand, in addition to filters going up in cost each time you purchased one. On top of this, you’re forced to buy a special suit for extensive surface traversal, this design choice coming across as pointless padding rather than a legitimate endeavor. That said, Kshatriya does add the ability to loot mutants, so there are counterbalances in place should you wish to try it.
Third is Sniper Team, a stealth-based excursion starring a Russian infiltrating a compound. Despite the eponymous weapon not having any use past the initial stage, the mission, as a whole, is actually quite fun: its biggest qualm being how unnaturally short it is. See, I feel like more was originally intended as Sniper Team (per the title) features a subplot entailing your partner going on a secret assignment, only for the story to cut to credits the second you both finally meet-up at the end in Nazi disguises: what he was up to you never find out.
Tower Pack was the second expansion, its focus being an arcade-style mode involving you brawling toe-to-toe against waves of enemies. If this sounds like Survival from Modern Warfare 3, you’d be correct, and while CoD has superb shooting that fits such a schematic, Metro’s, au contraire, does not work as well. Like Kshatriya, I didn’t finish this one, but inadequate gameplay combined with a Ready Player One VR set-up may not find much legion even amongst hardcore fans.
In some ways, the penultimate Developer Pack is more of the same, incorporating an MW2-esque museum in which you can admire the vanilla game’s assets, a combat arena to sic two foes against one another, and a shooting rink for standard gunplay challenges. Luckily, though, the Developer Pack stands apart via a handwoven single-player mission called Spider Lair wherein your nameless character finds himself trapped underground amidst a plethora of mutated arachnids. Perhaps done in response to Last Light’s action-reorientation, Spider Lair adopts a survivor horror framework heavily-inspired by the Alien movies in which you’re armed with a flamethrower against overpowered bugs seeking to devour you. With a tense atmosphere and insistence on strategy over combat (supplies and ammo have to be continuously-scrounged), Spider Lair is a definite sign of 2A’s continuous ability to craft memorable thrills. My sole complaints were it was sometimes hard to discern what needed to be done in order to advance, as well as the finale being annoyingly bleak(+++).
Chronicles was the concluding release, boasting a trifecta of missions framed around Pavel, Khan, and Anna, and sadly the quality wavers amongst the three. The worst, by far, is Anna’s, hers being a swift sidequel to one of the mainline missions in Last Light. In the middle is Pavel’s, his objectives emphasizing standard stealth gameplay in a hypogean bunker. Sadly, just like with Sniper Team, it comes across as unnaturally short, namely due to the finale allowing you to purchase new weapons & ammo, only to abruptly cut-to-black as the man enters a boat.
Thankfully, Khan’s is great , if for no other reason than that it showcases why a voiced protagonist would’ve made for a far better game. You star as Uhlman, one of the side characters from 2033, who meets-up with the mystic during a sabotage mission in the subway. As you can imagine, strange visions quickly befall the guy, their presence simultaneously driving the action and providing you insight into Khan’s mysterious background. With decent visuals and some fantastic interplay between its leads, you have an example of what Artyom could’ve been had 4A granted him a voice.
To close out this review, It’s high-time we spoke on the ending. As I’ve been hinting at throughout, Last Light replicates 2033’s binary formula via providing its own dual cappers, and while it is a fundamentally-pointless excursion due to the lack of in-game effects or carryover drama, I know the prospect will entice some gamers regardless.
Unfortunately, you’ll be hardpressed to know exactly what actions generate what results as not only is it left unclear in the game, but 2A themselves (to my knowledge) have never released an official guide clarifying things. Perusing numerous online resources yielded mixed results with few consistencies: some said looting corpses and killing over knocking-out pushed you towards the “bad” one; others stated the truth derived purely from your interactions with the cityfolk; and still more claimed karma was restricted to major choices made explicit during your journey (this makes the most sense, but also angers me tremendously++++).
As such, because there’s no clear-cut route for what needs to be done, you’re better off just playing the game how you want to play it and looking up the alternate conclusion (if you so desire). Like I mentioned earlier, nothing carries over to Exodus anyway, and, regardless, the bad ending is fine as far as providing a sufficient coda.
Overall, I remain mixed on Last Light. It improves a few things, downgrades others, and ultimately stumbles as a fruitful endeavor. I respect the strong fanbase this series has cultivated; however, having beaten two entries now, I feel it may not be for me.
NOTES
-Occasionally ran into some sound editing bugs in terms of volumic-variance from NPCs, though I’m willing to attribute this to my speaker set-up.
-One cool addition is the ability to use Military Grade Bullets as super-incendiary shells, providing you supplemental magazines at the cost of money. On the difficulty I played, I never had to use this, though I can imagine the prospect being necessary on higher challenges.
-I liked the main menu being a control panel for this steampunk vehicle.
-Artyom has a surprisingly-diverse arsenal of knife takedown animations.
-A couple of sections feature unique dialogue between guardsmen whenever they suspect your presence. Yeah, most posts just devolve to them calling you a b!tch (guessing it’s a common slur in Russia), but it was still cool to hear these naturale convos nonetheless.
-Glukhovsky’s books can ironically be found throughout the world.
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SPOILERS
+In the very beginning of the first title, they directly attack Artyom’s comrades and kill them. Here, though, they’ve been rendered into peace loving hippies who were just being misunderstood by the humans they assaulted. It’s really lame, and while the connection to Artyom is kind of interesting, it doesn’t change the fact that this feels like a forced retcon.
++Explaining his purpose to the stragglers in the railways over them magically not shooting him, and stopping Colonel Miller from threatening the Dark Child are two scenes that standout in particular.
+++You emerge from the depths only to get immediately killed by some beast.
++++There are instances where this would warrant you sparing two individuals (Lestnisky and Pavel); individuals who have conducted war crimes and will not face any kind of justice. Let me repeat -- to be bestowed with positive karma, the writers want you to let two war criminals (who tried to kill you no less!), go off scot-free. Yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this enrages me.
-This game features one of the most laughably bad sex scene lead-ins I’ve ever seen in a video game since Fahrenheit. Putting this in the spoiler section because it’s obvious who it involves (hint hint, the ONLY female NPC).
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Metro: Last Light is a case of one step forward, one step back: it makes a lot of improvements to its predecessor at the expense of some of its more unique elements, and while I ultimately enjoyed things more, I can definitely see said changes being viewed as derogatory by ardent fans.
Let’s start with the good, though: anyone who’s read my thoughts on 2033 knows my biggest gripes with it were the pseudo-sandbox schemes. See, much like Mirror’s Edge, 2033 boasted long-open playpens that ended up being fraudulent window dressing -- what originally appeared to be a wide array of opportunities quickly outed themselves as a glorified round of Minesweeper wherein any wrong move off the predesignated path landed you in hot water. It was annoying, it was cumbersome, and most importantly it made no sense- I remember once veering towards an adjacent tunnel only to get swallowed up by a vine critter, and it begged the question of why the devs even bothered granting such agency if they were just going to punish players who exercised it?
Well, luckily, Last Light has done away with this format, replacing things with fully linear-levels chock-full of soft and hard blocks. There are times where you can wander off a bit, but I always found these led to some enclosed barrier ripe with hidden caches rather than a secret death spring drummed up by some sadistic coder (and yes, this applies to the surface as well).
Another issue that’s been fixed is the lack of environmental variety. In 2033, you were tasked with traveling to a number of metro stations that didn’t look dissimilar from the other in spite of their ideological variance (this homogeneity, in turn, making you wonder whether you were actually progressing forward in the story). Now, however, 2A’s artisans have really kicked things into gear, drawing sharp lines amongst the Nazi and commie-inspired divergents, as well as all other factions in-between. Whether it’s the prisoner-of-war machinery of the Reichland, crimson-hued propaganda of the Red Line, or pleasure-district vibes of Venice, your travels will verily come across as continuous in-scope.
Finally, the plot is a lot more nuanced -- whereas 2033 occupied the Man vs. Monster schtick of B-Movie fame, Last Light strives to provide greater characterization to not only its humans, but also its forebearer’s antagonists. That’s right, to recap for those who forgot, the Dark Ones who assaulted Artyom’s compound are back, a member of their race having somehow survived his missile barrage. Because of this, Artyom’s boss orders him to eradicate it once and for all, and as you may expect, things don’t quite go according to plan: there’s more to this Survivor than meets the eye, and the other Metro sectors have a vested interest in capturing it too.
Unfortunately, this is also where I have to start bringing in those aforementioned “step back” motifs as Last Light’s story carries as many flaws as it does pros. For starters, there’s no real ethical grayness to any of the situations: yes, the Stalinists wanting a more unified Metro for easier rebuilding is admirable; however, their methods quickly render them mustache-twirling banditos morally-indistinguishable from their neighboring Reichsters. In addition, given that Artyom’s primary obstacles are Nazis and Communists, Last Light, as a whole, can’t help feeling like a conventional US military game at times (I know Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky, who helped with the game’s script, is Russian, but I stand by this claim).
More importantly, though, I just did not like the complete role-reversal of the Dark Ones(+). While 4A’s expansion of their inner mythology and origins is cool, you’ll be hardpressed to find their motivations consistent with what Artyom underwent in his first title. Don’t get me wrong, the writers did a good job balancing this plotline with the discovery of the aforestated Red Line shenanigans, but because it consists of so many retcons, you’d think the game had a different scripter from 2033.
For my part, however, the biggest chink in Last Light’s story has to be its sufferance from TLOU problem of narrative impetus being at odds with world events. As you may expect, Artyom, objectively-speaking, has no time to rest-or-stop lest tragedy befalls his people, yet the writers concocted SO MANY optional conversations and situations for him to listen in on/participate in, that it makes you wonder whether there was a disconnect between the assistant and head writers: if the former were told to pen to their heart’s content whilst the latter secretly conspired to ascribe their work purely to player discretion. One of the worst moments, for example, sees Artyom find these targets he’s after, only to then be offered a lap dance by some stripper when, logically-speaking, he would’ve F%CKING FOLLOWED the bad guys he FINALLY found (and yes, I did partake in it, but tu quoque my dear).
You may retort, well Red, if it’s not-mandatory, what’s the big deal? Well, because the vast majority of eavesdroppable convos expand on the lore of the series, you’ll be missing out on a ton of stuff by avoiding them: whether it’s soldiers reflecting on a haunted situation that occurred earlier or civilians relating their immediate histories to their peers, these genuinely go a long way towards making the setting feel filled-in. The Metro series has always been universally praised for its atmosphere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if such banter played a part in that praise, especially given that the first game had moments where you’d be allowed to take a break and just explore the various hubs. Here, though, to see Artyom just dick around whilst his compadres and mission patiently wait for him to continue….I don’t know, it really affected my OCD. But, for those of you who care for a more tangible reason to be upset, know that rubbernecking apparently plays a role in the ending you get (more on that later).
Compounding these issues is the annoying fact that Artyom, once again, remains a pointlessly-silent protagonist, and I seriously don’t understand what the rationale behind this decision was. Not only is he an explicit character with his own thoughts and feelings, but 4A already went through the freaking process of casting a voice actor for the opening level scrolls, so what was the issue? I’m not saying Artyom had to speak constantly; however, there were so many instances where a few simple words would’ve gone a long way towards making his progression more organic than the hackneyed-nonsense you witness on hand(++).
And it’s a shame because there are collectable diary entries strewn throughout that highlight his keen intellect/observations regarding current events: how he interprets the Dark Ones as possibly deific; how he sees the continuing conflict between surviving humans as futile. Yet because it’s shoved into dispensable material and not explicitly-depicted, the man is fundamentally rendered a mute imbecile too ball-less to cogently express himself ala Link. To add salt to these wounds, those same journal scraps often contain vital story revelations & explanations, meaning if you missed out on any, there’s a chance you’re going to come away from a scene outright confused.
I don’t want to sound overly-negative as Last Light can get pretty compelling at times, but because its interesting philosophy was stripped from the mainline narrative, what you’re left with are a bunch of standard wartime thrills that end-up dragging the pace.
Furthermore, fans of the first game will be disappointed to learn of the diluted horror here in favor of generic Call of Duty-inspired action. Now look, as someone who didn’t find 2033 particularly frightening (and outright disliked its action beats) I actually consider Last Light’s newfound approach to be for the better: not only did it result in the diminishment of gimmicky suspenseful moments, but it also led to a number of finely-crafted missions entailing Artyom duking it out with some foe or foes. Don’t mistake me, there are a few spine-tingling jiffs here-and-there, but if you’re going in expecting a stage akin to the Library from Metro 1, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Gameplay as a whole is largely the same as its predecessor’s, albeit with two major fixes to the stealth. One, vision cones have been completely tempered, meaning enemies are now capable of actually seeing you if you’re within a light source. And two, compared to Metro 1 where killing vs knocking-out thugs were indistinguishable actions, Last Light adds a noise appraisal differentiation wherein killing has a greater chance of alerting adjacent foes (reportedly, it also contributes to the type of ending you get, though, again, more on that later).
My only real continuing complaint has to do with the human AI whenever they’re alerted: I’m not sure if this was intentional or a case of the game code breaking, but upon getting frenzied, they start to dash about a 4x4 grid as though injected with amphetamines, this heightened state permanently preventing them from returning to a pre-alert manner. Now you may be thinking, well Red, isn’t that more realistic than most conventional games wherein thugs act like a buddy of theirs wasn’t haphazardly offed ala Assassin’s Creed? Sure, but the problem is they don’t switch to a search-and-destroy mode either: it’s literally as though their pathfinding has collapsed, preventing them from roving away and you from being able to outmaneuver them amidst the fever. Compare this to Arkham Asylum, a game that came out four years prior, wherein goons swapped-up patterns the moment they realized Batman was after them, and you’ll see what I mean.
Interestingly, despite, as I said before, Last Light tossing out most of its horror atmosphere, it does semi-double down on its survivor aspects: on the one hand, masks and filters can only be scavenged from the world; weapons need to be upgraded for tougher enemies, and vendors are much more expensive. On the other hand, though, finding new guns and ammunition (at least on Survival - Hardcore mode) isn’t an arduous task, and while you could just amp up the difficulty, this has the side effect of making Artyom pathetically-vulnerable to damage, which is not something you’ll want to deal with in light of the boss fights….
Yes, that’s right; in addition to your standard waves of enemies, Artyom will occasionally come across specially-designated foes that pack a greater punch, and though the gunplay is solid, the movement system simply isn’t up-to-par to accommodate these faster beasts: Arty has a short jump, limited sprint, and no strafing of any kind, meaning you’ll probably have to repeat these encounters through no fault of your own.
Besides that, 4A’s ability to craft a HUD-less display remains a superb feat, and, best of all, I really liked the subtle sense of Artyom growing stronger as you get used to the world, its fauna, and the types of situations you’ll encounter.
Graphically, I’m not going to go too in-depth due to 4A reusing their proprietary engine (as well as every asset) from the first game. This is an absolutely gorgeous world baked in Nuclear Winter dread, the titular tunnels a conglomerate of musty contraptions as protective as they are claustrophobic. While humans have successfully staved-off extinction, the presence of viridescent water, run-down interiors, and eerie volumetric fog indicate the fight for survival is far from over.
In my review of the first game, I noted the developers didn’t do much to spruce-up the surface beyond your usual post-apocalyptic candor. Well, this time around, the outside is a LOT more versatile courtesy of them indulging in extensive flora decor, scripted weather sequences, as well as good old-fashioned grey-scale. Whereas in 2033, you were primarily stuck with urbicidal cityscapes plucked out of your standard dystopian templates, Last Light opts to show the ecological-side of things, and it truly is admirable witnessing Mother Nature try and reclaim what man took from her: elements pelt everything indiscriminately, plants concurrently look dead-and-alive, and buildings are semi-biotic specimens seemingly wrought out of the ground. Combined with the player spending less time there compared to 2033, and you can bet the virtuosity continues to be persistently fresh with each “resurfacing,” the visuals on par with the best of fictional post-nuclear wastelands.
Even the more faulty aspects tend to have some counterpunch which partially alleviates them. For example, monsters occasionally glitch out and teleport, but at least their death animations are more organic compared to the jerky switcheroos of 2033; fire sprites appear 6th generation-ish, but man does their autumnal blaze light up the subway interiors; bricks are improperly texture-streamed, yet every other veneer is excellent; the top halves of faces manifest as paralyzed, but their bottom halves stand as crisply-synchronized.
For me, the only inexcusable defects were threefold: one, hair modeling is noticeably-unfinished compared to the gorgeous textile and skin work (you’ll be glad the majority of characters wear a buzz cut/hat); two, cutscenes hold a stutter to them (at least on PC), and three (and most importantly) the amount of overly-dim areas. I understand the Metro is underground, but there were times where I literally had to turn-up the brightness just to see my way around, and while you are given a flashlight and lighter, such tools are impractical during stealth portions where the player (obviously) needs to stay hidden. Night vision goggles do technically exist, but unlike the first game where you get them as part of the story, here they’re only obtainable during a certain section, meaning if you missed out on them (like I did), you’re SOL.
The sound trifecta, unfortunately, is worse-off, beginning with the voice acting, which is truly hit-or-miss. On the one hand, all the major NPCs sound quite good, with Khan (JB Blanc), Pavel (Mark Ivanir), Anna (Anna Graves), and Moskvin’s (Dimitri Diatchenko [RIP]) VAs, in particular, giving solid performances (their acting, in turn, proving the stupidity of Craig Mazin’s theory that actors who use a foreign accent are incapable of focusing on their craft adequately). On the other hand, though, nearly all the NPCs (as well as Artyom himself) can be cringy to listen to as they clearly spout-off lines half-heartedly (children being the WORST, a problem you’ll learn is particularly grating in Last Light for reasons I’ll leave vague).
Much like Portal’s OST, the score by Alexei Omelchuk is one of those compositions that’s terrific to hear in-game, yet loses its fervor when placed outside that box. It’s built around two concepts: level ambience and in-game events, both of which are heavily-reliant on the specific layouts, actions, and scripted proceedings you experience in game. Don’t get me wrong, Omelchuk is a maestro when it comes to accentuating such atmospheres, it’s just nothing in particular stands out when all is said-and-done.
Finally, the SFX has its pros-and-cons. Regarding the former, you’ve got a variety of impact noises contingent on the item material you’re shooting at or knifing (metal, glass, stone, flesh, even bone!) in addition to this being the first game I’ve ever played to have realistic “squishy” noises for mud stepping. Enemy sonority has been kicked up a notch significantly, and I always found myself tensing whenever I’d discern the howl of a Watchman or the flapping of a Demon’s wings! Lastly, I absolutely adored any reloading din (especially the Duplet’s!).
On the negative side, though, echoes are surprisingly diminished in spite of your subterranean surroundings, and, more importantly, the game is really weird about sound cues. There are three you’ll recurringly hear, and I genuinely never understood what they were programmed for: a set of piano keys, the blaring of a horn, and something that can only be described as a high-pitched version of the Head of St. Denis from AC Unity. Presumably these are tied to your level of awareness/exposure, but there were so many times in the game where I wasn’t seen yet got hit with one of them (or vice-versa, was seen and heard nothing). If it were a one-off, it’d be fine, but because this inconstancy persists, you’re going to have to deal with it from beginning-to-end.
Unlike its predecessor, Last Light came out with a lot of post-launch content, and having (mostly) played them all, here are my thoughts. First-up is the Faction Pack, consisting of three missions adjacent to Artyom’s journey, starting with Heavy Squad, a glorified reskin of the base game’s last chapter wherein you control a Nazi soldier (yay!) defending his base against an onslaught of Soviets. It’s okay, but fails to provide any unique set pieces minus spamming the area with snipers.
Next is Kshatriya, a roguelite mode wherein you’re tasked with making periodic trips to the surface in order to find rare artifacts for this collector, doing so granting you in-game currency (military grade ammo) that you can then use to procure better weapons and/or replenish supplies. All cards on the table guys, I didn’t have the patience to see this DLC to its completion, but from what I did play, there were one too many enemies thrown your way in contrast to the limited supplies on hand, in addition to filters going up in cost each time you purchased one. On top of this, you’re forced to buy a special suit for extensive surface traversal, this design choice coming across as pointless padding rather than a legitimate endeavor. That said, Kshatriya does add the ability to loot mutants, so there are counterbalances in place should you wish to try it.
Third is Sniper Team, a stealth-based excursion starring a Russian infiltrating a compound. Despite the eponymous weapon not having any use past the initial stage, the mission, as a whole, is actually quite fun: its biggest qualm being how unnaturally short it is. See, I feel like more was originally intended as Sniper Team (per the title) features a subplot entailing your partner going on a secret assignment, only for the story to cut to credits the second you both finally meet-up at the end in Nazi disguises: what he was up to you never find out.
Tower Pack was the second expansion, its focus being an arcade-style mode involving you brawling toe-to-toe against waves of enemies. If this sounds like Survival from Modern Warfare 3, you’d be correct, and while CoD has superb shooting that fits such a schematic, Metro’s, au contraire, does not work as well. Like Kshatriya, I didn’t finish this one, but inadequate gameplay combined with a Ready Player One VR set-up may not find much legion even amongst hardcore fans.
In some ways, the penultimate Developer Pack is more of the same, incorporating an MW2-esque museum in which you can admire the vanilla game’s assets, a combat arena to sic two foes against one another, and a shooting rink for standard gunplay challenges. Luckily, though, the Developer Pack stands apart via a handwoven single-player mission called Spider Lair wherein your nameless character finds himself trapped underground amidst a plethora of mutated arachnids. Perhaps done in response to Last Light’s action-reorientation, Spider Lair adopts a survivor horror framework heavily-inspired by the Alien movies in which you’re armed with a flamethrower against overpowered bugs seeking to devour you. With a tense atmosphere and insistence on strategy over combat (supplies and ammo have to be continuously-scrounged), Spider Lair is a definite sign of 2A’s continuous ability to craft memorable thrills. My sole complaints were it was sometimes hard to discern what needed to be done in order to advance, as well as the finale being annoyingly bleak(+++).
Chronicles was the concluding release, boasting a trifecta of missions framed around Pavel, Khan, and Anna, and sadly the quality wavers amongst the three. The worst, by far, is Anna’s, hers being a swift sidequel to one of the mainline missions in Last Light. In the middle is Pavel’s, his objectives emphasizing standard stealth gameplay in a hypogean bunker. Sadly, just like with Sniper Team, it comes across as unnaturally short, namely due to the finale allowing you to purchase new weapons & ammo, only to abruptly cut-to-black as the man enters a boat.
Thankfully, Khan’s is great , if for no other reason than that it showcases why a voiced protagonist would’ve made for a far better game. You star as Uhlman, one of the side characters from 2033, who meets-up with the mystic during a sabotage mission in the subway. As you can imagine, strange visions quickly befall the guy, their presence simultaneously driving the action and providing you insight into Khan’s mysterious background. With decent visuals and some fantastic interplay between its leads, you have an example of what Artyom could’ve been had 4A granted him a voice.
To close out this review, It’s high-time we spoke on the ending. As I’ve been hinting at throughout, Last Light replicates 2033’s binary formula via providing its own dual cappers, and while it is a fundamentally-pointless excursion due to the lack of in-game effects or carryover drama, I know the prospect will entice some gamers regardless.
Unfortunately, you’ll be hardpressed to know exactly what actions generate what results as not only is it left unclear in the game, but 2A themselves (to my knowledge) have never released an official guide clarifying things. Perusing numerous online resources yielded mixed results with few consistencies: some said looting corpses and killing over knocking-out pushed you towards the “bad” one; others stated the truth derived purely from your interactions with the cityfolk; and still more claimed karma was restricted to major choices made explicit during your journey (this makes the most sense, but also angers me tremendously++++).
As such, because there’s no clear-cut route for what needs to be done, you’re better off just playing the game how you want to play it and looking up the alternate conclusion (if you so desire). Like I mentioned earlier, nothing carries over to Exodus anyway, and, regardless, the bad ending is fine as far as providing a sufficient coda.
Overall, I remain mixed on Last Light. It improves a few things, downgrades others, and ultimately stumbles as a fruitful endeavor. I respect the strong fanbase this series has cultivated; however, having beaten two entries now, I feel it may not be for me.
NOTES
-Occasionally ran into some sound editing bugs in terms of volumic-variance from NPCs, though I’m willing to attribute this to my speaker set-up.
-One cool addition is the ability to use Military Grade Bullets as super-incendiary shells, providing you supplemental magazines at the cost of money. On the difficulty I played, I never had to use this, though I can imagine the prospect being necessary on higher challenges.
-I liked the main menu being a control panel for this steampunk vehicle.
-Artyom has a surprisingly-diverse arsenal of knife takedown animations.
-A couple of sections feature unique dialogue between guardsmen whenever they suspect your presence. Yeah, most posts just devolve to them calling you a b!tch (guessing it’s a common slur in Russia), but it was still cool to hear these naturale convos nonetheless.
-Glukhovsky’s books can ironically be found throughout the world.
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SPOILERS
+In the very beginning of the first title, they directly attack Artyom’s comrades and kill them. Here, though, they’ve been rendered into peace loving hippies who were just being misunderstood by the humans they assaulted. It’s really lame, and while the connection to Artyom is kind of interesting, it doesn’t change the fact that this feels like a forced retcon.
++Explaining his purpose to the stragglers in the railways over them magically not shooting him, and stopping Colonel Miller from threatening the Dark Child are two scenes that standout in particular.
+++You emerge from the depths only to get immediately killed by some beast.
++++There are instances where this would warrant you sparing two individuals (Lestnisky and Pavel); individuals who have conducted war crimes and will not face any kind of justice. Let me repeat -- to be bestowed with positive karma, the writers want you to let two war criminals (who tried to kill you no less!), go off scot-free. Yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this enrages me.
-This game features one of the most laughably bad sex scene lead-ins I’ve ever seen in a video game since Fahrenheit. Putting this in the spoiler section because it’s obvious who it involves (hint hint, the ONLY female NPC).
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2015
Note - this review is largely based off recollections from years back over a fresh playthrough, and while some footage was rewatched on YouTube, ultimately take the rating with a grain of salt
Her Story is a game I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, largely cause of two big reasons. One, it was the first Steam game I ever completed, meaning it intrinsically holds a special place in my heart; and two, to this day, it remains one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had in gaming: a pristine example of how to combine past and present models into an invigorating forte.
See, much like Papers, Please, Her Story is built around a basic gameplay loop that slowly engrosses you the longer you stay with it. You star as an unnamed tabula rasa tasked with uncovering the reason why some random lady murdered her husband, your method for doing so being a sultry of chopped-up interviews assembled on a terminal called the Logic Database. The Logic Database operates very simply- type in keywords to spawn a set of videos that extensively used or featured said keyword. The catch? The clips are out-of-order, meaning you’re going to have to personally parse, arrange, and deduce each one’s placement in order to solve the mystery.
Her Story was built by Sam Barlow, who reportedly developed it out of frustration towards standard detective games like LA Noire and Ace Attorney. Barlow’s criticisms were that, in those titles, players were often relegated to going through the motions over conducting actual sleuthwork, an analysis I am pretty sympathetic to given the replicatory blueprint seen in such ventures as the Arkham series or Assassin’s Creed: you know, those missions where you just walk around an enclosed area trying to find that one conveniently-highlighted clue for the main character to pin together.
In Her Story, there’s no such monologuing - your protagonist is completely silent, leaving it up to you to determine what transpired + the motivations behind said transpirations. And for the majority of players (including myself), that’ll entail putting pen-to-paper in order to actively write out your thoughts, theories, and observations. By the end of my journey I recalled having around two pages worth of notes, and though that quantity is bound to vary depending on each person, it does exemplify the kind of investigatory framework Her Story is going for.
Don’t worry, it’s not all manual labor as the Logic Database does provide some tools to aid you in your sleuthing: personalized tags can be added to videos for later recovery, specific quotes can be outright searched, and, best of all, individual reels can be arranged at the bottom to construct a proxy-timeline. These additions may seem small, but when you’re sifting through hours-upon-hours of content, they go a long way towards making the experience palatable: like you’re actually assembling one of those spiderweb billboards oft seen on crime TV.
Outside of the Windows 2000-esque interface, there isn’t much to say about the graphics. Occasionally a sodium bulb will flicker in the back, revealing the feminine visage of your MC, but otherwise this is a title heavily reliant on its full-motion videos. And on that note, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Her Story would never have worked were it not for Viva Seifert’s performance as the interviewee. Going by Hannah Smith, this is a woman who’s clearly been through some trauma, yet has opted to funnel said trauma into a persona of lies: rarely can you tell if she’s stating the complete truth; however, at the same time, you can’t help but believe many aspects of her tale. Throughout the ordeal, she’ll make you laugh, piss you off, and even shed some waterworks, all while compelling you with an increasingly-deep story about human tragedy. It’s a wonderfully-complex performance, on par with the best of guest stars from police procedurals, and the fact that Seifert didn’t come from an extensive acting background speaks highly of her talent.
There’s no other extensive audio: music is relegated to a single track played on repeat when you’re not watching footage, while SFX is your standard Dotcom Bubble dins. Perhaps hearing the police officer’s questions might’ve made for a worthwhile change, but as a whole, I can’t deny the minimalist set-up does a sufficient job immersing you in Hannah’s world, an aspect you’ll want to embrace should you wish to partake in Her Story’s journey.
And yes, regardless of your thoughts on the FMV genre, I firmly endorse playing this game. You’ll no doubt hear some j#ckasses online claim it’s not a “true” video game, but for the majority of you out there who are more open-minded, I promise you’ll find the experience invigorating.
Her Story is a game I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, largely cause of two big reasons. One, it was the first Steam game I ever completed, meaning it intrinsically holds a special place in my heart; and two, to this day, it remains one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had in gaming: a pristine example of how to combine past and present models into an invigorating forte.
See, much like Papers, Please, Her Story is built around a basic gameplay loop that slowly engrosses you the longer you stay with it. You star as an unnamed tabula rasa tasked with uncovering the reason why some random lady murdered her husband, your method for doing so being a sultry of chopped-up interviews assembled on a terminal called the Logic Database. The Logic Database operates very simply- type in keywords to spawn a set of videos that extensively used or featured said keyword. The catch? The clips are out-of-order, meaning you’re going to have to personally parse, arrange, and deduce each one’s placement in order to solve the mystery.
Her Story was built by Sam Barlow, who reportedly developed it out of frustration towards standard detective games like LA Noire and Ace Attorney. Barlow’s criticisms were that, in those titles, players were often relegated to going through the motions over conducting actual sleuthwork, an analysis I am pretty sympathetic to given the replicatory blueprint seen in such ventures as the Arkham series or Assassin’s Creed: you know, those missions where you just walk around an enclosed area trying to find that one conveniently-highlighted clue for the main character to pin together.
In Her Story, there’s no such monologuing - your protagonist is completely silent, leaving it up to you to determine what transpired + the motivations behind said transpirations. And for the majority of players (including myself), that’ll entail putting pen-to-paper in order to actively write out your thoughts, theories, and observations. By the end of my journey I recalled having around two pages worth of notes, and though that quantity is bound to vary depending on each person, it does exemplify the kind of investigatory framework Her Story is going for.
Don’t worry, it’s not all manual labor as the Logic Database does provide some tools to aid you in your sleuthing: personalized tags can be added to videos for later recovery, specific quotes can be outright searched, and, best of all, individual reels can be arranged at the bottom to construct a proxy-timeline. These additions may seem small, but when you’re sifting through hours-upon-hours of content, they go a long way towards making the experience palatable: like you’re actually assembling one of those spiderweb billboards oft seen on crime TV.
Outside of the Windows 2000-esque interface, there isn’t much to say about the graphics. Occasionally a sodium bulb will flicker in the back, revealing the feminine visage of your MC, but otherwise this is a title heavily reliant on its full-motion videos. And on that note, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Her Story would never have worked were it not for Viva Seifert’s performance as the interviewee. Going by Hannah Smith, this is a woman who’s clearly been through some trauma, yet has opted to funnel said trauma into a persona of lies: rarely can you tell if she’s stating the complete truth; however, at the same time, you can’t help but believe many aspects of her tale. Throughout the ordeal, she’ll make you laugh, piss you off, and even shed some waterworks, all while compelling you with an increasingly-deep story about human tragedy. It’s a wonderfully-complex performance, on par with the best of guest stars from police procedurals, and the fact that Seifert didn’t come from an extensive acting background speaks highly of her talent.
There’s no other extensive audio: music is relegated to a single track played on repeat when you’re not watching footage, while SFX is your standard Dotcom Bubble dins. Perhaps hearing the police officer’s questions might’ve made for a worthwhile change, but as a whole, I can’t deny the minimalist set-up does a sufficient job immersing you in Hannah’s world, an aspect you’ll want to embrace should you wish to partake in Her Story’s journey.
And yes, regardless of your thoughts on the FMV genre, I firmly endorse playing this game. You’ll no doubt hear some j#ckasses online claim it’s not a “true” video game, but for the majority of you out there who are more open-minded, I promise you’ll find the experience invigorating.
2020
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Oh boy, did this game grind my teeth. Evan’s Remains is one of those titles that thinks it’s smarter than you; worst part is, it’s bloody right. We’ve all engaged with products that came from the M. Night school of hard knocks wherein the creators believed themselves so much wiser than their target audience, they felt the constant need to subvert expectations; and from my own history alone, I’ve experienced this fervor with such games as Observation, Antichamber, Witness, and Enslaved -- solid releases hampered by devs more interested in impressing people than telling a thematically-finite tale.
Evan’s Remains risked falling into that trap -- after all, its indulgence in the mystery genre inherently warranted the twists-and-turns pioneered by prior classics. Yet it’s the intricate-execution by writer/creator Matías Schmied that saves it from the pitfalls of its cogenitors (his script firmly guiding your experience whilst subtly taunting you for your ineptitude). The premise is you’re a young woman named Dysis sent to a nameless isle to find the eponymous Evan: three years before the events of the game, he disappeared without a trace, and now that he’s shown signs of life, his multimillion dollar company is very interested in bringing him back.
There’s a futuristic backdrop to the whole shebang done to justify all the crazy tech within the world, from Dysis’s pocket dimension to the island’s “City of Tomorrow” structures; however, it never feels science fictiony, and Schmied’s ability to hone in on the grounded DNA of his plot forms the backbone of why the game works so well -- like the best of social sci-fi, it’s more interested in exploring the human condition than fantasizing about implausible gizmos.
A large part of that success derives from ER not wasting time reveling in its lore: while the isle has a deep mythos, it’s almost always relegated to the back in favor of Dysis’s introspections as well as her interactions with fellow explorer Clover. This young runt has his own purposes for being there, with Schmied consistently using the guy's philosophy to provide contemporary life lessons to both the audience and various characters within the game. Some of these points are blatantly false (ex. Clover lamenting Dysis’ obsessions with money when money is definitively proven to be tied to happiness), others much more relatable (the idea of pushing self-improvement initiatives to another date, thinking there will always be time later until there is none), but what constantly fascinated me about the whole ordeal was the execution. Not once did I ever feel like Clover was coming across as smug or hifalutin in his discourses to Dysis, and that’s a testament to the quality of the prose (as well as the English localization) - usually, in fiction, these kinds of sage-like, holier-than-thou characters warrant a punch to the face or kick to the groin (see Impa from Skyward Sword; Mordin from Mass Effect), and the fact that I didn’t want to do either to Clover speaks well of his composition.
The mystery itself is effectuated quite well: Schmied and his team actually have their characters speak directly to one another when asking and answering questions, as opposed to engaging in annoyingly prolonged methods ala deliberate vagueness for the sake of deliberate vagueness. And when he does pull the rug out from under you, as frustrating as it appears at first, the disclosure of previously-lain breadcrumbs combined with naturally-divulged revelations goes a long way towards building up to a second emotionally-riveting climax. It’s a game I highly recommend going into with little foresight.
The biggest criticisms I have with the narrative are two-fold: first, there’s a severe lack of connecting tissue between the aforementioned convos of our two protagonists and the motivators behind the endgame pronouncements. Yes, the writers do have a B thread that’s technically meant to serve as a link; however, not only is it tethered poorly, but a number of other unrelated plot threads are outright abandoned(+).
Second is that a lot of macro elements ultimately don’t make a lot of sense when you put even a little thought into them, but as this involves extensive spoilers, you’ll have to learn what I mean below (AFTER beating the game)++.
Evan’s Remains won’t catch your attention with just its story, though. Despite being made by a small team, this is one of the best-looking retro games I’ve ever seen: so much so, in fact, that for five straight minutes after booting it up, I wrote extensive notes about the insane production value I was observing on-hand. And so, let me list for you all the kinds of details maitan69 put into its post-SNES aesthetic: water surfaces reflect every visage in real time, sun particles dot the oceanic top, fresh wind jostles flutterable objects in your vicinity (hair, clothes, leaves), characters actually blink, afterimages are produced following a turbo jump, hard stopping produces a plume of dirt, waterfalls bounce loose aqua motes off your hat, vistas in the horizon display pristine animation work (smog, clouds, citiscapes, celestial bodies), I’m sure I’m missing more. The point is a lot of sweat, blood, and tears went into the graphics of Evan’s Remains, and it consequently deserves all your attention.
Of course, there are some small setbacks: blinking occurs at a tempo rather than natural hum, limbs appear as uncanny stumps due to the absence of defined appendages/shoes, shadows are relegated to bland circles at the base of each model, and I was not a fan of the game’s pseudo-depiction of dynamic lighting on Dysis (when running, her back leg is wholly darkened as though burnt to a crisp). In addition, the design of the atoll’s ancient civilization is a bit mixed, the devs opting for some neo-Mayan architecture that’s pleasant to gaze at, at the expense of not being particularly unique.
One of the stranger decisions made by maitan69 is their concoction of numerous thumbnails for their character dialogue, only for a fair chunk of them to not be used much whilst others pop-up extraneously. Don’t get me wrong, the portraiture itself is well-drawn, representing an Americanized anime style that hearkens back to Super Nintendo JRPGs: I just wish more of the dormant profiles had been incorporated versus the same 5 or so templates you see ad nauseam.
Speaking of the SNES, the score for Evan’s Remains, primarily done by Schmied himself alongside Tomás Batista, is hit-or-miss. On the one hand, it’s clearly inspired by the iconic console’s library (I personally heard some David Wise and Uematsu amongst others), thus leading to a number of genuinely-enthralling tunes. On the other hand, to get to those tunes, you need to sit through some of the worst synth music I've ever had the misfortune to hear in a video game, and I don’t mean synths as in the use of synthesizers to replicate instruments, but rather the use of synthesizers to replicate electronica. That’s right, for the first couple hours of your journey, be prepared to protect your ears from some nasally-sounding beats straight out of the 8-bit era, from French Horns filtered through elephantine mutes to a keyboard that literally sounds like an old Casiotone product from the 80s.
Luckily, as things progress, Schmied dials back his nostalgic tendencies in favor of a more organically-sounding OST adorned with somberly-atmospheric tracks: tracks that successfully elevate the games’ innumerable story beats to emotional heights.
Voice acting is relegated to personalized dins played during each character’s respective dialogue, meaning SFX encompasses the remaining soundscape. In comparison to the graphics, it’s definitely been given less priority: there’s no whoosh to the effervescent breeze, no differentiation between jumps or landing zones, and while footsteps were granted some diversity, the synchronization isn’t the best. To be clear, nothing is distracting; it’s more-so that nothing stands out, which is a bit of let-down given the otherworldly beauty.
Similar to Even the Ocean, Evan’s Remains interposes puzzle-platforming sections between its narrative drops, and though short, they’re actually quite good, entailing you min-maxing various switches for the sake of circumventing an en-raised scaffold. There’s even some tongue-in-cheek drollery thrown your way wherein NPCs will question the futility of Dysis doing these tasks when she could’ve just walked/swam around them(+++).
Fundamentally, though, it’s the story which’ll be your draw to the game, a facet I absolutely praise. Yes, Schmied believes himself your intellectual-superior, but you know what, unlike so many creatives who go this route, he actually has the repertoire to show for it. And with a smooth price tag, you can’t go wrong checking his product out.
NOTES:
+++You technically have the option to skip these sections, though the game encourages their completion via Dysis remarking that it feels right to do them.
-I did appreciate Schmied including all his [Patreon?] backers in the end credits.
-Didn’t get a chance to say this in the main body, but the interplay between Dysis and Clover is worth studying as a way of showcasing how to build-up a surprisingly authentic relationship betwixt strangers.
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SPOILERS
+/++What I mean is the game’s A plot throws all these themes at you regarding valuing the true purpose of life over artificial gains like materialism, only for the overarching B plot to be Evan’s conflicts with his corporation. There’s no doubt I’m possibly misremembering things, so take this diatribe with a grain of salt, but IIRC, Evan bailed because he had dirt on the company, leaving his friend Andre to deal with the aftermath. He sent the original message out as a way of drumming up media attention so that his inevitable whistleblow return would garner as much attention as possible.
I say it loosely ties things together because this whole information warfare scheme is very much at odds with the main plot involving Evan and Andre conspiring to give Clover a happy ending. Yes, I get that Clover helped change Evan’s views on life, but that’s a relatively-underdeveloped subplot and one that doesn’t explain why we needed this extensive corpo backstory; if anything, it's been set-up purely for sequelbait. Ask yourself if Evan and Andre had to be high-level salarymen for any of the story to progress?
Worse still is the notion that Dysis was arbitrarily-selected solely because of her name. I get the game kind of gives a justification via Andre implying they wanted authentic reactions from the surrogate sister figure, but would a highly-trained actress have really been any less effective? Given the futurism on-display, you’re really telling me these two brainiacs thought it better to psychologically-traumatize a random chick instead of paying a Thespian performer to undergo the exact same ordeal? It’s without a doubt the most nonsensical part of an otherwise well-told mystery.
Oh, and to add salt to the wounds, Dysis doesn’t even get an opportunity to speak before Clover and his sisters’ graves -- in fact, it’s implied she was outright drugged so that Andre could bury the bodies in secret before the game cuts to credits.
In terms of dropped plot threads, you’ve got things like how they found the island/Clover’s village, Dysis’s arc of transitioning to a less-consumerist person, the aforementioned whistleblowing, and Andre’s reasoning for even aiding the bunch.
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Oh boy, did this game grind my teeth. Evan’s Remains is one of those titles that thinks it’s smarter than you; worst part is, it’s bloody right. We’ve all engaged with products that came from the M. Night school of hard knocks wherein the creators believed themselves so much wiser than their target audience, they felt the constant need to subvert expectations; and from my own history alone, I’ve experienced this fervor with such games as Observation, Antichamber, Witness, and Enslaved -- solid releases hampered by devs more interested in impressing people than telling a thematically-finite tale.
Evan’s Remains risked falling into that trap -- after all, its indulgence in the mystery genre inherently warranted the twists-and-turns pioneered by prior classics. Yet it’s the intricate-execution by writer/creator Matías Schmied that saves it from the pitfalls of its cogenitors (his script firmly guiding your experience whilst subtly taunting you for your ineptitude). The premise is you’re a young woman named Dysis sent to a nameless isle to find the eponymous Evan: three years before the events of the game, he disappeared without a trace, and now that he’s shown signs of life, his multimillion dollar company is very interested in bringing him back.
There’s a futuristic backdrop to the whole shebang done to justify all the crazy tech within the world, from Dysis’s pocket dimension to the island’s “City of Tomorrow” structures; however, it never feels science fictiony, and Schmied’s ability to hone in on the grounded DNA of his plot forms the backbone of why the game works so well -- like the best of social sci-fi, it’s more interested in exploring the human condition than fantasizing about implausible gizmos.
A large part of that success derives from ER not wasting time reveling in its lore: while the isle has a deep mythos, it’s almost always relegated to the back in favor of Dysis’s introspections as well as her interactions with fellow explorer Clover. This young runt has his own purposes for being there, with Schmied consistently using the guy's philosophy to provide contemporary life lessons to both the audience and various characters within the game. Some of these points are blatantly false (ex. Clover lamenting Dysis’ obsessions with money when money is definitively proven to be tied to happiness), others much more relatable (the idea of pushing self-improvement initiatives to another date, thinking there will always be time later until there is none), but what constantly fascinated me about the whole ordeal was the execution. Not once did I ever feel like Clover was coming across as smug or hifalutin in his discourses to Dysis, and that’s a testament to the quality of the prose (as well as the English localization) - usually, in fiction, these kinds of sage-like, holier-than-thou characters warrant a punch to the face or kick to the groin (see Impa from Skyward Sword; Mordin from Mass Effect), and the fact that I didn’t want to do either to Clover speaks well of his composition.
The mystery itself is effectuated quite well: Schmied and his team actually have their characters speak directly to one another when asking and answering questions, as opposed to engaging in annoyingly prolonged methods ala deliberate vagueness for the sake of deliberate vagueness. And when he does pull the rug out from under you, as frustrating as it appears at first, the disclosure of previously-lain breadcrumbs combined with naturally-divulged revelations goes a long way towards building up to a second emotionally-riveting climax. It’s a game I highly recommend going into with little foresight.
The biggest criticisms I have with the narrative are two-fold: first, there’s a severe lack of connecting tissue between the aforementioned convos of our two protagonists and the motivators behind the endgame pronouncements. Yes, the writers do have a B thread that’s technically meant to serve as a link; however, not only is it tethered poorly, but a number of other unrelated plot threads are outright abandoned(+).
Second is that a lot of macro elements ultimately don’t make a lot of sense when you put even a little thought into them, but as this involves extensive spoilers, you’ll have to learn what I mean below (AFTER beating the game)++.
Evan’s Remains won’t catch your attention with just its story, though. Despite being made by a small team, this is one of the best-looking retro games I’ve ever seen: so much so, in fact, that for five straight minutes after booting it up, I wrote extensive notes about the insane production value I was observing on-hand. And so, let me list for you all the kinds of details maitan69 put into its post-SNES aesthetic: water surfaces reflect every visage in real time, sun particles dot the oceanic top, fresh wind jostles flutterable objects in your vicinity (hair, clothes, leaves), characters actually blink, afterimages are produced following a turbo jump, hard stopping produces a plume of dirt, waterfalls bounce loose aqua motes off your hat, vistas in the horizon display pristine animation work (smog, clouds, citiscapes, celestial bodies), I’m sure I’m missing more. The point is a lot of sweat, blood, and tears went into the graphics of Evan’s Remains, and it consequently deserves all your attention.
Of course, there are some small setbacks: blinking occurs at a tempo rather than natural hum, limbs appear as uncanny stumps due to the absence of defined appendages/shoes, shadows are relegated to bland circles at the base of each model, and I was not a fan of the game’s pseudo-depiction of dynamic lighting on Dysis (when running, her back leg is wholly darkened as though burnt to a crisp). In addition, the design of the atoll’s ancient civilization is a bit mixed, the devs opting for some neo-Mayan architecture that’s pleasant to gaze at, at the expense of not being particularly unique.
One of the stranger decisions made by maitan69 is their concoction of numerous thumbnails for their character dialogue, only for a fair chunk of them to not be used much whilst others pop-up extraneously. Don’t get me wrong, the portraiture itself is well-drawn, representing an Americanized anime style that hearkens back to Super Nintendo JRPGs: I just wish more of the dormant profiles had been incorporated versus the same 5 or so templates you see ad nauseam.
Speaking of the SNES, the score for Evan’s Remains, primarily done by Schmied himself alongside Tomás Batista, is hit-or-miss. On the one hand, it’s clearly inspired by the iconic console’s library (I personally heard some David Wise and Uematsu amongst others), thus leading to a number of genuinely-enthralling tunes. On the other hand, to get to those tunes, you need to sit through some of the worst synth music I've ever had the misfortune to hear in a video game, and I don’t mean synths as in the use of synthesizers to replicate instruments, but rather the use of synthesizers to replicate electronica. That’s right, for the first couple hours of your journey, be prepared to protect your ears from some nasally-sounding beats straight out of the 8-bit era, from French Horns filtered through elephantine mutes to a keyboard that literally sounds like an old Casiotone product from the 80s.
Luckily, as things progress, Schmied dials back his nostalgic tendencies in favor of a more organically-sounding OST adorned with somberly-atmospheric tracks: tracks that successfully elevate the games’ innumerable story beats to emotional heights.
Voice acting is relegated to personalized dins played during each character’s respective dialogue, meaning SFX encompasses the remaining soundscape. In comparison to the graphics, it’s definitely been given less priority: there’s no whoosh to the effervescent breeze, no differentiation between jumps or landing zones, and while footsteps were granted some diversity, the synchronization isn’t the best. To be clear, nothing is distracting; it’s more-so that nothing stands out, which is a bit of let-down given the otherworldly beauty.
Similar to Even the Ocean, Evan’s Remains interposes puzzle-platforming sections between its narrative drops, and though short, they’re actually quite good, entailing you min-maxing various switches for the sake of circumventing an en-raised scaffold. There’s even some tongue-in-cheek drollery thrown your way wherein NPCs will question the futility of Dysis doing these tasks when she could’ve just walked/swam around them(+++).
Fundamentally, though, it’s the story which’ll be your draw to the game, a facet I absolutely praise. Yes, Schmied believes himself your intellectual-superior, but you know what, unlike so many creatives who go this route, he actually has the repertoire to show for it. And with a smooth price tag, you can’t go wrong checking his product out.
NOTES:
+++You technically have the option to skip these sections, though the game encourages their completion via Dysis remarking that it feels right to do them.
-I did appreciate Schmied including all his [Patreon?] backers in the end credits.
-Didn’t get a chance to say this in the main body, but the interplay between Dysis and Clover is worth studying as a way of showcasing how to build-up a surprisingly authentic relationship betwixt strangers.
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SPOILERS
+/++What I mean is the game’s A plot throws all these themes at you regarding valuing the true purpose of life over artificial gains like materialism, only for the overarching B plot to be Evan’s conflicts with his corporation. There’s no doubt I’m possibly misremembering things, so take this diatribe with a grain of salt, but IIRC, Evan bailed because he had dirt on the company, leaving his friend Andre to deal with the aftermath. He sent the original message out as a way of drumming up media attention so that his inevitable whistleblow return would garner as much attention as possible.
I say it loosely ties things together because this whole information warfare scheme is very much at odds with the main plot involving Evan and Andre conspiring to give Clover a happy ending. Yes, I get that Clover helped change Evan’s views on life, but that’s a relatively-underdeveloped subplot and one that doesn’t explain why we needed this extensive corpo backstory; if anything, it's been set-up purely for sequelbait. Ask yourself if Evan and Andre had to be high-level salarymen for any of the story to progress?
Worse still is the notion that Dysis was arbitrarily-selected solely because of her name. I get the game kind of gives a justification via Andre implying they wanted authentic reactions from the surrogate sister figure, but would a highly-trained actress have really been any less effective? Given the futurism on-display, you’re really telling me these two brainiacs thought it better to psychologically-traumatize a random chick instead of paying a Thespian performer to undergo the exact same ordeal? It’s without a doubt the most nonsensical part of an otherwise well-told mystery.
Oh, and to add salt to the wounds, Dysis doesn’t even get an opportunity to speak before Clover and his sisters’ graves -- in fact, it’s implied she was outright drugged so that Andre could bury the bodies in secret before the game cuts to credits.
In terms of dropped plot threads, you’ve got things like how they found the island/Clover’s village, Dysis’s arc of transitioning to a less-consumerist person, the aforementioned whistleblowing, and Andre’s reasoning for even aiding the bunch.
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2012
Escape Goat takes a timeless staple of game design and puts its own spin on it - the iconic platformer, wherein you’ve got to cobble from one predesignated point to the other whilst evading death traps and enemies galore. The twist this time around is you’re a young purple buck trapped in a gloomy castle -- 10 worlds loom before you, each holding a key to freedom. Question is, can you collect them all to escape?
Let’s get right into the gameplay as that’s all that matters when it comes to platformers. Unlike certain sidescrollers ala SMB and DKC, Escape Goat’s levels generally stay within the confines of 1-2 screens, your goal being to unlock the lone door within. Sometimes it’s already open, however, more often than not, you’re going to have to find the adjacent key(s) to break its bolt, with said keys dutifully hidden behind dynamic and static hazards alike.
Platformers, in this day and age, tend to bank on a singular element to best distinguish them from the crowd, and while Escape Goat does have one (more on that soon), what’s interesting is how much it, instead, primarily relies on good old-fashioned puzzle platforming. All you’ve got is a double jump and dash, yet the amount of creativity the devs wrung out of this method is genuinely astounding. You’ll be setting off traps, tricking enemies, and manipulating objects amidst a myriad of other endeavors throughout your 3 plus hour runtime, and I never once found myself getting bored by any of the creations on display. Yes, a lot of the building blocks are familiar, but familiarity is never a net negative when you’ve got a macro product this inherently enjoyable.
As I stated earlier, though, there is a unique element here in the form of a rat Bucky can call forth in nearly-every stage, and while his main purpose is to set off out-of-reach switches, there are times where you’ll need him as either a proxy diversion or teleport rod depending on the available power-up. Overall, the end result is enjoyable, my only qualm being a world called Engine of Insanity -- the reason I wasn’t a fan of it was because I felt its chambers, all too often, relied on preset triggers: that is, you know those platformer levels where your sole task is to do something before an invisible timer permalocks you out? Yeah, that’s what Engine of Insanity largely consists of, and I was grateful it wasn’t representative of the product as a whole.
Graphically, Escape Goat looks off-putting at first: the jagged outlines and block-based structures hinting at low-quality freeware. Yet let this be a lesson to never castigate something off immature preconceptions as this is a dam good-looking game made by a talented developer. Escape Goat’s story may be pretty basic (as most platformers’ are), however, the art design goes a long way towards imbuing it with an ominous atmosphere. You don’t know why you’re here other than to be the prisoner of someone called the Master, and the dark tones adorning his dungeon make it clear he’s probably not the most pleasant person.
I’ve seen the word gothic thrown around, but, to me, eldritch serves as a better descriptor despite the absence of gore(+) -- corrupted wizards scour the planes, buzzsaws bounce willy-nilly, reappropriated skulls operate as valves, terrain and backgrounds appear cragly and ill-kept; heck, even the violet hues/yellow eyes of your protagonist play into this atmospheric melancholy. True, it does lean a little too heavily into NES-style pixel art, but given the breeziness of most levels, you won’t ever be fixated on those aesthetics for a prolonged period anyway.
Unfortunately, SFX is more of a letdown: there are no footsteps for standard running, sawblades are muted, throwing your mouse makes a cheesy cartoon boing, and the dash literally sounds like a giant wet sponge scraping along the floor. That said, the leap is very pleasant, item pings a delight, and the grinding of machine cubes ever-so industrial.
Where the game truly shines, though, is in the music by Ian Stalker and Chainsaw as this is one of the most, if not the, catchiest OSTs I have ever heard in a platformer. I want to say it pumps those classical macabre piano tunes we’ve come to associate with dark castles into an arcade-y format, but no, relistening to it, it’s honestly just standard synth percussion arrangements mixed into an upbeat score, and I cannot understate just how good it is. You’re going to be dying a lot, and having enjoyable chords bopping in the background goes a long way towards holding-off the tinges of anger.
On that note, is this game hard? Well, Escape Goat kind of falls halfway between a Celeste and Donkey Kong Country-style challenge: it’s more difficult than your standard indie release; however, most of those aforementioned deaths derive primarily from having to manually restart a stage rather than any fatality of your own creation. That said, like most games of the genre, Escape Goat does provide four additional challenge planes for you to try your hand at post-completion, and given that I’m not a masochist, I didn’t spend too much time on them (though the opportunity is commendable).
Overall, if you’re a fan of similar titles, Escape Goat will be worth your money: it stands as a pristine example of the sheer talentry we get, and will continue to get, out of the indie community.
NOTES
+Technically when enemies die they burst into a flurry of red bubbles.
-Your neighboring ovines detail various truths about the setting, including the sorcerers being corrupted prisoners and the presence of a mysterious force that’s prevented others from escaping, making me wonder if there was originally more planned for the story that ultimately got axed (or if the developers just liked having mythology). The font for these speech bubbles was also well-chosen, successfully embodying medieval-esque (or stereotypically-medieval-esque) calligraphy.
Let’s get right into the gameplay as that’s all that matters when it comes to platformers. Unlike certain sidescrollers ala SMB and DKC, Escape Goat’s levels generally stay within the confines of 1-2 screens, your goal being to unlock the lone door within. Sometimes it’s already open, however, more often than not, you’re going to have to find the adjacent key(s) to break its bolt, with said keys dutifully hidden behind dynamic and static hazards alike.
Platformers, in this day and age, tend to bank on a singular element to best distinguish them from the crowd, and while Escape Goat does have one (more on that soon), what’s interesting is how much it, instead, primarily relies on good old-fashioned puzzle platforming. All you’ve got is a double jump and dash, yet the amount of creativity the devs wrung out of this method is genuinely astounding. You’ll be setting off traps, tricking enemies, and manipulating objects amidst a myriad of other endeavors throughout your 3 plus hour runtime, and I never once found myself getting bored by any of the creations on display. Yes, a lot of the building blocks are familiar, but familiarity is never a net negative when you’ve got a macro product this inherently enjoyable.
As I stated earlier, though, there is a unique element here in the form of a rat Bucky can call forth in nearly-every stage, and while his main purpose is to set off out-of-reach switches, there are times where you’ll need him as either a proxy diversion or teleport rod depending on the available power-up. Overall, the end result is enjoyable, my only qualm being a world called Engine of Insanity -- the reason I wasn’t a fan of it was because I felt its chambers, all too often, relied on preset triggers: that is, you know those platformer levels where your sole task is to do something before an invisible timer permalocks you out? Yeah, that’s what Engine of Insanity largely consists of, and I was grateful it wasn’t representative of the product as a whole.
Graphically, Escape Goat looks off-putting at first: the jagged outlines and block-based structures hinting at low-quality freeware. Yet let this be a lesson to never castigate something off immature preconceptions as this is a dam good-looking game made by a talented developer. Escape Goat’s story may be pretty basic (as most platformers’ are), however, the art design goes a long way towards imbuing it with an ominous atmosphere. You don’t know why you’re here other than to be the prisoner of someone called the Master, and the dark tones adorning his dungeon make it clear he’s probably not the most pleasant person.
I’ve seen the word gothic thrown around, but, to me, eldritch serves as a better descriptor despite the absence of gore(+) -- corrupted wizards scour the planes, buzzsaws bounce willy-nilly, reappropriated skulls operate as valves, terrain and backgrounds appear cragly and ill-kept; heck, even the violet hues/yellow eyes of your protagonist play into this atmospheric melancholy. True, it does lean a little too heavily into NES-style pixel art, but given the breeziness of most levels, you won’t ever be fixated on those aesthetics for a prolonged period anyway.
Unfortunately, SFX is more of a letdown: there are no footsteps for standard running, sawblades are muted, throwing your mouse makes a cheesy cartoon boing, and the dash literally sounds like a giant wet sponge scraping along the floor. That said, the leap is very pleasant, item pings a delight, and the grinding of machine cubes ever-so industrial.
Where the game truly shines, though, is in the music by Ian Stalker and Chainsaw as this is one of the most, if not the, catchiest OSTs I have ever heard in a platformer. I want to say it pumps those classical macabre piano tunes we’ve come to associate with dark castles into an arcade-y format, but no, relistening to it, it’s honestly just standard synth percussion arrangements mixed into an upbeat score, and I cannot understate just how good it is. You’re going to be dying a lot, and having enjoyable chords bopping in the background goes a long way towards holding-off the tinges of anger.
On that note, is this game hard? Well, Escape Goat kind of falls halfway between a Celeste and Donkey Kong Country-style challenge: it’s more difficult than your standard indie release; however, most of those aforementioned deaths derive primarily from having to manually restart a stage rather than any fatality of your own creation. That said, like most games of the genre, Escape Goat does provide four additional challenge planes for you to try your hand at post-completion, and given that I’m not a masochist, I didn’t spend too much time on them (though the opportunity is commendable).
Overall, if you’re a fan of similar titles, Escape Goat will be worth your money: it stands as a pristine example of the sheer talentry we get, and will continue to get, out of the indie community.
NOTES
+Technically when enemies die they burst into a flurry of red bubbles.
-Your neighboring ovines detail various truths about the setting, including the sorcerers being corrupted prisoners and the presence of a mysterious force that’s prevented others from escaping, making me wonder if there was originally more planned for the story that ultimately got axed (or if the developers just liked having mythology). The font for these speech bubbles was also well-chosen, successfully embodying medieval-esque (or stereotypically-medieval-esque) calligraphy.
This review contains spoilers
This is part 2 of a spoiler-filled comprehensive critique of The Complete Edition. For Part 1, see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368458/
For a conventional spoiler-free review of the base game, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368448/
For the first DLC, Wrath of the Druids, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368450/
For the second DLC, The Siege of Paris, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368452/
For the third DLC, Dawn of Ragnarök, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368455/
The SFX has its pros and cons. On the plus side, this is the first time I was able to distinguish individualized beats for right & left footsteps in an AC Game, and considering the sheer amount of traveling you’ll be doing, it’s quite splendid to hear (expressly for horses!). Valhalla is also the first AC title to exhibit dismemberment and decapitation, and discerning such grisly cleavings via standard combat executions never gets old. The splintering of castle doors, clinking of loose metal on garments, bending of air around Sýnin and more are all signs of polished handiwork from Ubisoft’s artisans.
Sadly, these are partly counterbalanced by deficiencies, beginning with the sheer amount of rehashed dins from the prior RPG games: shattering pots, dragging barricades, crunching snow, whistling, stock animal growls, sail unmasting, fire burning, and others I’m sure I’m missing were blatantly transposed from Origins and Odyssey. And look, I know there’s only so much differentiation you can do with certain noises, but my point is that no initiative was made to even change them-up. Then again, maybe that was for the better as some of the fresh inclusions were not that good. For example, looting massive chests and completing raids produces this hooting that literally sounds like the chorus from Who Let the Dogs Out on steroids. Opening those coffers, in general, never feels invigorating courtesy of the lid removal having a generic sliding sound that’s not even properly-synchronized. Over and above that, atmospheric conditions are significantly diminished by ear: minus scripted sequences, elements like wind, snowfall, conflagrations, and rain come off as unnaturally-muted, which does hurt their visceralness. Like most AAA releases, Valhalla doesn’t feature any aural blemishes that’ll take you out of the game, but it definitely wasn’t as fortitive as it should have been.
I wish I could say the music atones for things, yet this was another area of disappointment for me. As you guys know, Valhalla marks Jesper Kyd’s grand return to the franchise after nine years, and there’s a reason that news generated a ton of hype: the Ezio scores are regarded as a high water mark for the series and his magnum opus as a whole. But it wasn’t just Jesper’s homecoming that was noteworthy: Sarah Schachner, who weaved the wonderful Origins OST, was announced as a co-composer, meaning nothing short of a masterpiece was expected from the duo.
Unfortunately, while you’ll no doubt find many fans who enjoyed their collaboration on Valhalla, I couldn’t help but feel letdown. The issue is Dark Age settings are inherently associated with symphonic orchestras: we’ve all listened to medieval tracks tinged with flute harmonies, brass fanfare, and of course string solos, and the fact of the matter is that none of those matched up with either musician’s prior arrangements (Jesper’s specialty being synths, Schachner’s electric instruments). Now of course, these are artists with longstanding resumes, and it’s very possible they’ve written music reminiscent of the Middle Age period that I’m simply not aware of but, regardless, their work in Valhalla felt very unnatural and subsequently non-enticing, often engaging in these heavy vocal and French Horn melodies, the former of which should’ve been up Jesper’s alley given his previous experience with choral music, but that ends up faltering due to it not resembling either monophonic chants or his famous carols. Nothing builds up to anything, instead occupying background harmonies that momentarily add a new leitmotif before returning to the shadows (the worst offender of this being the Raid strain, which sounds more like the accompaniment for a group of friars going horse cart racing than the bloody scene of their land being pillaged). Viewpoint tunes are a significant drop from Odyssey; the main theme is so forgettable, I literally had to look it up prior to typing this sentence (an absolute crime for an AC game); and, worst of all, Jesper’s revised version Ezio’s Family (aided by Einar Selvik) is relegated to the freakin’ credits, which, for the record, are a menu option and not mandatory). It’s really sad that Unity incorporated it better than its own maestro.
Obviously, not everything is dispiriting- some of the ambient tracks auxiliary to exploration are top notch, the Ravensthorpe theme is fantastic, and the shanties from your crewmen are the best the franchise has seen (though I suspect these were more Selvik’s creation). But considering everybody’s past body of work, Valhalla truly is a damp squib in this department. Reportedly, gamers were experiencing sound bugs that outright suppressed the music, and it pains me to say that those folks didn’t miss out on much.
On the note (no pun intended) of shanties, I’ll briefly go over the naval component of Valhalla as, unlike Black Flag, Rogue, and Odyssey, it’s not about maritime combat; theoretically, the purpose of the longboat is to merely transport you and your horde from place-to-place. However, the fact of the matter is you have mounts that do the exact same thing (aided by them being able to swim), making this apparent reasoning all but naught.
No, the sole intention behind the longboat was clearly to allow players to relive the Viking fantasy of coastal assaults, and the reality is that’s very shallow as, once you’re done plundering the abbeys, there is no other grounds for its existence. Sure, you can call your crew against the occasional camp scattered along the seaboard, but 9 times out of 10 it’s usually quicker to just solo it yourself. And listen, I would have no problem with this being a simple option for players, but the reason I’m complaining is because all those waterways they sculpted into the map make ground-based traversal between regions unnecessarily hamperful. While it’s not extraneous by any means, having to waste time paddling across tributaries whilst tracking down an orb gets tiring -- it reminded me too much of Venice from ACII, which suffered from similar qualms. I get that these rivers are probably historically accurate, but adding more bridges would’ve gone a long way towards making the amphibious transition more palatable. And speaking of bridges, I absolutely hate this instance during sailing wherein, everytime your boat approaches an overpass, your crew has to waste time slowing down and collapsing the mast (often causing it to clip with your tailpiece)- why not avoid the whole shebang and just make the structures taller? They already took a ton of creative liberty with the art assets anyway (as AskHistorians astutely assessed). And for those few of you who insist on traveling by sea, be prepared to get stuck on shorelines frequently (especially during turns) as your crew of @ssholes berate you.
The last major gameplay element is, of course, the skill tree, and it’s pretty bog standard insofar as RPGs go. Instead of levelling-up, you’re granted two points you can invest into one of three branching nodes representing combat, stealth, and archery, and thanks to the level cap not increasing between levels the way it typically does in other RPGs, you’re actually able to gather points at a reasonable pace without having to grind. In addition, Valhalla does away with Odyssey’s convoluted damage system in favor of consolidating everything into a singular “power level” that increases by two every time you invest in a slot, making it an enjoyable framework.
Now, I understand, there are some downsides to this more simplistic approach, mainly that gear boosts and builds don’t matter, but given that AC was never a hardcore role-playing series to begin with, I honestly didn’t mind the “return to roots” format, and it’s not like you’re less-incentivized to go loot scouring (avatar customization is an aesthetics-first enterprise after all).
Look, despite ending on that mini-rant, Valhalla actually ranks in my top 5 AC games of all time. It does a lot right for the franchise in terms of pioneering a better open world format, implementing balanced RPG mechanics, and (it goes without saying) fixing the modern-day after six entries of scattershot mediocrity. Eivor is another great protagonist, and given the sheer amount of hours of time you’ll be spending with him/her, it’s reassuring to know Ubisoft succeeded on this front. Yes there are a few botherations in the gameplay and narrative design you’ll have to contend with should you decide to embark on this long journey with the Vikingr, but as long as you know what you’re getting into, you’ll ultimately enjoy the ride. After 191 hours, I was saddened to be leaving Eivor and company behind, and you don’t experience that if the endeavor wasn’t worthwhile.
Notes
+The RPG elements began with Unity’s character customization/skillpoint acquisition and was further evolved in Syndicate outright having a leveling system. And both Egypt and England were not in their “ancient” status by historical standards.
++This question was actually directly posed to Darby during the aforementioned AMA. His response verbatim: “I'll never tell!”
+++Another thing Mr. McDevitt consistently hammered home during the AMA was Valhalla’s overarching impetus being the internal conflict Eivor contends with between her savage side (spurred by Odin) and more compassionate side, so wouldn’t a hypothetical success story from Styrbjorn’s part have contrasted well against the bloodthirsty warrior represented by Sigurd? I apologize for constantly whining about this story beat, but I cannot stress enough how disheartening it was to see a perfect build-up completely wasted.
-You’ve probably heard that Valhalla doesn’t have cloth physics, and the answer is both yes and no: there are animations for when you’re moving, but absolutely none for the elements (wind, in particular).
For a conventional spoiler-free review of the base game, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368448/
For the first DLC, Wrath of the Druids, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368450/
For the second DLC, The Siege of Paris, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368452/
For the third DLC, Dawn of Ragnarök, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368455/
The SFX has its pros and cons. On the plus side, this is the first time I was able to distinguish individualized beats for right & left footsteps in an AC Game, and considering the sheer amount of traveling you’ll be doing, it’s quite splendid to hear (expressly for horses!). Valhalla is also the first AC title to exhibit dismemberment and decapitation, and discerning such grisly cleavings via standard combat executions never gets old. The splintering of castle doors, clinking of loose metal on garments, bending of air around Sýnin and more are all signs of polished handiwork from Ubisoft’s artisans.
Sadly, these are partly counterbalanced by deficiencies, beginning with the sheer amount of rehashed dins from the prior RPG games: shattering pots, dragging barricades, crunching snow, whistling, stock animal growls, sail unmasting, fire burning, and others I’m sure I’m missing were blatantly transposed from Origins and Odyssey. And look, I know there’s only so much differentiation you can do with certain noises, but my point is that no initiative was made to even change them-up. Then again, maybe that was for the better as some of the fresh inclusions were not that good. For example, looting massive chests and completing raids produces this hooting that literally sounds like the chorus from Who Let the Dogs Out on steroids. Opening those coffers, in general, never feels invigorating courtesy of the lid removal having a generic sliding sound that’s not even properly-synchronized. Over and above that, atmospheric conditions are significantly diminished by ear: minus scripted sequences, elements like wind, snowfall, conflagrations, and rain come off as unnaturally-muted, which does hurt their visceralness. Like most AAA releases, Valhalla doesn’t feature any aural blemishes that’ll take you out of the game, but it definitely wasn’t as fortitive as it should have been.
I wish I could say the music atones for things, yet this was another area of disappointment for me. As you guys know, Valhalla marks Jesper Kyd’s grand return to the franchise after nine years, and there’s a reason that news generated a ton of hype: the Ezio scores are regarded as a high water mark for the series and his magnum opus as a whole. But it wasn’t just Jesper’s homecoming that was noteworthy: Sarah Schachner, who weaved the wonderful Origins OST, was announced as a co-composer, meaning nothing short of a masterpiece was expected from the duo.
Unfortunately, while you’ll no doubt find many fans who enjoyed their collaboration on Valhalla, I couldn’t help but feel letdown. The issue is Dark Age settings are inherently associated with symphonic orchestras: we’ve all listened to medieval tracks tinged with flute harmonies, brass fanfare, and of course string solos, and the fact of the matter is that none of those matched up with either musician’s prior arrangements (Jesper’s specialty being synths, Schachner’s electric instruments). Now of course, these are artists with longstanding resumes, and it’s very possible they’ve written music reminiscent of the Middle Age period that I’m simply not aware of but, regardless, their work in Valhalla felt very unnatural and subsequently non-enticing, often engaging in these heavy vocal and French Horn melodies, the former of which should’ve been up Jesper’s alley given his previous experience with choral music, but that ends up faltering due to it not resembling either monophonic chants or his famous carols. Nothing builds up to anything, instead occupying background harmonies that momentarily add a new leitmotif before returning to the shadows (the worst offender of this being the Raid strain, which sounds more like the accompaniment for a group of friars going horse cart racing than the bloody scene of their land being pillaged). Viewpoint tunes are a significant drop from Odyssey; the main theme is so forgettable, I literally had to look it up prior to typing this sentence (an absolute crime for an AC game); and, worst of all, Jesper’s revised version Ezio’s Family (aided by Einar Selvik) is relegated to the freakin’ credits, which, for the record, are a menu option and not mandatory). It’s really sad that Unity incorporated it better than its own maestro.
Obviously, not everything is dispiriting- some of the ambient tracks auxiliary to exploration are top notch, the Ravensthorpe theme is fantastic, and the shanties from your crewmen are the best the franchise has seen (though I suspect these were more Selvik’s creation). But considering everybody’s past body of work, Valhalla truly is a damp squib in this department. Reportedly, gamers were experiencing sound bugs that outright suppressed the music, and it pains me to say that those folks didn’t miss out on much.
On the note (no pun intended) of shanties, I’ll briefly go over the naval component of Valhalla as, unlike Black Flag, Rogue, and Odyssey, it’s not about maritime combat; theoretically, the purpose of the longboat is to merely transport you and your horde from place-to-place. However, the fact of the matter is you have mounts that do the exact same thing (aided by them being able to swim), making this apparent reasoning all but naught.
No, the sole intention behind the longboat was clearly to allow players to relive the Viking fantasy of coastal assaults, and the reality is that’s very shallow as, once you’re done plundering the abbeys, there is no other grounds for its existence. Sure, you can call your crew against the occasional camp scattered along the seaboard, but 9 times out of 10 it’s usually quicker to just solo it yourself. And listen, I would have no problem with this being a simple option for players, but the reason I’m complaining is because all those waterways they sculpted into the map make ground-based traversal between regions unnecessarily hamperful. While it’s not extraneous by any means, having to waste time paddling across tributaries whilst tracking down an orb gets tiring -- it reminded me too much of Venice from ACII, which suffered from similar qualms. I get that these rivers are probably historically accurate, but adding more bridges would’ve gone a long way towards making the amphibious transition more palatable. And speaking of bridges, I absolutely hate this instance during sailing wherein, everytime your boat approaches an overpass, your crew has to waste time slowing down and collapsing the mast (often causing it to clip with your tailpiece)- why not avoid the whole shebang and just make the structures taller? They already took a ton of creative liberty with the art assets anyway (as AskHistorians astutely assessed). And for those few of you who insist on traveling by sea, be prepared to get stuck on shorelines frequently (especially during turns) as your crew of @ssholes berate you.
The last major gameplay element is, of course, the skill tree, and it’s pretty bog standard insofar as RPGs go. Instead of levelling-up, you’re granted two points you can invest into one of three branching nodes representing combat, stealth, and archery, and thanks to the level cap not increasing between levels the way it typically does in other RPGs, you’re actually able to gather points at a reasonable pace without having to grind. In addition, Valhalla does away with Odyssey’s convoluted damage system in favor of consolidating everything into a singular “power level” that increases by two every time you invest in a slot, making it an enjoyable framework.
Now, I understand, there are some downsides to this more simplistic approach, mainly that gear boosts and builds don’t matter, but given that AC was never a hardcore role-playing series to begin with, I honestly didn’t mind the “return to roots” format, and it’s not like you’re less-incentivized to go loot scouring (avatar customization is an aesthetics-first enterprise after all).
Look, despite ending on that mini-rant, Valhalla actually ranks in my top 5 AC games of all time. It does a lot right for the franchise in terms of pioneering a better open world format, implementing balanced RPG mechanics, and (it goes without saying) fixing the modern-day after six entries of scattershot mediocrity. Eivor is another great protagonist, and given the sheer amount of hours of time you’ll be spending with him/her, it’s reassuring to know Ubisoft succeeded on this front. Yes there are a few botherations in the gameplay and narrative design you’ll have to contend with should you decide to embark on this long journey with the Vikingr, but as long as you know what you’re getting into, you’ll ultimately enjoy the ride. After 191 hours, I was saddened to be leaving Eivor and company behind, and you don’t experience that if the endeavor wasn’t worthwhile.
Notes
+The RPG elements began with Unity’s character customization/skillpoint acquisition and was further evolved in Syndicate outright having a leveling system. And both Egypt and England were not in their “ancient” status by historical standards.
++This question was actually directly posed to Darby during the aforementioned AMA. His response verbatim: “I'll never tell!”
+++Another thing Mr. McDevitt consistently hammered home during the AMA was Valhalla’s overarching impetus being the internal conflict Eivor contends with between her savage side (spurred by Odin) and more compassionate side, so wouldn’t a hypothetical success story from Styrbjorn’s part have contrasted well against the bloodthirsty warrior represented by Sigurd? I apologize for constantly whining about this story beat, but I cannot stress enough how disheartening it was to see a perfect build-up completely wasted.
-You’ve probably heard that Valhalla doesn’t have cloth physics, and the answer is both yes and no: there are animations for when you’re moving, but absolutely none for the elements (wind, in particular).