This review doesn’t contain direct spoilers, but it reveals a little bit of the game’s charm that would ideally be discovered on your own. If you were already intending to play it, I would say to just go ahead with my blessing.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance contains one of my favorite sidequests in any game I’ve ever played, and it’s all the better for being completely unmarked. In fact, most people won’t even perceive it as a sidequest, since it’s simply the result of a few systems interacting in a unique way. The goal of this quest is to save your game.
In a move to make the game feel more like reality, your ability to save is limited to sleeping in a secure bed, doing a save/quit, or consuming a certain potion. Since beds can’t be found just anywhere, and bouncing your game every time you want to save is annoying, one of the first things players will want to do is procure these potions. At a merchant, they’re 100 groschen each, and when late-game armor is 1.5k groschen, you can see how unaffordable it is to constantly chug them down. The far better alternative is to buy the recipe and use it to brew as many as you want. So, you do, and open up the recipe to see that you can’t read it. You’re a blacksmith’s son in early 15th century Bohemia, of course you can’t read. So, you have to go talk to people and find out where you can learn, because no one around you knows how to read either, and if they do, they’re too busy to deal with a peasant like you. Eventually you’ll get a good tip to find someone in a certain village, so you walk all the way there, ask around for that person, pay them, and learn the basics, which still doesn’t make the text completely clear. You have to keep reading to raise your skill, on top of going back to actually find the ingredients and learn how to do the brewing.
Is doing all that necessarily fun? No, and the way saving is limited may not even be a great idea to start with, but I highly value what’s being conveyed with this sort of structure. The game is far from actual realism, but these challenges still present the reality of a character confronted with all the trials of his time. As you overcome these challenges and start to thrive, it feels like a genuine accomplishment, and having other characters react to that and respect you more is incredibly rewarding. Dealing with the clunkiness endemic to games focused on realism may outweigh the satisfaction for a lot of people, especially when the plot itself is underwhelming, but it’s the little stories like this personal quest that made me really appreciate the game. They’re the type of stories you can’t experience just by watching or reading, the kind that you’re actually a part of, and any game that’s able to build that sort of player involvement is always worth a look.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance contains one of my favorite sidequests in any game I’ve ever played, and it’s all the better for being completely unmarked. In fact, most people won’t even perceive it as a sidequest, since it’s simply the result of a few systems interacting in a unique way. The goal of this quest is to save your game.
In a move to make the game feel more like reality, your ability to save is limited to sleeping in a secure bed, doing a save/quit, or consuming a certain potion. Since beds can’t be found just anywhere, and bouncing your game every time you want to save is annoying, one of the first things players will want to do is procure these potions. At a merchant, they’re 100 groschen each, and when late-game armor is 1.5k groschen, you can see how unaffordable it is to constantly chug them down. The far better alternative is to buy the recipe and use it to brew as many as you want. So, you do, and open up the recipe to see that you can’t read it. You’re a blacksmith’s son in early 15th century Bohemia, of course you can’t read. So, you have to go talk to people and find out where you can learn, because no one around you knows how to read either, and if they do, they’re too busy to deal with a peasant like you. Eventually you’ll get a good tip to find someone in a certain village, so you walk all the way there, ask around for that person, pay them, and learn the basics, which still doesn’t make the text completely clear. You have to keep reading to raise your skill, on top of going back to actually find the ingredients and learn how to do the brewing.
Is doing all that necessarily fun? No, and the way saving is limited may not even be a great idea to start with, but I highly value what’s being conveyed with this sort of structure. The game is far from actual realism, but these challenges still present the reality of a character confronted with all the trials of his time. As you overcome these challenges and start to thrive, it feels like a genuine accomplishment, and having other characters react to that and respect you more is incredibly rewarding. Dealing with the clunkiness endemic to games focused on realism may outweigh the satisfaction for a lot of people, especially when the plot itself is underwhelming, but it’s the little stories like this personal quest that made me really appreciate the game. They’re the type of stories you can’t experience just by watching or reading, the kind that you’re actually a part of, and any game that’s able to build that sort of player involvement is always worth a look.
2003
Beyond Good & Evil is a fantastic title. I’m not even trying to say that the actual game is amazing, but that the title itself is just wonderfully evocative. It pairs beautifully with the box art of the hero standing not with a gun, but with her camera, ready to capture the horrible truths at the foundation of a futuristic city. It lets your imagination run wild with the possibilities of what you may discover, and that’s exactly what bit me when I started playing. This game is hardly like what the box promises, striking a tone that’s more comedic and fantastical than it is mysterious. You spend a lot of time with quipping sidekicks, doing basic platforming and hitting fantasy monsters with a staff instead of uncovering dark truths. The stealth and photography that seemed like the main selling point are only a small portion of the game, coming to a total of about five pictures required over the course of the entire playthrough. It’s not that this difference from what was advertised makes the game bad, but it’s essentially a different form of the “is it a good sequel” problem. If a game sells itself in a way not reflective of the actual product, can people be blamed for being disappointed in spite of the game’s merits? If I played this game in a total contextual vacuum, I would simply pass it off as a mediocre fantasy platformer with a couple interesting ideas, but the product being so different from the more interesting version that was advertised cast a pall over my enjoyment. I kept waiting and waiting for the Beyond Good & Evil I had in my head, but it just never ended up happening. With how development of the sequel has been going, I’m starting to think that will be the main thing these games have in common.
2012
This review contains spoilers
I'm including my own spoiler warning here, just to be 100% safe. This has ending spoilers.
If I were to say that this is the only Walking Dead media I’ve ever viewed, what would you anticipate that I would say in the review? One guess could be that since the setting was completely fresh, the story would be as impactful as it could possibly be. Another guess could be just the opposite, that without the depth and wordbuilding afforded by its predecessors, it wouldn’t feel nearly as dramatic as it should. No matter which way a player in my shoes ended up actually feeling, it’s impossible to get away from the influence of these personal or cultural reference factors. So, while I haven’t read The Walking Dead or seen its TV adaptation, I can’t help but feel like my experience with the game was tainted by similar reference points regardless.
If there’s one recurring motif in the post-apocalyptic genre, it’s the gulf between pragmatic and moral decision making. Choosing to save someone’s life when they might betray you, stealing food, leaving people to die so you can escape, these are the bread and butter of apocalypse dilemmas. However, making decisions that would jeopardize your survival aren’t impactful in the context of an episodic story with no narrative failure state. Having played other episodic games and adventure games in general, I knew that the story would always take priority over the minutiae of player decisions, and that a generous latitude would always be granted in favor of a smooth narrative. For example, if you decide not to steal a sweater for Clementine, the result would never be that she’ll freeze to death and end the game, but that there might be some complaints of being cold later on. However, in the case of The Walking Dead, Clem would never actually tell you to do something immoral, and this is where I feel like she’s emblematic of the game’s problems. She’s the only character Lee really has a reason to care for, she unerringly advocates for moral choices, and as previously established, there’s no benefit in going for the more pragmatic choices. What you’re left with is a human incarnation of the game’s moral compass, scolding you for choices that would be perfectly reasonable outside the context of a story where immorality doesn’t have actual benefits. This all comes to a head with the game’s finale, where Clementine is abducted by someone who claims they’ll be a better surrogate parent than you. He attempts to throw all your selfish decisions in your face, but the lack of benefits to pragmatism and the endless moral signposting will probably make this confrontation fall entirely on its face; he will have no ammo to use against you. Not only that, but in an example of the unshakable course of the narrative rearing its head, even the immoral version of Lee will still be the better choice for Clementine, thanks to the odd decision of making this villain an unhinged psychopath carrying his wife’s zombie head in a bag. Even the moment of Lee’s final judgement, the moment all your decisions have built up to, has to be stripped of consequence so that Lee can still be seen in a positive enough light for the final scene with Clementine to function.
Remember though, this damage to the tension and weight of the narrative is mostly flowing from the knowledge of genre reference points. What if I had no clue that episodic games worked the way they do, and instead functioned like choose-your-own-adventure novels where you could fail at any time? What if The Walking Dead actually did have a history of killing characters people thought were unassailable, and actually would kill a character like Clementine? For all I know, maybe it already does, and this knowledge deepened the drama for series fans. With that level of uncertainty, even if the story was still just as linear, the weight of each decision would be strong enough to support the drama of the narrative. However, it’s not like The Walking Dead is alone in wrestling with the cultural context of its release, it affects every piece of media that will ever exist. I understand that there’s a combination of influence factors that would make it engaging for people, but a failure to move beyond, or at least plan around, the predictability and limitations of its chosen format is a failure nonetheless.
If I were to say that this is the only Walking Dead media I’ve ever viewed, what would you anticipate that I would say in the review? One guess could be that since the setting was completely fresh, the story would be as impactful as it could possibly be. Another guess could be just the opposite, that without the depth and wordbuilding afforded by its predecessors, it wouldn’t feel nearly as dramatic as it should. No matter which way a player in my shoes ended up actually feeling, it’s impossible to get away from the influence of these personal or cultural reference factors. So, while I haven’t read The Walking Dead or seen its TV adaptation, I can’t help but feel like my experience with the game was tainted by similar reference points regardless.
If there’s one recurring motif in the post-apocalyptic genre, it’s the gulf between pragmatic and moral decision making. Choosing to save someone’s life when they might betray you, stealing food, leaving people to die so you can escape, these are the bread and butter of apocalypse dilemmas. However, making decisions that would jeopardize your survival aren’t impactful in the context of an episodic story with no narrative failure state. Having played other episodic games and adventure games in general, I knew that the story would always take priority over the minutiae of player decisions, and that a generous latitude would always be granted in favor of a smooth narrative. For example, if you decide not to steal a sweater for Clementine, the result would never be that she’ll freeze to death and end the game, but that there might be some complaints of being cold later on. However, in the case of The Walking Dead, Clem would never actually tell you to do something immoral, and this is where I feel like she’s emblematic of the game’s problems. She’s the only character Lee really has a reason to care for, she unerringly advocates for moral choices, and as previously established, there’s no benefit in going for the more pragmatic choices. What you’re left with is a human incarnation of the game’s moral compass, scolding you for choices that would be perfectly reasonable outside the context of a story where immorality doesn’t have actual benefits. This all comes to a head with the game’s finale, where Clementine is abducted by someone who claims they’ll be a better surrogate parent than you. He attempts to throw all your selfish decisions in your face, but the lack of benefits to pragmatism and the endless moral signposting will probably make this confrontation fall entirely on its face; he will have no ammo to use against you. Not only that, but in an example of the unshakable course of the narrative rearing its head, even the immoral version of Lee will still be the better choice for Clementine, thanks to the odd decision of making this villain an unhinged psychopath carrying his wife’s zombie head in a bag. Even the moment of Lee’s final judgement, the moment all your decisions have built up to, has to be stripped of consequence so that Lee can still be seen in a positive enough light for the final scene with Clementine to function.
Remember though, this damage to the tension and weight of the narrative is mostly flowing from the knowledge of genre reference points. What if I had no clue that episodic games worked the way they do, and instead functioned like choose-your-own-adventure novels where you could fail at any time? What if The Walking Dead actually did have a history of killing characters people thought were unassailable, and actually would kill a character like Clementine? For all I know, maybe it already does, and this knowledge deepened the drama for series fans. With that level of uncertainty, even if the story was still just as linear, the weight of each decision would be strong enough to support the drama of the narrative. However, it’s not like The Walking Dead is alone in wrestling with the cultural context of its release, it affects every piece of media that will ever exist. I understand that there’s a combination of influence factors that would make it engaging for people, but a failure to move beyond, or at least plan around, the predictability and limitations of its chosen format is a failure nonetheless.
Have you ever played a game which catered to your tastes so specifically that it was almost suspicious? Like the developers had been spying on you, and made the weird mashup game that you had always wanted? That’s what this game is for me. Of the couple game ideas I’ve dreamt about, one of them would be heavily centered around customizing mechs. I love the mecha aesthetic, and the idea of tooling up futuristic weaponry to suit your style really resonates with me. I also love the less serious side of scifi, from pulp stories like Terminator to heartfelt looks to the future like Star Trek. For a game to come out that’s those two things smashed together, I was going to love it regardless of any inelegancies. And really, inelegance is what defines Aegis Rim. The real-time, top-down, and abstracted mecha combat is so far removed from the sidescrolling visual novel it’s attached to that it feels like two unrelated games were just glued together. Not only that, but each of the two games will occasionally block each other until you’ve made a certain amount of progress, and each of the thirteen protagonist stories can even block each other in the same way. If you don’t absolutely adore both the pulpy sci-fi narrative and the mecha combat, this clunky pacing will make you lose patience before the end of its thirty-hour runtime. However, I just can’t escape that this game unapologetically caters to a niche I love. It’s so full of twists and crazy reveals that it feels like a love letter to every piece of pop sci-fi made since 1954. The characters are all lovable and relatable, and I appreciate how their mechs have unique equipment sets to reflect their personalities. I love blasting kaiju with so many rockets that the PS4 struggles to handle all the explosions, with punchy sound design putting it over the top. It also has some notable features and polishes that I really appreciate, like automatically organizing a timeline of story events by character, and having a countless amount of postgame levels for people like me who are always looking to smash stuff with mechs. While I recognize its flaws, they’re the kind I’m able to forgive for an unapologetic celebration of my personal niche. It’s a bit like a Main Battery Heavy Railgun, in that for anyone outside the direct target audience, it will probably whiff completely, but for people like me, it hits hard.
2016
Each console that comes out is usually characterized by the dominance of a particular genre. For the Super Nintendo, it was sidescrollers, for the N64, it was collectathons, and for early VR, it was escape rooms. Since VR is so demanding on hardware, and because a lot of people get sick when moving around too much, plopping players into a small space with some puzzles scattered around is the easy solution that keeps everyone happy. Not only that, but since these games only require the absolute basics of movement and item interactions, even a solo indie developer can make one as their first project. The downside is that the players themselves are able to tell when something is a roughly made first-project, and that creates a reputation of the genre being low-effort. If any game vindicates the potential of the VR escape rooms however, it’s I Expect You To Die. It’s well polished, beautifully stylized, and doesn’t feel like the result of compromise at all. The tradecraft gameplay has so many funny details and clever solutions that the lack of Bond-esque stealth shooting feels more like a conscious decision to focus on uniqueness, rather than an inability to handle a larger scope. While the selection of levels is somewhat small, they’re all completely unique and the sort of classic spy locations one would hope for. Really, my only complaint is that the final level might be a little too tricky, and I struggled with some of the control gimmicks in a way that made it finish on a slightly sour note. However, even that’s hard to complain about when it was a free expansion. The escape room format doesn’t usually do much for me, and I can understand VR longtimers being burned out on the genre, but this game won me over, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s just getting started in VR.
Never before have I played a game that spoiled itself. Most games have an attract mode that plays if you idle on the title menu, usually some footage of a random snippet of gameplay or a short intro. Meanwhile, Fatal Frame 2 has a narrated trailer that reveals nearly all of the game’s plot points, including footage from the ending. If you watch it, the mystery will be completely gone, killing a major part of what makes the game interesting. Luckily, I decided not to watch the video until I had finished the story, but the silver lining is that this video was the first time the game’s polish was anything but perfect. It’s not just that it looks and feels a generation ahead of its time, but the level of detail that went into the animation is staggering. Just for one example, there are four different animations just for walking on stairs, depending on whether you’re walking or running, and going up or down. They’re all perfectly synced to the stair geometry as well, so you don’t get any weird floor clipping or shaky inverse kinematics. Even games today don’t bother with that level of detail, and it’s emblematic of the series’ focus on immersion. The problem is though, while I love calling out excellent polish, one can not live on polish alone. It has to enhance the existing story and gameplay, but Fatal Frame 2 is so similar to the previous game that it feels more like a reimagining than a sequel. The story is a functional copy, and while the gameplay streamlining is appreciated, it just feels the same. Horror games like this aren’t meant to be traditionally fun, so being interesting is what it relies upon, but a lack of originality works directly against this objective. As much as I respect the craftsmanship that went into this game, what can I say for a horror game that was so uninnovative that I was neither scared nor interested? It leaves me in a difficult spot when it comes to a recommendation, since it’s incredibly well made, but has parentheticals like “don’t idle on the main menu” and “it won’t be as good if you played the first game” which dampen my confidence. I guess the best thing for me to do is to suggest the series as a whole, since I really do like the concept of these games. If you like starting at the beginning, Fatal Frame holds up perfectly well, but if you want to go straight in without a clue of how the series works, Crimson Butterfly will be an incredible experience.
2020
Half Life is a personally significant series for a lot of people, but VR is still very much a luxury product. So, I wanted to review the game, but not give spoilers of any kind. Please enjoy this review of an entirely unrelated game.
Shenmue is a hard game to discuss. The “it hasn’t aged well” and “it was revolutionary for its time” factors are nothing new when it comes to analysis of old games, but Shenmue’s status as the founder of an abandoned genre turns everything into a quagmire. Its ambition was to bring games into the realm of reality, with the gameplay challenges being the same as you might face in your daily life. In any other game about a martial artist avenging the death of their father, you would assume you’re about to beat up six stages of bad guys, but in Shenmue, you call the police by looking up the number in a phone book, picking up the phone, and using a rotary dial. You walk around town and ask people in town if they know anything about the killers, then go back home when it gets late so you can be in bed on time. There’s still combat, but if you want to get good at it, you have to train. Just like dialing a phone or going to bed on time, this isn’t something that just happens as part of the story: you have to decide to visit an empty lot and perform the move hundreds of times before attaining mastery.
If that all sounds incredibly boring, that’s exactly why we’re in this quagmire to begin with. If Shenmue’s goal is to simulate day-to-day life, it’s a success, but the question is whether that’s enough to make the game interesting. In turn, that’s what brings us back to the question of how well things age. The novelty of a realistic world was interesting enough to justify its record-breaking budget back in the nineties, but realistic worlds have now become so commonplace that they’re just uninteresting backdrops. This is why Shenmue’s legacy has become so tarnished: the core of its appeal relies on novelty instead of real player agency. There’s no meaningful decision making in almost any capacity. There are no story choices, and combat encounters are too simple to truly challenge your skills. It’s not that pulling open drawers and reading phone books are a small part of a larger whole, that really is the core of the game.
As horrifying as that sounds, it’s not that Shenmue is entirely without merit, boringness can actually have an appeal of its own. If creating a virtual reality was the goal, doesn’t it make sense to replicate some of the same quiet moments from real life? In doing so, the moments of excitement can stand out, like arriving in a new place or getting taken by surprise in a chance encounter. You have the time to appreciate all the details and experience the simple joy of standing on a street corner taking in the world around you. I wish I could play a version of the game that recognized how powerful little moments like that could be, and told a story that took advantage of the player’s sense of presence in the virtual space. A story could be told directly through those little details, letting the player grow in their understanding of the world and become a part of it naturally. This concept has been used to great effect in the walking-simulator genre, with titles like What Remains of Edith Finch entirely based around imparting a sense of history to players as they explore. Meanwhile, the combat could be greatly enhanced with enemies scripted to take full advantage of their surroundings, instead of standing stock-still waiting to get hit. F.E.A.R. showed how fun it is to go against enemies that would mess with objects in the same way you do, moving them out of the way and using the room’s geometry to gain the advantage. Changes like these could tie the story presentation and combat together with a theme of being mindful of the things that surround you, whatever that may entail.
As nice as those ideas may sound, it’s not fair. Shenmue came out in 1999, and it was the starting point for generations of narrative games that experimented with those ideas. F.E.A.R. came out an entire console generation later in 2005, and it’s still unique in how well enemies respond to their environment. Suggesting specific changes is futile without an understanding of the developers’ limitations, and there’s a chance that the changes could have unforeseen consequences. The point isn’t that Shenmue could have been good from a singular change, but from a general evaluation if the game was enjoyable outside the context of technical novelty. It’s inevitable that games will look worse over time as graphics technology improves, it’s inevitable that game design methodologies will continue being refined, but interactivity will always be the essential core of the medium. I hope developers don’t lose sight of this as they pioneer new ways to play games, and we can look back fondly on the titles that impressed us without having to say “well, it was good for its time”. I would hate to see the games that broke the technological boundaries of our time end up like Shenmue.
Shenmue is a hard game to discuss. The “it hasn’t aged well” and “it was revolutionary for its time” factors are nothing new when it comes to analysis of old games, but Shenmue’s status as the founder of an abandoned genre turns everything into a quagmire. Its ambition was to bring games into the realm of reality, with the gameplay challenges being the same as you might face in your daily life. In any other game about a martial artist avenging the death of their father, you would assume you’re about to beat up six stages of bad guys, but in Shenmue, you call the police by looking up the number in a phone book, picking up the phone, and using a rotary dial. You walk around town and ask people in town if they know anything about the killers, then go back home when it gets late so you can be in bed on time. There’s still combat, but if you want to get good at it, you have to train. Just like dialing a phone or going to bed on time, this isn’t something that just happens as part of the story: you have to decide to visit an empty lot and perform the move hundreds of times before attaining mastery.
If that all sounds incredibly boring, that’s exactly why we’re in this quagmire to begin with. If Shenmue’s goal is to simulate day-to-day life, it’s a success, but the question is whether that’s enough to make the game interesting. In turn, that’s what brings us back to the question of how well things age. The novelty of a realistic world was interesting enough to justify its record-breaking budget back in the nineties, but realistic worlds have now become so commonplace that they’re just uninteresting backdrops. This is why Shenmue’s legacy has become so tarnished: the core of its appeal relies on novelty instead of real player agency. There’s no meaningful decision making in almost any capacity. There are no story choices, and combat encounters are too simple to truly challenge your skills. It’s not that pulling open drawers and reading phone books are a small part of a larger whole, that really is the core of the game.
As horrifying as that sounds, it’s not that Shenmue is entirely without merit, boringness can actually have an appeal of its own. If creating a virtual reality was the goal, doesn’t it make sense to replicate some of the same quiet moments from real life? In doing so, the moments of excitement can stand out, like arriving in a new place or getting taken by surprise in a chance encounter. You have the time to appreciate all the details and experience the simple joy of standing on a street corner taking in the world around you. I wish I could play a version of the game that recognized how powerful little moments like that could be, and told a story that took advantage of the player’s sense of presence in the virtual space. A story could be told directly through those little details, letting the player grow in their understanding of the world and become a part of it naturally. This concept has been used to great effect in the walking-simulator genre, with titles like What Remains of Edith Finch entirely based around imparting a sense of history to players as they explore. Meanwhile, the combat could be greatly enhanced with enemies scripted to take full advantage of their surroundings, instead of standing stock-still waiting to get hit. F.E.A.R. showed how fun it is to go against enemies that would mess with objects in the same way you do, moving them out of the way and using the room’s geometry to gain the advantage. Changes like these could tie the story presentation and combat together with a theme of being mindful of the things that surround you, whatever that may entail.
As nice as those ideas may sound, it’s not fair. Shenmue came out in 1999, and it was the starting point for generations of narrative games that experimented with those ideas. F.E.A.R. came out an entire console generation later in 2005, and it’s still unique in how well enemies respond to their environment. Suggesting specific changes is futile without an understanding of the developers’ limitations, and there’s a chance that the changes could have unforeseen consequences. The point isn’t that Shenmue could have been good from a singular change, but from a general evaluation if the game was enjoyable outside the context of technical novelty. It’s inevitable that games will look worse over time as graphics technology improves, it’s inevitable that game design methodologies will continue being refined, but interactivity will always be the essential core of the medium. I hope developers don’t lose sight of this as they pioneer new ways to play games, and we can look back fondly on the titles that impressed us without having to say “well, it was good for its time”. I would hate to see the games that broke the technological boundaries of our time end up like Shenmue.
2002
For me, this is the game. The game that changed the way I thought about games, the one that got me writing all these reviews and critiques in the first place. The reason why is because Resident Evil may have the most cohesive design of any game I’ve ever played, with every element focused on creating a compelling survival-horror experience. So, instead of just writing a personally fulfilling, yet ultimately useless love letter, this review is going to be an attempt at laying out the chain of design details that form the core of Resident Evil’s elegance.
The best place to start is probably the movement, with the infamous tank controls being the first hurdle players will have to jump over. Most third person games center their movement on the perspective of the camera, rather than the player character itself, so players don’t have to think about their facing direction and just move where they want. However, this benefit presupposes that the camera position is dynamic rather than fixed, and Resident Evil’s fixed camera is as legendary as the controls themselves. In the tight, claustrophobic halls of the mansion, the viewpoint flips between establishing shots of each area, balancing interesting perspectives with the ability to see hazards clearly. Since the camera can snap to different angles, camera-relative controls would lead to players awkwardly changing direction as they move around each room, something many players were confronted with when the HD version added this sort of control scheme. While there is the occasional awkward camera angle, the enemy design and placement are balanced around the player’s restrictions. Zombies groan to signal their presence, stand still until you’re in view, move slowly, and hold their arms out to indicate attacking range. Not only is this danger zone explicitly defined, but every lunge has an obvious cooldown time that allows for players to step back or run past, communicating to the player that they have the option of circumnavigating zombies instead of taking them on.
It’s not just “run or kill” that is going through players’ heads when they encounter a zombie though, there’s a deceptive amount of decision making that factors into this simple scenario. Players can’t shoot and move at the same time, so as soon as you see an enemy, a mental calculation has to occur on whether it’s safe to engage. Miscalculations could mean having to swap from abundant pistol ammunition to the rarer shotgun shells, or just taking damage. Even a successful kill isn’t the end of the decision making, with zombies turning into ferocious Crimson Heads shortly after being killed, unless they are decapitated or subsequently burned up. This means players have to factor in their proximity to an item box to retrieve the kerosene and lighter, assuming they didn’t already decide to use the shotgun for a headshot. Running back to the item box could lead to more encounters, so a route has to be chosen carefully, and the amount of kerosene itself is limited. Retrieving these items also takes up inventory space, so a judgement call needs to be made on the balance of healing, fighting, and collecting new items. Deciding to just sneak past an enemy has its own perils, carrying a high risk of taking damage in exchange for maintaining your supply cache. This risk only compounds with each traversal through the room, so encountering an enemy might even lead to opening up the map to analyze alternate routes. If you do mess up and get grabbed, you have the choice to use a rare defensive item to prevent the damage, or hold onto it in case of an emergency. If you don’t use it and eat the damage, you have to decide if you even want to heal yourself afterwards, either waiting to get the most value out of a full heal, or being slightly inefficient in exchange for safety and a free item slot. With supplies and key items scattered evenly across the map, having free inventory slots is a key element of strategy in itself, pushing players to take risks with fewer items on hand for the rewards of efficient play. Sometimes the best option is to carry no healing items or no extra ammo, putting you on a nervous edge entirely free from the artificiality of narrative stakes or a subjective sense of atmosphere.
Really though, it’s not just exploring without many items to defend yourself that gives you that nervous edge, it’s everything I’ve listed. Remember, those two whole blocks of detail resulted from explaining why the movement functions the way that it does; every system is so elegantly linked to the others that nothing can be analyzed on its own. All the supply management, the decision making required for each enemy, the tight corridors and cinematic angles, every single part of the game has been tuned to build up a comprehensive horror experience. This perfect design cohesion set on a backdrop of visual polish generations ahead of its time (thanks in part to the prerendering that static camera angles allow for) gives it a level of timelessness few games ever achieve. Even twenty years later, it stands as an achievement in survival horror game design, atmosphere, and how remakes should be handled in general. This is where I feel the temptation to transition into the love letter I was avoiding earlier, so this is probably the best place to wrap up. Everyone should play this to experience what I consider to be a textbook on effective game design. It’s required reading for understanding what makes games great.
The best place to start is probably the movement, with the infamous tank controls being the first hurdle players will have to jump over. Most third person games center their movement on the perspective of the camera, rather than the player character itself, so players don’t have to think about their facing direction and just move where they want. However, this benefit presupposes that the camera position is dynamic rather than fixed, and Resident Evil’s fixed camera is as legendary as the controls themselves. In the tight, claustrophobic halls of the mansion, the viewpoint flips between establishing shots of each area, balancing interesting perspectives with the ability to see hazards clearly. Since the camera can snap to different angles, camera-relative controls would lead to players awkwardly changing direction as they move around each room, something many players were confronted with when the HD version added this sort of control scheme. While there is the occasional awkward camera angle, the enemy design and placement are balanced around the player’s restrictions. Zombies groan to signal their presence, stand still until you’re in view, move slowly, and hold their arms out to indicate attacking range. Not only is this danger zone explicitly defined, but every lunge has an obvious cooldown time that allows for players to step back or run past, communicating to the player that they have the option of circumnavigating zombies instead of taking them on.
It’s not just “run or kill” that is going through players’ heads when they encounter a zombie though, there’s a deceptive amount of decision making that factors into this simple scenario. Players can’t shoot and move at the same time, so as soon as you see an enemy, a mental calculation has to occur on whether it’s safe to engage. Miscalculations could mean having to swap from abundant pistol ammunition to the rarer shotgun shells, or just taking damage. Even a successful kill isn’t the end of the decision making, with zombies turning into ferocious Crimson Heads shortly after being killed, unless they are decapitated or subsequently burned up. This means players have to factor in their proximity to an item box to retrieve the kerosene and lighter, assuming they didn’t already decide to use the shotgun for a headshot. Running back to the item box could lead to more encounters, so a route has to be chosen carefully, and the amount of kerosene itself is limited. Retrieving these items also takes up inventory space, so a judgement call needs to be made on the balance of healing, fighting, and collecting new items. Deciding to just sneak past an enemy has its own perils, carrying a high risk of taking damage in exchange for maintaining your supply cache. This risk only compounds with each traversal through the room, so encountering an enemy might even lead to opening up the map to analyze alternate routes. If you do mess up and get grabbed, you have the choice to use a rare defensive item to prevent the damage, or hold onto it in case of an emergency. If you don’t use it and eat the damage, you have to decide if you even want to heal yourself afterwards, either waiting to get the most value out of a full heal, or being slightly inefficient in exchange for safety and a free item slot. With supplies and key items scattered evenly across the map, having free inventory slots is a key element of strategy in itself, pushing players to take risks with fewer items on hand for the rewards of efficient play. Sometimes the best option is to carry no healing items or no extra ammo, putting you on a nervous edge entirely free from the artificiality of narrative stakes or a subjective sense of atmosphere.
Really though, it’s not just exploring without many items to defend yourself that gives you that nervous edge, it’s everything I’ve listed. Remember, those two whole blocks of detail resulted from explaining why the movement functions the way that it does; every system is so elegantly linked to the others that nothing can be analyzed on its own. All the supply management, the decision making required for each enemy, the tight corridors and cinematic angles, every single part of the game has been tuned to build up a comprehensive horror experience. This perfect design cohesion set on a backdrop of visual polish generations ahead of its time (thanks in part to the prerendering that static camera angles allow for) gives it a level of timelessness few games ever achieve. Even twenty years later, it stands as an achievement in survival horror game design, atmosphere, and how remakes should be handled in general. This is where I feel the temptation to transition into the love letter I was avoiding earlier, so this is probably the best place to wrap up. Everyone should play this to experience what I consider to be a textbook on effective game design. It’s required reading for understanding what makes games great.
2017
This review contains spoilers
The purpose of a critique is to take something apart to reveal a flawed construction or a shaky foundation, so it’s with some reluctance that I take on a modern classic with only an arm full of rocks to break the windows. I may have personally found this game to be a slog, but its straightforward action doesn’t actually have any fundamental problems. It tells a story with a lot of twists and turns, it develops its characters, there really doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. So, here’s the brick I intend to throw at it:
What is Nier: Automata about? Not in terms of plot, what are its themes and core ideas?
This question probably sounds insane. How could you not pick up on its absurdist ideas? How could you not notice how existentialism is core to its central conflict? Well obviously, I did, but the ridiculousness of the question is exactly my point. Nier: Automata leaves so little to the imagination, so little for you to wonder about and consider on your own that it ultimately works against its own interests. Naming someone “2B” in an existential game is a pretty cheeky move, and naming a traitor character “A2” starts to get into eye-rolling territory. When the two protagonists who work for an inscrutable authority wear blindfolds, and the one who left the organization has her eyes open, it's just painfully on the nose. Introducing the machine-fighting heroes as androids themselves, and having them state “There’s no actual meaning behind anything machines do” within the first thirty minutes signposts the direction of the plot so clearly that it kills the intrigue. Examples like these are dotted all over the game, like how the moral absoluteness of Yorha has literally made their base viewable only in black and white, and how most secondary characters are named after philosophers who tangentially relate to the game’s themes. These details don’t draw you in and spark your imagination, but simply highlight how this was written by someone who didn’t want the time they spent reading philosophy to be wasted on people who wouldn’t pick up on messages less subtle than a chainsaw.
This sort of approach affects the gameplay just as much, with the most notable example being how the endings are paced. The first “ending” takes about ten hours to reach, but this is more of an intro than anything. The plot goes on to be resolved in the subsequent endings B through E, with the B ending being the second longest with a run time of six hours. During this time, you play as the sidekick 9S instead of 2B, and essentially replay the entire game with minimal changes other than a repetitive hacking minigame. The purpose was to force players into recognizing all the plot/character details they may have missed the first time around, grinding players’ faces into the story to ensure that they did not miss absolutely anything. Replaying games can be great, and picking up on details you missed is fun, but hiding the resolution to the story behind a boring replay is excessively self-indulgent on the behalf of the developers. This is incredibly damaging to its overall replay value, even when there wasn’t much to begin with, considering how the combat is similarly concerned with ensuring even the least attentive players see everything. The action is very simplistic, and the combination of strong upgrade chips and consumable items only incentivizes players to thoughtlessly break through the game rather than mentally engage with it.
That’s really what all these little nitpicky rocks pile up to become. I may have loved its style, its fashion, its sense of humor, and how it actually tried to do something philosophical, but a game that tries to be about philosophy, yet doesn’t let players think on their own, has an unavoidably detrimental irony. It’s a game that misses its own point, not letting people uncover meaning in a game about uncovering meaning. Even so, the character drama still works. The combat is still fun to watch, and for people who haven’t been exposed to this sort of topic, it wouldn’t feel as patronizing. Most people don’t replay games at all, so even the repetition I found to be so gratuitous could have been an eye-opening experience. Nier: Automata still stands tall in spite of my little complaints, but it’s not exactly a house I want to live in. Some asshole broke all the windows.
What is Nier: Automata about? Not in terms of plot, what are its themes and core ideas?
This question probably sounds insane. How could you not pick up on its absurdist ideas? How could you not notice how existentialism is core to its central conflict? Well obviously, I did, but the ridiculousness of the question is exactly my point. Nier: Automata leaves so little to the imagination, so little for you to wonder about and consider on your own that it ultimately works against its own interests. Naming someone “2B” in an existential game is a pretty cheeky move, and naming a traitor character “A2” starts to get into eye-rolling territory. When the two protagonists who work for an inscrutable authority wear blindfolds, and the one who left the organization has her eyes open, it's just painfully on the nose. Introducing the machine-fighting heroes as androids themselves, and having them state “There’s no actual meaning behind anything machines do” within the first thirty minutes signposts the direction of the plot so clearly that it kills the intrigue. Examples like these are dotted all over the game, like how the moral absoluteness of Yorha has literally made their base viewable only in black and white, and how most secondary characters are named after philosophers who tangentially relate to the game’s themes. These details don’t draw you in and spark your imagination, but simply highlight how this was written by someone who didn’t want the time they spent reading philosophy to be wasted on people who wouldn’t pick up on messages less subtle than a chainsaw.
This sort of approach affects the gameplay just as much, with the most notable example being how the endings are paced. The first “ending” takes about ten hours to reach, but this is more of an intro than anything. The plot goes on to be resolved in the subsequent endings B through E, with the B ending being the second longest with a run time of six hours. During this time, you play as the sidekick 9S instead of 2B, and essentially replay the entire game with minimal changes other than a repetitive hacking minigame. The purpose was to force players into recognizing all the plot/character details they may have missed the first time around, grinding players’ faces into the story to ensure that they did not miss absolutely anything. Replaying games can be great, and picking up on details you missed is fun, but hiding the resolution to the story behind a boring replay is excessively self-indulgent on the behalf of the developers. This is incredibly damaging to its overall replay value, even when there wasn’t much to begin with, considering how the combat is similarly concerned with ensuring even the least attentive players see everything. The action is very simplistic, and the combination of strong upgrade chips and consumable items only incentivizes players to thoughtlessly break through the game rather than mentally engage with it.
That’s really what all these little nitpicky rocks pile up to become. I may have loved its style, its fashion, its sense of humor, and how it actually tried to do something philosophical, but a game that tries to be about philosophy, yet doesn’t let players think on their own, has an unavoidably detrimental irony. It’s a game that misses its own point, not letting people uncover meaning in a game about uncovering meaning. Even so, the character drama still works. The combat is still fun to watch, and for people who haven’t been exposed to this sort of topic, it wouldn’t feel as patronizing. Most people don’t replay games at all, so even the repetition I found to be so gratuitous could have been an eye-opening experience. Nier: Automata still stands tall in spite of my little complaints, but it’s not exactly a house I want to live in. Some asshole broke all the windows.
2007
I’m about to spoil one of the puzzles in this game. Even though it doesn’t reveal anything about the plot, I feel obligated to give a warning regardless, but there is a reason for it.
Your task is to flip two electrical switches, but flipping them individually causes a failure, so you have to flip both at the same time. If you’re playing on an original DS, this is trivial, just use the stylus and a finger to flip them simultaneously, but on an emulator it gets pretty tricky. If you’re just using the mouse to emulate a stylus, how are you supposed to touch two places at once? Truly, this is the real puzzle, and the key is that the DS touchscreen could only handle one contact point at a time. If it detected multiple presses, it would average their locations. So, to fool the game into thinking you’re lifting both switches, you have to start swiping up on one switch, then swipe in between them where no switch actually exists, to trick the game into thinking the DS hardware is averaging the two inputs.
The reason for explaining all that is twofold. Firstly, I want people to play this game, and I almost got stuck there until I found the answer on a forum post from 2010. Secondly, it’s a perfect example of why preservation for games has to be an active effort. I played on my DS all the time, but I had forgotten about how it handled multi-touch inputs, so what if someone 30 years from now who had never even seen a DS before wants to play Hotel Dusk? If I didn’t find any answers online, I could have just charged my old DS and tried things out for myself, but what happens when those forums are shut down and DS hardware becomes scarce? Gods forbid, what if Gamefaqs shuts down and the other puzzles that rely on hardware gimmicks become completely opaque to the player of the future?
An easy solution may seem to be avoiding gimmicks altogether, but it’s impossible to determine what will constitute a gimmick from the eyes of the future. The touchscreen problem here is actually a great example, seeing as how a touchscreen is the only input method for the mobile games of today, but was a novelty back in 2007. On one side, developers should take whatever measures they can to ensure games can be enjoyed with a variety of control styles. Not only does this help future players, but it could have accessibility benefits as well. Some people don’t have the luxury of holding a controller in the common two-handed way, and some might find that holding a stylus steadily is impossible, and ideally both sets of people should get to enjoy the games they want to enjoy. On the other side, I want to shout out the people who write guides for these old games and pour their effort into emulation passion projects, preserving games even after the companies who created them are long gone. I’m passionate about games as a medium, so I’m glad people are working so tirelessly for its historical and artistic preservation. If you're one of those heroes, genuinely, thank you.
Oh, shit, I hardly talked about the game itself. Well, visual novel, noir, detective stuff. Protagonist is so impatient that he made me laugh a lot, I had a great time. Lots of frame drops, but still playable. Fun characters, good mystery, like how it answers all your questions but doesn’t necessarily resolve all of them so you leave satisfied, but with something to think about. Great rotoscoped pencil animation. Give it a go.
Your task is to flip two electrical switches, but flipping them individually causes a failure, so you have to flip both at the same time. If you’re playing on an original DS, this is trivial, just use the stylus and a finger to flip them simultaneously, but on an emulator it gets pretty tricky. If you’re just using the mouse to emulate a stylus, how are you supposed to touch two places at once? Truly, this is the real puzzle, and the key is that the DS touchscreen could only handle one contact point at a time. If it detected multiple presses, it would average their locations. So, to fool the game into thinking you’re lifting both switches, you have to start swiping up on one switch, then swipe in between them where no switch actually exists, to trick the game into thinking the DS hardware is averaging the two inputs.
The reason for explaining all that is twofold. Firstly, I want people to play this game, and I almost got stuck there until I found the answer on a forum post from 2010. Secondly, it’s a perfect example of why preservation for games has to be an active effort. I played on my DS all the time, but I had forgotten about how it handled multi-touch inputs, so what if someone 30 years from now who had never even seen a DS before wants to play Hotel Dusk? If I didn’t find any answers online, I could have just charged my old DS and tried things out for myself, but what happens when those forums are shut down and DS hardware becomes scarce? Gods forbid, what if Gamefaqs shuts down and the other puzzles that rely on hardware gimmicks become completely opaque to the player of the future?
An easy solution may seem to be avoiding gimmicks altogether, but it’s impossible to determine what will constitute a gimmick from the eyes of the future. The touchscreen problem here is actually a great example, seeing as how a touchscreen is the only input method for the mobile games of today, but was a novelty back in 2007. On one side, developers should take whatever measures they can to ensure games can be enjoyed with a variety of control styles. Not only does this help future players, but it could have accessibility benefits as well. Some people don’t have the luxury of holding a controller in the common two-handed way, and some might find that holding a stylus steadily is impossible, and ideally both sets of people should get to enjoy the games they want to enjoy. On the other side, I want to shout out the people who write guides for these old games and pour their effort into emulation passion projects, preserving games even after the companies who created them are long gone. I’m passionate about games as a medium, so I’m glad people are working so tirelessly for its historical and artistic preservation. If you're one of those heroes, genuinely, thank you.
Oh, shit, I hardly talked about the game itself. Well, visual novel, noir, detective stuff. Protagonist is so impatient that he made me laugh a lot, I had a great time. Lots of frame drops, but still playable. Fun characters, good mystery, like how it answers all your questions but doesn’t necessarily resolve all of them so you leave satisfied, but with something to think about. Great rotoscoped pencil animation. Give it a go.
2012
Imagine that for the next game in your favorite franchise, the entire premise would be reversed, like a Resident Evil game where you played as a zombie and had to hunt down a hero and exhaust their limited supplies. While a lot of the series’ staple elements would still be there, calling it a mainline entry rather than a spinoff would be an incredibly divisive move. Some people would certainly enjoy it, and you couldn’t argue that it doesn’t belong within the series, but you couldn’t be blamed for being disappointed all the same. By using the same franchise title but not fulfilling the same expectations, the developers break the unspoken trade that comes with that decision, exchanging some creative freedom for a guaranteed audience. Hitman: Absolution may not seem like this sort of flip, since Agent 47 is still pursuing targets, swapping disguises, and sneaking around, but in all other ways, the premise is a complete reversal. It’s not 47 stalking targets on his own terms anymore, he’s the one being hunted. He can’t just slip into disguises to avoid suspicion since people are actively trying to find him, so guards see through his tricks and he’s forced to do more typical sneaking. As a result, the room for free approaches and navigating maps has been severely limited, a core element of what gave the prior games their identity. This is what separates Absolution from successful franchise pivots like Resident Evil 4, its uniqueness actually declined rather than grew with the changes. Not only that, but even when compared to the games it seeks to emulate, it doesn’t have a particularly special level of refinement or polish. The game does occasionally shine, particularly in the few missions where it fully embraces the concept of a hunter being hunted, but these moments are but rare glimpses at the potential of the concept. The theoretical version of Absolution that completely embraced this style of gameplay could have been fantastic, and Hitman/2/3 have shown how hungry people are for iterative improvements, but the version we got only proves how flipping the script without adequate development just leaves everyone unsatisfied.
Visual novels are often dismissed as low-effort titles, but it’s important to recognize the role they play in the modern gaming landscape. With the classic adventure genre being functionally dead, visual novels have taken their place as the format of choice for mixing a focused narrative with thoughtful gameplay. This can come in the form of something like Danganronpa, where the gameplay is detective work directly linked to the events of the story, or something more like Professor Layton, where its library of puzzles are only loosely contextualized within the narrative. In both cases, it’s a tough balancing act to ensure each part isn’t holding back the other, with riddles that are either too scarce to appeal to puzzle lovers or too frequent to maintain a good narrative pace. Layton’s approach heavily favors the puzzle side, but it made some smart concessions with its story to ensure everyone could enjoy the game. While it does require you to complete a certain number of puzzles, players have the freedom to skip the ones they’re stuck on, and since they’re given by townsfolk who may be unavailable at certain times, missed puzzles are conveniently moved to a centralized location at the end of each chapter. On the other side, the story has a lot of intriguing little mysteries, but there’s never a time where you have to sit and listen to people chat for minutes at a time. The plot is free of unnecessary drama, acknowledging that the central thread of the game is in solving mysteries, not character conflict. Characters are introduced and given a few sentences of establishment, then they reveal a new story detail, and present a new puzzle. It’s a concise way of keeping everyone happy, especially when combined with the aforementioned puzzle streamlining. The only problem the game really has is how, in a struggle to come up with 120+ unique puzzles, it flips from logic problems to semantic riddles without warning, occasionally cheating players with a deliberately misleading premise. These are very much the minority however, and the quality speaks for itself when someone who’s close to double the target age could still enjoy the game and have to spend time working out the tougher puzzles. The best way to sum it up would be that it’s just like the animated movies it seeks to emulate, in that its earnest simplicity could charm just about anyone, even if it probably won’t end up being an all-time favorite.
2020
This review contains no spoilers, but it reveals how the game's structure works in a general sense. I wouldn’t recommend reading it unless you’ve played a little bit already.
Spiritfarer is a narrative-focused management game, and that description is deceptively informative: it’s not a story game with management, it’s a management game with a story. The short pitch is that you’re the ferrymaster to the deceased, so it’s easy to expect the game to be mostly therapeutic heart-to-hearts with your passengers, but the reality is that 95% of your time will be spent running daily errands for them on your massive houseboat. Grow some plants, catch some fish, start a meal in the oven, go spin some thread as it cooks, smelt ore until you arrive at the next island, jump off and start chopping trees for a new house… you’re constantly juggling these little jobs, and most dialog is just getting new tasks or being told how well you’re doing. While the character growth and narrative progression are wonderfully executed, these sorts of interactions are awash in a sea of repetitive, filler responses to the egregiously repetitive list of errands. The idea was that by having each spirit demand so many specific amenities, players could bond with them over time and get used to their presence on the ship before they inevitably depart. Considering how important it is to convey a sense of loss in a game about death, it’s a sound theory, but the vast amount of repetition turns your passengers from living people into blatantly artificial checklists. After the first few characters make it to the Everdoor, the suspense is gone, and it’s harder to get attached to the new spirits when you know they’re just going to put you through the same food/house/improvements/quest/Everdoor cycle as before. The people who enjoy the crafting and sailing for its own sake might not feel this is a problem, and that a repetitive, slow pace is exactly what one should expect from the genre, but the way it smothers a beautifully unique narrative hook was unavoidably disappointing to me. In spite of how amazing some of the character moments are, and of how wonderfully it's presented overall, these qualities won’t balance out the mundanity if you’re anything less than a crafting enthusiast. Luckily, that’s probably most people, and I’m probably the weird one for never having gotten sucked into Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, or something comparable. If you love any of those games, I would highly recommend Spiritfarer, and I’ll sit here in jealousy that you get to enjoy a game I was just a few hours of chores away from actually loving.
Spiritfarer is a narrative-focused management game, and that description is deceptively informative: it’s not a story game with management, it’s a management game with a story. The short pitch is that you’re the ferrymaster to the deceased, so it’s easy to expect the game to be mostly therapeutic heart-to-hearts with your passengers, but the reality is that 95% of your time will be spent running daily errands for them on your massive houseboat. Grow some plants, catch some fish, start a meal in the oven, go spin some thread as it cooks, smelt ore until you arrive at the next island, jump off and start chopping trees for a new house… you’re constantly juggling these little jobs, and most dialog is just getting new tasks or being told how well you’re doing. While the character growth and narrative progression are wonderfully executed, these sorts of interactions are awash in a sea of repetitive, filler responses to the egregiously repetitive list of errands. The idea was that by having each spirit demand so many specific amenities, players could bond with them over time and get used to their presence on the ship before they inevitably depart. Considering how important it is to convey a sense of loss in a game about death, it’s a sound theory, but the vast amount of repetition turns your passengers from living people into blatantly artificial checklists. After the first few characters make it to the Everdoor, the suspense is gone, and it’s harder to get attached to the new spirits when you know they’re just going to put you through the same food/house/improvements/quest/Everdoor cycle as before. The people who enjoy the crafting and sailing for its own sake might not feel this is a problem, and that a repetitive, slow pace is exactly what one should expect from the genre, but the way it smothers a beautifully unique narrative hook was unavoidably disappointing to me. In spite of how amazing some of the character moments are, and of how wonderfully it's presented overall, these qualities won’t balance out the mundanity if you’re anything less than a crafting enthusiast. Luckily, that’s probably most people, and I’m probably the weird one for never having gotten sucked into Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, or something comparable. If you love any of those games, I would highly recommend Spiritfarer, and I’ll sit here in jealousy that you get to enjoy a game I was just a few hours of chores away from actually loving.
1991
I hadn’t even been born when this game came out, so it’s safe to say that I missed the golden age of Sonic. Even so, I found the increasing popularity of the “Sonic was never good” sentiment to be surprising, given the series’ prominent place in video game history. The root of this attitude was easy to perceive at the start of the game though, with how weird it feels compared to other platformers. Sonic needs to accelerate for a few seconds before he reaches a comfortable running speed, the maps feel oddly empty, and difficult platforming challenges are unusually scarce for a game that calls itself a platformer. These benchmarks can make it seem like fancy technology was the only reason for its success, but you have to realize that it wasn’t just the tech that was different back in 1991, it was perspective. Nowadays, we tend to think of Mario’s four-step process of introducing and combining mechanics on a per-level basis as the gold standard, but this wasn’t always the case. Sonic instead focuses on pacing that unfolds across an entire group of levels, which isn’t any less valid of an approach. The first stage may be focused on a single mechanic, so the second could ease off the player and introduce unrelated traversal gimmicks, for the third to then combine the two. It makes sense why individual stages would feel barren or erratically paced in comparison to Mario levels, when they aren’t intended to be analyzed in the same sort of contextual vacuum. Sitting down to play Sonic in a long session and paying attention to the ways stages flow into each other, build on each other’s ideas, and cathartically reward players with bursts of speed after sections of careful play, reveals how intelligently designed Sonic actually is. It may feel a little weird at the start, but weird can be a good thing, and if any series needs you to trust in that maxim, god knows it’s Sonic.
Every time a difficult game is released, the argument resurfaces whether game reviewers need to demonstrate a baseline level of competence before their article is considered “valid”. The argument for this is that competency in a game demonstrates understanding, and understanding is a requirement for conveying knowledge. However, I don’t think things are so simple. Games can catch someone’s eye for a variety of reasons, so it’s important to include the different experiences for someone with preexisting competency and someone without it. This gap between the expert-level breakdown and the novice experience might be widest for action games made by Platinum, The Wonderful 101 being the prime example.
Even before players get their hands on the basics of combat, they’ll notice that they’re being rated after every encounter based on the completion time, combo level, and damage taken. This is a useful feature for expert players, who want to get the highest rank they can on the mission overall. However, for new players, seeing "consolation prize" or bronze ranks after every fight is incredibly demoralizing, and they have no way of knowing that these evaluations are even biased against them. Like most Platinum games, important moves are relegated to the shop, but players have no way of knowing how useful these skills will actually be unless they’ve played comparable action games, or have encountered enemies that are already balanced around their use. Even moreso, the utility of some of these moves goes almost entirely unexplained, with the most famous example being the game’s block ability, Unite Guts. The description is as follows: “A Unite Morph materialized from a soul. Time with an incoming attack to bounce the attack back”. The way this is phrased suggests that it functions as a parry, but this is untrue. Not only are some attacks unblockable, but the timing doesn’t matter, and what differentiates blockable attacks from unblockable ones is that they’re “blunt” instead of “stabbing”. Nowhere is this explained, and the information passes mostly through word-of-mouth by the experts, who insist that this didn’t need in-game explanation because the blob of jello the team forms would offer no resistance to a blade. While this defense immediately falls apart when you consider how much resistance jello affords to a “blunt” hammer, the question to be asked is why this isn’t just explained in the game. Depth is created by complex decision making, not coyness about the functionality of core mechanics, and this is a problem that extends to many of the game's core systems and skills. Forcing players to take hits they don’t understand, and be criticized with poor rankings, just creates a hostile mood which isn’t conducive to the excitement these games live or die on.
The whole “turning into jello” thing may have thrown some people for a loop, so to back up, The Wonderful 101’s combat doesn’t have you control one character, but the titular hundred-and-one at the same time. You form a crowd of little heroes, who unite up into different weapons with their own specialties. This is accomplished by drawing shapes with the right analog stick, like a circle for a fist, a line for a blade, and so on. It’s a system that works pretty well, but the fact that you may have anticipated that clause reveals the problem. When it comes to recognizing drawn shapes, the question isn’t “if” the system will ever mess up, it’s “how often”. And truly, it works 95% of the time, but that means that one in twenty attempted morphs will fail. Guns are mistaken as whips, gliders as fists, bombs as hammers, and while novel mechanics do deserve some leeway, one must remember that this is an action game that will gleefully make fun of you for any mistake with a low rank. Not only that, but after an unintended morph, your morphing energy depletes anyway, leaving you in a worse state than you were before. However, this is another criticism that expert players will dismantle by saying they’ve played enough to where it works 99% of the time, and that drawing skills are part of the game. They can also point out how having to draw quickly and use energy efficiently is a valid mechanic, to which I at least partly agree. The reason I don’t like it is because of how nebulous of a skill this is, only developing as a result of errors new players had no way of anticipating. It’s a fun system when you already understand it, but again, making mechanics hard for new players to even experiment with is not equivalent to depth, and The Wonderful 101’s combat will behave more as a finicky barrier to entry rather than the exciting possibility space it should be.
This is the point where fans would point out that the director himself considers the first playthrough to function as a tutorial, and that he anticipated people would initially find the controls finicky and the skills opaque, but this is exactly my point. Is The Wonderful 101 actually that much more complex than other action games? Is the drawing system really as reliable as it could be? Would it be impossible to explain the basics of its mechanics on the first playthrough? The answer to all questions is “no”, so I have to question why this excuse is considered so bulletproof among action fans. I myself agree that one of the major joys of action games is in the discovery, but there’s a difference between giving players a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals while letting them discover the possibilities on their own, and simply failing to explain the basics and criticizing players for not knowing them already.
To wrap up this review, which is possibly the rantiest I’ve ever posted, I would like to note a couple things. Firstly, that I don’t intend to give the impression that this game is just terrible. There’s a reason why it has such a cult following, the people who really understand it can have a great time. It’s also not that anyone who isn’t an action game fan shouldn’t play this, but they will probably feel like they’re being repeatedly slapped in the face for trying to do so. It's to the point where even games analysts who praise the game's perfection and the importance of discovery will, somewhat hypocritically, post hour-long tutorials on how new players could even begin to enjoy themselves. As for myself, I had barely played any action games before my first try at The Wonderful 101, and quit about 70% of the way through for exactly this reason. By the time I went back and completed the HD version on PC, I had beaten the following action games:
Devil May Cry 1/2/3/4/5, Bayonetta 1/2, God Hand, Metal Gear Rising, P.N. 03, Nier Automata, Killer is Dead, Nioh, Viewtiful Joe, Vanquish, and Sekiro
… and even then, with more action game experience than 95% of players would ever have, The Wonderful 101 still felt insultingly obtuse at times. We, as the people who enjoy action games, shouldn’t just accept this sort of mediocrity because it’s the kind that resonates with us. Saying that the first sixteen-hour-long playthrough is supposed to be a frustrating tutorial, and that people should just git gud, kills interest in the genre and hurts everyone. And if The Wonderful 101 is trying to teach us anything, it’s that we’re stronger when we work together.
Even before players get their hands on the basics of combat, they’ll notice that they’re being rated after every encounter based on the completion time, combo level, and damage taken. This is a useful feature for expert players, who want to get the highest rank they can on the mission overall. However, for new players, seeing "consolation prize" or bronze ranks after every fight is incredibly demoralizing, and they have no way of knowing that these evaluations are even biased against them. Like most Platinum games, important moves are relegated to the shop, but players have no way of knowing how useful these skills will actually be unless they’ve played comparable action games, or have encountered enemies that are already balanced around their use. Even moreso, the utility of some of these moves goes almost entirely unexplained, with the most famous example being the game’s block ability, Unite Guts. The description is as follows: “A Unite Morph materialized from a soul. Time with an incoming attack to bounce the attack back”. The way this is phrased suggests that it functions as a parry, but this is untrue. Not only are some attacks unblockable, but the timing doesn’t matter, and what differentiates blockable attacks from unblockable ones is that they’re “blunt” instead of “stabbing”. Nowhere is this explained, and the information passes mostly through word-of-mouth by the experts, who insist that this didn’t need in-game explanation because the blob of jello the team forms would offer no resistance to a blade. While this defense immediately falls apart when you consider how much resistance jello affords to a “blunt” hammer, the question to be asked is why this isn’t just explained in the game. Depth is created by complex decision making, not coyness about the functionality of core mechanics, and this is a problem that extends to many of the game's core systems and skills. Forcing players to take hits they don’t understand, and be criticized with poor rankings, just creates a hostile mood which isn’t conducive to the excitement these games live or die on.
The whole “turning into jello” thing may have thrown some people for a loop, so to back up, The Wonderful 101’s combat doesn’t have you control one character, but the titular hundred-and-one at the same time. You form a crowd of little heroes, who unite up into different weapons with their own specialties. This is accomplished by drawing shapes with the right analog stick, like a circle for a fist, a line for a blade, and so on. It’s a system that works pretty well, but the fact that you may have anticipated that clause reveals the problem. When it comes to recognizing drawn shapes, the question isn’t “if” the system will ever mess up, it’s “how often”. And truly, it works 95% of the time, but that means that one in twenty attempted morphs will fail. Guns are mistaken as whips, gliders as fists, bombs as hammers, and while novel mechanics do deserve some leeway, one must remember that this is an action game that will gleefully make fun of you for any mistake with a low rank. Not only that, but after an unintended morph, your morphing energy depletes anyway, leaving you in a worse state than you were before. However, this is another criticism that expert players will dismantle by saying they’ve played enough to where it works 99% of the time, and that drawing skills are part of the game. They can also point out how having to draw quickly and use energy efficiently is a valid mechanic, to which I at least partly agree. The reason I don’t like it is because of how nebulous of a skill this is, only developing as a result of errors new players had no way of anticipating. It’s a fun system when you already understand it, but again, making mechanics hard for new players to even experiment with is not equivalent to depth, and The Wonderful 101’s combat will behave more as a finicky barrier to entry rather than the exciting possibility space it should be.
This is the point where fans would point out that the director himself considers the first playthrough to function as a tutorial, and that he anticipated people would initially find the controls finicky and the skills opaque, but this is exactly my point. Is The Wonderful 101 actually that much more complex than other action games? Is the drawing system really as reliable as it could be? Would it be impossible to explain the basics of its mechanics on the first playthrough? The answer to all questions is “no”, so I have to question why this excuse is considered so bulletproof among action fans. I myself agree that one of the major joys of action games is in the discovery, but there’s a difference between giving players a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals while letting them discover the possibilities on their own, and simply failing to explain the basics and criticizing players for not knowing them already.
To wrap up this review, which is possibly the rantiest I’ve ever posted, I would like to note a couple things. Firstly, that I don’t intend to give the impression that this game is just terrible. There’s a reason why it has such a cult following, the people who really understand it can have a great time. It’s also not that anyone who isn’t an action game fan shouldn’t play this, but they will probably feel like they’re being repeatedly slapped in the face for trying to do so. It's to the point where even games analysts who praise the game's perfection and the importance of discovery will, somewhat hypocritically, post hour-long tutorials on how new players could even begin to enjoy themselves. As for myself, I had barely played any action games before my first try at The Wonderful 101, and quit about 70% of the way through for exactly this reason. By the time I went back and completed the HD version on PC, I had beaten the following action games:
Devil May Cry 1/2/3/4/5, Bayonetta 1/2, God Hand, Metal Gear Rising, P.N. 03, Nier Automata, Killer is Dead, Nioh, Viewtiful Joe, Vanquish, and Sekiro
… and even then, with more action game experience than 95% of players would ever have, The Wonderful 101 still felt insultingly obtuse at times. We, as the people who enjoy action games, shouldn’t just accept this sort of mediocrity because it’s the kind that resonates with us. Saying that the first sixteen-hour-long playthrough is supposed to be a frustrating tutorial, and that people should just git gud, kills interest in the genre and hurts everyone. And if The Wonderful 101 is trying to teach us anything, it’s that we’re stronger when we work together.