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I didn't play enough of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw to give it a fair shake; just enough to recognize what I miss - or to realize what I don't miss - from space-life simulators like Escape Velocity.
Something I miss: "safe" progression options, or to put it another way, options to create my own stepping-stones toward a fully decked-out warship. Modern games in this vein do consistently include features like asteroid mining, commodity trading, and simple transport missions, but as I lamented in the first Rebel Galaxy, they tend to be very ornamental and not worth the time. (Outlaw has at least some of these, but they're so poorly tutorialized that I don't think the game even wants me to do them.)
Something I don't miss: destinations, like planets and space stations, that are really just text menus. 3030 Deathwar Redux did a great job of building the illusion that you were actually walking around a spaceport using computer terminals and chatting with NPCs; I wish more genre revivals would take that hint instead of copying the same menu UIs from 20+ years ago. (Outlaw has 3D renderings of your character interactions, and even some voice acting, but you still click through menus - and submenus! - to initiate actions, so the facade is entirely transparent.)
Something I miss: a bit of substance to space travel. Pointing at a nav marker and waiting for time to pass is no fun (yo, Starpoint Gemini 2), but neither is fast-traveling straight to your objective. Between sublight piloting inside a system, and hyperspeed navigation across systems, one or the other should have enough mechanical complexity to make star-hopping feel earned. (Outlaw lacks complexity in either, with automatic docking and one-button autopilot jumps.)
Something I don't miss: impenetrable ship combat. As with navigation, "some" complexity in targeting or maneuvering can be thrilling, but if a game can't pull off Strike Suit Zero I'd rather it keep things simple like the original Rebel Galaxy. Clunky aiming and firing (like Space Pirates and Zombies), or a proliferation of fiddly energy options a'la "redirect weapons power to shields" (like Outlaw), can make dogfights feel more like work than a game. (Outlaw does implement a great "follow target" simplification, but throttle-control and evasion are terribly unwieldy.)
And something I kind of miss: compelling storytelling. I know the old games' mission narratives were just walls of text, and that doesn't cut it anymore, but you can't just whip up some 3D character models and lip-synced voice acting and call it a day. Without interesting characters or engaging events, why should I upgrade my ship or explore the galaxy? (Outlaw starts with a wordless animated short that feels like a concept pitch for investors; then the main character's voice-overs sound genuinely uninterested in her own plot.)
I think I'd be kidding myself to believe that substantive, well-written, and well-acted story content could come from anything short of a AAA budget; and even epics like Mass Effect miss those marks pretty regularly. But I do want to believe there's some satisfying compromise, some way for a small, independent production to deliver a good story - and a few fascinating side-stories - in an open galaxy with fun (if simple) mechanics. Like a sane version of Star Citizen.
Dystopian future sci-fi. Neon vaporwave art and music. Sword-slinging bullet-deflection and dismemberment. Tactical slow-mo. What's not to like about Katana Zero?
Well, believe it or not, this time-manipulation action game doesn't let you rewind mid-level -- despite having narrative justification for it. Instead, when you die, the game rewinds all the way back to the start of the level, making you try the whole thing again.
This is a little annoying in early levels, and becomes quite annoying as enemies become stronger and levels become more complex.
So when I reached the halfway point of the game's final "bunker" area, and needed a break from the die-and-retry stress, I checked a look at what lies ahead of me and decided ... nah.
Katana Zero's storytelling and aesthetics are really compelling; and when the action is flowing, it's a thrill. I enjoyed those parts of the game in spite of its frustrating retry loops. And I'm acutely aware that, if I kept going, the frustrations would overtake the fun.
With a grid-based map, save-point safe rooms, hidden treasure chests, button-mashy combat, level-ups... I really thought that Batbarian's demo was teasing a full-blown Bloodstained-style Igavania. But after soaking in the full game - now en-subtitled Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials - for a couple hours, I've come to realize that it's really more of a platforming beat-em-up adventure that's borrowed a 'vania framework.
That is, instead of rapidly accruing new equipment and upgrades that unlock new map areas or overpower enemies, I'm really just solving mildly-puzzling navigation and combat challenges by feeding specialized berries to a magic bat.
That it's more of an action and platforming game than I expected isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I still appreciate the game's humorous dialog...
... but without an abundance of Metroid-ey upgrades, or the mechanical complexity that can make a puzzle-vania, I'm just not that interested.
Untitled Goose Game has more of a QWOP-like, hard-to-control angle than I expected. Not that it's an outright gamepad stress-test, but, moving around and picking things up is just difficult enough (and slow enough) to discourage me from experimenting in the game's sandbox.
Which makes "playing" the game, as in figuring out how to fulfill its puzzle-y objectives, basically moot: I'm not having fun discovering how the level's elements work, let alone putting those elements together for a solution.
Being a jerk goose sounds a lot more fun than it is in practice.
In a way, Deathloop feels like a retort to my FOMO on Prey's story choices: if you "miss" something, you can try it again tomorrow! It's a great wrapper around Arkane's dense and intricate levels, even though some flawed progression and poor storytelling keep it from reaching "masterpiece" status.
The game unfortunately puts its worst foot forward, its intro forcing you through a linear series of narrative-setup and tutorial sequences; you can't choose your own objectives or destinations, you can't even use "Residuum" to save equipment for the next loop. And while the sci-fi mystery plot itself is intriguing, main characters Colt and Julianna distract from that plot with their aggressively one-dimensional personalities.
"Angry" and "violent" are character traits. Not full characters. Colt and Julianna deliver some fun one-liners, but their dialogue lacks any of the curiosity or introspection that'd help players connect to their crazy situations.
... anyway, once it's done with the tutorials and unlocks your Residuum, Deathloop opens up to reveal its real strength: self-directed investigation. Colt's objectives of finding the Visionary targets, figuring out how to manipulate their schedules, and snatching their Dishonored-like magic powers ("blink" is called "shift," now) make for a deeply-satisfying time-detective adventure like Majora's Mask or The Sexy Brutale.
Deathloop is at its best when it combines this murder map mechanic with the sneaking, shooting, and trap-exploiting principles of Arkane's previous games. Now, finally, when you see a locked safe or an unpowered gadget on your way to something else -- the game will remember that "discovery" for you, to make it easy for you to revisit in another loop!
So that's the good news. Here's the bad news: character progression kinda sucks. And not for the reasons you might think.
That is, you might assume that it's hard to collect enough Residuum to persist upgrades (it isn't), or that it's easy to die unexpectedly and lose everything (it ... usually isn't). The game is actually quite generous with the "Reprise" ability to respawn and recover your body, bar a few intensely-frustrating exceptions ("nullifiers" and a couple of body-snatching death-traps).
No, what limits you in growing Colt's power are a very small loadout and random item drops. You'll find and accumulate dozens of Character Trinkets, but can only equip four; piles of pistols, shotguns, SMGs and sniper rifles, but can only carry three guns; even the five "Slab" magic abilities are hamstrung by a loadout limit of two. And except for the Slabs and a handful of unique weapons, none of the upgrade pickups are scripted -- you're likely to see a lot of duplicate, garbage drops.
Since you can't change your loadout mid-level (except by picking up new guns), these limits discourage experimenting with situational or risky options. And you can't exactly go looking for a specific Trinket upgrade, since again, the drops are random and often garbage.
I really hope the next game gives you more real-time inventory flexibility, and uses scripted sidequests to reward you with high-value upgrades, instead of asking you to pull the lever on a random-drop slot machine over and over.
And I do want a "next game," another Arkane take on time-loop mystery solving, because adding that element to their intensely-immersive world-building is an absolute win. It's just a shame that Deathloop has so little room for upgrading yourself to fully conquer that world.
Except... it doesn't. In truth, Clockwork God is still an adventure game with counterintuitive puzzles and laborious traversal -- it just also has pressure-plates and block-pushing as part of those puzzles. (And physics bugs, naturally.)
It's a shame, because the writing is still, just, incredibly charming; especially when it's mocking the games that inspired it, which is often. But if I need to look up puzzle solutions every 30 seconds - like Use Battery Acid to Melt Vines, or Push Airplane Propeller to Cut Down Tree - I'd rather not play it at all.
Transistor definitely succeeds at mixing Supergiant's colorful style with a techno-mystical TRON motif. And its blend of real-time and turn-based combat mechanics, though jarring at first, feels unique and exciting.
Unfortunately the narrative takes a hit from ... the narrator: while his character is better-integrated with the game than in Bastion, he talks so much - and there are so few other voice actors - that eventually the exposition sounds samey and repetitive.
And the gameplay is let down by an intimidating volume of progression options: being able to use every Function as an ability or an ability upgrade or a passive upgrade is a "cool idea," but the resulting matrix of choices is overwhelming, and wasteful. (After finding a setup that worked for me, I wasn't compelled to experiment any more.)
And -- both the story and the mechanics are limited by Transistor's short running length: 3-4 hours of content leaves a lot of unexplained backstory, and doesn't give that spread of Function options much room to breathe.
I guess the game might be expecting me to "recurse" and run it again - adding Limiters for extra challenge - but that's really not my thing.
I enjoyed my (brief) time with Transistor, to be clear; it just doesn't feel like it lives up to the potential of its ideas. And in retrospect, seems less like a setup for a TRON-like epic than it does a proof-of-concept for Hades.
It tries to be a Dark Souls, for one thing: meditation circles (bonfires) are where you heal, respawn, and allocate skill points; you can heal inbetween these with a limited-but-rechargeable store of stim canisters (estus flasks); your special abilities use a slowly-recharging Force meter (stamina), and most enemies have a stamina/guard meter to deplete before you can deal HP damage.
It even has surprise ambush bullshit like Dark Souls, enemies hiding behind corners (or burrowed underground) which you'd have absolutely no way of anticipating before they hit you in the back. Between that, and the meditation circles being placed very inconsistently - sometimes they're separated by less than a minute, sometimes by half an hour - Fallen Order certainly channels the aggravating and inconvenient parts of a Souls game.
Does it measure up to the "good" aspects of Souls games? Well, I don't like Souls games, so honestly I don't know what the "good" aspects are -- but Fallen Order has no customizable classes or character stats, and no collectible loot, so something certainly seems missing.
But wait, there's more: Fallen Order is also trying to be a Metroid, maybe more specifically a Metroid Prime. It has labyrinthine, interconnected world maps, and routes that are blocked until you find the ability that can un-block them. Each map area feels like a distinct environment with its own local wildlife, and its own mysterious history.
(Even the dead-and-gone Force-sensitive race of Zeffo sometimes seems like a re-brand of Metroid's Chozo.)
The problem is... Fallen Order's world isn't interconnected enough to meet the critical Metroid bar of spontaneous, undirected exploration. Each of Fallen Order's maps is a "planet," and you can only get from one to another using the Mantis ship, which is at a fixed location on each map. That is to say, this is no Dracula's castle; it's just a half-dozen branches off of a central hub (the ship).
So finding a secret off-map route never leads to jaw-dropping results like glimpsing a totally different part of the game -- just a shortcut in the current area. Deeply exploring a planet's map is discouraged by way of, well, when you're done you still need to walk all the way back to the ship. And while there are a couple of times the game "lets" you go to a planet earlier than its story sequence, you'll be unable to do much there until you've unlocked more abilities.
Those ability unlocks are mostly Force powers like slow, push, and pull. Cal Kestis was a padawan who learned these Force powers as a child, and then ... forgot them? suppressed them? as he survived Order 66, but is able to remember them through flashback sequences. To put this another way: sections of the game are unreachable until Cal remembers his training. This somehow feels worse than that time Samus had to wait for permission to unlock her suit powers.
These powers are useful in combat, too, although ... this is an aspect of Fallen Order that I wish was more blatantly influenced by other games. Force-pushing enemies off cliffs is a thrill; and parrying blaster fire back at Stormtroopers is super-satisfying. But when it comes to close-quarters lightsabering, the game's core mechanics of block, parry, evade, and strike get over-stressed in most encounters -- especially against multiple enemies.
The visual language of enemy attacks isn't very consistent: a red glow means "parry won't work" but then what? Sometimes you need to dodge, sometimes you need to run, sometimes you need to strike back and interrupt! When an enemy is blocking your attacks, does that mean they need to be stunned, or that you should just keep attacking until they're exhausted? Each enemy's patterns are a bit different, and the only way to learn them is by failing a few times.
(That's where I wish Fallen Order had cribbed more from, say, Batman in how enemies telegraph themselves.)
But even when you know what to do, the combat engine won't always allow it, for reasons that I still don't fully understand. I was almost never able to parry two Scout Troopers when they came at me together, and dodge-rolling to disengage from melee was really a crapshoot.
At least on Jedi Knight (normal) difficulty, the combat is rarely "hard," in the sense that you'll probably have enough health and stim-packs to survive anyway. But I had a lot more fun when I turned the difficulty down to Story mode, just to reduce the impact of all those frustrations. (Like the fact that enemies can interrupt your stim pack. Really, game?)
Okay, there's one more feature-set of Fallen Order to cover: the Uncharted parts! Yes, Cal also clambers up vines and sprints across walls and shimmies over cliff-faces and swings through chasms like a parkour adventurer. He's ... not that great at it, though.
What I mean is, the game's collision detection and the level design's precision requirements are not in line with each other. I fell to many, many deaths at the end of a wall-run because I didn't hit the wall at the right height; or on a rope-jump because I wasn't swinging far enough (or was swinging too far!); or on a slide because I wasn't turning at exactly the right angle. This is some Super Mario 64 flashback shit, and not in a good way.
Of all the different things that Fallen Order tried to do, I think this is where it came closest to greatness: Uncharted Star Wars, traipsing through exotic environments while hopping across the galaxy on a hunt for ancient treasure. Throw in some Nate-and-Sully-esque banter, and that formula could really work.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention Fallen Order's characters or story -- there's a reason for that. Though it ends on a high note (where Darth Vader chases you through a fucking undersea fortress), the game's story overall is 30 minutes of interesting content in a 12 hour bag.
The core problem is that its characters just have no personality: I never cared about Cere, or Greez, or even Cal, because they so rarely displayed any compelling motivation or passion. (Honestly, BD-1 - who is a robot - showed more charisma than the lot of them.)
But a sequel could inject some personality into them, and if it focuses up on polishing a smaller feature-set - instead of doing a mediocre job of imitating four different genres - I could absolutely see Respawn delivering a Jedi iteration that's truly exciting from start to finish.
I actually didn't expect they'd get the chance to try, until a trailer appeared yesterday. We'll just have to see if Survivor has the wisdom to focus its powers.
Black Flag has long been "the good Assassin's Creed game*" as well as "the good pirates game" in my memory, so when Our Flag Means Death reignited my child-like (or Stede Bonnet-like, if you prefer) fascination with the pirate life, it only felt natural to dive back into Edward Kenway's misadventure.
(*) Did you know?: Ubisoft has continued to make even more Assassin's Creed games! And, believe it or not, the modern-era Abstergo plot is still part of them. Wow!
The question is: has Assassin's Creed IV aged well? And the answer is, well, kinda.
In terms of technology -- yes, surprisingly, AC4's engine and features feel competitive with modern open-world games. The graphical fidelity of the open sea is pretty phenomenal, dynamic navmesh during ship-to-ship combat is still an impressive feat, and while there are frequent annoyances with clambering (Edward climbs the wrong thing) or melee combat (Edward attacks the wrong guy) ... it's not that much worse than recent titles like Red Dead, Tsushima, and Horizon.
Anyway. The in-game tech holds up, and while the story is garbage, it was just as much garbage "in its time." Checking my notes: Edward is shallow, Assassins are silly, the Juno cult... whatever. At least the narrative isn't a let-down, because I already knew it was dumb.
The part of Black Flag that's aged the most is its mission design: there just aren't that many good ideas in here. Sneaking between cover to infiltrate an enemy camp? Dodging cannon-fire and unleashing broadsides on a man-o-war? These templates work great. Others, like chasing a runner, slowly tailing a mark, boat stealth, or flat-out brawling; these missions just aren't very well-crafted.
In retrospect, that's probably why I got so into the side-activities in Black Flag my first time through; because they're "the good part."
But this time around, I left most of the collectibles and upgrade-treadmill alone because - even 6-7 years after Rogue - I am still burnt out on the Ubisoft game grind. I was plenty satisfied with the amount of yo-ho-ho-ing I'd had by the end of Black Flag's campaign.
Black Flag doesn't need a remaster -- it needs a true successor, an open-world privateer simulator but also compelling characters and exciting story missions. In the meantime, though, it's still "the good pirates game" to beat.
Better than: Red Dead Redemption 2 Not as good as: Horizon Zero Dawn In retrospect, not better than: Ghost of Tsushima; while Black Flag's core gameplay loop is more fun, exploring this slice of the Caribbean isn't as rewarding as Tsushima.
That's the good part: it prioritizes a consistent art style, simple yet evocative environments, and fixed camera views that show off some finely-curated scenes.
And if you're wondering whether that camera direction gets in the way of the game: yeah! It does. Sometimes I wondered if the fixed-cameras decision was made late in production, because there were a few moments of foregrounds obscuring the action, or awkwardly running "into" the camera, that simply didn't work.
Hob similarly makes questionable choices in its user interface: like, it may sound cool to keep heads-up elements small and show more of the game field, but in practice, the UI just doesn't explain shit. Inventory and map icons are hard to decipher, and all too often, a button prompt omits vital information like whether you're supposed to "press" or "hold" said button.
It even goes so far as omitting objective markers sometimes, though I wonder if those might be bugs, because I'm not the only one (exhibit a, exhibit b) who just didn't fuckin' know what to do.
The low-detail design spirit carries over into Hob's narrative, which has no script, written or otherwise. A small cast of NPCs just grunts, and gestures in directions, to attempt to convey information. I still don't really know what was going on the whole time.
To that point: in the game's ending moments, you can make a choice to join - or fight - the final boss. But that choice isn't ... explained at all, said boss just waves hands and makes noises, and there aren't any input prompts for what you might do.
So I guess I joined the enemy and the game ended. Whatever.
In theory, Hob is a fascinating Zelda-like with minimal, straightforward mechanics; in practice, its minimalism is more hindrance than help.
