The views and opinions expressed on this website are the author's alone. They are not endorsed by the author's employer, nor do they reflect the views and opinions of said employer or any other affiliated entity.
Gato Roboto is an adorable little Metroid clone with a cat in a power suit.
It has doors that you shoot to open; it has elevators connecting different sections of the map; it has ability upgrades that allow you to overcome progression obstacles, including a double-jump that looks a lot like the screw attack.
Sometimes you'll need to exit the suit and scamper through small tunnels or ventilation shafts ... kinda like morph-ball mode. Even the low-fidelity underground-laboratory aesthetic is highly evocative of Samus's early adventures.
So there's one problem: this game doesn't bring many new ideas to the table. Its cute theme and occasional humor - when a human monologues at the cat, and the cat just meows back - are pretty much all that separate it from Metroid II.
My other problem with Gato Roboto is that it is, at times, brutally difficult. A few enemy- and trap-filled gauntlets are frustratingly unforgiving, and one boss fight in particular is a maddening bullet hell with limited health and slippery movement.
Before the end, I went and got all the health upgrades and other collectibles, not because I "wanted" to 100%-complete the game; but because the upgrades felt necessary to keep up with the difficulty curve.
Gato Roboto is a perfectly competent Metroid-alike, but not much else. I enjoyed more of my 4-5 hours with it than not, and I like the game's cute personality, but too much of it feels like a tribute to Samus rather than an original creation.
The story took a bit of a weird turn near the end, but ultimately Exapunks left me feeling very satisfied.
Its simple instruction set and network-distributed parallelism make for fun puzzles; my new favorite among all Zachtronics games, which is saying a lot. The amount of content is impressive, with a main campaign that isn't just lengthy, but also feels "meaty" and well-paced.
And the story is easily the best of its genre, both in its enchanting cyberpunk theme and in its intriguingly diverse styles of narration. This feels like the glorious culmination of TIS-100's hidden notes, Shenzhen I/O's email banter, and Opus Magnum's dialog scenes.
I loved uncovering Exapunks's story, and I loved solving its puzzles. Hell, I'd still be solving the bonus puzzles right now, if they weren't so damn hard. Ah, well... more fun for later.
Better than: SpaceChem, and every other Zachtronics game I've played. Not as good as: I suppose if these puzzles could be combined with a Hacknet-style hacking game ... And +1: for the nonograms at the end of the manual. Of course I printed those out.
Progress: Finished the main campaign, and the first four bonus missions.
RiME is a very pretty - sincerely, a very aesthetically-pleasing - experience. Its exotic environments are visually striking, and evocative of various narratively-engaging themes of awe, curiosity, anxiety, and isolation.
But there's almost no substance to support this style. The game doesn't control very well (there's just a smidge of unpredictability when jumping or running), the puzzle mechanics don't evolve after the first hour, and its most challenging moments are only thus because of partially-hidden climbing handholds.
RiME has no voice-overs, no expository text, no character development and almost no ambient storytelling. The story it does tell, through confusingly metaphorical cinematics, takes a turn around the 4-hour point into "Oh, now I see what they're going for," but then takes another turn shortly afterward into "A lie is not a twist!" before landing on an unfulfilling ending.
Compared to the last Tequila Works title I played, Deadlight, RiME shows some growth in the "playability" domain. But it's still not mechanically fun, and the story still feels meaninglessly tepid.
Better than: Deadlight Not as good as: ... Myst? I guess? Roughly equivalent to: AER: Memories of Old; RiME is longer, but maybe it shouldn't be.
Every time I tell someone that "Indivisible is kinda like Valkyrie Profile," they respond with a shrug -- which is more than fair, since I've barely played Valkyrie Profile myself. And like I said back in 2011 - about a game released in 1999 - surprisingly, not many titles have tried to imitate it.
So to put it another way: Indivisible is a side-scrolling action-RPG with real-time multi-character combat, platforming challenges in a Metroidvania-like interconnected world, a plot inspired by Southeast Asian mythology, and a large cast of unique characters who by the way accompany the protagonist Ajna by living inside of her head. Does ... does that clarify things?
Combat is Indivisible's most distinctive aspect. If you aren't familiar with Valkyrie Profile, the Mario & Luigi games might be the next best comparison: your party has four members, and each one is mapped to a face button on the controller. Pressing a character's button will order that character to attack, or if an enemy is currently attacking, will order your character to defend. Each character also has modified attacks when you hold Up, Down, or Left/Right while pressing their corresponding button.
Indivisible's combat is all real-time, so if the action meters are full, you could mash all four buttons at once to have the whole party attack together. A shared iddhi meter encourages you to defend sparingly, and timely defenses are rewarded with a little healing. (The iddhi meter can also be used by some characters for ultra-powerful super attacks.)
Where it gets really interesting is that, of Indivisible's dozens-strong cast, each character has a totally unique set of moves. Some can heal, some have projectiles, some use elemental effects, some deal damage to multiple targets, some launch enemies into the air or can pierce their defenses... some lay traps, or have delayed effects like charging up a later attack.
Indivisible isn't a "fighting game," but you can tell that Lab Zero's fighter background helped in building this system up. Each character's move-set feels uniquely tailored to their fighting style. For example, there's a dog, and he does damage by barking. You can also build your iddhi meter by petting the dog. (Aww.)
Outside of combat, Indivisible is a platform-puzzle-y Metroidvania: the main story will take you through a huge interconnected map of varied environments, and as you make progress and learn new abilities, you'll be able to unlock new areas or uncover new secrets in previously-visited locations. Sometimes these progress gates are pretty direct, i.e. you need an ability to open a door; and sometimes they're indirect, i.e. you need an ability to increase your aerial range in order to reach a platform.
Indivisible's bar for platforming skill is higher than most Metroidvanias, and its collection of abilities also becomes rather large by the end, making it a challenge (at least for me) to maintain the mapping of abilities to hand muscles. In most cases, this feels more like an opportunity to improve than like an annoyance, as the game provides plenty of helpful hints and is merciful with its checkpoints.
The exceptions are the trips to Mt. Sumeru, which are kinda bullshit. These gauntlet-style platforming segments are what I might expect from a platform game's "challenge mode," requiring planning and precision on par with a Mario endgame, except that Indivisible requires getting through these sections to continue with its story. Which made me very motivated, but not very happy.
But I digress. Overall, Indivisible's platforming chops are pretty damn respectable, and contribute to a healthy variety of gameplay along with the combat.
As for the interconnected map, it's pretty good, but lacks a bit of polish. Chiefly: you can never see the "whole" map at once. Every region of the world is connected, including by some means of fast-travel, but when you View Map you can only see the region you're currently in. Which is just fine for chasing a local quest, but unhelpful when trying to find a good route to another region.
Sidequests in the late game require quite a bit of inter-region travel, and I didn't really feel like I had a handle on all the available routes until I'd finished most of those quests.
It helps, though, that each region of the world has a distinctive theme and feel. And, even more, that these regional themes aren't your typical tropey videogame environments. Port Maerifa is a bustling Mediterranean-style trading post; Tai Krung City is a dense, neon-soaked Asian metropolis mixing nightclubs and ramen shops; Kaanul is reminiscent of Maya or Inca temples overgrown by jungle. And while the Iron Kingdom is a clear nod to European culture, its industrial-age setting throws away archetypal nobles/castles/crumpets in favor of Dickensian peasants/slums/malaise.
These regions and the NPCs inhabiting them are built around a world mythology cribbed from Buddhism and Hinduism, which are similarly under-utilized in videogames, resulting in a pretty refreshing plot. And Indivisible's ending is an especially great example of integrating that background mythos with its hero's journey, as the idea of good-versus-evil intersects with the philosophical motives of cyclical death and rebirth.
More than its freshness and gravitas, Indivisible's storytelling is remarkable for how good-humored it is. Interactions with NPCs are almost always punctuated by a joke, and for all the problem-solving and world-saving that Ajna gets into, it's clear that "having fun" is still one of her top priorities.
Most of the (again, dozens-strong) cast is written with distinct and endearing personalities, and while some of the voice acting is ... let's say uneven, it's good when it counts. Crucially, Ajna's voice acting is some of the best I've heard in any game, and her emotional line deliveries are a big part of what makes Ajna's character development so compelling.
What did I miss? Oh, the rest of the audio is solid - including some catchy background tunes that I'm sure to catch myself idly humming - and the graphics are mostly excellent. These guys are known for their striking character art and fluid animations, and Indivisible's playable characters get top marks in both of those categories. Then there are the background NPCs made up for crowdfunding backers, which ... are easy enough to ignore.
Indivisible's imperfections - confusing world navigation, and the ass-ache that is Mt. Sumeru - were just enough to keep me from calling it an unconditional success. But it delivers strong on its core gameplay mechanics, builds a unique and refreshing world, and tells an interesting story; and for a studio's first attempt at an RPG, that's really damn good.
Open World Game is a 2D map with quest markers that you can complete by pressing a button. That's all it is. ... Well, that and text descriptions for those quests, which also take jabs at RPG tropes.
The surprising thing about Open World Game is that it's actually kinda good. Not just good for a free game, but also good by the standards of other satirical games like DLC Quest and Evoland.
The map is surprisingly big, with distinct regions; there are named characters, and their backstories intertwine with the political state of the world. Granted, your interactions with those characters are limited to reading text, and the plot is also heavily influenced by (sometimes practically copied from) well-known fantasy RPGs.
But my point is that there is more and better world-building in Open World Game than I would ever have expected. And in that way, it actually taps into the same conceit that makes a samey, repetitive game like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood successful: working through that quest-marker checklist is like an excuse to reveal more about the game's setting and lore.
The writing's sense of humor helps, too.
I don't want to blow too much smoke up this free game's skirt, and if it wasn't free I almost certainly wouldn't be willing to buy it. But I really admire the amount of effort that went into creating this world, even if it is ultimately just a 90-minute-long joke.
Better than: DLC Quest Not as good as: well, Skyrim, I guess. Higher-quality writing than: a depressing amount of paid, even triple-A, games.
In Tales of Lazo, you write prose descriptions of how the hero (er, Lazo) overcomes platforming and combat challenges. Explain how to beat the level, and then watch him do it! Like the English version of a programming-puzzle game. What a premise, right?
Of course the obvious question is, does it work well enough to maintain the illusion that you're writing a story instead of just entering keywords? And the answer is, no, it doesn't.
Its vocabulary is lacking, for one thing; I can write that Lazo "jumped" over a gap, but not that he "leaped" over it. And some definitions are surprisingly specific, for example while Lazo would be fine if he walked forward until he "reached a gap," walking forward until he "reached a ledge" would result in him trying to walk to a ledge past the "gap," tumbling head-first into the "gap" on his way there.
As frustrating as it is for this game to misinterpret my words, the problem is amplified even further by the high cost of death -- resetting the whole level. Falling into the sixth pit (or hole, or canyon, or whatever) results in having to retype the whole story from scratch.
Playing this guessing-game with Lazo's dictionary leads to dying and retrying, which in turn discourages wordiness in the written text, which thoroughly ruins the cool idea of the game. There's no point in wasting time and keystrokes on colorful language if Lazo is liable to fall in a pit anyway, so you may as well just enter "walked forward reached gap jumped forward" like it's a poorly-documented programming language instead of real, expressive prose.
This game idea needs a much stronger dictionary and more robust world-to-word abstraction to really make writing "fun." Short of that, it would probably be better to restrict the player to some pre-baked verbs and parameters, and make this a visual programming game instead of one about typing.
SpaceChem was one of my all-time favorites; and Infinifactory and TIS-100 were worthy, if somewhat experimental, follow-ups. But Shenzhen I/O was ultimately unsatisfying, and Opus Magnum was a disappointment. In my book, Zachtronics games were declining in the quality of their puzzles, and failing in their attempts to build compelling narratives.
This resulted in me taking entirely too long to start Exapunks, which might now be my new favorite programming game.
Exapunks takes the best features of TIS-100 (like a simple but versatile instruction set) and SHENZEN I/O (varied and "cool" devices/contexts) while discarding their biggest annoyances (respectively, limited instruction space and too-simple puzzles). Then it adds some radical new features of its own, chief among them the REPL instruction, which is just enough like fork() that I could fill an entire post geeking out about it. I won't, but I could.
Narratively, it learns from Opus Magnum's underwhelming storytelling, using a healthy variety of mechanics - ambient text, voice-overed cutscenes, and scene-setting background in the PDF manual - to weave its tale. Its characters actually have a little mystery to them, a little intrigue, which makes me curious to discover more about them. And the dulled-neon cyberpunk dystopia theme is definitely a winner.
Exapunks has a really fucking annoying "solitaire" minigame, just like Shenzhen I/O did. But I won a round of it and could happily live the rest of my life without playing it again.
I don't yet know where its story will take me, but I'm looking forward to it almost as much as I'm looking forward to optimally solving new distributed-computing puzzles.
Based on its low price, you might guess that Roombo: First Blood(great title, by the way) is a one-note joke of a game. And you'd be pretty much right.
I love this premise -- that you have the stealth attributes of a robot vacuum cleaner, and sneak around the house to brutally neutralize burglars, then clean up the evidence! There's an admirable variety of traps you can "hack" (like ceiling fans and refrigerators) to damage the burglars, and by vacuuming up their blood, you build a power/rage meter for a ramming attack.
The controls aren't as smooth as I'd like - it's easy to get stuck in a corner or on furniture ... like a real robot vacuum, I guess - and the UI could use some work to indicate where multiple burglars are rummaging around. But for the most part, the gameplay works well.
The problem is that there's only one map.
The game has multiple "levels" but they're all in the same house; later ones just have more burglars. I was pretty bored by level 3.
Seriously, what a great idea for a stealth action game. I'd be thrilled if these developers got to make more content for it: like more maps, more burglar types, more Roombo models or abilities... As it is, I got my fill in 15 minutes.
For one thing, in a literal sense, the graphics are distractingly zoomed-in and imprecise. The game's "cute" aesthetic looks like it was designed for small screens where edges would look sharper. It doesn't help that a minimalist UI gives you little to look at except the weirdly-blurry artifacts of scaling and rotating sprites.
But that's a pretty minor problem. What's more damning is that the puzzle gameplay just isn't very engaging. I don't think that's necessarily because of its intentionally chilled-out rules; being able to easily undo your moves, and the lack of a failure/game-over indication, actually feel pretty good.
It's more that the setting and ambience of the game don't do anything to pull me in. Start with the title: we're on Mars, and we route power. Right? Well, I would have looked forward to new puzzle rules about electricity, or terraforming, or something building on that basic premise.
Instead... new puzzle rules are totally arbitrary and disconnected from reality. Spikes that raise and lower based on the turn order? Shifting rows and columns of the map around? It only takes a few puzzles before the "Mars" and "Power" illusions fade, and it becomes obvious that this is a generic tile-based puzzle game with some thin branding.
Also, the music is overly mellow. Not just relaxing, but ... boring.
This is the kind of game that could occupy a few minutes of your time while you're waiting for something else to happen. But as a desktop experience that would take full focus? Nah.
Maybe Chrono Trigger is the reason I'm not big on "replay value."
Chrono Trigger is at its best when you're working through it for the first time, or at least for the first time in a few years. Story beats are dramatic and fresh, era changes are a surprising change of scenery, scrounging for items fleshes out each era's world, and the difficulty curve is just enough to keep the moment-to-moment gameplay interesting. In New Game+, these strengths all fall apart as the plot is familiar and combat becomes trivial, ... but that's okay, because one-shotting enemies is still kinda fun.
It's in subsequent New Game+ runs, for the sake of collecting endings, that the grindy monotony really sets in. The new-ish Auto-battle mode is a mercy for releasing me from 'A'-mashing during the tedious, brain-dead battles. If only there was an Auto option for story dialog, too.
The kicker is that none of Chrono Trigger's alternate endings are really worth watching. They don't feel like legitimate story options as much as they feel like easter eggs, left as teasers for obsessive fans who really want to re-fight Lavos at every conceivable opportunity.
(Yes, I still went after them all for the Steam achievements. Go ahead and judge me.)
Anyway, all that has been true since I fell in love with this game in the late '90s, so it ain't exactly new. The Dimensional Vortex dungeons, meanwhile - first added in the DS version - ... are just as inconsequential and uninteresting as I'd supposed back when that was new. ("[...] your big question is probably whether the new content makes it worth playing yet again. The answer: not especially.") And the "new" ending that follows those dungeons -- well, maybe it would have meant something more if I'd played Chrono Cross, but ... I haven't.
Chrono Trigger is still an all-time classic that will be difficult for any other RPG to unseat, personally speaking. And I know that its modern incarnations include some updates that I'm taking for granted, like turning on "run" (instead of "walk") by default! But this replay has refreshed my perspective, at least a little bit; present-day RPGs like Witcher 3 may eventually replace it in my "greatest of all time" list, nostalgia pending.
