Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

 Short Take  No Responses »
May 062013
 

Status: Complete

Most Intriguing Idea: I Love the 80s: the FPS!

Best Design Decision: High walls around outposts

Worst Design Decision: As usual, zombies

Summary:

Video game violence is mostly stupid and unbelievable. This makes Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon a superior FPS almost by default, as it is one of the few first-person shooters with a story and world dumb and ridiculous enough to match its gameplay. Sergeant Rex Power Colt punching a cybershark with his cyber-fist makes sense in a way that Dude McBro gutting a jaguar to make himself a new purse never did. What’s more, Blood Dragon improves on Far Cry 3‘s formula in almost every way. Most of the outposts have high walls and interesting interior level design, and there’s no experience penalty for setting off an alarm, eliminating the tedious long-range stealth approach that the main game incentivized (a lack of silenced weapons is also important in this regard).  The missions still have area borders, but mostly take place inside so this doesn’t matter quite as much. Weapons and upgrades are now rewards for completing challenges rather than just climbing towers, making them feel more earned.

Blood Dragon wobbles towards the end, however. The penultimate mission is a series of arena fights against running zombies that is not only pointlessly frustrating but also completely disconnected from everything else that the game is about. Worse, this gets followed up with a training montage (including a dubious sex scene) that goes on waaay too long. The final mission, with its laser arm and machinegun-equipped dinosaur, is almost perfect, but the game ends on a slightly down note with another overlong cutscene where the big bad dies without any player intervention. Blood Dragon could also have done with a bit more quantity and variety in sidequests, and really needed a more thorough reskin on its vehicles. A real night-day cycle would also have been appreciated, although I can understand if the developers didn’t think they could make the neon aesthetic work in daylight.

Blood Dragon is superior to the base game. The missions, with that one exception, are better, the level design, especially in the outposts, is much improved, and the tone of the story meshes much better with the tone of the mechanics. I liked it.

Verdict: Recommended

Guacamelee!

 Exploratory Platformers, Short Take  No Responses »
Apr 172013
 

Status: Complete

Most Intriguing Idea: Transforming into a chicken to save the world.

Best Design Decision: Enemies you can wrestle!

Worst Design Decision: Bosses you can’t wrestle.

Summary:

To avoid the dreaded term “Metroidvania”, I’ll call Guacamelee! (really feels like it needs an inverted exclamation point in front) an “exploratory platformer” starring a tequila brewer turned Luchador named Juan. The game has many points of similarity with Metroid, with new combat powers serving to remove obstacles in addition to taking down enemies, and the chicken form mimicking some purposes of the morph ball. The world, however, is a loose web rather than a dense one, and most of its areas radiate off the Santa Luchita hub. Despite the Dualshock’s mushy triggers, the controls are generally tight and responsive, but the game puts such stringent demands on the player that things can still get pretty frustrating. This is particularly true in platforming segments that require the player to quickly switch back and forth between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

While I found the platforming brittle at times, my real disappointment came in the boss encounters, most of which did not allow me to use Juan’s throws or suplexes, and some of which did not even allow me to perform combos in any real way. Much of the game’s primary combat is combo focused, and tactical throwing is very important to many of the fights. To have almost none of that paid off in the boss battles felt like a letdown.

Verdict: Cautiously recommended

Shooting and missing

 Critique, Immersive Shooters  1 Response »
Apr 162013
 

The discussion around BioShock Infinite‘s combat doesn’t just involve the question of whether its quantity of violence is essential to the story (yes), or whether telling a story where its quantity of violence is essential is interesting or worthwhile (no). Some of the discussion has centered around the question of whether the combat mechanics are any good. Eric Schwarz has written a fantastic post that describes most of the combat mechanics, and I want to expand on it a little. Even though I think violence helps to express the kind of character Booker is, I don’t think the combat systems of BioShock Infinite do much to help characterize him, and in some ways actively oppose that characterization.

Continue reading »

Thomas Was Alone

 Puzzle Games, Short Take  No Responses »
Apr 162013
 

Status: Finished

Most Intriguing Idea: Introducing powers as characters

Best Design Decision: Giving characters one purpose or power at a time.

Worst Design Decision: Over-reliance on narration.

Summary:

I heard many good things about Thomas Was Alone last year but I didn’t get around to playing it until recently. It’s a minimalist platformer that tends more towards puzzles than reflex play, which is just as well since I felt the controls weren’t quite as crisp as I would like. The game starts off with a single rectangular character, the titular Thomas, and slowly adds new characters with different jumping and environmental characteristics. One can float in water safely, for instance, and another falls up and jumps down. Some well-written and excellently-performed narration does most of the work of introducing the characters, although Thomas has some nice moments of expressive play. When Chris first bounces off of Laura, for instance, there’s a great feeling of freedom that belongs to both the character and the player. The long first part also does an excellent job of connecting an ability to a name, so that in the second part I was thinking “Oh, now I have Sarah’s power” instead of “Oh, now I can double-jump.”

The unfortunate downside of the narration is that towards the end of the game, it has to do too much work in not enough time to introduce the new characters. As a result the story in this part didn’t feel as immediate or interesting to me, and the final success was less moving than it perhaps could have been. As the array of powers enables some of the best levels in the game, I would have been happy for Thomas to take more time here and set itself up for a really strong ending. Nonetheless, I found the game delightful and would recommend it to almost anyone.

Verdict: Recommended

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