DrBloodmoney's Super Scientific Ranking of Games!

[HelixNebula_x]

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on Chained Echoes, it's been on my wishlist for a while.

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, HelixNebula_x said:

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on Chained Echoes, it's been on my wishlist for a while.

 

Well.... if you put any kind of stock in my opinions, I imagine I'll be helping to reduce the size of your Wishlist by 1....

[snatchesz]

Let's see how well Laika is doing, I loved that game even with his issues.

[DrBloodmoney]

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Earnests and Science-Vanessas, as promised (and in some no cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

 

Laika: Aged Through Blood

 

Summary: 

 

A stylish, 2023-released, hand-animated-looking metroidvania from Brainwash Gang, Laika: Aged Through Blood combines 2D, Trials-style bike controls with Hotline Miami/ My Friend Pedro-style combat to tell a bleak, dark tale of loss and suffering in a post-apocalyptic, Max Max-esque world.

 

The player takes on the role of the eponymous Laika, an anthropomorphised coyote mother from a family blighted by a curious curse - the females are immortal, cursed to revive whenever they are killed, and able to commune with the recently dead. 
Each woman in the family inherits this curse from their mother upon their first "bleed" (puberty,) and carry it until such time as their own daughter inherits it at their first bleed.

The curse is a benefit to the tribe the family belong to - in this bleak, uncaring world, in which the coyotes and other animals are oppressed by the bird population, (who declared themselves the "master race" centuries prior, and rule like an army,) the presence of Laika and her matriarchal lineage has been all that has allowed the loose collective of mammals to hold out their meagre existence against the birds - but is a bleak existence for the females of the family themselves, as the burdens of protection and the weariness of endless suffering crush and embitter them.

 

After discovering, at the game's outset, that the birds have tortured and crucified one of her daughter, Puppy,'s young friends, and that the child's father has stolen her revolver to seek revenge, Laika attempts to find him and pull him back from this suicide mission. 
While doing so, she discovers both that the child's remains have been taken, and that the birds are experimenting with new weaponry - weaponry that would solidify their stranglehold on the wastelands, and likely end her tribe's existence once and for all. 

What begins as a quest to recover the remains of the ill-fated child for proper burial, turns into a fight for the very existence of her tribe, as Laika seeks to cut the heart out of the fascist bird autocracy...
...all the while dealing with her own strained relationship with her mother, her split loyalties between wanting to shield her daughter and prepare her for her future, the needs of the makeshift community...
...and the ticking clock of her daughter's impending first bleed, that would herald the end of her tenure as protector.

Narratively, Laika is very good...
...and incredibly grim and bleak, almost to point of oppression.

 

The lore of the world, the immediate story of the lost child, and the emergent narrative of Laika's fight against the oppressive and fascist birds is, of course, somewhat detached, given that it all revolves around animated, anthropomorphic animals, but make no mistake - the primary reason this appears to be the case, is that by doing so, it allows the developer leeway to set a tone so dark, cruel, grim and hostile, that telling it using humans would simply be too much for the average player to stomach. The detachment that comes from the anthropomorphic animals used in place of humans allows the player to one-remove themselves a little, (in much the same way that the also very dark and grim Backbone did,) but here, unlike Backbone, I literally do think the story simply would not be palatable otherwise.
There are vivid descriptions of extreme torture, elements diving into hopeless depression and suicide, and elements of harsh brutality that are unusual in their level of implied violence - even within the videogame genre... 
...and that is saying something!

 

That almost seems like it should be a refrain - but the fact is, by going so extreme in the story tone, Laika actually manages to do something pretty interesting - it manages to feel far more original and interesting than one might think it should, considering the actual setting - post war, post-apocalyptic wasteland - is hardly a new ground for games. 

The narrative is genuinely good, but also genuinely quite unusual, simply because it is approaching the genre with "no holds barred". Nothing is off the table, so the story is able to go to new places that other games simply wouldn't want to.

To use an analogy to television, take the TV show Shameless. That show is essentially a family soap opera - a genre as old as the television format itself - but it consistently found original avenues of story and character development that hadn't been seen much before, simply because it was willing to use narrative elements and catalysts most other shows would baulk at. IT was willing to make it's characters do despicable things, that most shows wouldn't, for fear of alienating the audience... and by doing so, felt fresher and more original than the premise seemed like it would allow. 

 

The tone in Laika is great, and the individual beats of the narrative are well implemented. 
Dialogue is purely text - there is no voice work in the game, aside from vocals in the score (more on that later), but the writing, while highly stylised, is done well. The tone is that of a genre noir, and it works nicely, with different characters feeling well drawn and distinct, and their particular eccentricities and personalities on show. The tone is unendingly sad and grim - even to the point that "comedy relief" characters tend to make you first smile of laugh, then feel sad for them, as the crazy behaviour that IS comical, is clearly a sign of madness, brought on by their awful situation...
...but it works. 
The player has to be in for that kind of tone, for sure - not everyone is - but if they are, Laika offers a good version of it.

Gameplay is the primary factor in a metroidvania, of course, and here, it is also pretty damned great.

Laika moves around the wasteland on her dirt-bike, and the whole world is designed with that in mind, with virtually every element of the environments designed with ramps, tubes and tricky rails as the basis.  The game uses a very Trials / Joe Danger style of bike control, with the player controlling Laika's weight on the bike, and therefore flipping and spinning the bike forwards and backwards to gain or loose momentum in jumps. 
In fact, the traversal elements are fed directly into the other major element of the gameplay - the combat - quite neatly, as Laika's method for reloading her guns is to do an in-air backflip, and her method of recharging her "bullet-reflect" ability is to do an in-air forward flip. 
This means that the combat (which is extremely deadly and quick,) has a sort of "dance" involved - each encounter is something of both a combat and a traversal puzzle in one, where the player must evaluate each encounter, and establish the best pattern. 
"Jump off that ramp, then flip to block a bullet, then shoot two guys, then compete the flip to recharge, then land, then jump here, then shoot here, then reflect, then flip this way.... etc etc etc."

 

These encounters are very fast - and like in Hotline Miami, all enemies, and Laika herself, die in one hit - so can feel very frenetic...
... however, the ability to slow down time while aiming gives them a neat edge, and allows long combat encounters to be mixed with traversal in much the way My Friend Pedro.
In the case of Laika: Aged Through Blood though, it is done  to a much more crisp, clean, snappy and satisfying way than My Friend Pedro game was ever able to muster, as that game's primary issue was how "floaty" and disconnected the physics felt from the environments. In Laika: Aged Through Blood, the physics model is harsh but fair, and feels very intuitive and fitting to the environments being traversed.

This blending of Trials-style traversal and bike tricks, with an exploratory metroidvania actually put me in mind of another game - Yoku's Island Express. 
The two are, of course, wildly different in tone (indeed, I'm not sure it would be possible for two games to be more different in that sense!,) however, what Yoku's Island Express did - very successfully - was blend the traditional metroidvania with a traversal mechanic that existed before in other genres (in that case, Pinball,) and therefore feel wholly original.
Laika does the same thing, but rather than Pinball, the import is the Trials-bike controls, and the My Friend Pedro combat.

The gameplay works essentially on a mission structure - with "main" quests and side quests all pooling into a single, "to-do" task list, and what is curious about the game is how simple the actual requirements of these missions are. Virtually every mission - most main ones, and virtually all side ones - are simply "go to this location, find X, and return" - which should be incredibly dull - and would be, in many games of this type...
...but because Laika's traversal is different, the structural simplicity and mechanical similarity of the missions is largely immaterial. 
Simply getting to "X" in a particular area is the game. 

The combination of the player requiring very precise and technical traversal, combined with extremely fast and deadly combat means that even returning to an area previously explored gets old far less quickly than it might in other games - and Laika also does a smart thing, in that with each major step forward in the narrative (generally every 2-3 main story missions) there is a narrative-tied increase in the numbers of - and placement of - enemies across all areas. 

That means that while a late game mission that requires returning to an early game area might be a familiar route, the game remains engaging, because the combination of traversal and combat models means that even a single new enemy being added to a particular spot can drastically alter the approach the player must take - and requires more of them. 
Certain areas that are well used in the game - routes that are travelled back and forth over many times throughout - may have begun as relatively simple areas, where each ramp or jump requires only a well placed pistol shot while pulling a wheelie...
...but when there are more enemies in trickier spots, might require full 720-degree flips, blocking incoming shots, multiple reloads, wheelies at perfect timings and a good dollop of improvisation and luck to traverse in the later game. 

Visually, Laika: Aged Through Blood looks very nice.
It has a "thick-outlined", graphical design to its hand-drawn character models that - truth be told - I think looks a little less good when zoomed in close (as the game does when Laika is off her bike,) - however, in motion, and during the majority of the game it works very well. The actual character designs are very good - there is a lot of personality in the characters, and the design of the wastelands different areas are all very well done. 

 

The game has an interesting problem to solve with its environmental designs, in fact, in that it needs to marry together the physical and gameplay requirements for everything to be designed with the bike traversal in mind, but the narrative tone requires a bleak, lonesome, evocative wasteland from an artistic point of view. I think the balance struck is remarkably well done. While the gameplay is placed first and foremost (as it should be,) the artistic flourishes used to render a beautifully harsh and desolate world on top of that goes far enough that detains of the history of the world can be found, and each environment is a joy to see, even while serving the traversal primarily. 

Audio in Laika: Aged Through Blood is something very, very special, and needs to be mentioned - as even in a game with very high quality gameplay, a great narrative, good writing and nice visuals, I still think the clear highlight is the score!

The whole game, despite the bleak harsh, relentless and sometimes hyper-violent tone and pace, is scored in direct opposition to this - with a soulful, beautiful, wistful female-led album of tracks by Becolí. (Becolí, for anyone who might remember, is the artist who scored the rather beautiful The Longest road on Earth - the "game-as-pastiche-music-video" I reviewed sever years back... and if anything, this collection is even better than that album was.)

 

The auditory dissonance between the beautiful, calm, soulful soundtrack and the hyper-violent, frenetic gameplay is really unusual - and it works an absolute charm. There are a small collection of tracks available from the start, which play over the game (and, in a smart, Hotline-Miami like way, do not reset or interrupt during the (many) deaths and rebirths the player will endure,) but this collection is added to as a narrative element tied to a side activity, via the collection of cassette tapes in the world. 
It's a neat way to tie a collectible into a tangible benefit (not wholly original - I recall, for example, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag doing a similar thing with its sea shanties,) - but the fact that such a powerful element of the tone and personality of Laika: Aged Through Blood is manifest via the music, makes finding these a real highlight.

Overall, Laika: Aged Through Blood is a heck of a game!

 

It's one that can be quite tricky to pick up initially, particularly for those not hugely well versed in these kind of "Trials-like" controls, as they can feel a little unusual, and the extreme deadliness of the game (where a single mis-aligned landing will result in death,) means that the game's learning curve can feel rather punitive initially...
...but the art, music and the general mechanical finesse of the game is enough to carry the player over that hump - and the game they find on the other side of it is something quite original, and extremely well made and executed.

It's a game where gameplay is the key, and that gameplay is very good...
... but it also has art, narrative and music that more than pull their weight.

 

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a game that can feel punishingly difficult at times...
...but never in a way that makes the player want to walk away.
It only ever makes them want to get better! 
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

For ranking Laika: Aged Through Blood, the first point I looked at was other 2D metroidvania, or Rogue-like games. Laika: Aged Through Blood isn't actually a rogue-like per-se, however, it does have some of the mechanical gameplay elements in common with some notable rogue-likes, like Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy, in the sense of being a 2D, largely traversal-based game with high stakes and quick, brutal deaths.

 

The one game that really stood out as a comparison was Dandara. Dandara is a good comparison point, as it is also a metroidvania with an interesting traversal mechanic, a good look, a similar price point... and purely from a personal point of view, also surprised me with it's level of quality and finesse!

I think in the one on one match-up, Laika: Aged Through Blood certainly takes the win on music, and I would say, while both are good, the combat and the boss battles in Laika are slightly ahead of Dandara, but I think the visual style and art design of Dandara wins out over Laika, as does the lore and narrative.
Laika has it's interesting traversal, which is great, but Dandara's is a little more original - Laika is using a model seen in other genres, and making it original in application, but Dandara's feels more original fundamentally, so I think it takes the win there.

 

It's actually closer than I might have expected, but I do think Dandara holds its spot.

A Little further down the list though, came two games - one, a 2D metroidvania/rogue-lite hybrid that also has an animated look and great (if less original) traversal - Treasures of the Aegean - and one right below it that is a 3D isometric game, but plays in a similar broad area of "smaller-game with style and quick combat" - Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

 

I think, in a matchup with Laika: Aged Through Blood, Treasures of the Aegean does lose out in some areas - certainly on music, and on combat - but Treasures of the Aegean is more puzzling in nature, which Laika doesn't do. Treasures of the Aegean wins on visuals, but Laika: Aged Through Blood  takes the win on narrative, and while Laika: Aged Through Blood has the novelty of traversal, and does win - it's very close, as Treasures of the Aegean is less original, but smooth as silk and equally as fun.

 

It was very tough, but I think Treasures of the Aegean just manages to hang onto its place, primarily because it has the whole puzzle element, which I think counter's Laika: Aged Through Blood's combat puzzles effectively...
...but I think in a direct matchup, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light has to take a knee and accept defeat from Laika: Aged Through Blood.

Laika: Aged Through Blood wins that fight on audio and on visuals, and the fundamental gameplay is just a little too good for even Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light's good puzzles and fun combat to compete.

As such, Laika: Aged Through Blood finds its well deserved high placement on the ranking!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Chained Echoes

 

 

Summary: 

 

A kickstarted pixel-art RPG, designed as a throwback and loving tribute to the 16-bit era SNES JRPGs of the 1990s, Chained Echoes, from virtual one-man-developer Matthias Linda, pulls together elements of Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Mana and a host of other formative JRPGs, adds in a level of grimness and narrative complexity on top, and crafts a long and winding tale of a band of heroes fighting to end a war between kingdoms in the land of Valandis. 

 

Taking the RPG trope of a disparate group of mismatched heroes, bound together by common fate, and pitting them against a seemingly unstoppable and world-threatening calamity, Chained Echoes wears its influences very much both on its sleeve, and as a badge of honour - pulling together seemingly every RPG trope of those older, much lauded games, and fitting them all together in a single, complicated narrative in a single, complicated game...
...which does its level best to hold together...
...but doesn't really manage to pull it off.

Starting with the good elements first, I think it's safe to say that, visually, Chained Echoes is a winner.
 
It's a pixel-art game, and one playing very much in the "this could have actually existed on 16-bit hardware" style of throwback pixel-art. 
Unlike something like the recently released Sea of Stars, which also harkens back to a similar era, but uses some extra flourishes and effects that would have been impossible back in the 90s, Chained Echoes plays it pretty straight with its nostalgia aesthetic, using a pixel density and breadth of effects that much more closely resemble an actual 16-bit era aesthetic. 

 

To be clear, I think there is room for both, and both can work very effectively, and Chained Echoes is a fine example of the "could have been" style. It works in the more "3/4 Overhead" view, as the original Chrono Trigger or Zelda games did, as opposed to more isometric/ oblique view, as Sea of Stars tended towards, which helps the direct nostalgia, and the art design on characters - and particularly on enemies and environments is fun and colourful and well done. 

There is a nice variety of art too: there are a fair breadth of characters (too many, perhaps, as some are rather under utilised,) and a wealth of different locations and spaces, and they remain fun to explore and to see throughout the whole game.

 

The feel of nostalgia carries over to the audio too - which is decent...
...though in that case, I do think that is one area in which my personal proximity to playing Sea of Stars doesn't help Chained Echoes. 

The music in Chained Echoes is fine, and sometimes genuinely catchy...
...but Sea of Stars's music was excellent on a level that is rare, and because Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars are both playing is the same wheelhouse - both in terms of genre, inspiration and throwback - comparison is impossible to avoid, and the music in Chained Echoes doesn't even come close to the music in Sea of Stars.
Chained Echoes never sounds bad - in fact, it sounds pretty good - but it cannot be denied that it exists at a time where another, more accomplished, more popular, and fundamentally better game - Sea of Stars - came along shortly afterwards, and now casts a fairly dark shadow over it.

 

Art design and audio are, of course, a big part of RPG games - of all games, really, but are particularly important parts of throwback-style games, as they are the primary ways in which the older games being aped can be referenced and paid homage - and they are important.

Chained Echoes getting those elements right is a good thing, and is admirable...
...however, unfortunately, that is pretty much the end of the positive things to be said about the game.

Chained Echoes is...
... something of a mess. 

Visually and auditorially it works perfectly, but narratively, mechanically and stylistically... it is a bit of a whiff.

 

The trouble with Chained Echoes, fundamentally, is that it feels like a victim of "fandom-driven-creativity." 
It feels like a game made by someone who absolutely loves those SNES era JRPGs, and genuinely wants to pay loving tribute to them...
... but who has played them so exhaustively that they have lost sight of what made them good at the outset, and likely drew them into the genre in the first place. 

They likely felt dissatisfied after mastering the genre, and wished for more complexity to dig into... forgetting that the complexity of systems is something reserved for the end-games, for the player already steeped in the game, and for the player who already fell in love with the game on a more narrative and emotional level.

 

To find a metaphorical example of the general problem of "fan-driven-creativity", one only need to look at Mario Maker. 
Remember Mario Maker? 
Mario Maker was a brilliant game. It democratised the level making tools of a Mario game very well, allowing fans to make their own levels and share them, and many of these fan-made levels were excellent. However - a staggering number of the most competently made levels, made by the people who were the biggest fans of Mario, ended up being brutally difficult to the point that they were inaccessible to anyone not steeped in that same level of mastery. 

 

The reason was simple - those people who are the biggest fans of Mario, had spent 30 years playing those games, and had an absolute mastery of the finer nuances of the mechanics. They had gone beyond the point of "regular" levels and had mastered the games to such a degree, that they could barely fathom the idea of someone who wasn't at that level - and ended up making levels that were simply out of reach of the average player. They had lost sight of what made Mario great in the first place, in pursuit of only the "top end" of skill-requirement, because that's all they had left.

 

Now, Chained Echoes is not the same in terms of difficulty. It isn't a hugely difficult game on its "standard" settings...
... but it does have a lot of the same feel in terms of obtuse mechanical complexity. 

The old SNES JRPGs were great - they were whimsical tales, full of humour and secrets and fun and silliness, and had a certain level of complexity of systems, and of narrative, that varied from game to game, but generally capped out towards their respective "end-games".

Matthias Linda clearly loves those games, and Chained Echoes does - in some ways, very well - echo those games, and reference them in clever ways - both on a macro and micro level. 
The general art design is very much a loving homage to Chrono Trigger, and I would say a particularly well observed and well implemented one: not only is the pixel art of that style, but even things like the proportions of characters, and the way they move and follow one another, or the way encounters work - with enemies visible on the playfield, and the characters "taking their places" art the start of each encounter.

 

There are also specific references designed to tickle the nostalgia-bones of gamers who loved those games (of which, I am one!) - for example, a neat little intro bait-and-switch, where a main character awakens in a bedroom, woken by their mother, to a celebratory fair outside, in an almost 1:1 recreation of the introductory opening to Chrono Trigger... 
...before their mother begins yelling at them to wake up, and they realise that is the dream, and they are being shaken awake to their rather more grim and dire reality. 

Moments like that one are neat - they are done well...
...but they are also evidence of how well steeped in SNES RPGs Matthias Linda is, and that love and familiarity is the biggest downfall of Chained Echoes.

 

Chained Echoes feels like a game designed by someone who has played every one of those games at the "end-game" point for years, and has mastered them so completely, that they can only see them for the complexity of their systems, and not for the whimsical, fantastical, simple but engaging and fun tales they were. 
He pined for more complexity to fill the gap left by his mastery...
...and then made a game, and crammed that complexity into every available area...
... without ever asking "but wait... will this actually be fun?"

 

Mechanically, the game is absolutely sodden with systems - there are systems for weapon upgrades and attachments, micro and macro management of different concepts in battle, aggro, sliders for optimum attacking and defence, a tremendously irksome and superfluous add-on battle system used when fighting in sky-armours (that is entirely different to the also needlessly over-complicated standard battle system)...
...and almost none of these systems feels particularly beneficial to the experience. 

Each one might - on  its own - act as an interesting signature for the game, but because they are all present at once, it makes for a game that - particularly during battles (of which there are hundreds) - feels so stilted and bogged down, that it gets difficult to find a groove, and even more difficult to enjoy.

 

Take, for example, the "Overdrive" system. 
This is a mechanic where, in every battle, a party-wide "balance bar" is constantly in play, with a yellow, green and red portion, and a slider moving up and down the bar. Each different action a character takes moves the slider by set amounts, but generally, attacks increase it, and defence moves reduce it. When in green, the party do more and take less damage, and in red, they do less and receive more. 

 

It's the kind of mechanic that might seem interesting or clever on paper...
...but the reality of such a system, is simply adding a layer of "oh, I need to wait and defend when I could be attacking" - slowing down the pace of battle, and requiring micro-management with no real justification, or gameplay benefit. 
It's the kind of extra, convoluted complexity that simply has no reason to exist - it complicates, without feeling earned or justified, and simply forces the player to take longer to do things they want to do, without adding anything to the overall enjoyment.

 

It also - I guess beneficially, though that is a rather generous way of looking at it - is not punitive enough to matter...
... so essentially, it is a layer of complexity that the player is best placed, simply to ignore - since the benefits of using it effectively generally do not outweigh the costs of ignoring it. 
While the player will receive more incoming damage if they let themselves shoot into the "red zone"... they will likely still be better off just wailing on the enemy full throttle, and ending the fight faster, than trying to manage and use the overdrive system as intended.

 

That kind of system is all over Chained Echoes - the "complex, but largely ineffectual distraction".

Another perfect example is the weapon and armour "slot" system.
Players are constantly finding crystals around the world, that have little pellets of ore with different buffs. These have their own complete system for upgrading, with purity mechanics, combining mechanics, slotting mechanics for adding them to weapons or armour etc, and this whole system is a lengthly and byzantine process...
...and what the player learns, after several hours of toying with it, is that the benefits doing so - the minor buffs weapons and armour can be given - are not in any way powerful enough to justify the absurd level of fiddly faffing about they would need to do to make use of them.

By around 6 hours into the game, I simply stopped adding these to any weapons or armour, and found myself at no disadvantage, even in optional, top tier fights...
...so the question is "What is the point?"

 

Complex systems in a game like Chained Echoes can be fun - but they have to be beneficial enough to the player to make learning them and engaging with them worthwhile. Otherwise, they are simply extra layers of nonsense on an already busy and stat-heavy menu screen, distracting from the "core" of the game - and serve only to play into the old stereotype that RPGs are for nerds, and look like excel tables with pixel-art drawn on top.

 

The narrative suffers from the same fundamental problem too.

 

The narrative was usually - in the old SNES JRPGs Chained Echoes is a tribute to -  a whimsical, sweeping, yet relatively simple tale. 
The narrative in Chained Echoes, so absurdly over-stuffed and over-complex - particularly during the first half - that it loses the player, almost immediately. 
The story feels like it is trying to combine the SNES RPG with something as complex and dour as a Game of Thrones, with multiple warring kingdoms, and a huge cast of tertiary characters and agendas... 
...and results in enormous lore-dumps about off-screen kingdoms and political intrigue that not only doesn't matter to the main plot, but largely serves to distract the player from what the actual plot is. 

 

In the early game - the first 5-6 hours - I literally had given up on following the over-complex lore dumps about largely unseen characters...
...and found virtually none of that information to actually matter in the latter half of the game, where the story does start to get more focussed, and the real plot reveals itself.

It is a shame, because there IS actually the spine of a pretty good narrative in Chained Echoes, once it congeals enough to be identified, and gets a chance to stretch its wings in the back half, after a lot of pointless pontificating and unimportant characters are sloughed off. 
There are many elements that work, particularly later in the game...
...however, there is another issue, in that no sooner does the narrative gets a chance to taker proper shape, than the game enters its path towards the finale, and begins to really jump the shark, in the form of a constant stream of compounding "record-scratch" plot twists, to the point of exhaustion.

 

That feels, again, like an issue of fandom-created-media - like the developer loved the few moments from old SNES era JRPGs where a huge, plot-changing twist was revealed, and so decided to replicate that.
And did so.
In every cutscene.

 

The problem, of course, is those moments were memorable because they were rare. The plot of Chained Echoes gets a record-scratch-worthy plot twist so often that they stop having any impact.
By the time I reached the actual finale, after the 9th or 10th big plot-twisting reveal, I had pretty much given up, and was simply asking "okay, what's the next "big twist" with the detached, glassy stare of someone who barely remembers what the original idea of the plot actually was.

 

The other big issue with the narrative is more fundamental even than those issues...
... it isn't funny.

 

Now, most of the great JRPGs of the 16-bit era had grand, serious, world-ending or world-endangering plots, full of high drama, emotion, moments of levity and sadness...
...but fundamentally, they were all pretty whimsical and light, even despite those dire circumstances. 

Chrono Trigger was about saving the world... but there were genuinely funny moments between memorable and loveable characters all throughout.

Hell - Final Fantasy VI has the world literally suffer a cataclysm, and enter a "post-apocalyptic" state... 
...but it also had a running battle in which a wrestler could suplex a sentient train, and an opera performed for an incompetent and malevolent octopus. 

Those games - the best of them - had characters in terrible situations, but those characters were lovable, or lovably evil, and fun to be around.
There was a level of winking humour baked-in, which offset the direness, and made them fun to play.

 

Chained Echoes doesn't have any of that.
Its plot is dire in consequence and its villains evil - but they are "nasty evil," not "fun-evil".
the "Big Bad" in Chained Echoes isn't a Sephiroth or a Kefka - he's a Joffrey Baratheon.

The heroes, also, are generally both relatively forgettable, largely humourless... and often mean-spirited and genuinely unlikeable. 
Several are outright assholes. 
There are a couple of characters that feel like genuine throwbacks to the SNES era - a "queen of thieves" named Sienna, and a mage named Magenta are characters one could see slotting into one of those great old games well - but for the most part, the characters in Chained Echoes are either forgettably bland, or repellant douche-nozzles. 
One character - Robb, an archer, and protector of an errant princess - is clearly supposed to have a "redemption arc", going from being a dick to seeing the error of his ways... but his "assholiness" in the early game is so overblown, that it's virtually impossible to buy into that arc, and the player simply ends up hating him more than most of the actual "bad guys"!

Fundamentally, Chained Echoes is something of a disappointment, because while it has a lot of the elements required to craft a really good throwback, nostalgia-tickling pixel-art RPG - and occasionally, during simple sections of dungeon crawling or side-questing, does get there - it feels like in its zeal to encompass and amalgamate every possible thing anyone could love about every one of those older games, it loses focus completely, and ends up missing out the really important fundamental elements of those games.

 

Rather than implementing one or two clever mechanical systems as those games did, it implements 30 of them, without considering that they don't all work together, or serve the game effectively. 

Rather than implement one great, grand twist, it adds 20, and forgets that with each one, they dilute the impact of them all.

Rather than have a focussed narrative with a clear plot, it has 12 plots, and all of them serve only to distract from one another, and end up so overstuffed that something has to give...
... and what ends up being left out, is the most important thing - the humour and the fun.

It may sound harsh - and I don't want it to sound too harsh, as there are good things and fun to be found in Chained Echoes - but the honest feeling I got when playing it, is the idea of a game built by algorithm: 
a game designed by feeding in all the elements of many great games into a blender, but without an innate understanding of why they were great.
An algorithm that can easily replicate the functions of those games, but has no ability to replicate the feel of them.

 

That feels like a particularly pointed and harsh metaphor, I know - particularly since the opposite should be true, given the virtual one-man-developer status - and I absolutely do believe that Matthias Lucas genuinely loves the games he seeks to emulate...
... but I simply can't think of a better way to summarise my feeling when playing Chained Echoes.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So the problem with ranking Chained Echoes, is that I don't play a lot of throwback RPGs...
... and of the ones I have played, a fair few are still to be ranked. 
The ones that are on the list, and are certainly in the same wheelhouse as Chained Echoes - Sea of Stars and Airoheart - are both significantly better, so not really useful as a comparison.

 

Instead, looking down the list a bit, towards the "some fun to be had, but with significant problems" area, are two such games though - Rainbow Moon, and (ranked a bit lower still,) Adventure of Mana.

 

Now, for all the issues I think Chained Echoes has, I do think it quite easily outranks Adventure of Mana. Adventure of Mana is a much simpler game - too simple really, in terms of narrative especially - and while Chained Echoes has a lot of problems in its plot and pacing, it does have high points, and those rise well above Adventure of Mana's narrative. 

Adventure of Mana is also quite an ugly looking game, and say what you want about Chained Echoes, but it looks great. It also plays better, even despite the myriad annoying systems, and so I think it comfortably leaps over Adventure of Mana.

 

Rainbow Moon, however, is a tougher fight. I think Chained Echoes wins on visuals, though Rainbow Moon isn't a bad looking game, and music is, I think, about an even match. Both games have problems with over complexity and lack of focus mechanically...
...but I think Rainbow Moon has less issues there, as well as less problems with things like narrative, and has the more ingratiating and stronger characters. 
The scope of Chained Echoes is greater, but I think it muddles itself so much, that actually, that isn't much of a benefit beyond having a broader range of environments...
...and fundamentally, I think Rainbow Moon is the more fun game to actually play through.

 

I therefore concluded that Chained Echoes needs to rank lower than Rainbow Moon...
... however, the game right below it is Far Cry 6.

 

Far Cry 6 is a weird one, because it is a very pretty looking game - gorgeous, in fact - however, it suffers for a lack of ideas, while Chained Echoes suffers for an overabundance of them. 
The narrative of Chained Echoes is over complicated and dour... but Far Cry 6's narrative is simply dull. It doesn't fail due to doing to much, it fails by doing nothing.

The clincher though, is that despite Far Cry 6 still having a nice shooting model and playing well, I do think I'd replay Chained Echoes again before replaying it, and that speaks volumes...
...so Chained Echoes should rank above it.

 

With no other games between those two, Chained Echoes finds its spot!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirst Suitors

 

 

Summary: 

 

A curious hybrid of cooking sim, skating game, dating sim and light RPG, Thirsty Suitors, from Outerloop games (developers of Falcon Age,) combines various elements of different genres, and blends them together with a psychedelic, 90s-retro, over-the-top and vivacious aesthetic to serve a narrative that is part Ghost World, part Kamikaze Girls, part Young Adult, and all Scott Pilgrim.

 

Taking the role of Jala - a young South Asian-American woman, returning to her home town for her estranged sister's wedding. Jala, a somewhat flighty and flakey, yet oddly-endearing hot-mess, left the town with a girlfriend who has, after 3 years, kicked her out...
...and is returning to something of an emotional mess she left in her wake.

 

Her relationship with her parents - her stern, overbearing mother and her soft-spoken, eternally loveable father - is fractured, her sister is mad and avoiding her, and her former best friend and a string of exes from grade and high-school are waiting to exact their revenge or take the emotional pound of flesh they feel they are owed for the various infractions she visited upon them before she left. 

Over the course of the week or so leading up to the wedding, Jala must reckon with the exes that are gunning for her, find and smooth her relationship with her sister, navigate a treacherous path of South Asian family dynamics, deal with a strange cult of mascot-worshipping skaters that have overtaken the younger kids in town...
...and deal with that most perilous and dire of family fears: A visit from her battle-axe of a grandmother!

Narratively, Thirsty Suitors is quite unusual, and pretty good.

The story is, of course, a fairly high concept one - and structurally, is hard to not to compare to Scott Pilgrim... in the sense that while in this case the exes are Jala's own, and not a lovers, the actual resulting structure is largely the same. Each of the exes who feel wronged by her past actions form one of the main "bosses" for each chapter (split up by days) and they are all somewhat working together, united by their mutual antipathy towards Jala.

What sets it apart, however, (aside form the fact that Thirsty Suitors is good, and Scott Pilgrim - at least, as a movie, was very much not,) is that most, if not all, of Jala's exes do actually have a genuine beef with Jala, rather than it simply being a story about a kid fighting over someone else.

While many of her mistakes are fairly understandable given the age she was, (a certain amount of youthful indiscretion is understandable in school-aged kids, after all,) and don't necessarily put her beyond the player liking her, they are, for the most part, ones where the exes themselves holding a grudge is perfectly understandable.
The game walks a fairly high tightrope, in that it needs to make both Jala, and her exes, feel somewhat lovable and endearing - or at least, not repel the player - while also having the infractions committed in the past be realistic enough - and grave enough - to justify simmering resentment. 

 

I think for the most part - at least in the case of the bigger, more plot-important ones - it pulls that off.
I've certainly heard some players say they baulked at Jala as a character, and consider her to be too laden with baggage, or too uncaring or unthinking as a protagonist to effectively carry a game like this one...
... but it's not something I ever found to be the case myself. 
I am, of course, much older, but I do still just about remember high-school and the relationships that happen there, and they were always messy and flighty and tempestuous - it's a stew of hormones, with a group still finding their way in the world, and figuring out who they want to be - and not to be - and such relationships get messy quickly.
Actually, (partly depending on the choices made by the player to some extent, but even regardless of that,) the Jala that we play as in the "present" is, while certainly sardonic and sarcastic, shown to be relatively conscientious and considerate to the people around her. She is certainly able - and willing - to cut someone down, or hit them where it hurts emotionally, but she doesn't seem to do that without cause, and spends most of the game owning her past mistakes, as that is kinda the whole point...
...so I have a hard time holding her school-age indiscretions against her, since anyone with a pulse has at least one similar story!

Part of the reason the game is able to walk that emotional tightrope, is that for all the over-the-top, fantastical elements of the game - and it has many - the bright, psychedelic look, the flamboyance of the movement and the design, and the general leaning towards the extravagant and outlandish in terms of tone and aesthetic...
...the actual conversations and dialogue, and the specific emotional content is oddly grounded and real - and often surprisingly well observed and handled. 
It makes for a clever dichotomy, where relatively serious, heavy or nuanced relationship elements can be dealt with in a deceptively light way, because there is so much brash, unadulterated flamboyance in the art design or all the metaphorical elements around it, that it's only once a "battle" is in full swing, that the player even notices that the writing is getting curiously sharp and well observed in its actual content.

That's sort of the method the game employs in all facets actually - making the obvious, immediate visuals and mechanical "game" parts light and fluffy and silly, but folding the more emotional and plot-critical dialogue in amongst it. 
Jala's cooking mini-game, for example, is where she has virtually all her most unguarded conversations with both her parents... 
...and it allows the player to absorb all that dialogue in a fun way. It can get into the weeds of the emotional elements without getting bogged down in them.

Aside from the purely narrative, conversational elements of the game that carries the brunt of the plot and writing, there are essentially three prongs to the mechanical game: the previously mentioned cooking, "Fighting," and Skateboarding.

Fighting in the game is all metaphorical, and using a turn-based, JRPG-inspired model, but transposing all the violence of those games into metaphorical elements representing verbal sparring and jibes - and while the fights are never particularly difficult, or a genuine barrier to progress, that isn't really the point. The point is to show a psychedelic, strange, flamboyant metaphor for conversations, and in that sense the implementation is very clever, and often funny.

There is something rather clever about the idea that each character has fundamental weaknesses based on their own character flaws, and their specific relationship to Jala - some are still into her, and weak to a "thirsty" attack or flirting, others are quick to anger or still simmering, and open to an "angering" attack, others are prideful and self important, and can be easily weakened using an appropriate "insulting" type attack. 

Seeing things like the JRPG trope of "summon" attacks be transposed here, to where Jala can call her stern mother, or her body-builder Auntie, or even some of her exes that she has made amends with to perform flamboyant special attacks is silly and fun - and the over-the-top spectacle of those old summons, when translated into similarly over-the-top spectacular attacks from these "regular people" is neat and fun.

 

Many of the fights are plot critical ones - every chapter has some form of "Boss Battle", generally one of Jala's exes - and these fights contain a large amount of unique dialogue and plot critical narrative that plays out within the battle itself, but even smaller plot beats generally culminate is some for of "fight".

There aren't "random battles" in the traditional RPG sense, however, there is the option to engage with non-critical battles as a way to level up or simply for fun - in the form of present that are dotted around the main town location. These take the form of a dice-rolled "Gift or Grift" mechanic, giving either a small amount of money, or resulting in a battle against procedurally generated "suitors" - other south Asian men (and some women) who are responding to matrimonial adverts placed on Jala's behalf (and behind her back) by her grandmother...
...the largely unseen matriarchal ruler of the family, living in India and still exerting a domineering influence on the family, and who provides the catalyst for the the game's finale.

The cooking mini-game is pretty neat. Jala can, generally at the beginning of each new chapter before leaving the house, be taught a new recipe by either her loving, if stern, passive-aggressive and judgemental mother, or her more soft-spoken, calm but emotionally-intelligent and astutely observing father, and these take the form of a sort of QTE-heavy test of skill, interspersed with plot-adjacent discussions of the goings on or the history of the family. 

These sections actually form a particularly meaty part of the family dynamic sub plot of the game - which becomes more and more the focus as the narrative progresses, and lead to the actual finale of the game - but mechanically, are pretty fun too - and have a tendency, as many cooking games can - to make the player quite hungry!
The dishes being cooked are real, South Asian meals, and all the talk of preparing the ingredients, and the comments about the meals themselves, when complete - particularly if Jala gets it perfect, with "3-stars" can make the stomach grumble, as they sound delicious!

The skating element of the game is, arguably, the weakest part. For what it actually constitutes in the game, is perfectly serviceable - but not much more than that. Essentially, all traversal in the game outside of buildings is done on a skateboard, and the controls are somewhat analogous to earlier Tony Hawk games, though the actual trick variety is relatively limited, and - since there is only really two outdoor areas to the game - the environmental variety pretty slight.  

 

There isn't anything particularly negative about the skating per se, but it is rather simplistic and un-nuanced, and tends to have such a wide "hit-box" in terms of catching environmental obstacles for tricks and grinds, that it can actually get a little tricky to simply go from A to B, as Jala will often accidentally end up in a trick when the player is simply trying to skate past something!

There are a series of optional skating challenges spread across the two areas - set by the mysterious and bizarre park mascot / cult leader in a bear mask who has claimed the never-opened skate-park as his own - and these can be fun, however, the lack of fine tuning finesse in the skating model can make them a bit more frustrating than they really should be, with it being difficult at times to accurately gauge what direction a jump or a grind will exit into.

Really though, the skating, like the cooking and the combat, is following a specific model and function - that the actual nitty-gritty of the mechanics are not necessarily finessed to the level one might require in a game where that was the sole action, but is perfectly serviceable as part of a tapestry.  
While a game that was simply the Thirsty Suitors skating alone, expanded to a full game, would really show up how limited the mechanics of that element are, as part of a big, silly, flamboyant, colourful mix, it serves primarily as just another arrow in the kaleidoscopic quiver, and serves well enough in that regard. 

Visually, Thirsty Suitors is not playing in the higher end of technical graphics, but it is a game that uses its art-design extremely well, making for an aesthetic that is distinct and dripping with style. Thirsty Suitors is certainly a game playing on its stylishness as a selling point, and it does it well - and virtually every element of the game is given some interesting aesthetic design choice or slightly outrageous, heightened element to it.
Whether it's the way Jala will do a cartwheel when entering her home, or a backflip to come down the stairs, or the way suitors she is about to battle will walking into frame on their hands, or the way the pattern on their shirt is textured as if independent of their actual movement - everything in the game is done slightly oddly - for no real reason, other than that it makes for a fun visual palate! 

The game seems to fall, artistically, somewhere between an early 90's MTV music video, a psychedelic Saturday morning cartoon, and a Bollywood musical production - and it works, primarily because it is imbued with all the exuberance and the "ironic-but-not-ironic" zest that all three of those influences bring.
There's an ostentatious ridiculousness to the level to which everything in the game is heightened, but it's done with an ironic wink - which is serving to both disguise and make palatable the more emotional content, and to simply imbue everything with a smirking, gleeful sense of fun...
...but as much as that kind of "throw everything at the wall" type of design can be overpowering, the developer does seem to have a pretty good notion of exactly how far to push into the realm of the fantastical and over-the-top, without quite losing grip on reality...
... so the whole game maintains itself just on the cusp of absurdity, without ever tipping beyond reach.

 

Audio is very good - the voice work is excellent generally, and helps a lot to give the counterpoint to the more flamboyant elements, by having actors who can deliver the more serious lines with some emotional heft behind them when called for, and can deliver jokes with the right inflection, and Thirsty Suitors has both.

 

The music too - is decent - there is a lot of it, and it fits the bill nicely...
...though I will say, that in a game this style-heavy and original, there would probably be room for a little more in the way of really memorable tunes. 
I enjoyed the music in the game for what it was, but I didn't ever find myself humming it outside of the game, or finding myself looking to listen to it on Spotify or anything. That's not a knock against a game necessarily, but in this particular style of indie game, that has often been the case, and in a game so wrapped up in a retro aesthetic - and specifically, one as musically inclined as Thirsty Suitors is - it probably does speak to a little weaker a soundtrack than one might have hoped for. 

Overall Thirsty Suitors is not a power-house, but it is a good game, and a quite original one.

It isn't doing anything mechanically that hasn't been done before - all three of its mechanical pillars are ones imported from other genres, and none are finessed to the most exacting degree...
...but the simple combination of genres, the nippy pacing, the cool concept, the good writing, and the likeable cast of characters make for a good time regardless.

The stylish signature look and genuinely uplifting and upbeat art-style, mixed with the disarmingly sharp and smart dialogue makes for a game that goes down easy, doesn't wear out its welcome, and keeps the player engaged all the way through its modest run time.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Thirsty Suitors, being quite a unique game, doesn't have a bunch of super-obvious comparison points, but two games did come to mind that have a few things in common for a starting point: Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Flipping Death.

Sayonara Wild Hearts, due to the psychedelic visuals and concept - flamboyant aesthetic and gameplay as metaphor - and Flipping Death, for it's likeable-if-rather-flawed female protagonist, and the use of humour and absurdity to disguise some more serious subjects being dealt with.

 

A little thin? Perhaps...
...but it gave me the hook I needed for a floor and ceiling - because while I like a lot of elements of Thirsty Suitors, I don't see it competing with Sayonara Wild Hearts, which still takes the edge on visuals, definitely takes it on music, and I think while it is done much more subtly and vaguely, does have its own level of emotional content dealt with - albeit via more visual metaphor. 

Thirsty Suitors is a good, rounded experience, with multiple gameplay types, but none are particularly finessed - whereas Sayonara Wild Hearts does one thing, but does it super tightly...
...and I think holistically, Sayonara comes out the pretty clear winner overall.

Flipping Death, on the other hand, is a good adventure game - one I have a real fondness for, but I do struggle to see Thirsty Suitors ranking below it. For all the fun to be had in Flipping Death, I think Thirsty Suitors offers some of the same fun, with quite a bit more in the way of narrative emotionality, originality and sheer verve and style... and while Flipping Death is funnier - Thirsty Suitors has the more memorable characters, the better overall look, and the more engaging gameplay.

That leaves a fair spread of game between...
... and one that is hard to ignore in that spread - given Thirsty Suitor's skating element - is Rollerdrome.

 

Rollerdrome is, of course, purely an action / sports game. It's roller-derby / hyper-violence arenas are the primary focus of the game, whereas Thirsty Suitors has its narrative front and centre, and skateboarding is just one element...
...but it is a pretty large element, and while it is functional, Rollerdrome - of course - has it beat hands down on that front.

In a one-on-one match up, of course Thirsty Suitors takes the win on narrative...
...but even against a game as interesting looking and stylish as Thirsty Suitors, I do think the gorgeous cell-shading of Rollerdrome has to take the win. It's such a good look, that it's tough to beat, no matter how much style is put up against it! 

Rollerdrome also does have the longevity that Thirsty Suitors doesn't, and fundamentally, I do have to come back to the idea that while Thirsty Suitors does a lot of different things mechanically - it doesn't do any of them with the finesse that Rollerdrome does its one thing.
Add in that Rollerdrome takes the win on music, and I think Rollerdrome has to keep its spot.

There's only a handful of games between Flipping Death and Rollerdrome, and it really comes down to feel and intuition, as they are not really comparable genres.
While I'm comfortable stating that Thirsty Suitors is slightly more awesome than Operation Tango, Critter Crunch, The Last Campfire and the original Ratchet and Clank...
...I do have trouble saying it's more awesome than Chime Sharp - which takes a crowded and difficult genre to do something new in, and does something new very well.

 

There's basically no way, other than "overall" to compare the two...
...but that feels right, and when I step back and look at the list in that arrangement, it still feels right...

...so that means Thirsty Suitors finds its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oOo: Ascension

 

 

Summary: 

 

A smaller scale, arcade-style maze-racing puzzle game from Extra Mile Studios, originally released for Nintendo Switch in 2018 and brought to the Playstation in 2020, oOo: Ascension puts a cool new twist on a well worn, classic genre. 

 

Taking all the bones of one of the oldest forms of action game - the high-speed obstacle puzzle - and applying a sleek, neon-future aesthetic, a synthetic,  ambient electronica soundtrack, and some very smooth, high-frame-rate gameplay, oOo: Ascension puts a spin the genre - literally - by setting every stage on the surface of a rotating sphere.

Across 90 stages, playable in either solo or side-by-side couch co-op race, a different course is crafted on the surface of a floating sphere, with the level constantly rotating on a full 3D axis, meaning the player's controllable ship remains central, but the level rotates around it.

 

Gameplay in oOo: Ascension is very slick and lightning fast - the actual controls of the ship are very simple and easy to pick up - controlled via a single analogue stick, with a speed boost on one shoulder button and a brake on the other - but the minimalist aesthetic and the "level-floating-in-the-void" design means each one is loaded extremely fast, and movement and frame-rate are speedy, making for an extremely frenetic and high-octane pace of play. 

 

The levels themselves are simple - indeed, the majority can be, (and must be, if the player is looking to fully complete the game,) finished in a matter of 10-30 seconds - however, many require quite bit of thought and planning to achieve those speeds, and a fair amount of practice to whittle those completion times down to that level. 

The game is broken up into specific sets - areas - each comprising 10 levels, and each of these areas will generally introduce at least one new mechanical element to the game, as well as be somewhat thematically tied together. 
The first set, for example, is generally simple mazes with set obstacles, whereas another might introduce elements such as switches, portals, moving platforms, enemies that chase the player, walls that must be lowered or platforms that must be raised or moved, and the drip-feed of this constant escalation and variety is pretty well balanced. 

None of the elements introduced ever feel enormously revelatory or unique - indeed, I suspect there is no aspect of oOo: Ascension beyond its novel spherical playfield concept that feels particularly original, however, for a smaller game like this one, that doesn't feel a particularly negative aspect. 

Simply presenting fairly well trodden gameplay, but doing it well, and with a specific, neat twist, does rather feel like all one needs in this case - particularly when the genre itself is - while well trodden generally - one that hasn't actually been in vogue for quite some time. 
Indeed, as games like Shatter and some earlier Housemarque games have proven, the virtual absence of those arcade staples during the PS1-PS3 era, meant that their return (via the explosion onto console, of the earlier indie scene, and in particular, the Xbox Live Arcade,) was welcome and overdue. Simply taking those old staples, adding a modern, sleek look, some good music, and smooth, clean gameplay was more than enough to scratch a itch.

oOo: Ascension is certainly working within that wheelhouse, and not going particularly further - but it's hard to knock it for that, as the actual gameplay feels very good, the visuals are sound, and the game does a bang up job of modernising and adding a spin to the core mechanics.

 

The addition of competitive 2 player works pretty well too - and benefits quite a bit from the spherical design of the levels. Because the screen real estate is - by necessity - cut in half for these instances, a lot of other games in this genre might suffer due to the limitations this would put on the player's peripheral vision of the level. In the case of oOo: Ascension though, because each level is a rotating sphere, neither mode offers particularly more or less visual distance, nor fidelity, so the 2 player mode feels equally as viable and playable as the solo mode.

Visually, as said, the game is pretty nice. There isn't an awful lot going on in oOo: Ascension graphically - it's not a long game, and sits comfortably in the "smaller arcade indie" space, but judged within that space, I think it looks better than most.
It's not going nuts with the particle effects and overlay elements like a Resogun or a Super Stardust or a Shatter does, but the models, while simple, are all pleasing to look at, well rendered, and actually, the spherical design of the mazes is particularly nice. It's fun being able to see each level's "sphere" in the menu, and seen en masse like that, there is a strange, ethereal quality to them floating in the void that looks pretty cool.

 

Audio is decent - the ambient Electronica is fine - though it mostly stays out of the way and has a tendency to blend into the background a little, which is a little disappointing in some sense.  This kind of quick-fire arcade puzzler can, at times, be home to some seriously thumping, great tracks of that nature (I still listen to the Shatter soundtrack on occasion in the car, over a decade after first hearing it!) 
While nothing in oOo: Ascension's soundtrack ever stood out as poor, I'd also note that nothing ever stood out as great either. The whole thing was fine, but I never got the inclination to seek out the soundtrack to listen to absent the game itself.

Overall, oOo: Ascension isn't a game that is likely to wow - it is a smaller experience, and one that pretty much stays in its lane as far as being a simple, arcade speed puzzler...
...but it does that simple game genre proud - bringing it back with a lot of style, a smooth, well worked out challenge curve, some neat visuals, decent music, and has a variety of levels that mean it never wears out its welcome over its full length.

 

It's not a game liable to convert anyone to the genre per se, and isn't as endlessly repeatable or replayable as something like a Shatter, as it is time-based, rather than score-based...
... but for folks who enjoy (or missed) that particular slant of challenging, best-time-setting speed puzzler, it is one that offers good gameplay, with a neat, well implemented signature hook. 
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Looking at arcade puzzlers then, oOo: Ascension is a good one, but isn't really operating or seriously competing against some of the other "old-retro-gameplay-with-modern-hooks" type games on the ranking currently - Tetris Effect, Shatter, Nex Machina, Dead Nation etc.

However, it is a quite compulsive and neat spin on old design, and fun, and so I started looking for games in either the arcade or the "arcade puzzler" field, that, while not at the top end of the ranking, are still very fun games that make a good showing.

 

The one that jumped out initially was Chime Sharp.
Chime Sharp is more in the Tetris / Puyo Puyo / Critter Crunch type of genre, however, it has some elements in common with oOo: Ascension. Chime Sharp is the more repeatable and compulsive game, but I think oOo: Ascension gains some ground on its unique twist on an old idea, and probably does beat out Chime sharp on visuals and audio.

Still though, the gameplay and repeatable nature of the game is of paramount importance in these kind of arcade puzzlers, and the fact that generally I think the gameplay is both more addictive, and more replayable in Chime Sharp, does mean it has to keep it's place.

 

Further down the list though, is an interesting match-up: The duel pair of Arcade Game Series: Ms Pac-Man and Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man. 
Now, those are basically 1-to-1 ports of the original arcade games, so not exactly the same thing, however, they suffer a bit on this ranking because of the presence of another game: Pac Man Championship Edition DX. 
That is a game that took all the best of Pac Man, didn't lose any of the magic, but modernised it really well, and made a great package from it. That means it somewhat reduces the stature of "pure" ports of the original games, as there is less reason to play them now, in its wake. (A similar argument, in fact, to EA's lacklustre "Tetris" release. I love Tetris, but the mere existence of Tetris Effect almost forces EA's Tetris downwards, as there is virtually no reason to play it, given the existence of Tetris Effect. 

 

While the original Pac Man games are bonafide classics, the actual ports of them do little beyond simply present that old game - and in 2024, the novelty of those originals has faded a bit, in the wake of good modern versions. While I think the core gameplay of Pac Man as an idea does outmatch the core of oOo: Ascension, I still can't deny that in almost all secondary ways - visuals, music, controls etc oOo: Ascension obviously wins - but even in the primary way, the mere fact that oOo: Ascension is spinning a genre with it's own style does mean I'm comfortable ranking it above a game that is simply re-presenting a very old classic.

There aren't many comparable games in the gulf between Chime Sharp and Arcade Game Series: Ms Pac-Man (the higher ranked of the two Arcade Game Series releases) - there is Critter Crunch, which I think does outrank oOo: Ascension, due to also putting it's own spin on a classic (Puyo Puyo) and making a bit more of a complete, better looking package - but aside from that, it comes down to gut feel.

 

Of the games there, I think both Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and Don'tNod oddity Remember Me do have to outrank oOo: Ascension...
...but I suspect that, given the choice, I would likely both play - and recommend - oOo: Ascension before IO's odd little family-friendly adventure Mini Ninjas...

 

...so oOo: Ascension finds its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immortality

 

Summary: 

 

A Mystery / Psychological Horror FMV game from Sam Barlow - of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Her Story and Telling Lies fame - Immortality tasks the player with reviewing archive footage of three "lost" films - cutting room sides, filmed portions of rehearsals, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, audition tapes etc, alongside some tertiary footage such as interviews or commercials - and piecing them together, to make sense of them.

 

Among the hundreds of micro and macro mysteries to be pieced together - who different actors and stage hands are, why certain actors were cast or re-cast, what happened to different people, why each film was not released, who was at odds with who, who made decisions and why...
... the game circles around a grander mystery:
what happened to Marissa Marcel - the enigmatic, vivacious, mysterious and magnetic young woman who was the star of all three films, touched the lives of everyone around her... then promptly vanished?

Note: Immortality is going to be a slightly awkward game to review, because it is a game that I will not spoil. 

 

Now, simply saying "I won't spoil this" is, of course, in some ways, a spoiler. 
It implies there is, in fact, an element that could be spoiled - it lets the player know there is at least some element of the game that is a twist or a deeper mystery...
... however, saying that, I'm not too worried about, for one specific reason: 
The game has already done so.

Immortality is marketed as a Mystery / Horror game - and the mere fact that it is has that "Horror" classification does imply that there is something horrific within it to be found.

 

Well...
...there is.

 

That is the extent of my spoiler.

 

I'm not going to get into the weeds, and even mention how that element is integrated, let alone WHAT it is, or when a player might discover it - except to say this: 
They are staggeringly well done.

I played Immortality with my wife by my side - we chose to "watch" (play) Immortality in lieu of watching a TV show or film for the few nights we took to complete it - and the process of playing the game, discovering "the thing" investigating it, discussing it, and playing detective with the footage was an experience genuinely quite unlike any other game.

When first discovering the more hidden stuff - "the thing" as I shall refer to it, we found it deeply unnerving and creepy - in a way very few horror games are able to muster - and even beyond that, once the veil was lifted, the simple process of dissecting that mystery remained profoundly chilling and unsettling - in the best possible way. 
Indeed - upon finishing, MsBloodmoney - who is not a huge gamer, but is an ardent and inveterate horror-phile, and considers horror her favourite genre of cinema - declared Immortality, a videogame, to be one of the best horror films she has seen in a long while. 

 

Now, I hear you ask... 
..."hey... how you going to talk about a game, without talking about the main part of the game then?"

 

Well, the fact is, luckily, Immortality is a game that, even without "that thing"... is still one of the most impressive, original, intriguing and audacious games to have come out in the past decade. 
There is plenty to talk about, even while not talking about what I wont talk about!

In terms of actual mechanical gameplay, Immortality is relatively slight - even as compared to something like Barlow's previous FMV game, Telling Lies.

The way that footage is discovered and viewed is by way of "connecting elements". The player starts out with only a single piece of footage, and has the ability to rewind it, speed it up, freeze-frame or go frame-by-frame through stills, using the analogue stick as a defacto "reel control", and a single button to activate an "analysis mode" where a controllable cursor appears on screen.
By clicking on elements within the frame at different points - say, for example, an ashtray - the player will be presented with a moment in another piece of footage that contains the same, or a similar ashtray. They jump to that moment in that new piece of footage, and can watch from that point, or rewind it to the beginning, watch from the start, and then can click on another element within that footage, to jump to another.
And so on, and so on.

 

That is, for the most part, it. 
From a mechanical standpoint, at least.

"Backing up" will give the player an overview - a simple screen showing every piece of footage discovered, which can be ordered either by chronological date of shooting, or chronological date by reel - and they can also flag specific clips with a rudimentary "favourite" system... but realistically, that is all the player will be doing - at least, via a controller - through the whole game.

 

As said, even as compared to Telling Lies, that is pretty simple. In Telling Lies, for example, footage was found by searching keywords from dialogue, and presented in limited "batches" resulting in a slightly more "gamified" experience, and it also had the more traditional "wrap-around" element, with the player playing a specific character, and therefore having a more defined "player character goal". 
Here, however, both those things are absent - for the better.

 

The searching for elements within the footage, and therefore jumping from one to the other makes for a much more fluid, dynamic way of playing...
...and the lack of a "player character" is of significant note, because by removing that element, the room for the horror aspects is made. 
Rather than playing as a character, we are playing as ourselves. 
We aren't playing a character tasked with archiving the footage - we are the ones tasked with archiving the footage, so when things get creepy and unnerving, it's because they are happening before our eyes... and to us.

That notion, of involving the player directly, is played into throughout the game -explicitly in some instances involving the more supernatural elements - but broadly even outside of it. 
Because the footage often shows film scenes being filmed, but includes the footage captured before the director called "action" and beyond the director calling "cut", there are a lot of instances where the actors will break character, and look directly at the camera, giving away some of their emotionality, is if looking at the director. 
Since we are behind the camera though, the effect is that the actors appear to be looking and emoting directly to us - the player - and that effect can be extremely unnerving in some moments, or spark a real feeling of empathy and connection at others. 

These are real-life actors, playing live-action characters, and by looking directly at us in their more "unguarded" moments, the natural human feelings of connection and empathy kick in. It's easy, when watching a character, to feel detached and "once-removed" from them and their plight...
...but when the actor playing that character breaks character, and smiles, or looks sad, of forlorn, or upset, or scared - and does it directly to us, the fact that they are, themselves, a character, becomes largely immaterial - once we have bought into the fiction that we are, ourselves, the archivist, those "actor" characters are now "real people" - the people behind the characters, and feel on the same level as us. 

 

I'd wager it virtually impossible to finish playing Immortality, and not feel some strange connection to to some of the actors - and especially to Marissa Marcel... because it feels as if SHE is real, and the characters she plays are fake. 
She is a magnetic, intoxicating character - within the fiction, she has an effect on all the people around her - and we become no different. She has the same effect on the player, because they themselves have bough into that world.

 

The game does flourishes to make us feel like a character in the story too, like, for example, kicking in the score more dramatically when the player is scrubbing through a lot of footage at speed - making even those moments of furiously trying to find a specific remembered element feel cinematic...
... as the game mirrors such a scene in a movie. The character, shown in "montage", searching, then discovering something important.

Immortality is a game where, as said, the mechanical gameplay is very slight, but the engagement is off the charts - and that, of course, is completely dependent on three things:

the acting, the writing, and the general filmmaking.

 

All three are absolutely phenomenal.

The tough thing with talking about the acting on show in Immortality in a game review, is that there really isn't a counterpoint within the genre in which it lives.
It really isn't comparable to acting in other gaming media. 

There are, of course, games with motion-captured acting that is stellar (The Last of Us games, for example,) or games that have some acting (live-action or motion-captured) that approaches Immortality - Alan Wake 2 is good, recent example - but I'd argue none of those examples are asking the same level of naturally or range from the actors involved, nor have even close to the amount, or variety, of material.

While there is real-life, on screen acting in plenty of FMV games, there really isn't a reasonable comparison there either, because very few other FMV games even approach the amount of material, nor the quality on show in Immortality.  Literally the only games I can think of where the comparison isn't a virtual joke is the other two Sam Barlow games - Her Story, and Telling Lies, both of which had very good acting on show - but even those pale in comparison to Immortality. Partly because those games simply don't have the sheer volume of material that Immortality does, nor the scope...
...but mainly because while those games are well acted (and they are,) the actors are generally having to play a single character, and not having to contend with the myriad different genres, characters, on-screen/off-screen dynamics, and sheer range required.

Pretty much every actor in Immortality is having to play multiple and varied roles that are deep and nuanced - playing both an "on-screen" character in the particular film they are associated with, and the "real-life" counterpart - the actor they are playing who is playing that character - and are having to break between those two at specific points, or with different supernatural aspects affecting them...
...and having to do so with a subtlety and attention to nuance and detail that allows for the player to pick up on multiple subtle things, without simply "giving the game away".
No element in the game - no turn, or hint, or curiosity can ever be utterly unique - there cannot be only a single instance where a player might notice something, as that would potentially ruin the game if missed - but they also cannot hang lantern on any specific thing at any specific time, and call too much attention to it, or the game wouldn't work as the mystery it is. 

All film scenes must look like they were genuine scenes being filmed, in a film that would have made sense as its own fiction... 
...but must also work when the director cuts, and the actors behave as they should, or would, given what is going on off-screen, at that particular time. 

Virtually every actor in the entirety of the production does a fantastic job with their parts, but without a doubt, the most impressive part is that played by Manon Gage as Marissa Marcel herself. 

 

Gage is tasked with playing a role that is complicated, nuanced, and seen in three different era's. She is seen both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, in candid moments, as a young, naive actress, a temptress, an auteur, a party girl, a starlet, an interviewee and interviewer...
...and playing 4 separate character roles in three different productions of differing genres and eras and filmic styles, variously breaking character, shaping characters, playing off different actors who themselves are either playing character or not...
...and has to carry the considerable task of playing into the more supernatural elements of the narrative, which, of course, she is inextricably wrapped up in.

 

She is an actor who is able to take a scene in which the tone is one where she appears to be being rather explicitly and degradingly exploited, then turn the whole tone on its head with a single look or subtle intonation, flipping it so she becomes the exploiter rather than the exploited. 

 

Scenes where the actor is in conflict with the character she plays, or who's relationship with another actor has changed but the relationship between the characters they are playing on screen has not, for example, require a specificity and nuance that must be subtle enough to seem realistic to the fiction, but still able to be interpreted and pick up on by the player. 

That is far and away above what is generally asked in this kind of performance, and time and again, it is not only achieved, but achieved with the kind of quality that stands up to the rigorous and repeated analysis that Immortality requires from a game point-of-view.

It is an absolute tour-de-force performance - one essentially capturing every facet, age, mood, emotion and the full spectrum of experience of a single character (who herself, plays characters, both on screen and off), and one the entire game is completely dependent on to work. It is the kind of role that - if on film or television - would be in contention in award seasons (and, in fact, Gage has won several awards for this performance, albeit as they relate to games, rather than film.) 

It really is difficult to properly articulate just how crucial this performance is to the game, and how well Gage stepped up to it. 

Immortality is a game that, if not as well written and acted as it is, would be something of a minor curiosity - one of a few games doing something interesting in the much maligned FMV game space, and noteworthy only in that respect...
...but the level of commitment, the writing, the quality of filming - and most importantly, the acting - elevates it to the point that Immortality isn't simply "a good FMV game" - it is probably the best FMV game, and the greatest argument the genre has ever had, for viability and legitimacy to a "non-gaming" crowd.

In virtually all FMV games, acting is measured relative to the unspoken statement "for an FMV game." 
In Immortality, the acting is not only measured without that caveat - it comes out well without that caveat. 
The performance would still come out better than a significant amount of filmic and televisual output, whether part of a game or not.

The writing and filming are the other aspects - and both excellent throughout too.

 

Immortality is covering a fairly grand scope - both in terms of depth of character, and breadth of time, and makes that clear and well realised in every frame.

All three of the "lost" films are genre pieces of their own distinct genres and eras.

 

The earliest - "Ambrosio" is an erotic religious drama from the 60s, of the type made by the studio system - complete with a Dino DeLaurentis-type old-school, visionary-if-somewhat-lecherous director, and the filmic style is pitched pretty much perfectly to mirror the grander, more salacious religious films of the age - think Caligula, Salo, Mother Joan of the Angels etc.
Everything from the film stock, to the sets dressing, to the manner of rehearsal and casting and speech patterns (on film, and behind the scenes) feels pitch perfect.

 

The second film - "Minsky" - apparently made shortly thereafter - is more in the European auteur style that was imported to America as something of a reaction to those grander films, and as a rejection of the old studio system - with Marissa and her director putting it together in a more art-house style.  It is a neo-noir detective story, in the style of something like Klute - and again, every part of what the film itself looks like, it's shot composition and framing, its style and the dressing around it - the sexual-revolution era extras, the partying, the sexual freedom and discussions about that sexual freedom in the unguarded moments, the outfits, the haircuts - it all feels congruous with that era.

Seeing footage from the game, alongside behind the scenes footage of other early 70s auteur cinema, it would be hard to distinguish between the real and the constructed.

 

The third film - "Two of Everything" - is a much later production, from the early 90s - and is a class-based, erotic noire mystery, of the type that existed then too - in the vein of films like Basic Instinct, Colour of Night, and other slightly-schlocky, absurd-premise-but-with-dark-erotic-themes type movies. Once again, it feels appropriate to the era. The way rehearsals are done, the way cuts are done - even things like how the production workers interact with the stars, or how shots are set up and footage captured feels different to the other films in the right ways, and befitting the era it is aping.

 

It's remarkable how, for example, the player is able to discern exactly which film a shot is from, before even seeing a single actor or explicit clue, simply by looking at the film stock being used, or the signature lighting effects of that particular genre and era, or the filmic style of the time and genre.
In fact, while it is not the primary focus of the game, there is a tremendous through-line on show within Immortality, of the evolution of Hollywood, and film itself. The player can not only see how film and film making evolved and changed over the 3 decades shown, but also what stayed the same and remained. 
There are certain tropes that permeate all three films that are brought starkly into focus when viewing all eras mixed together like this - and when clicking on, say, a kiss, or an exposed breast, or a tear, and flipping from one era to the other, the player is given a pretty interesting view of how specific filmic tropes and ideas are constantly evolving, while still staying the same at their fundamental core. 

The actual tasks of pulling all the together into a game that works, is something quite special.
I can only imagine the difficulties involved in writing a gamer like Immortality - where every player will be discovering the game in completely different orders, and where mysteries must be compounded and evolving at their pace, without anyone stumbling into the end game too quickly, but neither being bored or put off or simply stuck in a loop of previously watched footage...
...but all I can speak to is my own experience, which seemed both completely led by my own curiosity and whim, yet felt entirely filmic and oddly well structured. 
As if I, somehow, stumbled into playing it in the exact "right" order.
That is - I am fully aware - not possible.
It is literally impossible, not only, that I somehow stumbled ass-backwards into the one "correct" route, and that all others are wrong...
...but it is a remarkable testament to the game design, that virtually any path a person could take seems to feel like "the way they should have done it" all along.

It might seem, to the person reading this write up who has not played the game, like Immortality as a game would naturally be lacking in any kind of "finale". 
After all, the game is driven primarily by what the player knows, and comes to understand, and is therefore partly down to "you get out what you take away". Certainly, that was the case with Barlow's previous two experimental FMV games. Her Story in particular had really no natural "end" - it was simply over when the player felt they had got enough from it, and while Telling Lies did have a defined "end game" it was triggered essentially by seeing X% of the footage.

 

In Immortality's case though, due to the nature of the more supernatural elements in the game, there is actually a far more structurally satisfying "End". 
There is a thing that happens - not after seeing everything, but after seeing particular key elements, combined with an overall percentage (I think!) - that results in one of the most wild, well played, and deeply unnerving endings I've seen in a game.

It is not an "absolute" end in the basic sense - certainly the player can continue beyond that point (and I did) to work to solve many more of the other mini (and not so mini) mysteries around the footage - and simply to see more of it, as I think it would be borderline criminal to miss a single clip of the game, as absurdly well make as it is - but what it does offer is what Telling Lies and Her Story never managed: A really good, climactic, structured "finale" in a game that is almost tailor-made not to allow for one.

It's a really clever, interesting way to approach such a game, and works very well. 

 

If there is one element of the game I slightly lament, it's that I feel like that finale possibly triggers a little earlier than I would have liked it to - I still had quite a few mysteries I wanted to solve, and questions I wanted to find answers to when it happened...
...but it's not something I'd hold too hard against the game.
Partly, because one can simply continue afterwards, but mostly, because coming when it does (around the 5-6 hour mark) does arguably cap the game at a reasonable point for those not struck by the full "completionism" sickness - when they have come to understand the depth of the mystery, if not every minute intricacy of it.

Overall, Immortality is something very, very special - in both the FMV field, and the horror field.

 

It is a game that feels truly original, whip-smart, is better acted and written than the majority of Film and TV, let alone other games...
... and manages to be deeply unsettling and genuinely unnerving in a way that most full-blown, "game-y" horror games could ever hope to come close to.

 

The limited mechanical gameplay does place it in an odd category - it feels more "film" than "game" at any particular point of play...
...but that doesn't change the fact that it is a story and a pice of fiction that simply couldn't exist as anything other than a game - and makes use of the interactivity that being a game brings with it in such novel ways, that it feels like its own thing entirely.

 

Immortality is a film that can only work as a game, and a game that can only work as a film...
...and by expanding the FMV genre to such a level that Barlow has essentially created a new genre all to himself, he has managed to craft literally the only home that could work for Immortality - without a doubt, his magnum opus.

 

It is - and I don't use this term often - a genuine masterpiece.
 

 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So.... ranking Immortality was a dang nightmare!

 

The issue is, realistically, there is only one truly comparable game on the list: Telling Lies. 
It is, after all, the only other game from Sam Barlow, which is also an FMV game on the level and of the style he defacto created...
...however, it's not a particularly useful comparison, because Immortality is so good, and operating on such an elevated level to Telling Lies, that the comparison is almost moot.

In fact, the existence of Immortality almost makes Telling Lies seem worse. Telling Lies is not a bad game at all - it's a very good one - but there is a bit of a "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of the Rings" quality to the two games - the former was great, but once the latter came out, the former looked simplistic and small in its shadow!

Instead, I had a think about just how impactful, and splendid an experience Immortality was, and then consider:
"What are the highest ranked games on the list, that hold those high placements for reasons that are NOT related to their mechanical gameplay?"

 

Now, that isn't as easy as you think.

There are games up there where the gameplay is fine, but isn't what pushes them as high as they are, (I would argue, for example, Bioshock, in terms of pure, raw, technical gameplay, would not hold its place where it does - it is the art design, mood, atmosphere and narrative that elevate it,) - however, it does still have quite a lot OF mechanical gameplay, and it is not a negative.

What I needed, was games where the technical, mechanical gameplay is either very slight, or not at all the reason for the games esteem...
...and the two that stood out, were This War of Mine, and Norco.

 

Now, Norco is a point and click Adventure game, which is a genre that is "gameplay-slight" anyways - but even within that genre, Norco's controls can be ropey. It is- at best - serviceable on that front...
...but what elevates it is everything else. The writing, the art, the tone, the score, the feeling, the mood, the weirdness and the style.

 

As compared to Norco, I actually think Immortality does have the edge on mechanics - it does even less, but does it with a bit more fluid style, and with some more clever mechanical hooks. (I know, I didn't mention those - it's for the initially mentioned reason about "The Thing" which I won't mention!)

Norco is one of the best examples of writing I've seen in a game, and as a straight narrative, I would contend it still (just) beats Immortality...
...but Immortality gets close, and does it while being malleable and changeable - fitting to the player whim to an extent that Norco's doesn't. While Norco makes for a brilliant, bizarre, strange tone, I think Immortality meets it head on in that fight.
I think Norco takes the win on music, but Immortality takes it on pure, unadulterated emotional investment (again, it's close, but it does), and Immortality also has the benefit of being not just original within a genre, as Norco is - but wholly original, in the sense that, aside from the two Barlow games leading to it, it effectively exists within its own genre. 

I think it's well known in this checklist how much I love Norco, so when I say Immortality beats it, I don't say it lightly...
...but I think it does.

The other game was This War of Mine - and that's a curious one, because it does have the gameplay - albeit not exemplary gameplay in its strategy field - but is really deserving of its place because of the tone, the malleability, the human connection...
...all things Immortality has too.
It doesn't have a straight narrative per-se, but it does have player-driven, emergent stories, whereas Immortality has one, grand story, being viewed in myriad, malleable ways. 

I find the hear-breaking elements of each playthrough of This War of Mine very effective - and amazingly empathy-inducing, considering the style of gameplay - but I think Immortality is doing that "connection to characters" better than virtually any game I have ever played... so it has to win there.

I could go round and round on this, as the two are quite distinct and original in their own ways, but in the end, I think I had to fundamentally take it down to the core, and ask "which of there two games, gun-to-my-head, would I recommend ahead of the other"...
... I can't deny that it would be Immortality.

The game directly above This War of Mine though - that couldn't possibly be less comparable to Immortality: it's Tetris effect...
... probably the most "gameplay-first" game there ever has been!

 

That's a really tough one, but fundamentally, I do think Immortality reaches its peak with that fight. 
The thing with Immortality, is that while it is one of the best experiences I've had in a game for a while - it is largely a one-time experience. It would be impossible to replay Immortality and have the same experience again. Watching someone else pay might still be fun...
...but going against a game like Tetris Effect, which I still play daily, after years of playing it, and some of the games above it, which are also very impactful games, but ones that do have more mechanical gameplay backing them up, and can stand up to repeat plays in a way Immortality can't, means I am comfortable seeing Immortality find its ranking peak.

 

Immortality a heck of a game, and is, therefore, the first in a while to enter the Scientific Top 20...
...and well deserves it!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game'!

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diaries finally remains as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game'!

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

 

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

[grayhammmer]

I saw that Immortality entered your top 20 and then saw that you are refusing to spoil it during your review, and so to avoid having any expectations when I get around to playing it I'm going to stay away from actually reading your review so I can go in completely fresh (I have a big problem with spoiling things I play/watch because I want to see what others think about it before I even finish it and I'm trying really hard to fix this problem of mine).

 

Also, now that you're caught up, I would like to request a analysis on Another World, a game that I myself have played long after it came out and as such was more disappointed in the length of the game than I probably would have been if I played it back when it came out (if that makes sense).

[Platinum_Vice]

On 2/22/2024 at 11:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Immortality a heck of a game, and is, therefore, the first in a while to enter the Scientific Top 20...

 

Dang! Hot diggity. 

 

On 2/22/2024 at 11:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

These are real-life actors, playing live-action characters, and by looking directly at us in their more "unguarded" moments, the natural human feelings of connection and empathy kick in. It's easy, when watching a character, to feel detached and "once-removed" from them and their plight...
...but when the actor playing that character breaks character, and smiles, or looks sad, of forlorn, or upset, or scared - and does it directly to us, the fact that they are, themselves, a character, becomes largely immaterial - once we have bought into the fiction that we are, ourselves, the archivist, those "actor" characters are now "real people" - the people behind the characters, and feel on the same level as us.

 

This reminds me of Inscryption. I got so bought into the "game within the game" when my character played Lemmy's adventure, that when that game within the game was interrupted or when I would lose, then camera would tilt upwards and I'd move my character as if I was moving myself. Feels kind of like a brainhack or hypnosis, somehow. 

[DrBloodmoney]

 

!!SCIENCE UPDATE!!

 

 

The next (not at all) randomly selected games to be submitted for scientific analysis shall be:

 

 

 

New

 

Final Fantasy VII: Remake

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Kentucky Route Zero

Open Roads

 

 

 

[No Priority Assignments this time - I'm way behind due to a tight work schedule!]

 

 

 

Can 'Current Most Awesome' game, Hitman: World of Assassination, continue its glorious reign?

 

Is gaming turdlet Htol#niQ: The Firefly Diaries  going to lose its new crown of 'Least Awesome Game'?

 

 

Let's find out, Science Chums!

[Aceterix]

This is going to be a wild update, I shall tend the fire and bring the kettle close in anticipation.

 

Set face to do not disturb.

[realm722]

 

I am going to devour those two Final Fantasy reviews like they're the last words on earth.

[DrBloodmoney]

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Jakes and Science-Amys, as promised (and in some no cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

 

Final Fantasy VII Remake

 

Summary: 

 

The first part of a planned trilogy of games remaking Final Fantasy VII, the curiously pragmatically titled "Final Fantasy VII Remake", released in 2020, takes the early portion of the seminal original game - the portion taking place within the corporate-run city of Midgar -  and expands it enormously, retelling the tale with vastly improved graphical flair, a lavish and meticulous attention to detail, and a new, multi-dimensional spin on the narrative.

It's probably worth mentioning right at the start of this review - I am a big fan of the original game. 

I'm not 100% sure which Final Fantasy game I consider to be the actual best overall entry - I think on balance that mantle likely falls on Final Fantasy VI, representing, as it does, the final, most engrossing entry of the 16-bit era, and featuring both the best overall gameplay and battle system - however, I do consider FFVII to be very high on that list, nipping at its heels.

Regardless though, I would argue FFVII is, even if not the best of the original games, it is without a doubt the most fitting entry in the series to receive this kind of lavish, audacious remake. 

 

The reasons are simple.

 

Firstly, FFVII, while perhaps not the actual pinnacle of the series, nor having quite the most complex or sweeping narrative the series ever saw, it is still very strong in those regards, and  I do think that it has the most iconic elements contained within any single entry. The cast of characters in Cloud, Aireth, Barrett, Tifa, Red XIII et all are memorable and iconic in a way that no other entry in the series can offer, and their journey though the set of locations - from Midgar, to Junon, to the Costa Del Sol and the Golden Saucer, to Coral and Nibelheim, to the Temple of the Ancients, is memorable as an overall journey in a way most other entries cannot match.

 

Secondly, it is one of the most beloved - primarily due to the time, place, and console on which it released. Final Fantasy VII was the first entry in the already beloved and well regarded series to appear on Playstation after a 6-game run on Nintendo consoles, and for many people, represents both the reason they shifted to the brand new Sony console.

 

Thirdly though - and most importantly...
... it is the single entry in the franchise most held back by the technology upon which it released. 

 

Final Fantasy games are always quite ambitious - long, involved, narratively and mechanically dense, and epic on a scale that - certainly at the time - was only offered by JRPGs, and by specific entries within that genre. In all cases, the games were products of the technology upon which they released, and tailored to those, but Final Fantasy VII in particular feels demonstrative of the widest gulf between the ambition of the game, and the ability for the developers to realise it with the time and the technology available to them.
The game was very strong in terms of story, of characterisation, and of gameplay - but the effort required to release on the new technology meant that FFVII is perhaps the only entry to really, really show its drawbacks in some areas.

 

The original game is in many ways - and I say this with love...
... kind of a mess.

It looks, well... ugly. 
The characters are cheebie, low-poly blocks. The combination of still backgrounds and ultra-low-poly characters/ interactable objects looks ridiculous. The mere idea of "hiding" openable chests in the scenes, for example, was laughable, as one only had to glance at the ugly, bright-yellow cube in the middle of a nicely rendered still background to know where it was. 
What is actually some really cool design on still backgrounds for the environments is totally undercut by the laughably terrible looking over-world.

Even things like cut-scenes, while very impressive at the time, were all over the place in terms of simple art design - in the same game, there are cut-scenes that are motion-comic-style sweeps across still backgrounds with polygon cheebie characters, ones that are fully rendered scenes with "realistic characters", ones that have fully rendered interpretations of the polygonal cheebie models...
...hell, there's even one where there are "realistically" rendered models, but with the proportions of the cheebie-characters, lending characters like Barrett the look of a child's action-figure... and the awkward gait to match!

 

Now, that's not to say these elements ruined the game - they demonstrably didn't. 
In fact, it's a real testament to the narrative and compulsive gameplay of the game that they didn't. 
The narrative, iconography, design and emotional impact of the story shone, despite those issues, and turned the game into the smash hit it was, and gave it the lasting fan adoration it has enjoyed for 25 years.

That is precisely why FFVII is the most fitting entry for a remake.

If you take a game that was strong enough in other areas, that it managed to elevate to the level FFVII did, even despite the huge drawbacks in visual fidelity, poor English translation of dialogue and technological limitations, imagine where that game can go when all those barriers are removed.
It's basically the old adage about the running coach, seeing two different sprinters at try-outs. They both get the same final time, but one has great form, and the other, lousy form. Which one should he pick to mentor?
The answer is the one with lousy form... because teach him the right form, and he beats the other guy.

Final Fantasy VII is the sprinter with lousy form, who still got a respectable final time.

Having now played Remake, and the second game in the trilogy, Rebirth, I can confidently state that, if the third entry maintains the quality established, it is on track to beat the others. It has been taught the right form.

 

 

The actual portion of the original game covered in this entry of the Remade trilogy is certainly of note.
While the Midgar portion of the original Final Fantasy VII is important, and certainly contains some of the more iconic moments of that game, the fact remains - of a game that most first time players spend around 80-100 hours with, the early Midgar portion not only serves as primarily a tutorial area, prior to the gameplay opening up and the player getting access to the world map...
...but it also only takes around 3-4 hours.

 

It's a curious concept - certainly on paper - remaking the original game, and having the first third cover such a small section of the original run-time. I'll freely admit, it's one I was quite sceptical about upon first hearing it, however, it's a decision that feels far less strange upon actually playing the game to completion...
...and particularly with the hindsight of having played both currently available parts of the trilogy.

 

The fact is, in terms of natural "break points" in the original story, there are two - the leaving of Midgar (now the end of Remake), and the Temple of the Ancients, (now, the end of Rebirth.) Those are the point at which the game demonstrably changes, and the points at which the narrative provides its most clear act breaks - they just come at unusually paced times, when considering the length and duration of the gameplay as a whole.

 

What it does mean, of course, is that the Midgar section of the original game is expanded immensely from what it was originally, though curiously, the actual beats of that narrative remain largely the same. The progression from point to point, and the actual content is largely unchanged, but what is altered is simply additive - extra time is taken to flesh out characters - the main ones, and side characters like Wedge and Biggs and Jesse, who's parts were pretty minor in the original.
Even characters like Johnny, or Don Corneo and his bodyguards who, while present in the original, were little more than footnotes, are given significant screen time, and set up as characters who can (and will be) returning later in the story.

 

In fact, having played Rebirth, what becomes clear looking back at Remake, is that the vastly expanded Midgar section, and the significant increase in detail contained in it, is a huge benefit in terms of tying the narrative together across the entirety of the arc.

The fact is, while the events that take place in Midgar are extremely important to the overall plot of Final Fantasy VII, much of that connection is a little ignored or taken for granted in the original. Once the characters leave Midgar, there are relatively few points where the calamitous event of that section or the serious implications of it on the world and the characters are referenced back to with any specificity. They are mentioned, but largely in passing, and in a vague, generalised way.
In the remade trilogy, however, the events are given more weight, and the implications of them are more realised and made more immediate and centre-stage, which allows the entire story the be tied together a little more. I'll talk a little more about that when discussing Rebirth, but suffice to say, that wile there can be a feeling, in Remake, that the original game's plot points are being drawn out, and made to take so much longer by the addition of a lot of incidental world-building and character-building in between them, that is for good reason. It provides a much more grounded and solid base from which the rest of the narrative can be anchored, and elements of that expanded "opening" work to bind the post-Midgar game much more neatly and naturally to where the narrative started.

In terms of narrative, Remake does some interesting things with the original narrative, in that it somewhat splits the difference between "retelling", "reimagining" and "rewriting". 

The actual beats of the narrative are pretty much all as they were in the original game, and often remain largely unchanged in terms of pure content. However, the additional material added between and around them has the effect of somewhat recontextualising some of them. The game works partly as a remake, and partly as a sort of sequel in some ways, in the sense that while the events are playing out as if for the first time, the game does not simple pretend the original game does not exist.

A new meta-narrative framework is established - one in which the original game serves not as a prequel, but as pre-ordainment. 
The original game is referenced, not as past, but as portent - as the way things are "meant" to go. 

In a word: Fate.

 

This allows the developers to write around all the elements of the original game that the players will be familiar with, but also deviate or add or mould those story beats, and to do so in a way that allows both the nostalgic feel of a remake, and the genuine intrigue of a new story. The familiar player can be confident that they will be seeing all the old elements they remember and loved, but they won't necessarily be presented in a way that feels like a simple re-tread. 

 

It also creates a situation where the characters themselves are essentially fighting three "big bads", rather than two. 
In addition to the heartless, megalomaniacal Shinra corporation, and the iconic spectre of evil that is Sephiroth - the nihilistic, vengeful, world-endangering emo-punk-neerdowell of the original game - they are also battling their own pre-destined fates - embodied and personified here as grim, cloaked spectres, trying to force the game to follow the exact path of the original.

In fact, in some ways, these "fates" are used as a slightly tongue-in-cheek way for the writers of the game to embody their true enemy: The Die-Hard Purists among the player-base.
It's not difficult to imagine the developers - the writers in particular - when trying to adapt the original games narrative to work on the much longer timeframe and new game style of the remade trilogy - feeling the grim, spectral force of the purist fan-base as a choir of howling, faceless wraiths, trying to force them to simply retread the old story without deviation...
...and to imagine them taking a little glee in having the characters within the game fight - and win - against that congealed mass of spectres, breaking out of the bonds of their old fates, and finding a new path!

 

That said though, something that I do think is of genuine interest - and which continues into the second entry in the trilogy - is that while Remake firmly establishes a narrative and structural framework, and a basis, for significant deviation from that original game's narrative, the developer doesn't actually go nearly as far as they might in that regard. 

Remake takes great pains to establish how and why they could change the narrative - giving themselves permission, if you will - but the developers are actually remarkably careful about doing so. 
Really what the remake trilogy does, isn't so much deviating, as simply recontextualising within the original parameters. Finding a way to acknowledge the majority of the player-base's pre-existing knowledge of the narrative as a meta-contextual framework underpinning the new tale, but still striving to maintain all the major - and most of the minor - narrative beats.

Essentially, the game presents a story you know, but does so in a way that maintains the vitality and liveliness of the characters, freeing them from being "flattened" by repetition... because they themselves are striving not to repeat their old mistakes - whether or not they are actually aware of it. 

 

It's a formula that works well - in this game for the most part, and particularly well going forward in Rebirth.
I, as a person very familiar with the original game, found myself constantly embraced and enraptured by my own nostalgic connection to that original game, and feeling the warm fuzzies upon seeing elements of that original design and narrative presented in high fidelity and with such graphical and technical flair...
...but I was also driven and propelled forwards by a story that, while featuring all the elements I hold dear, was different enough - and cognisant of its remake status enough - to still be surprising and colourful and interesting and engaging.

 

Characters retain all their important character traits - and moments - but they are made a little more vital, simply by being seen for much longer. Having a chance to flesh out, and in some cases provide more justification or context, for why they are how they are, or do what they do. 

Cloud, for example, is... well... a bit of dick. 
He was in the original, and he is here...
...however, there is significantly more attention paid to contextualising why he is a bit of dick - because the developers are both fleshing out, and bringing forward some context that, in the original game, only revealed much later on. 
Cloud is mentally unstable. 
He is the result of experiments, and those experiments changed his mind and his body. He has very little understanding for why he feels like he does - hell, he isn't even sure what happened to him, or where he has been for the last 5-7 years. He is inexorably linked to a corporation and a foe (Sephiroth) in a way he can't explain to himself, let alone to others. 
He acts like a bit of a dick, because he is trying to stay cool and composed, while covering the fact he has literally NO IDEA what is going on in his own head, or what he should be doing about it.

 

That kind of altering of the narrative is both necessary, and quite welcome in the remade trilogy - not only because it allows for more connection to the characters, but also because it is a trilogy. 
It's one thing to have a long game like the original FFVII only explain why a character behaves like they do after 40-50 hours of play - that's a big enough stretch for a player - but to have a trilogy of games release over the course of years, where a character's motivation was only explained 2 games and 5-6 years later would be simply ridiculous.

 

Also, there is, of course, the lack of actual mystery inherent to a remake. 
The fact is, whether the game explains these aspects earlier or not - whether they tell us Cloud is sick, or that he is linked to the mysterious black robed individuals around the city, or to Sephiroth, or to Zack Fair, or to Shinra in this early part of the story...
...we know anyways. 
We've known since 1997. 
The cat is out of the bag, so why not use that pre-exiting, impassable spoiler as a benefit, rather than a curse? Acknowledge that the player-base already knows the ending, and bring forward some of the late game "exposition", to do some more interesting things with it in the early game.

The tone of the game is curious - and a little uneven in Remake, truth be told, though it does find its feet eventually, and maintains that solid footing all the way through Rebirth.

The thing about remakes of older games from previous console generations, is that striking the right tone can be tough. 
The natural, most obvious course for developers to take - and one that can work, or not, depending on the property in question - is to maintain the general story, but to make it a bit more grounded, or a bit more gritty, or a bit more "real". 
The thing about games from pre-PS3 era, is that with relatively few exceptions, even relatively "serious" narratives were imbued with a certain level of lightness or silliness around the edges. Games were somewhat hampered by technology in terms of real grittiness, and games were less of a serious business in terms of narrative generally - while "serious" stories were told at times, there was an inherent ridiculousness to that seriousness, due to the lack of graphical fidelity and the more limited tool set.

 

With some games - the recent Resident Evil remakes, for example - simply making those graphics more realistic, adding more gore and horror trappings, and giving the stories a little more of a cinematic and grounded quality - within the fictional tone of course - works a charm.
However, Final Fantasy is a more difficult beast in that regard.

The fact is, Final Fantasy VII, while telling an epic narrative with a lot of more emotional or serious elements as the main beats, was quite silly and quite goofy a lot of the time. 
Deliberately so, and it worked very well. 
The battle against Shinra was treated as somewhat serious... but it always had a lot of silliness and goofiness in the tertiary characters, and around the edges. 
The epic struggle to defeat Sephiroth, and the major story beats that affected the characters were treated fairly straight...
...but there was still a character who was - to all intents and purposes - a vampire, and another who is a mechanical cat perched atop a stuffed toy. 

 

That makes the idea of updating Final Fantasy VII as more "serious" a difficult prospect. 
Firstly, the game, if trying for a "gritty" more "realistic" approach, would have to excise a lot of stuff from the original game - much of which comprises iconic elements the players remember fondly.

Secondly - and arguably more importantly - Final Fantasy as a franchise has never been one where going more "dour" or more "serious" has been a benefit. 
Generally, the goofier the tone manages to be around the edges of the central narrative, the better the game ended up being. Most of the best entries in the franchise - FFVII, FFIX, FFIV, FFXII - all struck a similar balance of "world-ending-calamity" in the primary narrative, encased in a world of abject silliness and goofy wonder.
Even what is generally considered the best Final Fantasy game (by myself, along with many others) - Final Fantasy VI - while certainly containing maybe the most dour and bittersweet primary narrative in the whole franchise, was filled to the brim with silliness around the edges. The world might literally suffer an apocalypse halfway through...
...but there is still a remarkable amount of time spent singing operas for octopi, suplexing moving trains and listening to Gau say dumb things with a smile.

 

In fact, every time a Final Fantasy game dove too far away from that silliness, and tried to "get real", it was to the game's detriment. 
FFVIII is a good entry, but the tone is remarkably humourless and sour, and it takes away from the narrative, rather than adding to it. 
When FFXIII worked, it was because it went sillier, not more serious. In fact, when the series tries a genuinely "gritty" tale in FFXV, it failed spectacularly - not because it managed to completely excise the goofiness, but because it tried to treat it's goofiness as seriousness, and it simply didn't work.

That leaves the remakes in a curious spot though - they can't necessarily make the tone more "serious"... but the amount of goofiness and the tone of the original simply wouldn't sustain a game with much more realistic graphics and a much longer length.

There can be quite a few moments of tonal dissonance that spring up, but don't feel terribly well paced or plotted initially...
....but they finally congeal in Wall Market, where the developers and writers were finally forced to make a serious decision, due to a particular clanger from the original game - Don Corneo.

The Corneo section in the original is meant as goofy fun - where Cloud and Aireth need to infiltrate the mansion of a self-proclaimed lothario, and do so by dressing cloud in drag, and having him pose as a woman, with the help of, among other things, a trans body-builder, and "massage parlour".

It's a section that is well remembered and silly fun... but that was 1997.

It's not exactly the easiest section to make palatable to a 2020 audience, and is predicated on such potential minefields as sex-slavery, rape, molestation, threats of genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia...
...y'know... all the fun things you want in your AAA, colourful, fun RPG!

 

It's a section I suspect would have been genuinely considered for simple excising from the game. It would have been easy, actually, given that writing it out of the narrative would actually have been relatively simple, and leave most of the rest of the game unaffected...
...however the developer didn't do the easy thing. 
They did the hard thing: 
They made it work...

...and it paid off enormously, because the solution they found not only made that section a highlight of the game, but established the exact tone the game needed going forward, that could contain all of the oddness and silliness of the original game, without it destroying the serious elements.

Flamboyance.

The game goes - for want of a better term - full vajazzle.

 

FFVII Remake becomes - tonally - outrageous and over-the-top and flamboyant in a way very few games are - and that tone remains pretty much consistent from that point.

They serve up a serious, often dire, and occasionally emotional journey, and treat it with seriousness to a point...
...but they do it while maintaining all the ridiculousness of the originals, and make it palatable in a way it really shouldn't be, by serving it up on a golden, bejewel plate of Ru Paul-level, pink-flamingo outlandishness.
It is a "serious" narrative...
... but it is presented dipped in glitter, covered in sprinkles, spray-painted pink, disco-lit and served atop a chocolate dildo.

That tone remains relatively consistent from Wall Market onwards - and is where Rebirth lives in its entirety. 

 

Visually the game is something quite special, in the sense that it is very high fidelity and well made, making use of a really great graphical engine, but is applying that graphical flair to a design ethos already established somewhat, by the original game. As said, the visual fidelity of the original game was pretty ropey in many, many ways...
...but the actual design of the world - and particularly of Midgar, was so good, as to transcend those visual drawbacks.

 

Here, without those drawbacks, Midgar looks pretty astounding.

The slums below, and the "new" city, built on "That F@£king Pizza" - the series of 8 giant, metal plates jutting out from a central column of impossible size and scale, each powered by it's own life-draining Mako reactor - look fantastic, and the art design tends to follow a similar approach to "remaking" as the narrative:
ie., don't change, but add, broaden, widen, and recontextualise.

 

Basically, pretty much every iconic element of the original game's environmental design is retained, broadened, and brought to life in a way that is impressive both has a standalone piece of design, and - even more so - in how well 2D, single-screen static backgrounds have been brought to life in full 3D. 
Every location - from the 7th Heaven bar, to Aireth's oddly idyllic flower-encircled home in the slums, to the church, to the reactors, to the Shinra headquarters, to even small details like the play park equipment or the signage on Wall Market stores are retained and given a new coat of paint, but the whole city is made to feel massive by comparison, via draw distance, fidelity and artistic grandeur. 
There is a combination of attention to the smallest details, with a sense of scale that is impressive - and a treat for people like myself who recall the original game, and who could only imagine, in 1997, what lay beyond the edges of the still screens.

Character design is something else too. The characters of Final Fantasy VII are archetypal, and - certainly in the original - larger than life and extremely cartoonish. They do not immediately lend themselves to representation in a more "realistic" world, and with realistic proportions, but the developers do a good job of making the characters more human-esque... while still keeping them as large and broad and caricature as they need to be to embody their larger than life personas.

The world of FFVII isn't realistic, of course - this is a cartoonish, manga-inspired, super-hero world of over-the-top nonsense, but while nothing is exactly "realistic" it is made to feel "real" within the context of the world it inhabits. 
Barrett might still look like a Sherman Tank - his hands might be the size of the other character's heads - but he doesn't quite feel out of place in this strange land of floating fish, steam-punk slums, Talking dogs and inexplicably pointy hair, because everything is odd, and odd on the same level.

 

One can point to fifty ridiculous things in any single scene, but it almost doesn't matter, because the world is rendered and realised such that it allows emotional engagement and tension and stakes within its own strange tone and setting. 
It doesn't feel "true"....
...but it feels "right" for that world.

 

The combat system is excellent - almost certainly the best the series has seen since divesting itself of the fully turn-based ATB system of the first 10 mainline entries. 
While there have been good versions of modern Final Fantasy battle systems (say what you want about FFXIII, and I said plenty, but it's combat system was very, very good,) the series has struggled a little with modernising battles, because the turn-based systems were such an integral part of what made the series work originally.

It's ironic, in a way, because while trying to modernise, and shift away from turn-based combat has been difficult for new entries, primarily because the series never seems able to completely shed the remnants of that old turn-based system...
... in FFVII Remake, they actually manage to strike upon the best version of a modern system, by deliberately not getting fully away from it. 

Because this game is a remake, and requires some direct parallel to the original game - including specific limit breaks, special moves, materia system etc - the devs are forced not to run from the old system, but to address it head-on. To find a "split-the-difference" style of combat, that serves both a modern audience looking for more action-heavy, real-time combat, and the sizeable old-guard, playing for nostalgic kicks, and looking to recall the original game.

 

The result is a system where combat is primarily action-focused, but uses built-up meters to unleash special moves that serve as analogous to the old turn-based actions, and because enemies are designed around original enemies in the original game, who's weaknesses and strengths were designed for a turn-based system, the devs introduce several new mechanics - namely "pressure" (a meter built up on each enemy, which is affected by specific elemental or situational weaknesses), and "stagger" which results when an enemy is "pressured" enough, and opens them up to vastly increased damage.

 

This system is key to the successful splicing of old and new concepts, as it allows battles to have the kinetic, frenetic and fast-paced action the original game never did, with the requisite benefits of skill-based real-time dodging and battle placement - but still forces a significant strategic element on top, where fans of the old game can find the nostalgic leanings they crave.

A boss can be fought, and survived against to some extent by simply being skilled at dodging and could be whittled-down using standard attacks or special moves at opportune times...
...but even the most skilful character-action player will likely not be able to fully defeat them without also exploiting specific weaknesses using specific magic attacks, or items, and by managing both their full party, and their materia set-up to work in synergistic harmony, the way the old ATB model required.

 

The result is pretty much exactly what one would want. A system where fights - and bosses in particular - can feel insanely difficult and overpowered at first...
...but analysing them, identifying weaknesses, and finding a specific combination of skills, materia and tactics can often bring them to heel remarkably quickly... providing the player is also on the ball in terms of real-time combat. 
The "micro" of a battle is in the action-side, but the "macro" - the things that will eventually defeat the enemy - are tactical and strategic, and driven primarily by good preparation and materia set-up rather than by skilful or "twitch" in-battle play. 

 

Audio is great - the voice work on the characters works much like the visual and narrative tone does, in that it takes the over-the-top and the silly, doesn't shy away from it, but manages to be serious enough to cast the spell of emotional connection strongly enough that it doesn't break under the levity.

The musical score is very good - the original score of the original game is extremely well remembered and iconic, and that score is remastered, re-worked and updated in a way that always retains the nostalgia, but still sounds modern and vibrant. 

 

 

There is one aspect that I think should be addressed with a remake like this one, and that is "would this game work for people completely unfamiliar with the original game?"

My feeling is "probably not."

 

For sure, the game would work from a purely mechanical stand-point - the gameplay is largely different from the original anyways, and gameplay elements imported from the original game like the materia system could easily be picked up, either intuitively, or via the robust (and well implemented) tutorial options...
...however, I do think that, narratively, it would be hard to find a single remake out there less friendly to newcomers. 

The fact is, by acting as both pseudo-sequel, and remake, and by using the player's familiarity with the original game as part of the meta-narrative, the game is essentially requiring at least some familiarity with the narrative elements of the original.

A new player could certainly see Midgar for the first time in Remake, and simply think "what an odd, weird design of a city", but when it comes to narrative beats, I suspect they would be entirely lost at sea when Aireth begins making hints that she has foreseen her eventual fate (or one possible fate,) and would be even more confused about who Sephiroth is when he keeps showing up...
...particularly since Sephiroth is not only not explained, really, in this game, but he wasn't even present in this portion of the original game, and was only given a backstory post-Midgar.

 

On the one hand, that could be seen as a major flaw in the game, in terms of being a straight "remake" - a modernisation of an existing game for modern audiences. On the other hand though, of all the games in existence, FFVII is one of the most well known and beloved. It has legions of fans, and it's plot is so widely known, that it's arguable that in order to avoid that issue, the game would actually do a disservice to the much larger group of people who do know the original story.

 

Overall, FFVII Remake is quite a triumph - it was so in 2020, and feels even more so from the 2024 stand-point, seeing it as the first game in trilogy, and knowing how it informs and leads into Rebirth.

 

It is a game that manages to successfully walk the tightrope of being both a nostalgic retread of a game, and feel as fresh and lively as a new game, and one that pays true service to it's origins, without being so slavishly devoted to the old tone and style that it feels dated or hold itself back.

 

The gameplay feels on par with modern games, and the combat system is easily the best the franchise has seen in years. 
The narrative, while covering only a small fraction of the original story, never feels particularly stilted or staid or slow, and looking back now, it's clear the areas in which Remake vastly expanded on the run-time are allowing the developer to pay back in dividends via references and no-backs in future instalments.

 

It's a game that really shouldn't work as well as it does - it is reliant entirely on players remembering a previous game, it has cartoonishly, outrageous moments and characters right alongside serious ones, and ask that the player accept both ridiculous, silly things, and extreme, dire stakes hand-in-hand...
..but pulls it off in a way that somehow just works.

 

It plays beautifully, has depth and challenge and charm to boot, and establishes a framework - and eventually a tone - that could serve Square for years to come, with countless games, be they remakes of other FF games, or new entires.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

There's going to be a significant problem with ranking FFVII Remake, and its sequel, and that is the relationship to the already ranked FFVII original game.

The issues being around two significant questions:
1. How much does the weight of the eventual full trilogy matter?
2. How much does the fact that the games owe their existence to the original game matter?

 

To answer the first question...
...the thing is - I'll say it right now - if the final entry in the trilogy maintains the standard of the first two games, I am confident in stating, that trilogy as a full game will outrank its progenitor.

In fact, I am now of the opinion, having played Remake and Rebirth back to back, that the combination of the two game already outranks the original game...
...however, the complicating factor is that each individual section is only a part of a whole.
Each feels like a "full" game, but narratively, not a "complete" one. 
These games are not sequels in the traditional sense, they are parts of one grand, long game, split into three.

 

On the second question...
...that's more sticky. 
The fact is, in most cases where a remake exists I would consider them separate... but FFVII Remake is unique, in that it is narratively predicated on the player having to have played the original. It is sequel, and remake. It isn't simply remaking things from the original, it is remaking them while requiring the player to be familiar with them in their original form, in order to make sense of the narrative.

In the end, I feel like I have to simple acknowledge that the original FFVII is the baseline, and consider how much I enjoyed the individual section of the game covered in each part of the remade games, and consider whether I feel I had more fun playing it, than the entirety of the original game...
...and when the final part does finally release, there may need to be some kind of reckoning.
Perhaps the individual placements will be removed, and a single, all encompassing ranking made.

(Truth be told, I've considered removing Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 from the rankings already, for a similar reason - in that all their positive elements are actually already included in the Hitman" World of Assassination ranking...
...but it's less of an issue there, for the simple reason that Hitman: WOA is at the very top, and not causing any issues to me, due to it's astounding awesomeness!)

 

So, in the specific case of Remake, I do have to concede that while I think the changes made for modernising and remaking the early part of FFVII are - in basically every possible area - the best possible versions one could have hoped for, and the game is absolutely fantastic in virtually all regards...
...I do think the sheer length, already existing awesomeness of the original game, and the inherent "completeness" of the original, as opposed to the "first of many" aspects of Remake, do mean that the original still outmatches it in totality.

 

Yes, Remake plays better - quite a bit better - and yes, Remake looks and sounds and feels better - a lot better...
...but a lot of the great elements are inherited and built on an already solid foundation, and wouldn't exist without the original, and the original is so massive and sprawling, whereas Remake is quite contained and linear in this outing.

 

That places it below FFVII... but that's still pretty dang high. Theres a lot of belters in that end of the list!

At the top end of the list, the games are diverse - related only in their sheer awesomeness - but what I looked for was other RPGs or Action games, with great narratives, and - preferably - that are parts of trilogies or larger franchises, but not necessarily the best or most complete narrative part of that trilogy or franchise.

 

Can you see where I stopped?
Yup - Mass Effect 3.

 

Mass Effect 3 is a good comparison, I think, because it is part of an ongoing narrative - not the pinnacle of that trilogy, but still a sterling game, and an integral part of it.

Mass Effect 3 is a great game - its much maligned ending and the subsequent and odious "fan" reaction notwithstanding...
...but I do think FFVII Remake has it beat. It is too well made, too fun, and too good for Mass Effect 3 to beat it - it wins on visuals, gameplay... even audio - and Mass Effect 3's audio is no slouch. The narratives are not similar, but they are similarly high quality within their respective genres, and the fundamental fact is, I had more fun with Remake than with ME3.

 

That pushed FFVII Remake above it - but the two games above ME3 are Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Alan Wake II.

 

Now, Sekiro is a hell of a game - a cool reformatting of the souls-like formula to a slightly different flavour, and it work very well...
...but I do think in totality, FFVII Remake wins. It has the narrative edge, it has the visual edge by a long way... and there is simply more iconic and memorable and endearing character and story elements to boot. It also has music that stomps all over Sekiro's.

 

I do however, have trouble seeing FFVII Remake beating Alan Wake II.

 

Alan Wake II is not just a great game - it's a game doing weird, interesting things in a way FFVII Remake isn't. While Remake still retains the edge on music and on raw gameplay, I think Alan Wake II does actually take the lead by a fair margin on visuals, as they are not just as good in terms of graphical flair, but they are significantly more original and interesting, in the blending of FMV and CGI, motion capture, and stylistic flourishes...
...and when it comes to narrative and tone, both are great, but Alan Wake II is more audacious and surprising and bizarre. Alan Wake II is taking risks in a way few games on that scale ever attempt... and not just having them pay off, but having them hit the fucking jackpot.

 

That has to be recognised... and when combined with the excellent narrative and great characters, I do think it manages to hold out against FFVII Remake's onslaught - even with Remake winning on music and gameplay.

That places FFVII Remake just above Sekiro, and just below Alan Wake II...
...a well deserved, very envious position!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

 

 

Summary: 

 

The 2024 follow up to Final Fantasy VII Remake - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, picks up where Remake left off in tone, in visual style, in combat system and in meta-contextual flow, and begins the not inconsiderable task of telling a much more extended segment of the original Final Fantasy VII's narrative - essentially the bulk of the remainder of what constituted "disc 1"...
...getting into what is a much more open, much looser, much more fantastical, and altogether more colourful, eccentric and iconic area of the game to which it owes its existence.

The actual narrative differences between the original Final Fantasy VII and the part-remake-part-sequel nature of the remade trilogy remain something I won't get bogged down on discussing in detail - but suffice to say, Rebirth follows Remake, in the sense that while actual beats of the narrative, and the broad content remains largely the same, and are simply fleshed out; the biggest area of change is less in content, but in context. 

The actual path the characters take, their motivations for doing so, and the people, environments, locations, enemies and obstacles they encounter on the "main path" are all largely lifted from the original game and simply made to work with the new combat system, graphical style and fidelity, however, what Rebirth does with this section of the game is primarily to tie it much more tangibly and tightly to both the events of Remake, and to the meta-narrative the developers are using to weaponise the player-base's pre-existing knowledge of the source material as a benefit, rather than a curse.

 

Curiously, while Remake took explicit pains to establish in-narrative ways in which the game might significantly deviate from the original story, post-Midgar - including a particularly pointed and explicit section at the end, in which the characters actively "defeat" their pre-determined "fates" - Rebirth actually doesn't deviate from the original path any more than Remake did.
In fact, setting aside optional side content, and some additions, there is very, very little that is markedly changed.

There is certainly far more content - narrative, gameplay, tertiary story, world building, characterisation - that is added and embellished, however, this is generally done around the edges of a well trodden story, and affects it only be altering the tone and context, rather than the beats. 

 

As an example, characters like Biggs, Jesse, Johnny, Don Corneo - ones who were, in the original, simple side characters in the Midgar area, largely forgotten once the narrative moved on, here, the main narrative retains it's rough original form, but because those characters had been fleshed out far more in Remake, there is more scope to refer back to them, or to bring them into the content around Rebirth.

The events of Remake too - aspects such as the fall of the Midgar city plate, or the public reaction to Avalanche and their actions, are referenced far more in Rebirth than they ever were in that section of the original game, tying the games together in a more flowing, coherent way.

Character motivations and characterisation is stronger, I would argue, in Rebirth also, than it ever was in the original game, and as a result, the characters are actually considerably more relatable and their motivations comprehensible than they once were. 

Many of these changes are subtle, but as an example, take Cloud's behaviour. 

Cloud does a lot of dumb things, and takes a lot of very curious and questionable actions in the game. He did in the original too. He is mentally unstable. We know that. We knew it in the original too... but not necessarily at this point in the game. 
eventually we come to understand what was happening to him, but at this point, we didn't. 
However, at no point in the original do the other characters appear to acknowledge his odd behaviour... either to him, or to each other. 
Cloud appears to act either like a mad-man, or a bit of a dick, and the other characters stick with him, because... well... he's the main character!

 

Here though, not only do the other characters appear to actually see that Cloud is mentally unstable - they address it, both to him, and more often, to one another. 

Now - does that actually change the outcome or path of events? 
Largely no. 
The main narrative remains on roughly the same path it always took, and the actions have basically the same result. However, what it does do, is change the tone of that narrative, and the player's relationship to the characters. 
We feel more for Cloud himself, and for the characters around him, because he seems less like just a douche-bag, and they feel less like idiots. They know there is something wrong, and they want to help him - but also, they still need him, because, well, he's a bad-ass with a bad-ass sword, and their best hope for saving the planet.

 

 

The meta-narrative, multi-universe elements established in Remake begin to pay off here too, in the sense that while the main narrative is going on, a secondary, rather mysterious parallel reality is also playing out in the form of occasional cut-scenes and short gameplay sections - of another reality... one in which Zack Fair returns to Midgar, and where the end of Remake went calamitously badly for our main heroes. 
These sections are generally positioned while our characters sleep, lending them the guise of "dream sequences", however, the fact that Sephiroth is, in this game, seeking not simply to rule/destroy the world, but to rule/destroy all possible worlds in all possible realities, means the player cannot simply dismiss these sections as flights of fancy, and they lend the whole game a strange mystery side-story, which is (somewhat) paid off in the finale, though feels poised to matter a great deal come the third and final entry in the remade trilogy.

Where Rebirth really deviates is in how free and open the game feels.

While Remake did have some sections where the player was free to explore and to complete side-quests or side-content, these were relatively contained - as they were in that section of the original game, within Midgar. The fact is, while the original FFVII game was largely an open-world game, it wasn't until after leaving Midgar. Prior to that point, it was relatively linear, and so Remake followed suit. 

Upon leaving Midgar, however, the player was free to explore much more. The narrative path was linear - gated by things like continental constraints and traversal methods, however, the player could explore large areas within reason, and so Rebirth does the same.

The game is still - as Remake was - divided into discrete chapters, following the main narrative path and dissecting it at key point and by key bosses, but pretty much each time where - in the original game - the player was free to explore a large land mass, Rebirth achieves the same, by having several very large land masses that have a sort of "mini-ubisoft-model" open-world exploration element. 

 

Now, there is two ways to read that statement, and I'm fully aware that "ubisoft-open-world-model" is not a phase that conjures positive feeling for everyone. 
Even for a majority, most likely. 
It tends to conjure ideas of "icon-barf" maps with far too many things to do, and cookie-cutter missions that feel like busywork rather than unique content. Luckily, while there can - on occasion - be some elements of these areas that do feel a tad repetitive, for the most part, these open-world areas retain only the good aspects of the "Ubisoft-Formula." Namely, the encouragement to explore, the activate-towers-to-unveal-missions, and the easily tracked, distinct sets of side activities. 
What they don't import, is the endlessness of repetition, the inflexibility of mission structure and the overabundance of similar gameplay.

 

Each of these areas has around 20-30 activities to be done, and while there is a generalised pattern to them, each area has enough distinct elements to feel different, and offer new gameplay. All areas have towers - in this fiction, pre-Shinra communications towers, being activated for Chadley, the curiously Nier: Automata-esque robot/AI character in a schoolboy uniform who aids Cloud in his quest, in return for help cataloguing the world and researching "combat data" - and all areas share some of the more minor tasks such as finding crystallised materia...
...however, each also has its own set of unique missions for unique characters, its own distinct mini-game tied to a particular "area quest" and specific traversal elements linked to the area's local chocobo breed (or vehicle availability,) etc. 

In addition, each area has its own set of enemies, and these have specific, tailored combat trials, the completion of which leads to unlocking a specific, unique "sub-boss" for that area.

The result is that while the path to "completing" an area is roundly the same each time, following a checklist model, there is enough distinction for each area to feel unique in terms of more than just landscape. Running around Cosmo Canyon, using a chocobo that can hover and fly from canyon to canyon, playing the odd, programming-logic-based tower defence games, fighting sand snakes and trying to get a local chocobo farm hand to get over her fears, feels distinctly different to driving around the area beneath the Gold Saucer in a dune-buggy, fighting cactuar in a strange, oddly compulsive speed-trial mini-game, fighting birds, setting traps, trying to lure out a Tonberry King to steal his crown, and hitting the Costa del Sol for some Queen's Blood or a pirate-themed shooting gallery. 

Speaking of which, the other way Rebirth really distinguishes itself from Remake goes hand-in-hand with that more free and open design: mini-games. 
There are a lot of different mini-games. 

 

Final Fantasy games have always had their fair share of mini-games, of course - and Final Fantasy VII was one of the more abundant in that regard.  Particularly within the section of the original game that Rebirth covers, there was tower defence in Fort Condor, Chocobo breeding and racing, Battle Arenas, G-Bike racing, Basketball, Mog House, 3D Brawler, Shooting Coaster... the original was not hurting for mini-game distractions...
... but in Rebirth, the list is not only (mostly) imported to the remade version, but the mini-game abundance is increased fourfold!

In addition to the Gold Saucer, which sees the better original mini-games brought into the new version (excising the less interesting Basketball hoop, and the - let's call it what it was... shite... Mog House,) and adding things like a curiously competent and fun space shooter into the mix, the game also adds - without exaggeration - around 30 or so additional new mini-games into the mix.

 

Mini-games can be something of a double-edged sword in games. 
In some cases, having a few mini-games that are fun to play adds a good side-activity, but in many cases, mini-games can feel like a burden if the main game is good enough to support itself without them, or if it feels like there are too many of them.
FFVII Rebirth feels like something of an anomaly, however, because despite the main game being very good, and easily able to sustain the huge length of the narrative without distraction or boredom, and despite the huge number of different mini-games available, they never feel particularly burdensome - or even like a major distraction...
...and the reasons are threefold.

 

Firstly, while there are a huge and varied number of different side activities and mini-games, each of them feels, pretty much without exception, well made and fun. The ones engaged with the most - Fort Condor (the tower-defence mini-game first displayed in the Yuffie-themed DLC of Remake,) Cactuar Speed Challenges, Chocobo racing, Piano-Playing, Shooting Galleries, Queen's Blood, etc - are all crafted to a degree high enough to more than sustain interest and fun for their duration. They are designed well enough to ensure the player is challenged, but not flummoxed. 

 

Secondly, the devs seem to have a good understanding of exactly how much of any particular mini-game is feasible and it can sustain, and pepper them in accordingly. 
Something like Queen's Blood - a card-battling game revolving around deck building and synergistic card collecting and play - is extremely robust and an absolute blast to play, to the extent where it could almost sustain a game in its own right (and I maintain, should, in fact be released as a stand-alone spin-off on mobile, with a versus mode!) - is given a lot of game-time... and it own entire, Inscryption-inspired quest-line. 
Throughout the game, Cloud and his cadre are collecting and buying cards, and while early on, QB seems a simple distraction - a world-building element, establishing a popular game within the fiction, that they can play against the many players around the world, in the spirit of Triple Triad from FFVIII or Tetra Master from FFIX - a secondary, sinister, almost 4th-wall-breaking quest-line is slowly introduced via the game. Not only does the player ENJOY the QB matches, but they have legitimate, tangible reason to engage with it - winning games throughout the world not only has material rewards, but there is a quite intriguing and curious narrative payoff building also. 

Not every mini-game is on that level, of course - most don't have a whole narrative quest-line around them, but they do almost all feed into at least one or two different side quests, and to a one, they have material benefits to winning. 
Collecting the better materia in the game requires mastering many of these little mini-games, and that works, simply because they are mostly very fun to play.

 

Thirdly, the sheer volume of them is matched by their variety and quality.
Mini-games game feel like over-egging at times when there are so many, but Rebirth seems almost to side-step that issue, not by holding back, but by going so hard, that they push through the "too many" boundary, and come out the other side! 

The fact is, too many mini-games distracting from the core gameplay can feel exhausting, but here, there is SUCH a variety, and SO many, that the abundance of mini-games actually BECOMES part of the core game. It's hard to argue that mini-games are a distraction, because there are so many that Rebirth doesn't feel like a combat RPG with mini-games, but rather, half-and-half a combat RPG, and a party game.

 

I don't actually think I've encountered a game with quite this split of gameplay. 
I am reliably informed by my squad of Science Chums that the closest analogue is the Yakuza series, which splits its "serious" narrative, with absurd mini-games and side content in much the same way, though I have yet to sample that series myself...
...but it makes for a really odd situation, where while playing, I was constantly thinking "this should be a detriment... but it doesn't feel like it is."

The fact is, while I would almost assuredly caution a game developer against putting such an absurd amount of non-core gameplay into their game, I was consistently excited when a new mini-game popped up in Rebirth - and eager to engage with it - and that speaks both to the strength of those mini-games themselves, and to the engaging nature of the main narrative: no matter how much time I spent hopping over obstacles as a frog beneath Junon, or fighting foes in the Battle Arena, or playing a complicated Rock-Paper-Scissors in the Gold Saucer 3D Brawler, or riding a bike, or shooting spacecraft, or doing sit-ups in a jungle gym, or playing cards, or racing birds, or breaking boxes, or picking mushrooms, or slicing cactuar...
...I never got wholly detached from the main story, nor felt my time was being wasted on busywork. It was ALL enjoyable and fun, and the patchwork of different gameplay only seemed to feed into and work for the tone and world-building.

 

That speaks, of course, to the tone of the game - something I spoke about quite a bit in the Remake write-up, and it's of great import here too.

There is a tonal consistency to Rebirth that Remake lacked - because once Remake had laid the groundwork in its first half, then established its tone with the second, the developer stuck to it. In fact, they doubled down - and that works, because the actual section of the original FFVII game that Rebirth covers is the most eccentric and varied section of the original game. 

 

While the Midgar early sections of the original game do have some bizarre or eccentric elements - Wall Market, Don Corneo, some of the Shinra executives etc - as compared to the later game, that section is positively benign. Rebirth covers a huge swathe of the world of Final Fantasy VII, arguably all of the most memorable - and weird - elements. There is Cait Sith, the magical/mechanical cat riding a stuffed toy, the golden Saucer and in all its bizzaro glory, Dio - the purveyor of said bizzaro glory, who looks like a circus strongman in undies and a cape - chocobos, moogles, the Costa del Sol, mini-games galore, the list goes on and on...
...and one might have expected, given the feel of Remake, that the developers might excise some of the more incidental or odd elements to streamline the narrative, but in fact, they not only lean into those elements - they add significantly to them.

 

Rebirth has no issues with its tone - because the game knows what it is - goofy, fabulous, over-thee-top spectacle, and fun all round. 
The game is as bright and colourful and silly and over-the-top as a glitter-ball drag show. 
It is a circus of colour and theatrics and musicality and wackiness, with a "serious" story running through it. That dissonance works, and is what allows the "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" approach to the gameplay to work as well as it does.

The world is so heightened and odd, and the characters so archetypal and strong, that the game can swing from a deadly serious fight for survival against a genuine threat, to a mechanical cat atop a stuffed toy yelling in a Scottish accent, or a talking dog playing what is essentially single-player Rocket League to win a prize on a date, without anything feeling particularly out of place...
...because everything is fair game, when your tone is "Fabulous."

 

The game's tone is a cavalcade cornucopia of bright lights and sparkles - it is a drag show musical, telling its serious story with a wink and a nod, while dancing the can-can. 
You can't over-stuff or over-egg something which is tonally predicated on being over-the-top and overstuffed - so abundance becomes the norm, and silliness becomes indistinguishable from seriousness.
It's all silly... and it's all serious. 
It's a fandango.

 

In terms of combat and core gameplay, there are certainly differences as compared to Remake - the slightly cumbersome "Weapon Upgrade" system is replaced by a rather less fiddly "character level" sphere-grid style upgrade path, and some adjustments in the way materia work have been made to limit the player's ability to become too overpowered. (Where in Remake, maxing out the level of a materia resulted in a new materia of the same type spawning, in Rebirth, that mechanic is excised, to limit access to the best possible materia.)  
However, it's rather remarkable how much of the excellent battle system is brought over whole-cloth. 
That shouldn't be read as a slight either - it's a testament to how good the combat and materia system worked in Remake, that it can be applied to Rebirth virtually unchanged, include the play-styles of the new characters alongside the pre-existing ones, be applied to much wider, broader set of enemies and bosses, and still remain not only serviceable, but a genuine highlight of the game.

The exploratory elements and the general gameplay is crisp and well done - there is more in the way of flexibility in traversing the world, as in Rebirth, characters feel more nimble and able to hop up and down ledges and climb areas that would have been "false walls" in Remake. The exploratory elements of Rebirth don't feel hugely dissimilar, there's simple a lot more of them - both in terms of some of the bigger set piece environments, and, of course, in the large open world areas.

Visuals remain at the high standard set by Remake, and stylistically the games are cut from the same cloth, though the fact that Rebirth covers a far wider swathe of locations obviously opens that style up to much more variety. 

There is certainly a minor increase in fidelity and scope - things like draw distance and fine detail are improved, most likely due to the lack of a last-gen version to put a damper on the game - however, these improvements are relatively inconsequential in the micro, as Remake was already an excellent looking game. 
The real marker of progress is simply how much bigger a scale these excellent visuals are applied to. While the Midgar of Remake had distinct locations, there is still an inherent similarity to most of it - it was all one city (or, two cities if one considers "old" and "new" Midgar,) whereas Rebirth is covering multiple distinct locations and biomes.

 

The art design follows the same rules Remake followed - retain, but expand and embellish - so locations still have all the most iconic and distinctive elements recalled from the still backgrounds of the original game, but are simply detailed and expanded upon to a degree that is impressive. From the quiet of Kalm, to the militaristic port town of Junon, to the beach resort town of Costa del Sol, to the garish and ostentatious Golden Saucer and the dusty, downtrodden former mining town of Coral, to the Tudor quaintness of the mountain town of Nibelheim, the player familiar with the original game can easily identify all the existing elements they recall - of both design and, to some extent, layout - but the realisation and attention to detail is still impressive for a 2024 game. 

 

It's done to a degree that is genuinely impressive too. 
There is no real reason why, for example, the Costa del Sol would need to have an archway bridge crossing from the port to the resort - some redesign would be perfectly acceptable, but the fact that the developers ensure it IS there for people to remember, while also making the town seem like something that would be designed from scratch in a modern game, is emblematic of the process of design used in these remakes. 
It's a redesign to accommodate the new, but with an attention to small details of the original, and to making them work as more than simple throwbacks, that impresses over and over.

 

Audio remains of the high standard set in the previous entry too - and again, sticks to the "retain but embellish philosophy. Final Fantasy VII's soundtrack is iconic and sacrosanct - it's one of the earliest game soundtracks I can recall to be beloved to the extent of seeing sales of soundtracks on more than a minuscule scale, and a lot of the locations or character-specific themes are etched in the memories of the player-base for all time. The developers wisely stick to using these themes, and rather than wholly rewriting anything, simply create new arrangements of them, and they still work to the same degree they did originally.

Overall, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is something very special - and manages to follow up the excellent Final Fantasy VII Remake to such a sterling degree, that it outshines its predecessor in virtually every way.

 

 

Virtually every part of Remake was impressive, but also set up considerable questions with regards to the continuation of the series - Remake established such a rich, well executed, fleshed out version of the early portion of the Final Fantasy VII, that it was a perfectly legitimate concern to wonder just how the developer might be able to maintain such a level of quality when applying that design ethos to a much larger, much looser and much more expansive chunk of the old narrative.

Those questions are put to rest with Rebirth, which not only maintains the level of quality, but doubles down on it, adding in countless new elements to an already rich and high quality experience, and does it while maintaining all that was good about Remake. 
It is a massive game, with scope and scale and variety and spectacle on a level that is really astounding considering the size of it, and does so without ever cutting corners on quality, user experience, fun or engagement.

I was concerned about the idea of Remake originally - I had assumed the developer might meddle to much, or need to excise too much of the original game to maintain my nostalgia, or would conversely get bogged down trying to do everything, and end up hampering their modernisation. 

 

That was proven wrong.

 

I was then concerned about Rebirth - worried simply that by delivering so well on Remake, that they had set themselves an impossible task with Rebirth, and would never be able to maintain that level of quality in a game so much larger. 

 

That was proven wrong.

 

I think I've simply learned now - not to worry about whatever the final entry is.

All they need to do, is just not fuck it up, and there's a very good chance that the complete FFVII Remade Trilogy will easily slip into the spot of "Best Final Fantasy Game of All Time".

 

Fingers crossed!
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So...
...in ranking FFVII Rebirth, all the same issues I mentioned in the Remake ranking still apply... but here, they are a little more pointed, as - spoiler alert - FFVII Rebirth is an even better game than FFVII Remake.

In fact, it is such a good game, and - unlike its predecessor - actually covers such a substantial section of the original progenitor game from which it sprang, that it gets much more questionable whether the amount covered actually does elevate it past the original game.

 

The fact is, probably the one thing holding FFVII Remake back from outclassing its progenitor, was that it is, while a long game, substantially shorter and covering so much less ground than the complete original. FFVII Rebirth, on the other hand, is like 200-250 hours long. In fact, if pursuing the platinum, completing FFVII Rebirth actually takes longer than the entire original game did to fully complete, and has probably a greater variety of gameplay to boot.

That makes the question of ranking strange... because there is no longer the simple "this is less game" part evaporate. What is left, is the fact that FFVII Rebirth is less of a "complete" story - naturally - however, it is a comparable length story...
...and in virtually all other ways, it is a superior game. It plays like a dream - even better than the original ever did - looks light years better, has more compelling characters due to the better rounded character arcs and more substantial differentiation of character and motivations...
...and in all the areas where the original game excelled - the abundance of mini-games, the music, the enemies, the location design, the narrative -it does either as good as, or better.

That, I think, begins to make what seemed impossible prior to Rebirth's release start to become an indisputable reality:
FFVII Rebirth has to outrank its originator... even without the final part of the trilogy even existing yet!

Yes, Final Fantasy Fan, I am as surprised as you are.
There is a reason the original FFVII is ranked in the current 12th position on this massive list. 
I fucking love that game...
...and yes, that love for the original is a key component to me loving FFVII Rebirth...
...but I can't deny - I think I love Rebirth more in 2024 than I love the original.

 

It's close...
...but it's true.

What makes for a strange fight though, is the game right above the original FFVII... Mass Effect 2.
(Cloud vs. Shepherd seems an odd matchup, but this ranking has forced it twice now!)

So, Mass Effect 2 is phenomenal.
It's easily the best entry in a blisteringly good trilogy - and it puts up a lot of fight against Rebirth. It has to come down to individual points.

 

FFVII Rebirth does win on gameplay. There's more of it, it is more variable and challenging, and it is more fun overall. The battle system wins pretty easily against ME2's 3rd person shooting. 
Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, does take it on story and narrative. I love the story in FFVII Rebirth, and the fabulous, silly, over-the-top tone, but Mass Effect 2 is that style of Western RPG at arguably the best it ever gets, and it works amazingly. the writing is great in both instances... but ME2 has to take the edge.

 

FFVII Rebirth takes the win visuals - and not just because it is 2 console generations later. Yes, graphically it stomps all over ME2, but also, its visual design and the way it incorporates the old game's designs in new, exciting ways, and has such variety and detail and scope and scale even beats out the very cool interesting designs of ME2.

 

Mass Effect 2, however, takes it on audio. Both on original score, and on voice work. Both games are sterling examples of both areas, but the voice acting and music, however, the score in ME2 is one of the best I've heard. The Jack Wall score for things like the final Suicide Mission are simply so good, that nothing in the excellent FFVII Rebirth score is able to match it, and while voice acting in Rebirth is very good, and highly stylised, there is more meat, I think, to the performances in ME2.

I

t's a very, very close fight, but in the end, I do think Mass Effect 2 manages to squeak the win.
It's really a case where it comes down to the "completeness" - both are middle chapters in trilogies, but Mass Effect 2 does have a "roundedness" that Rebirth doesn't - a person could play only ME2, and feel they got an amazing single game. I think to love Rebirth on the same level, the person would not only have to play Remake, they would also have to play the original FFVII too.

It's a tough call, but looking at the list, I'm comfortable seeing the games above and below where that places them...
...so FFVII Rebirth finds its spot, right above its towering progenitor, and right below the incredible ME2!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

 

 

Summary: 

 

A 2024 addition to the Prince of Persia franchise from Ubisoft's Montpellier Studio, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown reworks the old, rather underserved franchise with a new lick of paint, a new gameplay genre, a new 2D Metroidvania format... and, curiously, without a Princely Protagonist!

Prince of Persia as a franchise has been in something of a strange spot for nigh-on two decades at this point.
Once one of Ubisofts powerhouse, tentpole franchises in its hey-day of the PS2-era Sands of Time trilogy,  the series - which dates back to 1989 originally - was arguably one of the most recognised videogame IPs around...
... but post-PS2-era, it began to suffer something of an identity crisis.

 

The reason can be summed up in two words: Assassin's Creed.

 

Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and, to all intents and purposes, ate Prince of Persia's lunch. 

It had the parkour platforming, a similar setting, a similar audioscape, a similar look, but where Prince of Persia was level-based and rigid, AC was free-flowing and modern, and where PoP was established and set in its lore, AC was new and exciting...
...and given that they came from the same overarching company, one suffered for the other's success.

 

Because Assassin's Creed established its place in Prince of Persia's backyard, right at the time Prince of Persia had completed a trilogy and was poised to set its new direction, the natural thing was for Prince of Persia to go hard in another direction. 
And it did, with the 2008 reboot simply titled Prince of Persia. 

 

Now... I love the 2008 PoP. 
It is, in fact, my personal favourite game in the franchise...
...however, I cannot deny that while I loved it... many other franchise fans - and Ubisoft - clearly didn't. 

 

It was a game that divided fans of the previous trilogy, feeling and looking as different as it did, and while it was a great game, it's not hard to see why fans of the series baulked. After all, PoP 2008 isn't a game similar in any way to the aforementioned trilogy. 
It isn't an action platformer really - it's a 3D spacial puzzle game. there's combat and platforming, but not as the fans recognised it, and the game, while modestly successful, saw anaemic sales as compared to Assassin's Creed.

 

Then, Assassin's Creed 2 came out... and things went from bad-to-worse for the poor Prince!

Assassin's Creed 2 was a hell of a game - a brilliant, ambitious, fantastic sequel to the original, which not only did everything PoP 2008 didn't that the fans wanted it to...
...but even featured a protagonist who was practically the Sand of Time Prince in terms of attitude and look. 
Hell, Ezio was even voiced by Nolan North - the same actor as the Prince from PoP 2008!

 

Ubisoft's resolve wavered, and they did what probably seemed the safe option, but, in hindsight, was the nail in Prince of Persia's coffin:
They abandoned all the work they had done redesigning what Prince of Persia was, and released "The Forgotten Sands"..
...a poor, rather pale and unnecessary new entry in a tired and completed "trilogy", awkwardly bolted onto it. A fourth game, acting as a fifth wheel, which only made the franchise feel old and stilted and stuck in the muck, at a time when Assassin's Creed was new and exciting and in blistering ascension.

 

The results, for Prince of Persia, were catastrophic. 
After the 2012 release of The Forgotten Sands, and the lacklustre sales it accrued, Ubisoft pretty much shelved the IP. Aside from a few very questionable mobile-bound runner games, there wouldn't be another Prince of Persia game for another 12 years. 
that is a lifetime in franchise gaming! 

Cut to 2024.

 

Assassin's Creed has made Ubisoft more money than God, has had more entries than most franchises could imagine, and has even reinvented itself a couple of times over...
...but it's finally showing some signs of age. In many ways, one could argue Assassin's Creed is, post "Open-World-Trilogy", in a similar place to where Prince of Persia was in 2006-2007. It is currently flailing around, figuring out exactly what it wants to be - a big, open-world historical RPG? A tighter, assassination-based stealth game? A GaaS style Ever-game? 
A Valhalla, or a Mirage, or an Infinity?

The stage seems ripe to bring the old prince out of retirement, and reinvent that old IP for a new audience.
And that's exactly what they did.
Well... sans the actual Prince, that is.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is not, it should be noted, particularly similar to any previous Prince of Persia game. It is a 2D platforming metroidvania, in the style of Guacamelee or Dead Cells or, ironically, the Assassin's Creed offshoot "Chronicles" games.

 

After Prince Ghassan - the Prince of Persia - is kidnapped by a trusted General, General Anahita, the new protagonist - Sargon - part of an elite cadre of protectors of the Prince called "Immortals," travels to the cursed city of Mount Qaf with his allies, to rescue the kidnapped prince.

Once a vibrant city, Mount Qaf is plagued by a temporal anomaly, causing all who enter it to experience time out of joint, and the group quickly begin to splinter, as they become lost in the maze of time.
After the leader of the Immortals - Vahram - reveals himself to be the true enemy and the power behind the kidnapping, murdering the Prince in-front of Sargon, Sargon must navigate the maze and the temporal misalignments to rewrite history, save the Prince, defeat Vahram, and escape the cursed city.

As a Metroidvania, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is something of an anomaly, in the sense that while the game has all the hallmarks of a smaller game - and indeed, is most accurately categorised with many other games that fall in the shorter, more focussed, generally Indie-game-led space - it is actually far longer and more expansive than the majority of games that are its peers.

The scope of the game is admirably large, and the amount of exploration, secrets, collectibles and platforming puzzles are both varied, abundant and impressive. 

 

The platforming and puzzles of the game are also, virtually without exception, excellent. 

There is a slow and steady metroidvania-staple drip feed of new abilities given to Sargon, and these are all clever, fun to use, and allow synergistic combinations of abilities to slowly open up access to different areas of the map.
Early on, puzzle platforming sections and straight "puzzle" areas tend to make use of single or double combination abilities, but as the game progresses, and Sargon has access to a full arsenal of abilities, there are some really clever, interesting combination-requiring puzzles designed, which can stump the player before they have their "eureka moment" or realising how they can combine them to defeat it.

 

Many of these result in coin collectibles, and these are cleverly used too - these collectibles are obtained, usually, during lengthly combination platforming puzzles, however, they are not immediately added to Sargon's inventory. Instead, they float alongside him... and are only actually collected, once he is back on solid ground.
That is a neat solution to what is often an issue with puzzle platformer collectibles - the player can often simply kamikaze themselves into a pit, as long as they get the collectible on their way to certain death. They don't actually have to figure out how to get it safely. Here, not only to the need to get it safely...
...the also need to get back safely, without losing it - and in some of the more tricksy puzzles, the getting there is easy, but the getting back is where the real challenge lies!

 

The Metroidvania elements of the game are actually of note too, in that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown does a couple of things that are extremely cool quality of life improvements within the genre itself, and should, ideally, be adopted by other Metroidvanias going forward. 

The game doesn't guide the player particularly in terms of narrative progression, not in terms of auto-tagging locked areas or points of interest, however, it has an in-built "tagging" system, allowing the player to drop little symbols from a pool of them, onto the map themselves. 

 

See an area that is too high to reach with your current abilities? 
Drop a little symbol on it, to remind yourself to come back once you have some new abilities. 
Or, better yet...
...use the "take photo" function, which creates a screen capture within the game, and a symbol in that place on the map, so when viewing the map, you have a handy image of what is there to remind you what exactly was the issue, and what abilities might help you overcome it.

It's a great system, and one that really benefits the Metroidvania design, as it allows the player to feel much more "ownership" over their own exploration, avoids irksome journeys back to areas trying to remember where a gated path was, or only to discover the they still don't have the requisite ability - and does it while also allowing the developer to excise some "hand-holding". 
When the player is in full control of the map, and able to tag all the places they might want to revisit of explore later, the game doesn't have to hang signs on things saying "look here". The player feels more in control, so the game can loosen its grip on their shoulder.

Unfortunately though, despite some admirable length and scope, some great metroidvania elements, and some excellent platforming and puzzle design, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is not a game without significant issues.

 

The biggest one, is combat.

While the platforming puzzle elements are all generally very well designed and fun to play with, the combat is rather crude and rudimentary, and often works in direct opposition to the good platforming elements.

In many cases, fun platforming sections feature enemies that seem designed not so much to challenge, as to frustrate and annoy the player.

Sargon is incredibly nimble and adept at movement, yet curiously stiff in terms of actually swinging his sword in the right direction. parrying and blocking is useful, but Sargon must be facing the correct direction to do so, so it is largely useless in any 1 vs many encounter - and most enemies use far more "unblockable" attacks than parry-able ones, so really, maintaining speed, combo and air-based attacks to "stun lock" enemies is always preferable.

That's more a design choice than a straight up problem - however, there is also a genuine problem is some areas, where the addition of combat-based obstacles to platforming-challenge areas simply doesn't seem to have been effectively thought through.

There are multiple spots where this is an issue, and it's not the simplest thing to explain, but to give a good example, take the "Upper City" area.

This is a section with a number of very large room, where the player is progressing vertically upwards, using a series of moving platforms and platforming puzzle elements. These are fun, and well designed. However, the area is also populated by a large number of enemies, who are constantly firing flaming arrows at the player from considerable off-screen distance. The player is therefore required to navigate the level, proceed upwards, but also seek out the enemies based on the trajectories of the incoming arrows, and kill them to reduce the incoming threat. 

 

All good, standard, action-platforming fare so far.
However, the problem is twofold. 

 

Firstly, these enemies are all positioned on small platforms themselves - and take quite a few hits to kill. Because Sargon's combat moves routinely result in "knocking" the enemies in the air, or around the arena, there is a constant issue with hitting the enemies off their perches, but not actually killing them...
...and since that sends them plummeting to the bottom of the area, and the game has no fall damage, and they are still able to fire a tremendous distance from offscreen, the result is that the arrow continue... but from a new - much harder to avoid - trajectory, coming straight up at Sargon. 
As such, in order to progress, the player generally must go all the way back down the level, deliver the finishing blow, then climb all the way back up to where they were to continue their progression.

 

The second problem - compounding the first considerably - is that there are multiple "exits" and "entrances" to this large area, where the player will want to explore as they proceed upwards. After all, the core tenant of a metroidvania is exploration, and checking every nook and cranny is part of the metroidvania experience. 
However, every time they move back and forth out of and into the main area, all the enemies respawn in it - below, and above. 
As such, the whole section becomes a tiresome and irritating process of constantly going up and down, hitting enemies who fall, then going down and killing them, then going back up, then exploring a path, then having the enemies respawn, then doing it again... and again... and again...
...none of which is particularly challenging, but all of which is time consuming and irksome.

 

That isn't an isolated problem either. 
There are multiple such problems in the game, that seem specifically designed to take a very fun, clever, well designed platforming area, and turn it into a frustrating exercise in patience-testing. The number of airborne enemies who pose no actual threat - who's incoming attacks are laughably weak, but who are positioned and who's movement is designed ONLY to interrupt long platforming puzzles - is dishearteningly abundant, and so common and escalating that it can only be a result of deliberate decision. 

An ice area, for example, in the later game, where extremely long platforming sections are rife, has floating enemies who not only serve only to stymie progression without challenge, but who leave behind obstacles after being killed, seems designed solely to further frustrate players who might have already gotten good at airborne arrow-shooting to deal with their non-ice counterparts...
...but still offer no actual combat challenge.

 

One might argue these are nit-picking points, or simply preferential annoyances - surely all action platformers have such enemies, and they are there to increase the challenge of the platforming?...
...well, yes they do... 
...but that is exactly the point.

There are countless example of other action platformers that do use enemies in the same way - Guacamelee, Dandara, Dust: An Elysian Tale, the list goes on...
...but in none of those cases did they feel like they were solely annoying, and not prohibitively challenging.

 

 

Another major area of concern, is the visuals.

They are just... bland. 

 

There are some areas - a forrest area around halfway through, and in particular an excellent, really cool looking area where a ship in mid-battle has been frozen in time, and the player is able to run on the chrono-frozen sea surface, and jump between mid-explosion sections of splintering hull - however, these sections of particularly interesting design personality are the exception, rather than the rule... 
...and truth-be-told, likely stand out as more interesting that they might be in another game, only due to the distinct lack of distinctness elsewhere. 

For the most part, the different areas of Mount Qaf, while perfectly functional and distinct from one another, are exactly the areas one might expect, and any seasoned gamer could likely list them without ever playing the game. We have the city area, the library, the sewers, the forrest, the docks - all perfectly acceptable, but all rather generic areas for any game.

That's not a problem in itself necessarily - the same could be said for many games - however, it is brought into stark relief by the fact that the actual visual style of the game is so drab and uninteresting. The visual personality of the game seems to be simply "no personality". The game looks like the generic "default" of a game, prior to the overlay of any distinct art-style.

 

It's a shame, because actually, the fact that the game is 2D, means it would be ripe for an interesting art-style to be applied. There are loads of great 2D games out there where incredible, distinctive art-styles elevate good gameplay - one can imagine this game with a hand-drawn style like Treasures of the Aegean, or a cartoonish art-style like Dust: An Elysian Tale, or a noir-ish style like Limbo or Inside, or pixel-art like Dead Cells, or even a watercolour style like Child of Light, and it giving the game the personality injection it sorely needs...
...but unfortunately, the flat, rather uninteresting style settled on is best described as "default"... 
...and more cruelly described as "Fortnite".

 

That is a genuine problem, because while "genero-visuals" might be forgivable and less of an issue in a shorter game, the fact that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a game which is much longer than almost all the games that are its peers, and that it would be compared to, coupled with the fact that it looks so much less interesting than any of them, highlights the game's repetitive visual blandness, and just makes it feel like it wears on and on and on. 
It does a disservice to what is actually quite a varied and clever game in terms of platforming and puzzles.

 

Audio is a mixed bag in the game - or more accurately, it's a game of two halves. 
In terms of spoken dialogue, the game is not particularly stand out. The default language is English, and when played that way, the vocals are both a little too over-the-top, and strangely cast. 
Pretty much all characters speak with London accents, and it is somewhat fiction-breaking, particularly given that the writing, while serviceable, also isn't terribly impressive. The dialogue given to individual members of the Immortals seems designed more to try and force personality into characters who don't get a lot of screen time, and tends to fall into caricature and stereotype as a result, and when coupled with the overacting and strangely pedestrian accents, it makes for laughs more often than immersion.
There is, however, a language option of Persian available. 
In this mode, the voice cast does a much better job, with dialogue a little more subdued, and reading the text as subtitles tends to work better than hearing it in a London accent.

 

The score, on the other hand, requires no equivocation - and is arguably the best thing in the entire game!

The music, by Mentrix and Gareth Coker is an absolute belter - a mix of orchestral themes and pounding percussive, rousing battle-arrangements stylistically similar to the soundtracks of the God of War games, which are variously spliced with more modern sounding electronica or middle-eastern inspired themes.
It's a great and expansive soundtrack - one I've listened to quite a few times outside of the game itself, and is both one of the best original soundtracks I've heard this year, and easily the best soundtrack a Prince of Persia game has had in its long history!

Overall, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a bit of a mixed bag. 
It's a metroidvania with some genuinely good, genre-advancing ideas, that is admirable and impressive in scale and scope, and which offers some excellent platforming, tight controls, clever abilities and a fun progression and skill tree. 

 

It is also a game which is let down quite considerably by some pretty flat and awkward combat design, uninteresting environmental detailing, questionable and ill-conceived enemy placements, and is presented in a visual style almost custom designed to make the game seem blander than it should be.

 

The voice work is not great, (though can be alleviated greatly by playing in Persian,) but there is a rousing, excellent score that elevates it quite a bit. 

It's a game that has significant good points - many of the things it does well it does very well, and fans of puzzle platforming (like myself) will doubtless be able to push through the frustrating elements, and find a lot of fun here...
...but one can't help but see the game as somewhat disappointing in a sense, because the core gameplay - which is mostly there and mostly good - is let down time and again by tertiary elements.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

The obvious place to start with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is some of the previously ranked PoP games...
...and the placement within the 4 "Sands" games is relatively clear and obvious to me, without even looking.

 

The two better Sands games - Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time definitely outclass this new entry, but the weaker two - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands are clearly weaker than it.

 

That narrows the placement quite quickly, to somewhere in the gulf between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

I had hoped that placement might be made easier by the inclusion, somewhere in there, of another comparable Metroidvania, but alas, there isn't one.

 

The closest game would be the original Trine.

 

I think, on balance, Trine beats out Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. It doesn't have the smoothness of gameplay, but it does have more fluid, interesting puzzles, a great co-op, and much, much more interesting visual design and art-style. It doesn't have the music, or the scope or length, but it has more personality in a single level than Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has in its entirety, and tends to be memorable i na way Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn't.

 

It then comes down to simply asking "which of these handful of games below Trine, but above Warrior Within is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, with its mixed bag of good puzzles and platforming, and less good combat and visual design, better than?"

 

Working up from Warrior Within, I think its good elements are enough to outclass Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Bayonetta and to just about beat out Costume Quest 2...
...but I don't think it can really offer any serious fight against Final Fantasy XIII-2, nor Resident Evil VII: Village.

As such, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown finds its spot!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Kentucky Route Zero

 

 

Summary: 

 

A surrealist narrative Adventure Game from Cardboard Computer, originally released on PC as 5 separate "acts" over the course of 7 years between 2013 and 2020, Kentucky Route Zero was finally finished and ported as a single, complete work to various platforms under the moniker of "Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition" - including to PS5 in 2023.

 

Taking a Lynchian, non-linear, heightened-reality approach to mood-based narrative storytelling, it tells the tale of several different characters in a strange, mysterious version of the Kentucky twilight, coming together via circumstance, and travelling together on a strange, winding journey centred around the mysterious "Kentucky Route Zero" - a highway of sorts, seemingly existing outside of conventional time and space, and linking curios and oddities hidden in plain sight in the moonlit world.

The core spine of the narrative is relatively simple - Kentucky Route Zero is a road movie of sorts, following the delivery of a package, and begins with a single character - Conway - an ailing, world-weary delivery driver, as he travels across Kentucky to make his final delivery of antiques before the closure of the store he works for. 

As he travels the mysterious back ways and curious spaces of the ever-nighttime road, searching for - and eventually travelling on - the mysterious "Kentucky Route Zero" - he meets various strange and curious characters on their own journeys, with their own stories, regrets, hopes, dreams and personal sadnesses, and they flit and flutter in and out of the central narrative as they come together and join the Quixotic quest to deliver the package.

 

That plot description is pretty vague, and it's for good reason - Kentucky Route Zero is a difficult game to summarise in terms of plot.
In some ways, the actual "quest" the characters are on feels...
...not exactly irrelevant, as it does drive the plot and act as the jumping off point from which all the curious, strange, mysterious other elements of the game can spine off... 
...however, it does act largely as a macguffin for the majority of a game where simply being on the strange journey with these strange characters, exploring the world presented to them, and hearing the stories it has to tell, is the primary focus.

The game has less the feeling of a single narrative, than of a short story collection built around a theme. 
There is a mosaic quality to the individual vignettes - they aren't random, and while some wholly unrelated seeming section might come up, generally characters within that scene will eventually figure in some way into the primary narrative - but the impact on the overall will as often be tertiary or tonal rather than particularly plot heavy. 

The game is one where the straight narrative is loose and nebulous, hopping from absurdist section to absurdist section with little grounding insofar as straight "logic", however, the mood and the tone ARE very specific, and no matter how outlandish or absurdist or tangential the individual scenes get, they do piece together into coherent TONE. They just do it without allowing pesky things like logic or realism get in the way.

Anyone familiar with David Lynch's more esoteric fare - Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Inland Empire, Eraserhead et al - will be familiar with the story-telling style on show here - scenes may be difficult to place or to fit together in any kind of beat-to-beat-to-beat logical way, particularly as presented in their non-linear fashion, but there is a palpable tonal through-line.

Therefore, while its possible to simply go "this makes no sense" and switch off from a purely logical point of view, if the viewer gives over to the art as presented, accepts each scene as it comes, and allows their more emotive side to take the wheel, the narrative lends itself to an emotional through-line that is consistent in a way the practical and logical through line isn't.

The world of Kentucky Route Zero is one in which a scene of Conway asking for direction in a gas station might yield a curious conversation with an elderly gas station attendant, an encounter with ghostly Dungeons and Dragon's players, and a semi-sentient computer...
... or where an underground bootlegger whiskey distillery is run by skeletons...
...or where a mountain cave full of research graduates have created a text adventure game in which some people have become lost...
...but those absurdist elements can exist right alongside a lengthly scene of downtrodden barflies in a run down roadside bar, chatting aimlessly about their troubles, and neither feels more or less bizarre than the other, because the strange, dreamlike, noirish tone remains constant across all. 

The player is never able to predict exactly what will happen next, because the plot and the storytelling are not bound by logic or reason, but the events don't feel so fully untethered as to simply lose their attention, because the tone is consistent, and the through line is maintained - it's just done via ambiance and feeling. 

There is a dreamlike quality to the whole affair - the way characters feel exceptionally well realised within their vignettes, yet detached from any wider life beyond them... in the same way that in a dream, a scene might feel very real, but if reality begins to bleed in, and you begin to think beyond the bounds of that particular moment, you can't exactly remember how it started, or how you got there.

 

In fact, that story-telling method does seem to feed quite neatly into the moral theme of the story itself. The characters in Kentucky Route Zero are all different and imbued with personality and interesting and diverse - Conway himself; Shannon Weaver, the struggling TV Repairwoman; Lulu Chamberlain, the one-time performance and installation artist, now working an unfulfilling job at the Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces; Ezra, the precocious child in a business suit, who's brother is a giant eagle; Junebug and Johnny, the motorcycling musicians; Will and Cate, the odd couple who captain the Mucky Mammoth riverboat - however, what they all have in common, is that they have their own tragedies and sadnesses, their own troubles and strifes, but simply get on with the act of living, in the face of adversity or ennui.

 

That does feel like the central thesis statement of Kentucky Route Zero to a large extent - it is a parable of sorts, telling a loose and winding tale around the theme of "getting busy living" and "keeping on keeping on". Of making some kind of life work, and seeking your own personal salvation, even in the face of bleak odds or overwhelming universal indifference.
That the world around you changes all the time, and doesn't care to tell you why, or care for your plans or your wellbeing...
... but in addition to the struggle and the sadness and the bleakness and the indifference, it can be magical and free and hopeful and interesting and beautiful, if only you give over to it. If you dive in and swim in the emptiness and the madness and the oddness, and appreciate the smaller moments of joy in the company of those around you, or take a moment to appreciate the stories of others, or the majestic strangeness of the forgotten spaces of the world.

It is, as such, not a game for everyone - Lynch movies are the same - but anyone willing to simple forgo their desire for narrative or logical sense, and accept the world as presented, and read into it as it comes, will actually find a sort of non-linear logic to the whole game, as the seemingly separate elements of storytelling are pieced together and congeal successfully as a collage of strange elements with a specific, tonal consistency.

A lot of that is down to the writing and the visual style - both of which are very good.

 

The writing is absolutely killer - Kentucky Route Zero is a game where even with minimal dialogue or description, the writers are able to nail the tone and specificity of mood and place with pinpoint accuracy. Depths of individual characters mood and feelings and pasts are conveyed very well with relatively minimal dialogue exchanges, and that comes down entirely to the strength of the language and writing. 
The downtrodden yet hopeful, or mournfulness, or wistfulness of the overall tone never falters, and the characters' acceptance of the world in which they are presented goes a long way to setting the stage for the player to do the same - and to feel a connection to characters whom they spend relatively little time with. 

 

The player is able to shape the narrative to some extent - there are certainly dialogue prompts and choices to be made, but these tend to feel more like choices about what aspects of the characters they get to find out about, rather than changing the actual outcome of events. The player can, for example choose which character says something in a given situation, letting them see different aspects of different character's personalities and their relationships to one another, rather than specifically shaping who those characters actually are.

 

Make no mistake - while the visuals and the music are certainly key components of making Kentucky Route Zero work, and are important - the writing is the main draw here. If the writing didn't work, the whole game wouldn't, and, here, it is of such uniform high quality that it is responsible for making the game ass compulsive and as memorable and as engaging as it is.
Playing Kentucky Route Zero is, essentially, reading a curious novel in game form. 
Yes, there are game trappings - and certainly there is power in the fact that the visuals cool and dream-like and interesting, and the music mood-setting and compulsive - but the feeling coming out of Kentucky Route Zero is akin to that of having read an interesting novella, rather than of playing a videogame. The medium is used effectively, but it is in aid of embellishing an evocative story, rather than good writing informing or improving upon a game.

Those visuals are cool too, of course. The general visual style is one of low-poly greys and highly stylised character silhouettes, with some white-on-black vector graphic style sections conveying the actual roads travelled. 

Individual scenes are rarely similar in terms of input or control - some feel largely 2D, some 2.5D, some isometric 3D, some flat-plane, almost cut-out form, but they follow a stylistic theme, and are generally framed in a way that is both stylish and cinematic, yet specific to the requirements of that specific vignette. 
The game picks and chooses its input controls based on the best use for that scene - so if a scene would work best from a first person perspective, it uses that. If it would work best in isometric view, it uses that. The controls are generally quite rudimentary - as is often the case with Adventure Games - but it's largely irrelevant, as there is never any situation where pinpoint accuracy or twitch movement is required. Much like the actual narrative, the player should not look for a mechanical through-line, but rather treat each individual scene as its own entity, play it, and come to understand how it feed into the overall pastiche only once such knowledge makes itself known or required.

 

The game does have occasional moments where the controls feel a bit unsuited to the requirements - one section where the player controls a vehicle in isometric view is a little irksome, as the controls don't seem quite up to snuff for what they are trying to achieve - but for the most part, these issues are minor, and not prohibitively debilitating, given that there is no threat of "failure" - just a bit of faffing around if a 3-point turn is required!

The audio is curious, and pretty well done. 

There isn't general voice work per-se, the majority of dialogue is text-only, however, there is some voice work in the game. Certain radio stations, or television sections, or songs are voiced, and in many cases, the audio is used quite effectively and evocatively in these areas. For example, while two characters might be having an exchange in text only, if in the background they could hear, say, the singing of a choir in a church they are approaching, that singing is voiced... and will get more or less muffled as our characters get closer or further way. 
It quite an effective use of audio, as it feels like it feeds into the eerie, mysterious nature of the game, and lets the player hear what the characters are concentrating on but does it without having the primary dialogue voiced, so the character's themselves are voiced within the player's head, keeping them feeling more personal.

 

The general audio is relatively sparse, using ambient sounds and some wistful, tonal musical stings, but there is also several in-game songs played - including some country tunes from a band that seem to appear here and there in the foreground of some scenes. These are a highlight - very evocative, and work to further cement the palpable tone of the game.

Overall, Kentucky Route Zero is a strange game - but a very winning one. 

It's certainly not the kind of game that appeals to everyone - there is very little in the way of mechanical gameplay, or challenge or complexity from a gameplay standpoint, however, it a narrative game that absolutely nails the dreamlike, ethereal quality of a David Lynch film, and has a tone and style that feels both very distinct, and very specific.

 

There is a languid pace and an almost deliberate slowing down of the pace of the game that the player must get on board with - scenes operate at a deliberate pace, and rarely are the actual "progression points" uniform or broadcast, and so playing the game tends to rely on the player simply giving themselves over to the game, enjoying the dreamlike quality of to, poking, prodding, exploring, reading, and getting out of it as much as they are willing to put into it...
...but if they are willing to meet the game on its own terms, there is a surprisingly dense, exceptionally well written, remarkably well realised, and genuinely original tale being spun, with a mood and tone that is simultaneously palpable, deliberate, curious, mysterious, stark, maudlin...
... and often quite beautiful.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Kentucky Route Zero is not a Walking Sim per se, but it is a game predicated almost solely on writing and mood and ambiance, and on drawing the player in with narrative and visuals, so the natural starting point is Walking Sims, as those are the most comparable games to this largely incomparable game!

The one that immediately came to mind was arguably the original Walking Sim - the game that pretty much created that genre AS a genre, and still stands as one of the best examples of "mood-based, non-gameplay" gaming: Dear Esther.

 

Now, I am a big fan of Dear Esther - the writing is excellent, the visuals lovely and haunting, and the mood created by it is palpable - so when I say Kentucky Route Zero beats it quite easily, that's not a slight on Dear Esther - it's a compliment to Kentucky Route Zero! The narrative is longer and more interesting, I was more engaged, and despite not being able to predict what would happen next in either, I was more fascinated and compelled by Kentucky Route Zero.

 

The next Walking Sim working up the list from Dear Esther is What Remains of Edith Finch, and again, when I say Kentucky Route Zero is the superior experience, it's again a testament to Kentucky Route Zero. What Remains of Edith Finch has a lot of the best parts of Dear Esther in there - it has good - if not better - writing, its longer, more substantial, more detailed, and has a more esoteric and curious narrative...
...but Kentucky Route Zero is still the game I know I will remember longer, and felt more compelled to see through, and to get more of.

 

The next one up, though, is Firewatch.

Firewatch is a tougher fight, because Firewatch is the first one were I think the voice work and performance is such a substantially additive element, and so good, that it begins to really buoy it against Kentucky Route Zero. Is the narrative more compelling... no, probably not. It's more linear, and has more of a payoff (though that payoff is more a rug pull than a catharsis,) but the game is certainly mysterious and compelling throughout.

 

It's relatively close - very very close actually, but I think, Firewatch does manage - just - to hold its place.

It's a very tough call that one though, and so the only fair thing feels like placing Kentucky Route Zero just below it...
...which means its found its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Roads

 

Summary: 

 

A short family-melodrama / mystery Lite-Adventure game from The Open Roads Team, Open Roads sees a mother - Opal - and a daughter - Tess - who are in the process of packing up Opal's late-mother's home after her death, discover clues to a mystery around their mother/grandmother - and a possible affair she may have had when Opal was a teenager, around the time of her husband's death.

 

During a time of tension and difficulty for the family - where Opal's job is in jeopardy, Tess's relationship with her divorced father is causing friction, thoughts of Tess's future are weighing on both their minds, and the stress of family upheaval in the wake of the grandmother's death and the forced sale of the home, this mystery provides a much needed distraction to Tess...
...and so, with some cajoling, she and Opal set off to the long abandoned summer trailer-home to follow the trail, to unravel the mystery. 

The story is a short one - it's a curious enough unravelling of a family mystery, though it does feel a little too truncated, and a little too easy. 
I don't mean in terms of game challenge - Open Roads is essentially a Walking Sim/ lite-Adventure game, and the narrative is key here, not mechanical gameplay - but a little to easy for the character's themselves.

The thing is, Opal and Tess are, in the fiction, uncovering a long buried family mystery, across several locations, including two long abandoned homes...
...but it feels like all the clues to unravel that mystery are so obviously and simply laid out in these locations, that it is genuinely baffling that they would have made it 30 years without figuring out this mystery before.

 

The mystery makes itself known initially via clues in Opal's mothers home, which makes some logical sense, given that Tess and Opal are in the process of clearing the house for sale, so it is logical that they might find some artefacts of the past hinting at the mystery during that process...
...however, these clues are hardly hidden well enough that it could be believable that children in that house would not have accidentally stumbled across them.

In the two subsequent locations, it seems very convenient and coincidental that practically the only things remaining un-destroyed in these long-abandoned domiciles, is the exact items that point to the mystery, too. As if a hurricane blew through, destroyed everything, then someone came and carefully laid out a set of incriminating or plot-critical postcards and diary entries for someone to come and find later!

 

In fact, the lack of red herrings or non-critical or other elements to muddy the detective elements was so jarring, that I actually assumed it was deliberate - that the plot was eventually going to reveal that someone had left these things as a trail to be followed, and that the ending would reveal someone pulling the strings...
...but in fact, it simply seems to be the game itself not doing enough to make the mystery seem in any way hidden from the people to whom it had - apparently - remained a mystery for 30 years.

They must have been very unquestioning, incurious children, to miss what are relatively obvious indicators of a family mystery, left rather signposted all around them!

The art-style is... interesting...
...though if I'm honest, not an aspect that worked particularly well for me. 

 

It's not that the art-style is bad - in fact, not only is it good, it's actually two kinds of good - I just don't think that the two ways in which is good compliment each-other particularly well. In fact, they feel like they almost work against one another.

 

So, there are two distinct graphical styles - one for the environments, and one for the characters. 

The environments are rendered in full 3D, and do look pretty good. I will say, that when the game first opened, in Tess's room, the 3D environment was so pleasingly rendered that I initially didn't realise it WAS a 3d environment, I actually thought I was looking at a still frame. Not everything throughout the game is enormously or intricately detailed - there is a slightly cartoonish, colourful heightening to the general environs, and individual objects picked up, while nicely rendered, are not phot-realistic by any stretch, but there is a consistency and a pleasing style to everything.

 

In fact, it's worth pointing out the vivid colours and use of brightness and light, because it's unusual and deliberate. 
Open Roads, while something of a loose detective mystery, is not a game that is trading in scares, tension or spookiness...
... but because it has some of the hallmarks of the many, many, many games that are trading on those elements (exploring abandoned houses, finding details of past mysteries, piecing together a buried secret etc,) the visuals seem to be deliberately avoiding comparison. 
There are games - for example, Gone Home, or The Suicide of Rachel Foster, or The Town of Light, or even things like Layers of Fear, which are doing much of the same type of gameplay in similar settings, but where "eeriness" and "spookiness" are part and parcel of the experience. Since Open Roads very much isn't in that "spooky" wheelhouse, the developer seems to have specifically chosen the visual palate to be key in differentiating the game from that strain of gaming as far a possible, to the extent that even a trailer for the game would not be mistaken fora quote-unquote "horror" game.

 

Those environments work quite well - it's pleasant to explore the spaces, and moving around them feels like a fun family adventure, rather than a spooky or tense experience.

The other art-style is in the characters - they are 2D, hand-drawn cartoons, similar in style to late-80's/ early-90's Saturday morning fare, and are animated in a similar low-frame, motion-comic style. 

The things is - these characters also look good - the characters are distinct and well drawn, and emotive enough to convey the tone of the scenes...
...however, there is a bit of visual dissonance when they are placed into the rather more realistic looking backdrops and 3D environments. 

 

In the general "Hey Mom!" interchanges, (where Tess finds objects of interest, and can call her mother for a discussion of what they mean,) this is not a huge issue as the backgrounds are static for the most part, but when in the car scenes, for example, where the 3D environment of the backdrop is swooshing past the windows of the 3D environment of the car, with a 2D drawing of the characters inside, it has a tendency to look a bit odd... like two different media spliced together, and not quite existing in the same reality.

 

It's not a huge problem - as said, both individual styles are good - but it is something that never quite felt "right" throughout the game...
...and occasionally did give rise to actual, bonafide wonkiness.  Occasionally - rarely, but occasionally - the perspective of the 2D animation seems not to quite align with the camera position in the 3D environment, resulting in one or both of the characters looking like an actual 2D cardboard cutout placed in the world. 
That works in something like Tinykin, because it is part of the charm and the style, and looks quite deliberately funny...
...but doesn't work here, where it is only accidentally funny at times, and tends to pull the player right out of the scene.

 

Voice work is decent enough in the game - the two primary voice actors are Keri Russell as Opal (the mother) and Kaitlyn Dever as Tess (the daughter.) Both are extremely accomplished film and TV actors, and I am a big fan of both in that context. In fact, the two stars were the main draw that convinced me to purchase the game in the first place.

I will say though, while I do think the performances given by both actresses are generally good, there is a slight caveat to that.

The dialogue is delivered well enough, however, the actual writing can feel a little "day-time soap opera", with exchanges feeling less natural than they should. There is a tendency to want to imply friction or sassiness or tension, but still want to keep it all very light, and so the back and forth can feel overly tame, or like the characters are being more polite and less familiar with one another than a real mother and daughter would in a situation like the one presented.

The vocal performances can at times also feel a little stilted. 
Partly, that is as a result of the writing... but I don't think it's solely that.

Something that seems to happen on occasion, when primarily film and tv actors take videogame voice roles to which they are not accustomed, is that the delivery can take on a slightly over-annunciated, "radio-play" feel - where it feels like the words are being read verbatim from the page, with careful and specific attention paid to the stage directions, but lacking the naturalistic lilt. 
As if one can almost hear the directions given to the actor at the specific points they have been given.

 

It's understandable in some sense - a film or TV actor used to performing on camera and less familiar with the medium of games may not have the trust and faith in the media to carry the nuance of their performance in the same way a seasoned voice actor might - there is likely a tendency to feel like radio-play level diction and theatrical enunciation is more media-appropriate...
... but it can mean some of the interplay between characters, or quieter, more introspective or inner-monologue type readings can feel more stilted or wordy than they should. 

That does happen sometimes in Open Roads, though, thankfully, it tends to be more in the shorter exchanges, or most often in the single line reads for incidental dialogue, rather than the lengthier exchanges. In those more plot-critical, longer interplays between the mother and daughter, the conversations feel much more natural - perhaps owing to the two actors being present together for the readings rather than recorded individually, or perhaps simply due to the performances being longer and having more substance to them, lending the actors more runway to give a nuanced performance.

 

Overall, Open Roads is a neat enough little game, but one that tends to end up feeling a little underwhelming, despite some good aspects.

 

Tess and Opal are both perfectly good characters, and endearing enough, but for as much personality as the visual design and vocal performances give, and for as much information as we glean of their lives around the game, it's hard to be particularly strongly invested in their relationship, as the tone is kept "daytime television" enough that it never feels enormously under threat, even in the more heated moments.

While the mystery is curious enough, and interesting enough, with a decent enough payoff, it feels short and largely simple for the characters to figure out - to the point that it almost seems odd that the grandmother would have been able to sustain the secret as long as she did. 

Props have to be given for the combination of visual styles - they both look good in isolation, and the combination does give the game its own signature look that is relatively original...
...but despite the props for trying something different, I'm just not sure that it really pays off in that respect either, as the visuals tend to work against each-other.

It's not a bad game by any stretch, and is compelling enough a narrative with strong enough characterisation to just sustain over its short length...
...but that feels like faint praise, as the game is noticeably short. It feels like the same story, stretched out over a few more hours, with a couple more locations, and a bit more in the way of disguising the clues in each, would result in a much more satisfying experience overall.

 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So Open Roads was a bit of a disappointment, all told. It's not terrible, but it's fleeting and simple, and didn't really draw me in the way I might have hoped, so I started looking for other games that are sorter or more narrative in nature, that had promise, but didn't really deliver or had problems.

 

The three that came to mind were Twelve Minutes, Twin Mirror, and Knee Deep.

 

Now, Knee Deep is actually the more ambitious and curious of the three - but also the one that is least successful in execution, and is lowest ranked. I think Open Roads does beat it - the narrative is less compelling in the plot sense, but it's told and written better, and while Knee Deep has some really interesting stylistic leanings, they falter often. Open Roads also has some problems with its art style specifically... but they still work more consistently than Knee Deep, and when you couple that with the decent voice work and the better general visuals, Open Roads is the clear winner.

 

Twelve Minutes is the highest ranked of the three games, and while it does have a lot of problems in terms of user-experience, lack of signposting of its rigid structure, and letting the player get lost without any rhyme or reason...
...the narrative itself is more compelling, and more interesting. I also think the visuals work better, there is more meat to the gameplay (when it works,) and the vocal performances are the better ones.

It's also worth noting that Twelve Minutes is also a game using actors primarily known for Film, and they do a better job, I think, than the actresses in Open Roads do, and have better material to work with.

 

Twin Mirror is in between the two, and that is a closer fight. On the one hand, Open Roads is the simpler, less compelling story, on the other hand, the voice performances are better, as is the general writing. Twin Mirror has some clangers, and to be honest, despite spending more time with the characters in Twin Mirror, I felt more connection to Tess and Opal in Open Roads. 
While Twin Mirror does look better, I think it achieves it by playing safe -there's nothing interesting or ambitious about the visuals of Twin Mirror - they just look fine. Open Roads looks more interesting, even if its combination visual styles don't always mesh well.

I think on balance, Open Roads, despite being more fleeting, is the winner there. Twin Mirror is a game that just isn't memorable in any real positive way, whereas I reckon I'll remember the interesting, if not always successful visuals of Open Roads for longer, and with more fondness, even after the story fades.

There's not a huge amount of games between Twin Mirror and Twelve Minutes - and they aren't comparable genres, but simply on the old "Is Open Roads the better experience?" question...
...I'd say the answer is "yes" for Jusant, but "no" for the others, so I think the right spot of Open Roads is just above Jusant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game'!

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diaries finally remains as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game'!

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

 

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

[Copanele]

Daamn, science is back in town  

I will briefly comment on Prince of Persia Lost Crown before the real topic of the day FF VII is discussed here  also I will need more time to finish reading that, but anyway!

 

24 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

A 2024 addition to the Prince of Persia franchise from Ubisoft's Montpellier Studio, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown reworks the old, rather underserved franchise with a new lick of paint, a new gameplay genre, a new 2D Metroidvania format... and, curiously, without a Princely Protagonist!

 

This was a very weird approach to the story. It threw me out of the loop for quite a bit, because in every PoP game, even the first ones, the main protagonist is either a Prince or will become a Prince at the end of the game. I think the most standoff-ish exception was PoP 2008 where the main character was calling himself a "Prince", I do not remember too well what the catch was there, but he definitely was a sort-of-Prince.

There's a bit of story covered in Lost Crown that I discovered, but I will put it in spoilers:

Spoiler

By reading the collected documents and interacting with the NPC near the "Impossible Climb" + the Queen's odd reaction towards Sargon, you can reasonably deduce that Sargon IS The true Prince of Persia, swapped at birth with Ghassan who is just a commoner. This was a nice twist, but the rushed ending didn't push too much towards explaining all that.

 

I sure hope this is covered more in the upcoming DLC.

 

30 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Many of these result in coin collectibles, and these are cleverly used too - these collectibles are obtained, usually, during lengthly combination platforming puzzles, however, they are not immediately added to Sargon's inventory. Instead, they float alongside him... and are only actually collected, once he is back on solid ground.
That is a neat solution to what is often an issue with puzzle platformer collectibles - the player can often simply kamikaze themselves into a pit, as long as they get the collectible on their way to certain death. They don't actually have to figure out how to get it safely. Here, not only to the need to get it safely...
...the also need to get back safely, without losing it - and in some of the more tricksy puzzles, the getting there is easy, but the getting back is where the real challenge lies!

Regarding the Xerxes coins, what I also found brilliant is that the game will not allow you to sneakily use the "backup" power. In the game you collect a power named Shadow of Simurgh which allows you to place a shadow, then rewind back to it at any point during the same level.  You can't cheese the coins like that, I had a very hilarious moment where I placed a Shadow, struggled to grab a Xerxes coin then pressed Rewind...just to lose the coin. You have to get back the traditional way, which I found brilliant  

 

35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Unfortunately though, despite some admirable length and scope, some great metroidvania elements, and some excellent platforming and puzzle design, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is not a game without significant issues.

 

The biggest one, is combat.

While the platforming puzzle elements are all generally very well designed and fun to play with, the combat is rather crude and rudimentary, and often works in direct opposition to the good platforming elements.

Oh yes, the combat...this was the exact same issue that I had, but it's not because of Sargon's abilities (really, even with multidirectional parries, it still worked) - but man, the enemies were a pain to fight. They were so annoying that I simply triggered my inner Mirror's Edge spirit and speedran past them because I had NO mood to reflect a million arrows back.

Worst part - you get mad damaged by those arrows but reflecting them back barely affects the monsters! What the hell!

Combat was kinda lame - glad the platformer was good.

 

Boss fights were sick though!

 

40 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Another major area of concern, is the visuals.

They are just... bland. 

....

...but unfortunately, the flat, rather uninteresting style settled on is best described as "default"... 
...and more cruelly described as "Fortnite".

Yep, I'll take the blame for that comparison 😂but man, FUCK the visuals...at least for the first half. God what a lazy Ubisoft-y way to approach the visuals of the game, especially in the first half when the game is supposed to pop off.

Still won't forgive them!

 

41 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

The score, on the other hand, requires no equivocation - and is arguably the best thing in the entire game!

As I mentioned one point...somehow Ubisoft has pretty much the best music in their games. I don't know how they do it.

Lost Crown is no exception - that music is FABULOUS. Ironically, the music is why I enjoy Warrior Within way more than I'd expect  emo Prince and all that.

 

Whew that's it! It was the review I was waiting for, so glad that it kinda confirmed that my eyes were actually working and it's not me being insane.

 

Now...excuse me, I'll get back to reading the Final Fantasy ones...it will take me quite a while. Bless Tifa!

[DrBloodmoney]

10 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Daamn, science is back in town  

I will briefly comment on Prince of Persia Lost Crown before the real topic of the day FF VII is discussed here  also I will need more time to finish reading that, but anyway!

 

This was a very weird approach to the story. It threw me out of the loop for quite a bit, because in every PoP game, even the first ones, the main protagonist is either a Prince or will become a Prince at the end of the game. I think the most standoff-ish exception was PoP 2008 where the main character was calling himself a "Prince", I do not remember too well what the catch was there, but he definitely was a sort-of-Prince.

There's a bit of story covered in Lost Crown that I discovered, but I will put it in spoilers:

  Reveal hidden contents

By reading the collected documents and interacting with the NPC near the "Impossible Climb" + the Queen's odd reaction towards Sargon, you can reasonably deduce that Sargon IS The true Prince of Persia, swapped at birth with Ghassan who is just a commoner. This was a nice twist, but the rushed ending didn't push too much towards explaining all that.

 

I sure hope this is covered more in the upcoming DLC.

 

You know - I'll put my hands up - I missed that!

That's an interesting twist though - could be they are laying the long game for - as you say, DLC, or maybe for a sequel!

 

10 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Regarding the Xerxes coins, what I also found brilliant is that the game will not allow you to sneakily use the "backup" power. In the game you collect a power named Shadow of Simurgh which allows you to place a shadow, then rewind back to it at any point during the same level.  You can't cheese the coins like that, I had a very hilarious moment where I placed a Shadow, struggled to grab a Xerxes coin then pressed Rewind...just to lose the coin. You have to get back the traditional way, which I found brilliant  

 

Haha - yes - I found that one particularly tricky for the big long section at the top of the library - managed to get all the way to the coin and back, then was like "dafuq? Where my coin!?!?!"

 

Turn out my method was to us the Shadow ability above those auto-slamming platforms, drop past them to activate, then shadow back to on top of it...., and I had left it behind!

Took me another 20 minutes to work out a new way to get there -cwhich was, of course, remarkably simple once realised - to get there without that ability!

 

10 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Oh yes, the combat...this was the exact same issue that I had, but it's not because of Sargon's abilities (really, even with multidirectional parries, it still worked) - but man, the enemies were a pain to fight. They were so annoying that I simply triggered my inner Mirror's Edge spirit and speedran past them because I had NO mood to reflect a million arrows back.

Worst part - you get mad damaged by those arrows but reflecting them back barely affects the monsters! What the hell!

Combat was kinda lame - glad the platformer was good.

 

Boss fights were sick though!

 

I didn't mind the bosses AS much.... but honestly, they felt too in love with their own animations and movesets, and were soooooo quick to pull out and release some canned animation, making me have to figure out where the hell I was when It ended!

 

10 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Yep, I'll take the blame for that comparison 😂but man, FUCK the visuals...at least for the first half. God what a lazy Ubisoft-y way to approach the visuals of the game, especially in the first half when the game is supposed to pop off.

Still won't forgive them!

 

As I mentioned one point...somehow Ubisoft has pretty much the best music in their games. I don't know how they do it.

Lost Crown is no exception - that music is FABULOUS. Ironically, the music is why I enjoy Warrior Within way more than I'd expect  emo Prince and all that.

 

Oh, that score is a banger and a half - gives God of War a run for it's money, and reminded me sometimes of the awesome AC Revelations score - which is high praise!

 

10 minutes ago, Copanele said:

Whew that's it! It was the review I was waiting for, so glad that it kinda confirmed that my eyes were actually working and it's not me being insane.

 

Now...excuse me, I'll get back to reading the Final Fantasy ones...it will take me quite a while. Bless Tifa!

 

Praise Tifa 🙌

Edited May 17 by DrBloodmoney

[Platinum_Vice]

12 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

In terms of narrative, Remake does some interesting things with the original narrative, in that it somewhat splits the difference between "retelling", "reimagining" and "rewriting". 

The actual beats of the narrative are pretty much all as they were in the original game, and often remain largely unchanged in terms of pure content. However, the additional material added between and around them has the effect of somewhat recontextualising some of them. The game works partly as a remake, and partly as a sort of sequel in some ways, in the sense that while the events are playing out as if for the first time, the game does not simple pretend the original game does not exist.

A new meta-narrative framework is established - one in which the original game serves not as a prequel, but as pre-ordainment. 
The original game is referenced, not as past, but as portent - as the way things are "meant" to go. 

In a word: Fate.

 

Such a fascinating angle for a remake!

 

12 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Now, there is two ways to read that statement, and I'm fully aware that "ubisoft-open-world-model" is not a phase that conjures positive feeling for everyone. 
Even for a majority, most likely. 
It tends to conjure ideas of "icon-barf" maps with far too many things to do, and cookie-cutter missions that feel like busywork rather than unique content.

 

🫣

 

12 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

The next one up, though, is Firewatch.

Firewatch is a tougher fight, because Firewatch is the first one were I think the voice work and performance is such a substantially additive element, and so good, that it begins to really buoy it against Kentucky Route Zero. Is the narrative more compelling... no, probably not. It's more linear, and has more of a payoff (though that payoff is more a rug pull than a catharsis,) but the game is certainly mysterious and compelling throughout

 

Sounds like a fair comparison point. I'll proceed with caution with KRZ and remember not to take it too literally. As this review falls into the category of 'games that look interesting but I haven't played... better see what the Doc thinks,' I'm glad you spoke about HOW to play it from an intellectual perspective in the review. 

 

 

[Breakingthegreen]

13 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

In terms of narrative, Remake does some interesting things with the original narrative, in that it somewhat splits the difference between "retelling", "reimagining" and "rewriting". 

The actual beats of the narrative are pretty much all as they were in the original game, and often remain largely unchanged in terms of pure content. However, the additional material added between and around them has the effect of somewhat recontextualising some of them. The game works partly as a remake, and partly as a sort of sequel in some ways, in the sense that while the events are playing out as if for the first time, the game does not simple pretend the original game does not exist.

A new meta-narrative framework is established - one in which the original game serves not as a prequel, but as pre-ordainment. 

 

I don't know if this is a term that other people use, but I've been calling FFVIIRemake a "Remaquel" (a portmanteau of remake and sequel), which is when a game (or other kind of story) remake fully assumes the audience has played the game that the remake is based on.

 

My favourite example is Kingdom Hearts Union X which most people assume to be a remake of KH X (Not unfairly since the original game never left japan and there's now no way to play it.)

In that game the player progresses and eventually ends up in the Keyblade war and nearly dies, to save them they are placed in a simulation of the original X game: this what Union X is, but in this simulation the war never happens and the game just keeps going. You wouldn't know this depth of the story without knowledge of the prior game, hence my label of "Remaquel."

 

 

[YaManSmevz]

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

Aaaayyyyyyy!!!

 

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Final Fantasy VII Remake

 

Sigh.... yeah, it's great!

 

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

It's a section that is well remembered and silly fun... but that was 1997.

It's not exactly the easiest section to make palatable to a 2020 audience, and is predicated on such potential minefields as sex-slavery, rape, molestation, threats of genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia...
...y'know... all the fun things you want in your AAA, colourful, fun RPG!

 

It's funny how it was even handled rather well in 1997 - like "just wait til 2020 tho, this shit will be progressive af!"

 

"A...f?"

 

"Oh yeah, they say that in the future."

 

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

...however the developer didn't do the easy thing. 
They did the hard thing: 
They made it work...

...and it paid off enormously, because the solution they found not only made that section a highlight of the game, but established the exact tone the game needed going forward, that could contain all of the oddness and silliness of the original game, without it destroying the serious elements.

Flamboyance.

The game goes - for want of a better term - full vajazzle.

 

I am stealing the term vajazzle, but more importantly this is a perfect microcosm of why this Remake is so good - there was clearly so much love put into it, and a genuine desire to really make multiple angles work simultaneously, be it the tone, the combat, the very storytelling itself.. fuck, even the music! It's such an expertly done marriage of old and new, it's so good.

 

As was this! A spectacular job articulating all this game's contrabulous fabtraptions!

 

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

 

 

14 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Kentucky Route Zero

 

Dude! Thank you for this one, I've been quite curious for some time... always seeing it mentioned in respected circles, but never enough to really know much about it. I will definitely give this one a try!

 

Stupendous work, my friend... the FF7s alone must've been a daunting undertaking, I salute you!

[ProfSeajay7]

I noticed that a few games I played were low on the rankings, with Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom being #245. Then again, if I were to make a ranking system like yours, Nexomon would be #10 on the list and Dragon Quest Builders 2 would be #1. Then again, I don't play as many games as you do. Good reviews, and your attitude towards the mini-games in FF7 Rebirth make me wonder if I could stomach them enough to pay full price for a $70 download.

 

I did play Chapter 1 of FFVII Remake on my other account and while I did take a lot of damage on easy mode, I wasn't very familiar with the combat. Still, the narrative was decent. (The voices I put in French as I wasn't sure I wanted to hear them in English. If I replay the game I will do it right.)

[Rally-Vincent---]

On 2/22/2024 at 4:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Immortality

 

 

Instant download. Playing delayed 'til after next milestone. I am curious.

[jonesey46]

On 5/17/2024 at 12:01 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Jakes and Science-Amys, as promised (and in some no cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

 

Final Fantasy VII Remake

 

Summary: 

 

The first part of a planned trilogy of games remaking Final Fantasy VII, the curiously pragmatically titled "Final Fantasy VII Remake", released in 2020, takes the early portion of the seminal original game - the portion taking place within the corporate-run city of Midgar -  and expands it enormously, retelling the tale with vastly improved graphical flair, a lavish and meticulous attention to detail, and a new, multi-dimensional spin on the narrative.

It's probably worth mentioning right at the start of this review - I am a big fan of the original game. 

I'm not 100% sure which Final Fantasy game I consider to be the actual best overall entry - I think on balance that mantle likely falls on Final Fantasy VI, representing, as it does, the final, most engrossing entry of the 16-bit era, and featuring both the best overall gameplay and battle system - however, I do consider FFVII to be very high on that list, nipping at its heels.

Regardless though, I would argue FFVII is, even if not the best of the original games, it is without a doubt the most fitting entry in the series to receive this kind of lavish, audacious remake. 

 

The reasons are simple.

 

Firstly, FFVII, while perhaps not the actual pinnacle of the series, nor having quite the most complex or sweeping narrative the series ever saw, it is still very strong in those regards, and  I do think that it has the most iconic elements contained within any single entry. The cast of characters in Cloud, Aireth, Barrett, Tifa, Red XIII et all are memorable and iconic in a way that no other entry in the series can offer, and their journey though the set of locations - from Midgar, to Junon, to the Costa Del Sol and the Golden Saucer, to Coral and Nibelheim, to the Temple of the Ancients, is memorable as an overall journey in a way most other entries cannot match.

 

Secondly, it is one of the most beloved - primarily due to the time, place, and console on which it released. Final Fantasy VII was the first entry in the already beloved and well regarded series to appear on Playstation after a 6-game run on Nintendo consoles, and for many people, represents both the reason they shifted to the brand new Sony console.

 

Thirdly though - and most importantly...
... it is the single entry in the franchise most held back by the technology upon which it released. 

 

Final Fantasy games are always quite ambitious - long, involved, narratively and mechanically dense, and epic on a scale that - certainly at the time - was only offered by JRPGs, and by specific entries within that genre. In all cases, the games were products of the technology upon which they released, and tailored to those, but Final Fantasy VII in particular feels demonstrative of the widest gulf between the ambition of the game, and the ability for the developers to realise it with the time and the technology available to them.
The game was very strong in terms of story, of characterisation, and of gameplay - but the effort required to release on the new technology meant that FFVII is perhaps the only entry to really, really show its drawbacks in some areas.

 

The original game is in many ways - and I say this with love...
... kind of a mess.

It looks, well... ugly. 
The characters are cheebie, low-poly blocks. The combination of still backgrounds and ultra-low-poly characters/ interactable objects looks ridiculous. The mere idea of "hiding" openable chests in the scenes, for example, was laughable, as one only had to glance at the ugly, bright-yellow cube in the middle of a nicely rendered still background to know where it was. 
What is actually some really cool design on still backgrounds for the environments is totally undercut by the laughably terrible looking over-world.

Even things like cut-scenes, while very impressive at the time, were all over the place in terms of simple art design - in the same game, there are cut-scenes that are motion-comic-style sweeps across still backgrounds with polygon cheebie characters, ones that are fully rendered scenes with "realistic characters", ones that have fully rendered interpretations of the polygonal cheebie models...
...hell, there's even one where there are "realistically" rendered models, but with the proportions of the cheebie-characters, lending characters like Barrett the look of a child's action-figure... and the awkward gait to match!

 

Now, that's not to say these elements ruined the game - they demonstrably didn't. 
In fact, it's a real testament to the narrative and compulsive gameplay of the game that they didn't. 
The narrative, iconography, design and emotional impact of the story shone, despite those issues, and turned the game into the smash hit it was, and gave it the lasting fan adoration it has enjoyed for 25 years.

That is precisely why FFVII is the most fitting entry for a remake.

If you take a game that was strong enough in other areas, that it managed to elevate to the level FFVII did, even despite the huge drawbacks in visual fidelity, poor English translation of dialogue and technological limitations, imagine where that game can go when all those barriers are removed.
It's basically the old adage about the running coach, seeing two different sprinters at try-outs. They both get the same final time, but one has great form, and the other, lousy form. Which one should he pick to mentor?
The answer is the one with lousy form... because teach him the right form, and he beats the other guy.

Final Fantasy VII is the sprinter with lousy form, who still got a respectable final time.

Having now played Remake, and the second game in the trilogy, Rebirth, I can confidently state that, if the third entry maintains the quality established, it is on track to beat the others. It has been taught the right form.

 

 

The actual portion of the original game covered in this entry of the Remade trilogy is certainly of note.
While the Midgar portion of the original Final Fantasy VII is important, and certainly contains some of the more iconic moments of that game, the fact remains - of a game that most first time players spend around 80-100 hours with, the early Midgar portion not only serves as primarily a tutorial area, prior to the gameplay opening up and the player getting access to the world map...
...but it also only takes around 3-4 hours.

 

It's a curious concept - certainly on paper - remaking the original game, and having the first third cover such a small section of the original run-time. I'll freely admit, it's one I was quite sceptical about upon first hearing it, however, it's a decision that feels far less strange upon actually playing the game to completion...
...and particularly with the hindsight of having played both currently available parts of the trilogy.

 

The fact is, in terms of natural "break points" in the original story, there are two - the leaving of Midgar (now the end of Remake), and the Temple of the Ancients, (now, the end of Rebirth.) Those are the point at which the game demonstrably changes, and the points at which the narrative provides its most clear act breaks - they just come at unusually paced times, when considering the length and duration of the gameplay as a whole.

 

What it does mean, of course, is that the Midgar section of the original game is expanded immensely from what it was originally, though curiously, the actual beats of that narrative remain largely the same. The progression from point to point, and the actual content is largely unchanged, but what is altered is simply additive - extra time is taken to flesh out characters - the main ones, and side characters like Wedge and Biggs and Jesse, who's parts were pretty minor in the original.
Even characters like Johnny, or Don Corneo and his bodyguards who, while present in the original, were little more than footnotes, are given significant screen time, and set up as characters who can (and will be) returning later in the story.

 

In fact, having played Rebirth, what becomes clear looking back at Remake, is that the vastly expanded Midgar section, and the significant increase in detail contained in it, is a huge benefit in terms of tying the narrative together across the entirety of the arc.

The fact is, while the events that take place in Midgar are extremely important to the overall plot of Final Fantasy VII, much of that connection is a little ignored or taken for granted in the original. Once the characters leave Midgar, there are relatively few points where the calamitous event of that section or the serious implications of it on the world and the characters are referenced back to with any specificity. They are mentioned, but largely in passing, and in a vague, generalised way.
In the remade trilogy, however, the events are given more weight, and the implications of them are more realised and made more immediate and centre-stage, which allows the entire story the be tied together a little more. I'll talk a little more about that when discussing Rebirth, but suffice to say, that wile there can be a feeling, in Remake, that the original game's plot points are being drawn out, and made to take so much longer by the addition of a lot of incidental world-building and character-building in between them, that is for good reason. It provides a much more grounded and solid base from which the rest of the narrative can be anchored, and elements of that expanded "opening" work to bind the post-Midgar game much more neatly and naturally to where the narrative started.

In terms of narrative, Remake does some interesting things with the original narrative, in that it somewhat splits the difference between "retelling", "reimagining" and "rewriting". 

The actual beats of the narrative are pretty much all as they were in the original game, and often remain largely unchanged in terms of pure content. However, the additional material added between and around them has the effect of somewhat recontextualising some of them. The game works partly as a remake, and partly as a sort of sequel in some ways, in the sense that while the events are playing out as if for the first time, the game does not simple pretend the original game does not exist.

A new meta-narrative framework is established - one in which the original game serves not as a prequel, but as pre-ordainment. 
The original game is referenced, not as past, but as portent - as the way things are "meant" to go. 

In a word: Fate.

 

This allows the developers to write around all the elements of the original game that the players will be familiar with, but also deviate or add or mould those story beats, and to do so in a way that allows both the nostalgic feel of a remake, and the genuine intrigue of a new story. The familiar player can be confident that they will be seeing all the old elements they remember and loved, but they won't necessarily be presented in a way that feels like a simple re-tread. 

 

It also creates a situation where the characters themselves are essentially fighting three "big bads", rather than two. 
In addition to the heartless, megalomaniacal Shinra corporation, and the iconic spectre of evil that is Sephiroth - the nihilistic, vengeful, world-endangering emo-punk-neerdowell of the original game - they are also battling their own pre-destined fates - embodied and personified here as grim, cloaked spectres, trying to force the game to follow the exact path of the original.

In fact, in some ways, these "fates" are used as a slightly tongue-in-cheek way for the writers of the game to embody their true enemy: The Die-Hard Purists among the player-base.
It's not difficult to imagine the developers - the writers in particular - when trying to adapt the original games narrative to work on the much longer timeframe and new game style of the remade trilogy - feeling the grim, spectral force of the purist fan-base as a choir of howling, faceless wraiths, trying to force them to simply retread the old story without deviation...
...and to imagine them taking a little glee in having the characters within the game fight - and win - against that congealed mass of spectres, breaking out of the bonds of their old fates, and finding a new path!

 

That said though, something that I do think is of genuine interest - and which continues into the second entry in the trilogy - is that while Remake firmly establishes a narrative and structural framework, and a basis, for significant deviation from that original game's narrative, the developer doesn't actually go nearly as far as they might in that regard. 

Remake takes great pains to establish how and why they could change the narrative - giving themselves permission, if you will - but the developers are actually remarkably careful about doing so. 
Really what the remake trilogy does, isn't so much deviating, as simply recontextualising within the original parameters. Finding a way to acknowledge the majority of the player-base's pre-existing knowledge of the narrative as a meta-contextual framework underpinning the new tale, but still striving to maintain all the major - and most of the minor - narrative beats.

Essentially, the game presents a story you know, but does so in a way that maintains the vitality and liveliness of the characters, freeing them from being "flattened" by repetition... because they themselves are striving not to repeat their old mistakes - whether or not they are actually aware of it. 

 

It's a formula that works well - in this game for the most part, and particularly well going forward in Rebirth.
I, as a person very familiar with the original game, found myself constantly embraced and enraptured by my own nostalgic connection to that original game, and feeling the warm fuzzies upon seeing elements of that original design and narrative presented in high fidelity and with such graphical and technical flair...
...but I was also driven and propelled forwards by a story that, while featuring all the elements I hold dear, was different enough - and cognisant of its remake status enough - to still be surprising and colourful and interesting and engaging.

 

Characters retain all their important character traits - and moments - but they are made a little more vital, simply by being seen for much longer. Having a chance to flesh out, and in some cases provide more justification or context, for why they are how they are, or do what they do. 

Cloud, for example, is... well... a bit of dick. 
He was in the original, and he is here...
...however, there is significantly more attention paid to contextualising why he is a bit of dick - because the developers are both fleshing out, and bringing forward some context that, in the original game, only revealed much later on. 
Cloud is mentally unstable. 
He is the result of experiments, and those experiments changed his mind and his body. He has very little understanding for why he feels like he does - hell, he isn't even sure what happened to him, or where he has been for the last 5-7 years. He is inexorably linked to a corporation and a foe (Sephiroth) in a way he can't explain to himself, let alone to others. 
He acts like a bit of a dick, because he is trying to stay cool and composed, while covering the fact he has literally NO IDEA what is going on in his own head, or what he should be doing about it.

 

That kind of altering of the narrative is both necessary, and quite welcome in the remade trilogy - not only because it allows for more connection to the characters, but also because it is a trilogy. 
It's one thing to have a long game like the original FFVII only explain why a character behaves like they do after 40-50 hours of play - that's a big enough stretch for a player - but to have a trilogy of games release over the course of years, where a character's motivation was only explained 2 games and 5-6 years later would be simply ridiculous.

 

Also, there is, of course, the lack of actual mystery inherent to a remake. 
The fact is, whether the game explains these aspects earlier or not - whether they tell us Cloud is sick, or that he is linked to the mysterious black robed individuals around the city, or to Sephiroth, or to Zack Fair, or to Shinra in this early part of the story...
...we know anyways. 
We've known since 1997. 
The cat is out of the bag, so why not use that pre-exiting, impassable spoiler as a benefit, rather than a curse? Acknowledge that the player-base already knows the ending, and bring forward some of the late game "exposition", to do some more interesting things with it in the early game.

The tone of the game is curious - and a little uneven in Remake, truth be told, though it does find its feet eventually, and maintains that solid footing all the way through Rebirth.

The thing about remakes of older games from previous console generations, is that striking the right tone can be tough. 
The natural, most obvious course for developers to take - and one that can work, or not, depending on the property in question - is to maintain the general story, but to make it a bit more grounded, or a bit more gritty, or a bit more "real". 
The thing about games from pre-PS3 era, is that with relatively few exceptions, even relatively "serious" narratives were imbued with a certain level of lightness or silliness around the edges. Games were somewhat hampered by technology in terms of real grittiness, and games were less of a serious business in terms of narrative generally - while "serious" stories were told at times, there was an inherent ridiculousness to that seriousness, due to the lack of graphical fidelity and the more limited tool set.

 

With some games - the recent Resident Evil remakes, for example - simply making those graphics more realistic, adding more gore and horror trappings, and giving the stories a little more of a cinematic and grounded quality - within the fictional tone of course - works a charm.
However, Final Fantasy is a more difficult beast in that regard.

The fact is, Final Fantasy VII, while telling an epic narrative with a lot of more emotional or serious elements as the main beats, was quite silly and quite goofy a lot of the time. 
Deliberately so, and it worked very well. 
The battle against Shinra was treated as somewhat serious... but it always had a lot of silliness and goofiness in the tertiary characters, and around the edges. 
The epic struggle to defeat Sephiroth, and the major story beats that affected the characters were treated fairly straight...
...but there was still a character who was - to all intents and purposes - a vampire, and another who is a mechanical cat perched atop a stuffed toy. 

 

That makes the idea of updating Final Fantasy VII as more "serious" a difficult prospect. 
Firstly, the game, if trying for a "gritty" more "realistic" approach, would have to excise a lot of stuff from the original game - much of which comprises iconic elements the players remember fondly.

Secondly - and arguably more importantly - Final Fantasy as a franchise has never been one where going more "dour" or more "serious" has been a benefit. 
Generally, the goofier the tone manages to be around the edges of the central narrative, the better the game ended up being. Most of the best entries in the franchise - FFVII, FFIX, FFIV, FFXII - all struck a similar balance of "world-ending-calamity" in the primary narrative, encased in a world of abject silliness and goofy wonder.
Even what is generally considered the best Final Fantasy game (by myself, along with many others) - Final Fantasy VI - while certainly containing maybe the most dour and bittersweet primary narrative in the whole franchise, was filled to the brim with silliness around the edges. The world might literally suffer an apocalypse halfway through...
...but there is still a remarkable amount of time spent singing operas for octopi, suplexing moving trains and listening to Gau say dumb things with a smile.

 

In fact, every time a Final Fantasy game dove too far away from that silliness, and tried to "get real", it was to the game's detriment. 
FFVIII is a good entry, but the tone is remarkably humourless and sour, and it takes away from the narrative, rather than adding to it. 
When FFXIII worked, it was because it went sillier, not more serious. In fact, when the series tries a genuinely "gritty" tale in FFXV, it failed spectacularly - not because it managed to completely excise the goofiness, but because it tried to treat it's goofiness as seriousness, and it simply didn't work.

That leaves the remakes in a curious spot though - they can't necessarily make the tone more "serious"... but the amount of goofiness and the tone of the original simply wouldn't sustain a game with much more realistic graphics and a much longer length.

There can be quite a few moments of tonal dissonance that spring up, but don't feel terribly well paced or plotted initially...
....but they finally congeal in Wall Market, where the developers and writers were finally forced to make a serious decision, due to a particular clanger from the original game - Don Corneo.

The Corneo section in the original is meant as goofy fun - where Cloud and Aireth need to infiltrate the mansion of a self-proclaimed lothario, and do so by dressing cloud in drag, and having him pose as a woman, with the help of, among other things, a trans body-builder, and "massage parlour".

It's a section that is well remembered and silly fun... but that was 1997.

It's not exactly the easiest section to make palatable to a 2020 audience, and is predicated on such potential minefields as sex-slavery, rape, molestation, threats of genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia...
...y'know... all the fun things you want in your AAA, colourful, fun RPG!

 

It's a section I suspect would have been genuinely considered for simple excising from the game. It would have been easy, actually, given that writing it out of the narrative would actually have been relatively simple, and leave most of the rest of the game unaffected...
...however the developer didn't do the easy thing. 
They did the hard thing: 
They made it work...

...and it paid off enormously, because the solution they found not only made that section a highlight of the game, but established the exact tone the game needed going forward, that could contain all of the oddness and silliness of the original game, without it destroying the serious elements.

Flamboyance.

The game goes - for want of a better term - full vajazzle.

 

FFVII Remake becomes - tonally - outrageous and over-the-top and flamboyant in a way very few games are - and that tone remains pretty much consistent from that point.

They serve up a serious, often dire, and occasionally emotional journey, and treat it with seriousness to a point...
...but they do it while maintaining all the ridiculousness of the originals, and make it palatable in a way it really shouldn't be, by serving it up on a golden, bejewel plate of Ru Paul-level, pink-flamingo outlandishness.
It is a "serious" narrative...
... but it is presented dipped in glitter, covered in sprinkles, spray-painted pink, disco-lit and served atop a chocolate dildo.

That tone remains relatively consistent from Wall Market onwards - and is where Rebirth lives in its entirety. 

 

Visually the game is something quite special, in the sense that it is very high fidelity and well made, making use of a really great graphical engine, but is applying that graphical flair to a design ethos already established somewhat, by the original game. As said, the visual fidelity of the original game was pretty ropey in many, many ways...
...but the actual design of the world - and particularly of Midgar, was so good, as to transcend those visual drawbacks.

 

Here, without those drawbacks, Midgar looks pretty astounding.

The slums below, and the "new" city, built on "That F@£king Pizza" - the series of 8 giant, metal plates jutting out from a central column of impossible size and scale, each powered by it's own life-draining Mako reactor - look fantastic, and the art design tends to follow a similar approach to "remaking" as the narrative:
ie., don't change, but add, broaden, widen, and recontextualise.

 

Basically, pretty much every iconic element of the original game's environmental design is retained, broadened, and brought to life in a way that is impressive both has a standalone piece of design, and - even more so - in how well 2D, single-screen static backgrounds have been brought to life in full 3D. 
Every location - from the 7th Heaven bar, to Aireth's oddly idyllic flower-encircled home in the slums, to the church, to the reactors, to the Shinra headquarters, to even small details like the play park equipment or the signage on Wall Market stores are retained and given a new coat of paint, but the whole city is made to feel massive by comparison, via draw distance, fidelity and artistic grandeur. 
There is a combination of attention to the smallest details, with a sense of scale that is impressive - and a treat for people like myself who recall the original game, and who could only imagine, in 1997, what lay beyond the edges of the still screens.

Character design is something else too. The characters of Final Fantasy VII are archetypal, and - certainly in the original - larger than life and extremely cartoonish. They do not immediately lend themselves to representation in a more "realistic" world, and with realistic proportions, but the developers do a good job of making the characters more human-esque... while still keeping them as large and broad and caricature as they need to be to embody their larger than life personas.

The world of FFVII isn't realistic, of course - this is a cartoonish, manga-inspired, super-hero world of over-the-top nonsense, but while nothing is exactly "realistic" it is made to feel "real" within the context of the world it inhabits. 
Barrett might still look like a Sherman Tank - his hands might be the size of the other character's heads - but he doesn't quite feel out of place in this strange land of floating fish, steam-punk slums, Talking dogs and inexplicably pointy hair, because everything is odd, and odd on the same level.

 

One can point to fifty ridiculous things in any single scene, but it almost doesn't matter, because the world is rendered and realised such that it allows emotional engagement and tension and stakes within its own strange tone and setting. 
It doesn't feel "true"....
...but it feels "right" for that world.

 

The combat system is excellent - almost certainly the best the series has seen since divesting itself of the fully turn-based ATB system of the first 10 mainline entries. 
While there have been good versions of modern Final Fantasy battle systems (say what you want about FFXIII, and I said plenty, but it's combat system was very, very good,) the series has struggled a little with modernising battles, because the turn-based systems were such an integral part of what made the series work originally.

It's ironic, in a way, because while trying to modernise, and shift away from turn-based combat has been difficult for new entries, primarily because the series never seems able to completely shed the remnants of that old turn-based system...
... in FFVII Remake, they actually manage to strike upon the best version of a modern system, by deliberately not getting fully away from it. 

Because this game is a remake, and requires some direct parallel to the original game - including specific limit breaks, special moves, materia system etc - the devs are forced not to run from the old system, but to address it head-on. To find a "split-the-difference" style of combat, that serves both a modern audience looking for more action-heavy, real-time combat, and the sizeable old-guard, playing for nostalgic kicks, and looking to recall the original game.

 

The result is a system where combat is primarily action-focused, but uses built-up meters to unleash special moves that serve as analogous to the old turn-based actions, and because enemies are designed around original enemies in the original game, who's weaknesses and strengths were designed for a turn-based system, the devs introduce several new mechanics - namely "pressure" (a meter built up on each enemy, which is affected by specific elemental or situational weaknesses), and "stagger" which results when an enemy is "pressured" enough, and opens them up to vastly increased damage.

 

This system is key to the successful splicing of old and new concepts, as it allows battles to have the kinetic, frenetic and fast-paced action the original game never did, with the requisite benefits of skill-based real-time dodging and battle placement - but still forces a significant strategic element on top, where fans of the old game can find the nostalgic leanings they crave.

A boss can be fought, and survived against to some extent by simply being skilled at dodging and could be whittled-down using standard attacks or special moves at opportune times...
...but even the most skilful character-action player will likely not be able to fully defeat them without also exploiting specific weaknesses using specific magic attacks, or items, and by managing both their full party, and their materia set-up to work in synergistic harmony, the way the old ATB model required.

 

The result is pretty much exactly what one would want. A system where fights - and bosses in particular - can feel insanely difficult and overpowered at first...
...but analysing them, identifying weaknesses, and finding a specific combination of skills, materia and tactics can often bring them to heel remarkably quickly... providing the player is also on the ball in terms of real-time combat. 
The "micro" of a battle is in the action-side, but the "macro" - the things that will eventually defeat the enemy - are tactical and strategic, and driven primarily by good preparation and materia set-up rather than by skilful or "twitch" in-battle play. 

 

Audio is great - the voice work on the characters works much like the visual and narrative tone does, in that it takes the over-the-top and the silly, doesn't shy away from it, but manages to be serious enough to cast the spell of emotional connection strongly enough that it doesn't break under the levity.

The musical score is very good - the original score of the original game is extremely well remembered and iconic, and that score is remastered, re-worked and updated in a way that always retains the nostalgia, but still sounds modern and vibrant. 

 

 

There is one aspect that I think should be addressed with a remake like this one, and that is "would this game work for people completely unfamiliar with the original game?"

My feeling is "probably not."

 

For sure, the game would work from a purely mechanical stand-point - the gameplay is largely different from the original anyways, and gameplay elements imported from the original game like the materia system could easily be picked up, either intuitively, or via the robust (and well implemented) tutorial options...
...however, I do think that, narratively, it would be hard to find a single remake out there less friendly to newcomers. 

The fact is, by acting as both pseudo-sequel, and remake, and by using the player's familiarity with the original game as part of the meta-narrative, the game is essentially requiring at least some familiarity with the narrative elements of the original.

A new player could certainly see Midgar for the first time in Remake, and simply think "what an odd, weird design of a city", but when it comes to narrative beats, I suspect they would be entirely lost at sea when Aireth begins making hints that she has foreseen her eventual fate (or one possible fate,) and would be even more confused about who Sephiroth is when he keeps showing up...
...particularly since Sephiroth is not only not explained, really, in this game, but he wasn't even present in this portion of the original game, and was only given a backstory post-Midgar.

 

On the one hand, that could be seen as a major flaw in the game, in terms of being a straight "remake" - a modernisation of an existing game for modern audiences. On the other hand though, of all the games in existence, FFVII is one of the most well known and beloved. It has legions of fans, and it's plot is so widely known, that it's arguable that in order to avoid that issue, the game would actually do a disservice to the much larger group of people who do know the original story.

 

Overall, FFVII Remake is quite a triumph - it was so in 2020, and feels even more so from the 2024 stand-point, seeing it as the first game in trilogy, and knowing how it informs and leads into Rebirth.

 

It is a game that manages to successfully walk the tightrope of being both a nostalgic retread of a game, and feel as fresh and lively as a new game, and one that pays true service to it's origins, without being so slavishly devoted to the old tone and style that it feels dated or hold itself back.

 

The gameplay feels on par with modern games, and the combat system is easily the best the franchise has seen in years. 
The narrative, while covering only a small fraction of the original story, never feels particularly stilted or staid or slow, and looking back now, it's clear the areas in which Remake vastly expanded on the run-time are allowing the developer to pay back in dividends via references and no-backs in future instalments.

 

It's a game that really shouldn't work as well as it does - it is reliant entirely on players remembering a previous game, it has cartoonishly, outrageous moments and characters right alongside serious ones, and ask that the player accept both ridiculous, silly things, and extreme, dire stakes hand-in-hand...
..but pulls it off in a way that somehow just works.

 

It plays beautifully, has depth and challenge and charm to boot, and establishes a framework - and eventually a tone - that could serve Square for years to come, with countless games, be they remakes of other FF games, or new entires.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

There's going to be a significant problem with ranking FFVII Remake, and its sequel, and that is the relationship to the already ranked FFVII original game.

The issues being around two significant questions:
1. How much does the weight of the eventual full trilogy matter?
2. How much does the fact that the games owe their existence to the original game matter?

 

To answer the first question...
...the thing is - I'll say it right now - if the final entry in the trilogy maintains the standard of the first two games, I am confident in stating, that trilogy as a full game will outrank its progenitor.

In fact, I am now of the opinion, having played Remake and Rebirth back to back, that the combination of the two game already outranks the original game...
...however, the complicating factor is that each individual section is only a part of a whole.
Each feels like a "full" game, but narratively, not a "complete" one. 
These games are not sequels in the traditional sense, they are parts of one grand, long game, split into three.

 

On the second question...
...that's more sticky. 
The fact is, in most cases where a remake exists I would consider them separate... but FFVII Remake is unique, in that it is narratively predicated on the player having to have played the original. It is sequel, and remake. It isn't simply remaking things from the original, it is remaking them while requiring the player to be familiar with them in their original form, in order to make sense of the narrative.

In the end, I feel like I have to simple acknowledge that the original FFVII is the baseline, and consider how much I enjoyed the individual section of the game covered in each part of the remade games, and consider whether I feel I had more fun playing it, than the entirety of the original game...
...and when the final part does finally release, there may need to be some kind of reckoning.
Perhaps the individual placements will be removed, and a single, all encompassing ranking made.

(Truth be told, I've considered removing Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2 from the rankings already, for a similar reason - in that all their positive elements are actually already included in the Hitman" World of Assassination ranking...
...but it's less of an issue there, for the simple reason that Hitman: WOA is at the very top, and not causing any issues to me, due to it's astounding awesomeness!)

 

So, in the specific case of Remake, I do have to concede that while I think the changes made for modernising and remaking the early part of FFVII are - in basically every possible area - the best possible versions one could have hoped for, and the game is absolutely fantastic in virtually all regards...
...I do think the sheer length, already existing awesomeness of the original game, and the inherent "completeness" of the original, as opposed to the "first of many" aspects of Remake, do mean that the original still outmatches it in totality.

 

Yes, Remake plays better - quite a bit better - and yes, Remake looks and sounds and feels better - a lot better...
...but a lot of the great elements are inherited and built on an already solid foundation, and wouldn't exist without the original, and the original is so massive and sprawling, whereas Remake is quite contained and linear in this outing.

 

That places it below FFVII... but that's still pretty dang high. Theres a lot of belters in that end of the list!

At the top end of the list, the games are diverse - related only in their sheer awesomeness - but what I looked for was other RPGs or Action games, with great narratives, and - preferably - that are parts of trilogies or larger franchises, but not necessarily the best or most complete narrative part of that trilogy or franchise.

 

Can you see where I stopped?
Yup - Mass Effect 3.

 

Mass Effect 3 is a good comparison, I think, because it is part of an ongoing narrative - not the pinnacle of that trilogy, but still a sterling game, and an integral part of it.

Mass Effect 3 is a great game - its much maligned ending and the subsequent and odious "fan" reaction notwithstanding...
...but I do think FFVII Remake has it beat. It is too well made, too fun, and too good for Mass Effect 3 to beat it - it wins on visuals, gameplay... even audio - and Mass Effect 3's audio is no slouch. The narratives are not similar, but they are similarly high quality within their respective genres, and the fundamental fact is, I had more fun with Remake than with ME3.

 

That pushed FFVII Remake above it - but the two games above ME3 are Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Alan Wake II.

 

Now, Sekiro is a hell of a game - a cool reformatting of the souls-like formula to a slightly different flavour, and it work very well...
...but I do think in totality, FFVII Remake wins. It has the narrative edge, it has the visual edge by a long way... and there is simply more iconic and memorable and endearing character and story elements to boot. It also has music that stomps all over Sekiro's.

 

I do however, have trouble seeing FFVII Remake beating Alan Wake II.

 

Alan Wake II is not just a great game - it's a game doing weird, interesting things in a way FFVII Remake isn't. While Remake still retains the edge on music and on raw gameplay, I think Alan Wake II does actually take the lead by a fair margin on visuals, as they are not just as good in terms of graphical flair, but they are significantly more original and interesting, in the blending of FMV and CGI, motion capture, and stylistic flourishes...
...and when it comes to narrative and tone, both are great, but Alan Wake II is more audacious and surprising and bizarre. Alan Wake II is taking risks in a way few games on that scale ever attempt... and not just having them pay off, but having them hit the fucking jackpot.

 

That has to be recognised... and when combined with the excellent narrative and great characters, I do think it manages to hold out against FFVII Remake's onslaught - even with Remake winning on music and gameplay.

That places FFVII Remake just above Sekiro, and just below Alan Wake II...
...a well deserved, very envious position!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

 

 

Summary: 

 

The 2024 follow up to Final Fantasy VII Remake - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, picks up where Remake left off in tone, in visual style, in combat system and in meta-contextual flow, and begins the not inconsiderable task of telling a much more extended segment of the original Final Fantasy VII's narrative - essentially the bulk of the remainder of what constituted "disc 1"...
...getting into what is a much more open, much looser, much more fantastical, and altogether more colourful, eccentric and iconic area of the game to which it owes its existence.

The actual narrative differences between the original Final Fantasy VII and the part-remake-part-sequel nature of the remade trilogy remain something I won't get bogged down on discussing in detail - but suffice to say, Rebirth follows Remake, in the sense that while actual beats of the narrative, and the broad content remains largely the same, and are simply fleshed out; the biggest area of change is less in content, but in context. 

The actual path the characters take, their motivations for doing so, and the people, environments, locations, enemies and obstacles they encounter on the "main path" are all largely lifted from the original game and simply made to work with the new combat system, graphical style and fidelity, however, what Rebirth does with this section of the game is primarily to tie it much more tangibly and tightly to both the events of Remake, and to the meta-narrative the developers are using to weaponise the player-base's pre-existing knowledge of the source material as a benefit, rather than a curse.

 

Curiously, while Remake took explicit pains to establish in-narrative ways in which the game might significantly deviate from the original story, post-Midgar - including a particularly pointed and explicit section at the end, in which the characters actively "defeat" their pre-determined "fates" - Rebirth actually doesn't deviate from the original path any more than Remake did.
In fact, setting aside optional side content, and some additions, there is very, very little that is markedly changed.

There is certainly far more content - narrative, gameplay, tertiary story, world building, characterisation - that is added and embellished, however, this is generally done around the edges of a well trodden story, and affects it only be altering the tone and context, rather than the beats. 

 

As an example, characters like Biggs, Jesse, Johnny, Don Corneo - ones who were, in the original, simple side characters in the Midgar area, largely forgotten once the narrative moved on, here, the main narrative retains it's rough original form, but because those characters had been fleshed out far more in Remake, there is more scope to refer back to them, or to bring them into the content around Rebirth.

The events of Remake too - aspects such as the fall of the Midgar city plate, or the public reaction to Avalanche and their actions, are referenced far more in Rebirth than they ever were in that section of the original game, tying the games together in a more flowing, coherent way.

Character motivations and characterisation is stronger, I would argue, in Rebirth also, than it ever was in the original game, and as a result, the characters are actually considerably more relatable and their motivations comprehensible than they once were. 

Many of these changes are subtle, but as an example, take Cloud's behaviour. 

Cloud does a lot of dumb things, and takes a lot of very curious and questionable actions in the game. He did in the original too. He is mentally unstable. We know that. We knew it in the original too... but not necessarily at this point in the game. 
eventually we come to understand what was happening to him, but at this point, we didn't. 
However, at no point in the original do the other characters appear to acknowledge his odd behaviour... either to him, or to each other. 
Cloud appears to act either like a mad-man, or a bit of a dick, and the other characters stick with him, because... well... he's the main character!

 

Here though, not only do the other characters appear to actually see that Cloud is mentally unstable - they address it, both to him, and more often, to one another. 

Now - does that actually change the outcome or path of events? 
Largely no. 
The main narrative remains on roughly the same path it always took, and the actions have basically the same result. However, what it does do, is change the tone of that narrative, and the player's relationship to the characters. 
We feel more for Cloud himself, and for the characters around him, because he seems less like just a douche-bag, and they feel less like idiots. They know there is something wrong, and they want to help him - but also, they still need him, because, well, he's a bad-ass with a bad-ass sword, and their best hope for saving the planet.

 

 

The meta-narrative, multi-universe elements established in Remake begin to pay off here too, in the sense that while the main narrative is going on, a secondary, rather mysterious parallel reality is also playing out in the form of occasional cut-scenes and short gameplay sections - of another reality... one in which Zack Fair returns to Midgar, and where the end of Remake went calamitously badly for our main heroes. 
These sections are generally positioned while our characters sleep, lending them the guise of "dream sequences", however, the fact that Sephiroth is, in this game, seeking not simply to rule/destroy the world, but to rule/destroy all possible worlds in all possible realities, means the player cannot simply dismiss these sections as flights of fancy, and they lend the whole game a strange mystery side-story, which is (somewhat) paid off in the finale, though feels poised to matter a great deal come the third and final entry in the remade trilogy.

Where Rebirth really deviates is in how free and open the game feels.

While Remake did have some sections where the player was free to explore and to complete side-quests or side-content, these were relatively contained - as they were in that section of the original game, within Midgar. The fact is, while the original FFVII game was largely an open-world game, it wasn't until after leaving Midgar. Prior to that point, it was relatively linear, and so Remake followed suit. 

Upon leaving Midgar, however, the player was free to explore much more. The narrative path was linear - gated by things like continental constraints and traversal methods, however, the player could explore large areas within reason, and so Rebirth does the same.

The game is still - as Remake was - divided into discrete chapters, following the main narrative path and dissecting it at key point and by key bosses, but pretty much each time where - in the original game - the player was free to explore a large land mass, Rebirth achieves the same, by having several very large land masses that have a sort of "mini-ubisoft-model" open-world exploration element. 

 

Now, there is two ways to read that statement, and I'm fully aware that "ubisoft-open-world-model" is not a phase that conjures positive feeling for everyone. 
Even for a majority, most likely. 
It tends to conjure ideas of "icon-barf" maps with far too many things to do, and cookie-cutter missions that feel like busywork rather than unique content. Luckily, while there can - on occasion - be some elements of these areas that do feel a tad repetitive, for the most part, these open-world areas retain only the good aspects of the "Ubisoft-Formula." Namely, the encouragement to explore, the activate-towers-to-unveal-missions, and the easily tracked, distinct sets of side activities. 
What they don't import, is the endlessness of repetition, the inflexibility of mission structure and the overabundance of similar gameplay.

 

Each of these areas has around 20-30 activities to be done, and while there is a generalised pattern to them, each area has enough distinct elements to feel different, and offer new gameplay. All areas have towers - in this fiction, pre-Shinra communications towers, being activated for Chadley, the curiously Nier: Automata-esque robot/AI character in a schoolboy uniform who aids Cloud in his quest, in return for help cataloguing the world and researching "combat data" - and all areas share some of the more minor tasks such as finding crystallised materia...
...however, each also has its own set of unique missions for unique characters, its own distinct mini-game tied to a particular "area quest" and specific traversal elements linked to the area's local chocobo breed (or vehicle availability,) etc. 

In addition, each area has its own set of enemies, and these have specific, tailored combat trials, the completion of which leads to unlocking a specific, unique "sub-boss" for that area.

The result is that while the path to "completing" an area is roundly the same each time, following a checklist model, there is enough distinction for each area to feel unique in terms of more than just landscape. Running around Cosmo Canyon, using a chocobo that can hover and fly from canyon to canyon, playing the odd, programming-logic-based tower defence games, fighting sand snakes and trying to get a local chocobo farm hand to get over her fears, feels distinctly different to driving around the area beneath the Gold Saucer in a dune-buggy, fighting cactuar in a strange, oddly compulsive speed-trial mini-game, fighting birds, setting traps, trying to lure out a Tonberry King to steal his crown, and hitting the Costa del Sol for some Queen's Blood or a pirate-themed shooting gallery. 

Speaking of which, the other way Rebirth really distinguishes itself from Remake goes hand-in-hand with that more free and open design: mini-games. 
There are a lot of different mini-games. 

 

Final Fantasy games have always had their fair share of mini-games, of course - and Final Fantasy VII was one of the more abundant in that regard.  Particularly within the section of the original game that Rebirth covers, there was tower defence in Fort Condor, Chocobo breeding and racing, Battle Arenas, G-Bike racing, Basketball, Mog House, 3D Brawler, Shooting Coaster... the original was not hurting for mini-game distractions...
... but in Rebirth, the list is not only (mostly) imported to the remade version, but the mini-game abundance is increased fourfold!

In addition to the Gold Saucer, which sees the better original mini-games brought into the new version (excising the less interesting Basketball hoop, and the - let's call it what it was... shite... Mog House,) and adding things like a curiously competent and fun space shooter into the mix, the game also adds - without exaggeration - around 30 or so additional new mini-games into the mix.

 

Mini-games can be something of a double-edged sword in games. 
In some cases, having a few mini-games that are fun to play adds a good side-activity, but in many cases, mini-games can feel like a burden if the main game is good enough to support itself without them, or if it feels like there are too many of them.
FFVII Rebirth feels like something of an anomaly, however, because despite the main game being very good, and easily able to sustain the huge length of the narrative without distraction or boredom, and despite the huge number of different mini-games available, they never feel particularly burdensome - or even like a major distraction...
...and the reasons are threefold.

 

Firstly, while there are a huge and varied number of different side activities and mini-games, each of them feels, pretty much without exception, well made and fun. The ones engaged with the most - Fort Condor (the tower-defence mini-game first displayed in the Yuffie-themed DLC of Remake,) Cactuar Speed Challenges, Chocobo racing, Piano-Playing, Shooting Galleries, Queen's Blood, etc - are all crafted to a degree high enough to more than sustain interest and fun for their duration. They are designed well enough to ensure the player is challenged, but not flummoxed. 

 

Secondly, the devs seem to have a good understanding of exactly how much of any particular mini-game is feasible and it can sustain, and pepper them in accordingly. 
Something like Queen's Blood - a card-battling game revolving around deck building and synergistic card collecting and play - is extremely robust and an absolute blast to play, to the extent where it could almost sustain a game in its own right (and I maintain, should, in fact be released as a stand-alone spin-off on mobile, with a versus mode!) - is given a lot of game-time... and it own entire, Inscryption-inspired quest-line. 
Throughout the game, Cloud and his cadre are collecting and buying cards, and while early on, QB seems a simple distraction - a world-building element, establishing a popular game within the fiction, that they can play against the many players around the world, in the spirit of Triple Triad from FFVIII or Tetra Master from FFIX - a secondary, sinister, almost 4th-wall-breaking quest-line is slowly introduced via the game. Not only does the player ENJOY the QB matches, but they have legitimate, tangible reason to engage with it - winning games throughout the world not only has material rewards, but there is a quite intriguing and curious narrative payoff building also. 

Not every mini-game is on that level, of course - most don't have a whole narrative quest-line around them, but they do almost all feed into at least one or two different side quests, and to a one, they have material benefits to winning. 
Collecting the better materia in the game requires mastering many of these little mini-games, and that works, simply because they are mostly very fun to play.

 

Thirdly, the sheer volume of them is matched by their variety and quality.
Mini-games game feel like over-egging at times when there are so many, but Rebirth seems almost to side-step that issue, not by holding back, but by going so hard, that they push through the "too many" boundary, and come out the other side! 

The fact is, too many mini-games distracting from the core gameplay can feel exhausting, but here, there is SUCH a variety, and SO many, that the abundance of mini-games actually BECOMES part of the core game. It's hard to argue that mini-games are a distraction, because there are so many that Rebirth doesn't feel like a combat RPG with mini-games, but rather, half-and-half a combat RPG, and a party game.

 

I don't actually think I've encountered a game with quite this split of gameplay. 
I am reliably informed by my squad of Science Chums that the closest analogue is the Yakuza series, which splits its "serious" narrative, with absurd mini-games and side content in much the same way, though I have yet to sample that series myself...
...but it makes for a really odd situation, where while playing, I was constantly thinking "this should be a detriment... but it doesn't feel like it is."

The fact is, while I would almost assuredly caution a game developer against putting such an absurd amount of non-core gameplay into their game, I was consistently excited when a new mini-game popped up in Rebirth - and eager to engage with it - and that speaks both to the strength of those mini-games themselves, and to the engaging nature of the main narrative: no matter how much time I spent hopping over obstacles as a frog beneath Junon, or fighting foes in the Battle Arena, or playing a complicated Rock-Paper-Scissors in the Gold Saucer 3D Brawler, or riding a bike, or shooting spacecraft, or doing sit-ups in a jungle gym, or playing cards, or racing birds, or breaking boxes, or picking mushrooms, or slicing cactuar...
...I never got wholly detached from the main story, nor felt my time was being wasted on busywork. It was ALL enjoyable and fun, and the patchwork of different gameplay only seemed to feed into and work for the tone and world-building.

 

That speaks, of course, to the tone of the game - something I spoke about quite a bit in the Remake write-up, and it's of great import here too.

There is a tonal consistency to Rebirth that Remake lacked - because once Remake had laid the groundwork in its first half, then established its tone with the second, the developer stuck to it. In fact, they doubled down - and that works, because the actual section of the original FFVII game that Rebirth covers is the most eccentric and varied section of the original game. 

 

While the Midgar early sections of the original game do have some bizarre or eccentric elements - Wall Market, Don Corneo, some of the Shinra executives etc - as compared to the later game, that section is positively benign. Rebirth covers a huge swathe of the world of Final Fantasy VII, arguably all of the most memorable - and weird - elements. There is Cait Sith, the magical/mechanical cat riding a stuffed toy, the golden Saucer and in all its bizzaro glory, Dio - the purveyor of said bizzaro glory, who looks like a circus strongman in undies and a cape - chocobos, moogles, the Costa del Sol, mini-games galore, the list goes on and on...
...and one might have expected, given the feel of Remake, that the developers might excise some of the more incidental or odd elements to streamline the narrative, but in fact, they not only lean into those elements - they add significantly to them.

 

Rebirth has no issues with its tone - because the game knows what it is - goofy, fabulous, over-thee-top spectacle, and fun all round. 
The game is as bright and colourful and silly and over-the-top as a glitter-ball drag show. 
It is a circus of colour and theatrics and musicality and wackiness, with a "serious" story running through it. That dissonance works, and is what allows the "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" approach to the gameplay to work as well as it does.

The world is so heightened and odd, and the characters so archetypal and strong, that the game can swing from a deadly serious fight for survival against a genuine threat, to a mechanical cat atop a stuffed toy yelling in a Scottish accent, or a talking dog playing what is essentially single-player Rocket League to win a prize on a date, without anything feeling particularly out of place...
...because everything is fair game, when your tone is "Fabulous."

 

The game's tone is a cavalcade cornucopia of bright lights and sparkles - it is a drag show musical, telling its serious story with a wink and a nod, while dancing the can-can. 
You can't over-stuff or over-egg something which is tonally predicated on being over-the-top and overstuffed - so abundance becomes the norm, and silliness becomes indistinguishable from seriousness.
It's all silly... and it's all serious. 
It's a fandango.

 

In terms of combat and core gameplay, there are certainly differences as compared to Remake - the slightly cumbersome "Weapon Upgrade" system is replaced by a rather less fiddly "character level" sphere-grid style upgrade path, and some adjustments in the way materia work have been made to limit the player's ability to become too overpowered. (Where in Remake, maxing out the level of a materia resulted in a new materia of the same type spawning, in Rebirth, that mechanic is excised, to limit access to the best possible materia.)  
However, it's rather remarkable how much of the excellent battle system is brought over whole-cloth. 
That shouldn't be read as a slight either - it's a testament to how good the combat and materia system worked in Remake, that it can be applied to Rebirth virtually unchanged, include the play-styles of the new characters alongside the pre-existing ones, be applied to much wider, broader set of enemies and bosses, and still remain not only serviceable, but a genuine highlight of the game.

The exploratory elements and the general gameplay is crisp and well done - there is more in the way of flexibility in traversing the world, as in Rebirth, characters feel more nimble and able to hop up and down ledges and climb areas that would have been "false walls" in Remake. The exploratory elements of Rebirth don't feel hugely dissimilar, there's simple a lot more of them - both in terms of some of the bigger set piece environments, and, of course, in the large open world areas.

Visuals remain at the high standard set by Remake, and stylistically the games are cut from the same cloth, though the fact that Rebirth covers a far wider swathe of locations obviously opens that style up to much more variety. 

There is certainly a minor increase in fidelity and scope - things like draw distance and fine detail are improved, most likely due to the lack of a last-gen version to put a damper on the game - however, these improvements are relatively inconsequential in the micro, as Remake was already an excellent looking game. 
The real marker of progress is simply how much bigger a scale these excellent visuals are applied to. While the Midgar of Remake had distinct locations, there is still an inherent similarity to most of it - it was all one city (or, two cities if one considers "old" and "new" Midgar,) whereas Rebirth is covering multiple distinct locations and biomes.

 

The art design follows the same rules Remake followed - retain, but expand and embellish - so locations still have all the most iconic and distinctive elements recalled from the still backgrounds of the original game, but are simply detailed and expanded upon to a degree that is impressive. From the quiet of Kalm, to the militaristic port town of Junon, to the beach resort town of Costa del Sol, to the garish and ostentatious Golden Saucer and the dusty, downtrodden former mining town of Coral, to the Tudor quaintness of the mountain town of Nibelheim, the player familiar with the original game can easily identify all the existing elements they recall - of both design and, to some extent, layout - but the realisation and attention to detail is still impressive for a 2024 game. 

 

It's done to a degree that is genuinely impressive too. 
There is no real reason why, for example, the Costa del Sol would need to have an archway bridge crossing from the port to the resort - some redesign would be perfectly acceptable, but the fact that the developers ensure it IS there for people to remember, while also making the town seem like something that would be designed from scratch in a modern game, is emblematic of the process of design used in these remakes. 
It's a redesign to accommodate the new, but with an attention to small details of the original, and to making them work as more than simple throwbacks, that impresses over and over.

 

Audio remains of the high standard set in the previous entry too - and again, sticks to the "retain but embellish philosophy. Final Fantasy VII's soundtrack is iconic and sacrosanct - it's one of the earliest game soundtracks I can recall to be beloved to the extent of seeing sales of soundtracks on more than a minuscule scale, and a lot of the locations or character-specific themes are etched in the memories of the player-base for all time. The developers wisely stick to using these themes, and rather than wholly rewriting anything, simply create new arrangements of them, and they still work to the same degree they did originally.

Overall, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is something very special - and manages to follow up the excellent Final Fantasy VII Remake to such a sterling degree, that it outshines its predecessor in virtually every way.

 

 

Virtually every part of Remake was impressive, but also set up considerable questions with regards to the continuation of the series - Remake established such a rich, well executed, fleshed out version of the early portion of the Final Fantasy VII, that it was a perfectly legitimate concern to wonder just how the developer might be able to maintain such a level of quality when applying that design ethos to a much larger, much looser and much more expansive chunk of the old narrative.

Those questions are put to rest with Rebirth, which not only maintains the level of quality, but doubles down on it, adding in countless new elements to an already rich and high quality experience, and does it while maintaining all that was good about Remake. 
It is a massive game, with scope and scale and variety and spectacle on a level that is really astounding considering the size of it, and does so without ever cutting corners on quality, user experience, fun or engagement.

I was concerned about the idea of Remake originally - I had assumed the developer might meddle to much, or need to excise too much of the original game to maintain my nostalgia, or would conversely get bogged down trying to do everything, and end up hampering their modernisation. 

 

That was proven wrong.

 

I was then concerned about Rebirth - worried simply that by delivering so well on Remake, that they had set themselves an impossible task with Rebirth, and would never be able to maintain that level of quality in a game so much larger. 

 

That was proven wrong.

 

I think I've simply learned now - not to worry about whatever the final entry is.

All they need to do, is just not fuck it up, and there's a very good chance that the complete FFVII Remade Trilogy will easily slip into the spot of "Best Final Fantasy Game of All Time".

 

Fingers crossed!
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So...
...in ranking FFVII Rebirth, all the same issues I mentioned in the Remake ranking still apply... but here, they are a little more pointed, as - spoiler alert - FFVII Rebirth is an even better game than FFVII Remake.

In fact, it is such a good game, and - unlike its predecessor - actually covers such a substantial section of the original progenitor game from which it sprang, that it gets much more questionable whether the amount covered actually does elevate it past the original game.

 

The fact is, probably the one thing holding FFVII Remake back from outclassing its progenitor, was that it is, while a long game, substantially shorter and covering so much less ground than the complete original. FFVII Rebirth, on the other hand, is like 200-250 hours long. In fact, if pursuing the platinum, completing FFVII Rebirth actually takes longer than the entire original game did to fully complete, and has probably a greater variety of gameplay to boot.

That makes the question of ranking strange... because there is no longer the simple "this is less game" part evaporate. What is left, is the fact that FFVII Rebirth is less of a "complete" story - naturally - however, it is a comparable length story...
...and in virtually all other ways, it is a superior game. It plays like a dream - even better than the original ever did - looks light years better, has more compelling characters due to the better rounded character arcs and more substantial differentiation of character and motivations...
...and in all the areas where the original game excelled - the abundance of mini-games, the music, the enemies, the location design, the narrative -it does either as good as, or better.

That, I think, begins to make what seemed impossible prior to Rebirth's release start to become an indisputable reality:
FFVII Rebirth has to outrank its originator... even without the final part of the trilogy even existing yet!

Yes, Final Fantasy Fan, I am as surprised as you are.
There is a reason the original FFVII is ranked in the current 12th position on this massive list. 
I fucking love that game...
...and yes, that love for the original is a key component to me loving FFVII Rebirth...
...but I can't deny - I think I love Rebirth more in 2024 than I love the original.

 

It's close...
...but it's true.

What makes for a strange fight though, is the game right above the original FFVII... Mass Effect 2.
(Cloud vs. Shepherd seems an odd matchup, but this ranking has forced it twice now!)

So, Mass Effect 2 is phenomenal.
It's easily the best entry in a blisteringly good trilogy - and it puts up a lot of fight against Rebirth. It has to come down to individual points.

 

FFVII Rebirth does win on gameplay. There's more of it, it is more variable and challenging, and it is more fun overall. The battle system wins pretty easily against ME2's 3rd person shooting. 
Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, does take it on story and narrative. I love the story in FFVII Rebirth, and the fabulous, silly, over-the-top tone, but Mass Effect 2 is that style of Western RPG at arguably the best it ever gets, and it works amazingly. the writing is great in both instances... but ME2 has to take the edge.

 

FFVII Rebirth takes the win visuals - and not just because it is 2 console generations later. Yes, graphically it stomps all over ME2, but also, its visual design and the way it incorporates the old game's designs in new, exciting ways, and has such variety and detail and scope and scale even beats out the very cool interesting designs of ME2.

 

Mass Effect 2, however, takes it on audio. Both on original score, and on voice work. Both games are sterling examples of both areas, but the voice acting and music, however, the score in ME2 is one of the best I've heard. The Jack Wall score for things like the final Suicide Mission are simply so good, that nothing in the excellent FFVII Rebirth score is able to match it, and while voice acting in Rebirth is very good, and highly stylised, there is more meat, I think, to the performances in ME2.

I

t's a very, very close fight, but in the end, I do think Mass Effect 2 manages to squeak the win.
It's really a case where it comes down to the "completeness" - both are middle chapters in trilogies, but Mass Effect 2 does have a "roundedness" that Rebirth doesn't - a person could play only ME2, and feel they got an amazing single game. I think to love Rebirth on the same level, the person would not only have to play Remake, they would also have to play the original FFVII too.

It's a tough call, but looking at the list, I'm comfortable seeing the games above and below where that places them...
...so FFVII Rebirth finds its spot, right above its towering progenitor, and right below the incredible ME2!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

 

 

Summary: 

 

A 2024 addition to the Prince of Persia franchise from Ubisoft's Montpellier Studio, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown reworks the old, rather underserved franchise with a new lick of paint, a new gameplay genre, a new 2D Metroidvania format... and, curiously, without a Princely Protagonist!

Prince of Persia as a franchise has been in something of a strange spot for nigh-on two decades at this point.
Once one of Ubisofts powerhouse, tentpole franchises in its hey-day of the PS2-era Sands of Time trilogy,  the series - which dates back to 1989 originally - was arguably one of the most recognised videogame IPs around...
... but post-PS2-era, it began to suffer something of an identity crisis.

 

The reason can be summed up in two words: Assassin's Creed.

 

Assassin's Creed came out in 2007, and, to all intents and purposes, ate Prince of Persia's lunch. 

It had the parkour platforming, a similar setting, a similar audioscape, a similar look, but where Prince of Persia was level-based and rigid, AC was free-flowing and modern, and where PoP was established and set in its lore, AC was new and exciting...
...and given that they came from the same overarching company, one suffered for the other's success.

 

Because Assassin's Creed established its place in Prince of Persia's backyard, right at the time Prince of Persia had completed a trilogy and was poised to set its new direction, the natural thing was for Prince of Persia to go hard in another direction. 
And it did, with the 2008 reboot simply titled Prince of Persia. 

 

Now... I love the 2008 PoP. 
It is, in fact, my personal favourite game in the franchise...
...however, I cannot deny that while I loved it... many other franchise fans - and Ubisoft - clearly didn't. 

 

It was a game that divided fans of the previous trilogy, feeling and looking as different as it did, and while it was a great game, it's not hard to see why fans of the series baulked. After all, PoP 2008 isn't a game similar in any way to the aforementioned trilogy. 
It isn't an action platformer really - it's a 3D spacial puzzle game. there's combat and platforming, but not as the fans recognised it, and the game, while modestly successful, saw anaemic sales as compared to Assassin's Creed.

 

Then, Assassin's Creed 2 came out... and things went from bad-to-worse for the poor Prince!

Assassin's Creed 2 was a hell of a game - a brilliant, ambitious, fantastic sequel to the original, which not only did everything PoP 2008 didn't that the fans wanted it to...
...but even featured a protagonist who was practically the Sand of Time Prince in terms of attitude and look. 
Hell, Ezio was even voiced by Nolan North - the same actor as the Prince from PoP 2008!

 

Ubisoft's resolve wavered, and they did what probably seemed the safe option, but, in hindsight, was the nail in Prince of Persia's coffin:
They abandoned all the work they had done redesigning what Prince of Persia was, and released "The Forgotten Sands"..
...a poor, rather pale and unnecessary new entry in a tired and completed "trilogy", awkwardly bolted onto it. A fourth game, acting as a fifth wheel, which only made the franchise feel old and stilted and stuck in the muck, at a time when Assassin's Creed was new and exciting and in blistering ascension.

 

The results, for Prince of Persia, were catastrophic. 
After the 2012 release of The Forgotten Sands, and the lacklustre sales it accrued, Ubisoft pretty much shelved the IP. Aside from a few very questionable mobile-bound runner games, there wouldn't be another Prince of Persia game for another 12 years. 
that is a lifetime in franchise gaming! 

Cut to 2024.

 

Assassin's Creed has made Ubisoft more money than God, has had more entries than most franchises could imagine, and has even reinvented itself a couple of times over...
...but it's finally showing some signs of age. In many ways, one could argue Assassin's Creed is, post "Open-World-Trilogy", in a similar place to where Prince of Persia was in 2006-2007. It is currently flailing around, figuring out exactly what it wants to be - a big, open-world historical RPG? A tighter, assassination-based stealth game? A GaaS style Ever-game? 
A Valhalla, or a Mirage, or an Infinity?

The stage seems ripe to bring the old prince out of retirement, and reinvent that old IP for a new audience.
And that's exactly what they did.
Well... sans the actual Prince, that is.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is not, it should be noted, particularly similar to any previous Prince of Persia game. It is a 2D platforming metroidvania, in the style of Guacamelee or Dead Cells or, ironically, the Assassin's Creed offshoot "Chronicles" games.

 

After Prince Ghassan - the Prince of Persia - is kidnapped by a trusted General, General Anahita, the new protagonist - Sargon - part of an elite cadre of protectors of the Prince called "Immortals," travels to the cursed city of Mount Qaf with his allies, to rescue the kidnapped prince.

Once a vibrant city, Mount Qaf is plagued by a temporal anomaly, causing all who enter it to experience time out of joint, and the group quickly begin to splinter, as they become lost in the maze of time.
After the leader of the Immortals - Vahram - reveals himself to be the true enemy and the power behind the kidnapping, murdering the Prince in-front of Sargon, Sargon must navigate the maze and the temporal misalignments to rewrite history, save the Prince, defeat Vahram, and escape the cursed city.

As a Metroidvania, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is something of an anomaly, in the sense that while the game has all the hallmarks of a smaller game - and indeed, is most accurately categorised with many other games that fall in the shorter, more focussed, generally Indie-game-led space - it is actually far longer and more expansive than the majority of games that are its peers.

The scope of the game is admirably large, and the amount of exploration, secrets, collectibles and platforming puzzles are both varied, abundant and impressive. 

 

The platforming and puzzles of the game are also, virtually without exception, excellent. 

There is a slow and steady metroidvania-staple drip feed of new abilities given to Sargon, and these are all clever, fun to use, and allow synergistic combinations of abilities to slowly open up access to different areas of the map.
Early on, puzzle platforming sections and straight "puzzle" areas tend to make use of single or double combination abilities, but as the game progresses, and Sargon has access to a full arsenal of abilities, there are some really clever, interesting combination-requiring puzzles designed, which can stump the player before they have their "eureka moment" or realising how they can combine them to defeat it.

 

Many of these result in coin collectibles, and these are cleverly used too - these collectibles are obtained, usually, during lengthly combination platforming puzzles, however, they are not immediately added to Sargon's inventory. Instead, they float alongside him... and are only actually collected, once he is back on solid ground.
That is a neat solution to what is often an issue with puzzle platformer collectibles - the player can often simply kamikaze themselves into a pit, as long as they get the collectible on their way to certain death. They don't actually have to figure out how to get it safely. Here, not only to the need to get it safely...
...the also need to get back safely, without losing it - and in some of the more tricksy puzzles, the getting there is easy, but the getting back is where the real challenge lies!

 

The Metroidvania elements of the game are actually of note too, in that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown does a couple of things that are extremely cool quality of life improvements within the genre itself, and should, ideally, be adopted by other Metroidvanias going forward. 

The game doesn't guide the player particularly in terms of narrative progression, not in terms of auto-tagging locked areas or points of interest, however, it has an in-built "tagging" system, allowing the player to drop little symbols from a pool of them, onto the map themselves. 

 

See an area that is too high to reach with your current abilities? 
Drop a little symbol on it, to remind yourself to come back once you have some new abilities. 
Or, better yet...
...use the "take photo" function, which creates a screen capture within the game, and a symbol in that place on the map, so when viewing the map, you have a handy image of what is there to remind you what exactly was the issue, and what abilities might help you overcome it.

It's a great system, and one that really benefits the Metroidvania design, as it allows the player to feel much more "ownership" over their own exploration, avoids irksome journeys back to areas trying to remember where a gated path was, or only to discover the they still don't have the requisite ability - and does it while also allowing the developer to excise some "hand-holding". 
When the player is in full control of the map, and able to tag all the places they might want to revisit of explore later, the game doesn't have to hang signs on things saying "look here". The player feels more in control, so the game can loosen its grip on their shoulder.

Unfortunately though, despite some admirable length and scope, some great metroidvania elements, and some excellent platforming and puzzle design, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is not a game without significant issues.

 

The biggest one, is combat.

While the platforming puzzle elements are all generally very well designed and fun to play with, the combat is rather crude and rudimentary, and often works in direct opposition to the good platforming elements.

In many cases, fun platforming sections feature enemies that seem designed not so much to challenge, as to frustrate and annoy the player.

Sargon is incredibly nimble and adept at movement, yet curiously stiff in terms of actually swinging his sword in the right direction. parrying and blocking is useful, but Sargon must be facing the correct direction to do so, so it is largely useless in any 1 vs many encounter - and most enemies use far more "unblockable" attacks than parry-able ones, so really, maintaining speed, combo and air-based attacks to "stun lock" enemies is always preferable.

That's more a design choice than a straight up problem - however, there is also a genuine problem is some areas, where the addition of combat-based obstacles to platforming-challenge areas simply doesn't seem to have been effectively thought through.

There are multiple spots where this is an issue, and it's not the simplest thing to explain, but to give a good example, take the "Upper City" area.

This is a section with a number of very large room, where the player is progressing vertically upwards, using a series of moving platforms and platforming puzzle elements. These are fun, and well designed. However, the area is also populated by a large number of enemies, who are constantly firing flaming arrows at the player from considerable off-screen distance. The player is therefore required to navigate the level, proceed upwards, but also seek out the enemies based on the trajectories of the incoming arrows, and kill them to reduce the incoming threat. 

 

All good, standard, action-platforming fare so far.
However, the problem is twofold. 

 

Firstly, these enemies are all positioned on small platforms themselves - and take quite a few hits to kill. Because Sargon's combat moves routinely result in "knocking" the enemies in the air, or around the arena, there is a constant issue with hitting the enemies off their perches, but not actually killing them...
...and since that sends them plummeting to the bottom of the area, and the game has no fall damage, and they are still able to fire a tremendous distance from offscreen, the result is that the arrow continue... but from a new - much harder to avoid - trajectory, coming straight up at Sargon. 
As such, in order to progress, the player generally must go all the way back down the level, deliver the finishing blow, then climb all the way back up to where they were to continue their progression.

 

The second problem - compounding the first considerably - is that there are multiple "exits" and "entrances" to this large area, where the player will want to explore as they proceed upwards. After all, the core tenant of a metroidvania is exploration, and checking every nook and cranny is part of the metroidvania experience. 
However, every time they move back and forth out of and into the main area, all the enemies respawn in it - below, and above. 
As such, the whole section becomes a tiresome and irritating process of constantly going up and down, hitting enemies who fall, then going down and killing them, then going back up, then exploring a path, then having the enemies respawn, then doing it again... and again... and again...
...none of which is particularly challenging, but all of which is time consuming and irksome.

 

That isn't an isolated problem either. 
There are multiple such problems in the game, that seem specifically designed to take a very fun, clever, well designed platforming area, and turn it into a frustrating exercise in patience-testing. The number of airborne enemies who pose no actual threat - who's incoming attacks are laughably weak, but who are positioned and who's movement is designed ONLY to interrupt long platforming puzzles - is dishearteningly abundant, and so common and escalating that it can only be a result of deliberate decision. 

An ice area, for example, in the later game, where extremely long platforming sections are rife, has floating enemies who not only serve only to stymie progression without challenge, but who leave behind obstacles after being killed, seems designed solely to further frustrate players who might have already gotten good at airborne arrow-shooting to deal with their non-ice counterparts...
...but still offer no actual combat challenge.

 

One might argue these are nit-picking points, or simply preferential annoyances - surely all action platformers have such enemies, and they are there to increase the challenge of the platforming?...
...well, yes they do... 
...but that is exactly the point.

There are countless example of other action platformers that do use enemies in the same way - Guacamelee, Dandara, Dust: An Elysian Tale, the list goes on...
...but in none of those cases did they feel like they were solely annoying, and not prohibitively challenging.

 

 

Another major area of concern, is the visuals.

They are just... bland. 

 

There are some areas - a forrest area around halfway through, and in particular an excellent, really cool looking area where a ship in mid-battle has been frozen in time, and the player is able to run on the chrono-frozen sea surface, and jump between mid-explosion sections of splintering hull - however, these sections of particularly interesting design personality are the exception, rather than the rule... 
...and truth-be-told, likely stand out as more interesting that they might be in another game, only due to the distinct lack of distinctness elsewhere. 

For the most part, the different areas of Mount Qaf, while perfectly functional and distinct from one another, are exactly the areas one might expect, and any seasoned gamer could likely list them without ever playing the game. We have the city area, the library, the sewers, the forrest, the docks - all perfectly acceptable, but all rather generic areas for any game.

That's not a problem in itself necessarily - the same could be said for many games - however, it is brought into stark relief by the fact that the actual visual style of the game is so drab and uninteresting. The visual personality of the game seems to be simply "no personality". The game looks like the generic "default" of a game, prior to the overlay of any distinct art-style.

 

It's a shame, because actually, the fact that the game is 2D, means it would be ripe for an interesting art-style to be applied. There are loads of great 2D games out there where incredible, distinctive art-styles elevate good gameplay - one can imagine this game with a hand-drawn style like Treasures of the Aegean, or a cartoonish art-style like Dust: An Elysian Tale, or a noir-ish style like Limbo or Inside, or pixel-art like Dead Cells, or even a watercolour style like Child of Light, and it giving the game the personality injection it sorely needs...
...but unfortunately, the flat, rather uninteresting style settled on is best described as "default"... 
...and more cruelly described as "Fortnite".

 

That is a genuine problem, because while "genero-visuals" might be forgivable and less of an issue in a shorter game, the fact that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a game which is much longer than almost all the games that are its peers, and that it would be compared to, coupled with the fact that it looks so much less interesting than any of them, highlights the game's repetitive visual blandness, and just makes it feel like it wears on and on and on. 
It does a disservice to what is actually quite a varied and clever game in terms of platforming and puzzles.

 

Audio is a mixed bag in the game - or more accurately, it's a game of two halves. 
In terms of spoken dialogue, the game is not particularly stand out. The default language is English, and when played that way, the vocals are both a little too over-the-top, and strangely cast. 
Pretty much all characters speak with London accents, and it is somewhat fiction-breaking, particularly given that the writing, while serviceable, also isn't terribly impressive. The dialogue given to individual members of the Immortals seems designed more to try and force personality into characters who don't get a lot of screen time, and tends to fall into caricature and stereotype as a result, and when coupled with the overacting and strangely pedestrian accents, it makes for laughs more often than immersion.
There is, however, a language option of Persian available. 
In this mode, the voice cast does a much better job, with dialogue a little more subdued, and reading the text as subtitles tends to work better than hearing it in a London accent.

 

The score, on the other hand, requires no equivocation - and is arguably the best thing in the entire game!

The music, by Mentrix and Gareth Coker is an absolute belter - a mix of orchestral themes and pounding percussive, rousing battle-arrangements stylistically similar to the soundtracks of the God of War games, which are variously spliced with more modern sounding electronica or middle-eastern inspired themes.
It's a great and expansive soundtrack - one I've listened to quite a few times outside of the game itself, and is both one of the best original soundtracks I've heard this year, and easily the best soundtrack a Prince of Persia game has had in its long history!

Overall, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a bit of a mixed bag. 
It's a metroidvania with some genuinely good, genre-advancing ideas, that is admirable and impressive in scale and scope, and which offers some excellent platforming, tight controls, clever abilities and a fun progression and skill tree. 

 

It is also a game which is let down quite considerably by some pretty flat and awkward combat design, uninteresting environmental detailing, questionable and ill-conceived enemy placements, and is presented in a visual style almost custom designed to make the game seem blander than it should be.

 

The voice work is not great, (though can be alleviated greatly by playing in Persian,) but there is a rousing, excellent score that elevates it quite a bit. 

It's a game that has significant good points - many of the things it does well it does very well, and fans of puzzle platforming (like myself) will doubtless be able to push through the frustrating elements, and find a lot of fun here...
...but one can't help but see the game as somewhat disappointing in a sense, because the core gameplay - which is mostly there and mostly good - is let down time and again by tertiary elements.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

The obvious place to start with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is some of the previously ranked PoP games...
...and the placement within the 4 "Sands" games is relatively clear and obvious to me, without even looking.

 

The two better Sands games - Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time definitely outclass this new entry, but the weaker two - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands are clearly weaker than it.

 

That narrows the placement quite quickly, to somewhere in the gulf between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

I had hoped that placement might be made easier by the inclusion, somewhere in there, of another comparable Metroidvania, but alas, there isn't one.

 

The closest game would be the original Trine.

 

I think, on balance, Trine beats out Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. It doesn't have the smoothness of gameplay, but it does have more fluid, interesting puzzles, a great co-op, and much, much more interesting visual design and art-style. It doesn't have the music, or the scope or length, but it has more personality in a single level than Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has in its entirety, and tends to be memorable i na way Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn't.

 

It then comes down to simply asking "which of these handful of games below Trine, but above Warrior Within is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, with its mixed bag of good puzzles and platforming, and less good combat and visual design, better than?"

 

Working up from Warrior Within, I think its good elements are enough to outclass Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Bayonetta and to just about beat out Costume Quest 2...
...but I don't think it can really offer any serious fight against Final Fantasy XIII-2, nor Resident Evil VII: Village.

As such, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown finds its spot!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Kentucky Route Zero

 

 

Summary: 

 

A surrealist narrative Adventure Game from Cardboard Computer, originally released on PC as 5 separate "acts" over the course of 7 years between 2013 and 2020, Kentucky Route Zero was finally finished and ported as a single, complete work to various platforms under the moniker of "Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition" - including to PS5 in 2023.

 

Taking a Lynchian, non-linear, heightened-reality approach to mood-based narrative storytelling, it tells the tale of several different characters in a strange, mysterious version of the Kentucky twilight, coming together via circumstance, and travelling together on a strange, winding journey centred around the mysterious "Kentucky Route Zero" - a highway of sorts, seemingly existing outside of conventional time and space, and linking curios and oddities hidden in plain sight in the moonlit world.

The core spine of the narrative is relatively simple - Kentucky Route Zero is a road movie of sorts, following the delivery of a package, and begins with a single character - Conway - an ailing, world-weary delivery driver, as he travels across Kentucky to make his final delivery of antiques before the closure of the store he works for. 

As he travels the mysterious back ways and curious spaces of the ever-nighttime road, searching for - and eventually travelling on - the mysterious "Kentucky Route Zero" - he meets various strange and curious characters on their own journeys, with their own stories, regrets, hopes, dreams and personal sadnesses, and they flit and flutter in and out of the central narrative as they come together and join the Quixotic quest to deliver the package.

 

That plot description is pretty vague, and it's for good reason - Kentucky Route Zero is a difficult game to summarise in terms of plot.
In some ways, the actual "quest" the characters are on feels...
...not exactly irrelevant, as it does drive the plot and act as the jumping off point from which all the curious, strange, mysterious other elements of the game can spine off... 
...however, it does act largely as a macguffin for the majority of a game where simply being on the strange journey with these strange characters, exploring the world presented to them, and hearing the stories it has to tell, is the primary focus.

The game has less the feeling of a single narrative, than of a short story collection built around a theme. 
There is a mosaic quality to the individual vignettes - they aren't random, and while some wholly unrelated seeming section might come up, generally characters within that scene will eventually figure in some way into the primary narrative - but the impact on the overall will as often be tertiary or tonal rather than particularly plot heavy. 

The game is one where the straight narrative is loose and nebulous, hopping from absurdist section to absurdist section with little grounding insofar as straight "logic", however, the mood and the tone ARE very specific, and no matter how outlandish or absurdist or tangential the individual scenes get, they do piece together into coherent TONE. They just do it without allowing pesky things like logic or realism get in the way.

Anyone familiar with David Lynch's more esoteric fare - Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Inland Empire, Eraserhead et al - will be familiar with the story-telling style on show here - scenes may be difficult to place or to fit together in any kind of beat-to-beat-to-beat logical way, particularly as presented in their non-linear fashion, but there is a palpable tonal through-line.

Therefore, while its possible to simply go "this makes no sense" and switch off from a purely logical point of view, if the viewer gives over to the art as presented, accepts each scene as it comes, and allows their more emotive side to take the wheel, the narrative lends itself to an emotional through-line that is consistent in a way the practical and logical through line isn't.

The world of Kentucky Route Zero is one in which a scene of Conway asking for direction in a gas station might yield a curious conversation with an elderly gas station attendant, an encounter with ghostly Dungeons and Dragon's players, and a semi-sentient computer...
... or where an underground bootlegger whiskey distillery is run by skeletons...
...or where a mountain cave full of research graduates have created a text adventure game in which some people have become lost...
...but those absurdist elements can exist right alongside a lengthly scene of downtrodden barflies in a run down roadside bar, chatting aimlessly about their troubles, and neither feels more or less bizarre than the other, because the strange, dreamlike, noirish tone remains constant across all. 

The player is never able to predict exactly what will happen next, because the plot and the storytelling are not bound by logic or reason, but the events don't feel so fully untethered as to simply lose their attention, because the tone is consistent, and the through line is maintained - it's just done via ambiance and feeling. 

There is a dreamlike quality to the whole affair - the way characters feel exceptionally well realised within their vignettes, yet detached from any wider life beyond them... in the same way that in a dream, a scene might feel very real, but if reality begins to bleed in, and you begin to think beyond the bounds of that particular moment, you can't exactly remember how it started, or how you got there.

 

In fact, that story-telling method does seem to feed quite neatly into the moral theme of the story itself. The characters in Kentucky Route Zero are all different and imbued with personality and interesting and diverse - Conway himself; Shannon Weaver, the struggling TV Repairwoman; Lulu Chamberlain, the one-time performance and installation artist, now working an unfulfilling job at the Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces; Ezra, the precocious child in a business suit, who's brother is a giant eagle; Junebug and Johnny, the motorcycling musicians; Will and Cate, the odd couple who captain the Mucky Mammoth riverboat - however, what they all have in common, is that they have their own tragedies and sadnesses, their own troubles and strifes, but simply get on with the act of living, in the face of adversity or ennui.

 

That does feel like the central thesis statement of Kentucky Route Zero to a large extent - it is a parable of sorts, telling a loose and winding tale around the theme of "getting busy living" and "keeping on keeping on". Of making some kind of life work, and seeking your own personal salvation, even in the face of bleak odds or overwhelming universal indifference.
That the world around you changes all the time, and doesn't care to tell you why, or care for your plans or your wellbeing...
... but in addition to the struggle and the sadness and the bleakness and the indifference, it can be magical and free and hopeful and interesting and beautiful, if only you give over to it. If you dive in and swim in the emptiness and the madness and the oddness, and appreciate the smaller moments of joy in the company of those around you, or take a moment to appreciate the stories of others, or the majestic strangeness of the forgotten spaces of the world.

It is, as such, not a game for everyone - Lynch movies are the same - but anyone willing to simple forgo their desire for narrative or logical sense, and accept the world as presented, and read into it as it comes, will actually find a sort of non-linear logic to the whole game, as the seemingly separate elements of storytelling are pieced together and congeal successfully as a collage of strange elements with a specific, tonal consistency.

A lot of that is down to the writing and the visual style - both of which are very good.

 

The writing is absolutely killer - Kentucky Route Zero is a game where even with minimal dialogue or description, the writers are able to nail the tone and specificity of mood and place with pinpoint accuracy. Depths of individual characters mood and feelings and pasts are conveyed very well with relatively minimal dialogue exchanges, and that comes down entirely to the strength of the language and writing. 
The downtrodden yet hopeful, or mournfulness, or wistfulness of the overall tone never falters, and the characters' acceptance of the world in which they are presented goes a long way to setting the stage for the player to do the same - and to feel a connection to characters whom they spend relatively little time with. 

 

The player is able to shape the narrative to some extent - there are certainly dialogue prompts and choices to be made, but these tend to feel more like choices about what aspects of the characters they get to find out about, rather than changing the actual outcome of events. The player can, for example choose which character says something in a given situation, letting them see different aspects of different character's personalities and their relationships to one another, rather than specifically shaping who those characters actually are.

 

Make no mistake - while the visuals and the music are certainly key components of making Kentucky Route Zero work, and are important - the writing is the main draw here. If the writing didn't work, the whole game wouldn't, and, here, it is of such uniform high quality that it is responsible for making the game ass compulsive and as memorable and as engaging as it is.
Playing Kentucky Route Zero is, essentially, reading a curious novel in game form. 
Yes, there are game trappings - and certainly there is power in the fact that the visuals cool and dream-like and interesting, and the music mood-setting and compulsive - but the feeling coming out of Kentucky Route Zero is akin to that of having read an interesting novella, rather than of playing a videogame. The medium is used effectively, but it is in aid of embellishing an evocative story, rather than good writing informing or improving upon a game.

Those visuals are cool too, of course. The general visual style is one of low-poly greys and highly stylised character silhouettes, with some white-on-black vector graphic style sections conveying the actual roads travelled. 

Individual scenes are rarely similar in terms of input or control - some feel largely 2D, some 2.5D, some isometric 3D, some flat-plane, almost cut-out form, but they follow a stylistic theme, and are generally framed in a way that is both stylish and cinematic, yet specific to the requirements of that specific vignette. 
The game picks and chooses its input controls based on the best use for that scene - so if a scene would work best from a first person perspective, it uses that. If it would work best in isometric view, it uses that. The controls are generally quite rudimentary - as is often the case with Adventure Games - but it's largely irrelevant, as there is never any situation where pinpoint accuracy or twitch movement is required. Much like the actual narrative, the player should not look for a mechanical through-line, but rather treat each individual scene as its own entity, play it, and come to understand how it feed into the overall pastiche only once such knowledge makes itself known or required.

 

The game does have occasional moments where the controls feel a bit unsuited to the requirements - one section where the player controls a vehicle in isometric view is a little irksome, as the controls don't seem quite up to snuff for what they are trying to achieve - but for the most part, these issues are minor, and not prohibitively debilitating, given that there is no threat of "failure" - just a bit of faffing around if a 3-point turn is required!

The audio is curious, and pretty well done. 

There isn't general voice work per-se, the majority of dialogue is text-only, however, there is some voice work in the game. Certain radio stations, or television sections, or songs are voiced, and in many cases, the audio is used quite effectively and evocatively in these areas. For example, while two characters might be having an exchange in text only, if in the background they could hear, say, the singing of a choir in a church they are approaching, that singing is voiced... and will get more or less muffled as our characters get closer or further way. 
It quite an effective use of audio, as it feels like it feeds into the eerie, mysterious nature of the game, and lets the player hear what the characters are concentrating on but does it without having the primary dialogue voiced, so the character's themselves are voiced within the player's head, keeping them feeling more personal.

 

The general audio is relatively sparse, using ambient sounds and some wistful, tonal musical stings, but there is also several in-game songs played - including some country tunes from a band that seem to appear here and there in the foreground of some scenes. These are a highlight - very evocative, and work to further cement the palpable tone of the game.

Overall, Kentucky Route Zero is a strange game - but a very winning one. 

It's certainly not the kind of game that appeals to everyone - there is very little in the way of mechanical gameplay, or challenge or complexity from a gameplay standpoint, however, it a narrative game that absolutely nails the dreamlike, ethereal quality of a David Lynch film, and has a tone and style that feels both very distinct, and very specific.

 

There is a languid pace and an almost deliberate slowing down of the pace of the game that the player must get on board with - scenes operate at a deliberate pace, and rarely are the actual "progression points" uniform or broadcast, and so playing the game tends to rely on the player simply giving themselves over to the game, enjoying the dreamlike quality of to, poking, prodding, exploring, reading, and getting out of it as much as they are willing to put into it...
...but if they are willing to meet the game on its own terms, there is a surprisingly dense, exceptionally well written, remarkably well realised, and genuinely original tale being spun, with a mood and tone that is simultaneously palpable, deliberate, curious, mysterious, stark, maudlin...
... and often quite beautiful.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Kentucky Route Zero is not a Walking Sim per se, but it is a game predicated almost solely on writing and mood and ambiance, and on drawing the player in with narrative and visuals, so the natural starting point is Walking Sims, as those are the most comparable games to this largely incomparable game!

The one that immediately came to mind was arguably the original Walking Sim - the game that pretty much created that genre AS a genre, and still stands as one of the best examples of "mood-based, non-gameplay" gaming: Dear Esther.

 

Now, I am a big fan of Dear Esther - the writing is excellent, the visuals lovely and haunting, and the mood created by it is palpable - so when I say Kentucky Route Zero beats it quite easily, that's not a slight on Dear Esther - it's a compliment to Kentucky Route Zero! The narrative is longer and more interesting, I was more engaged, and despite not being able to predict what would happen next in either, I was more fascinated and compelled by Kentucky Route Zero.

 

The next Walking Sim working up the list from Dear Esther is What Remains of Edith Finch, and again, when I say Kentucky Route Zero is the superior experience, it's again a testament to Kentucky Route Zero. What Remains of Edith Finch has a lot of the best parts of Dear Esther in there - it has good - if not better - writing, its longer, more substantial, more detailed, and has a more esoteric and curious narrative...
...but Kentucky Route Zero is still the game I know I will remember longer, and felt more compelled to see through, and to get more of.

 

The next one up, though, is Firewatch.

Firewatch is a tougher fight, because Firewatch is the first one were I think the voice work and performance is such a substantially additive element, and so good, that it begins to really buoy it against Kentucky Route Zero. Is the narrative more compelling... no, probably not. It's more linear, and has more of a payoff (though that payoff is more a rug pull than a catharsis,) but the game is certainly mysterious and compelling throughout.

 

It's relatively close - very very close actually, but I think, Firewatch does manage - just - to hold its place.

It's a very tough call that one though, and so the only fair thing feels like placing Kentucky Route Zero just below it...
...which means its found its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Roads

 

Summary: 

 

A short family-melodrama / mystery Lite-Adventure game from The Open Roads Team, Open Roads sees a mother - Opal - and a daughter - Tess - who are in the process of packing up Opal's late-mother's home after her death, discover clues to a mystery around their mother/grandmother - and a possible affair she may have had when Opal was a teenager, around the time of her husband's death.

 

During a time of tension and difficulty for the family - where Opal's job is in jeopardy, Tess's relationship with her divorced father is causing friction, thoughts of Tess's future are weighing on both their minds, and the stress of family upheaval in the wake of the grandmother's death and the forced sale of the home, this mystery provides a much needed distraction to Tess...
...and so, with some cajoling, she and Opal set off to the long abandoned summer trailer-home to follow the trail, to unravel the mystery. 

The story is a short one - it's a curious enough unravelling of a family mystery, though it does feel a little too truncated, and a little too easy. 
I don't mean in terms of game challenge - Open Roads is essentially a Walking Sim/ lite-Adventure game, and the narrative is key here, not mechanical gameplay - but a little to easy for the character's themselves.

The thing is, Opal and Tess are, in the fiction, uncovering a long buried family mystery, across several locations, including two long abandoned homes...
...but it feels like all the clues to unravel that mystery are so obviously and simply laid out in these locations, that it is genuinely baffling that they would have made it 30 years without figuring out this mystery before.

 

The mystery makes itself known initially via clues in Opal's mothers home, which makes some logical sense, given that Tess and Opal are in the process of clearing the house for sale, so it is logical that they might find some artefacts of the past hinting at the mystery during that process...
...however, these clues are hardly hidden well enough that it could be believable that children in that house would not have accidentally stumbled across them.

In the two subsequent locations, it seems very convenient and coincidental that practically the only things remaining un-destroyed in these long-abandoned domiciles, is the exact items that point to the mystery, too. As if a hurricane blew through, destroyed everything, then someone came and carefully laid out a set of incriminating or plot-critical postcards and diary entries for someone to come and find later!

 

In fact, the lack of red herrings or non-critical or other elements to muddy the detective elements was so jarring, that I actually assumed it was deliberate - that the plot was eventually going to reveal that someone had left these things as a trail to be followed, and that the ending would reveal someone pulling the strings...
...but in fact, it simply seems to be the game itself not doing enough to make the mystery seem in any way hidden from the people to whom it had - apparently - remained a mystery for 30 years.

They must have been very unquestioning, incurious children, to miss what are relatively obvious indicators of a family mystery, left rather signposted all around them!

The art-style is... interesting...
...though if I'm honest, not an aspect that worked particularly well for me. 

 

It's not that the art-style is bad - in fact, not only is it good, it's actually two kinds of good - I just don't think that the two ways in which is good compliment each-other particularly well. In fact, they feel like they almost work against one another.

 

So, there are two distinct graphical styles - one for the environments, and one for the characters. 

The environments are rendered in full 3D, and do look pretty good. I will say, that when the game first opened, in Tess's room, the 3D environment was so pleasingly rendered that I initially didn't realise it WAS a 3d environment, I actually thought I was looking at a still frame. Not everything throughout the game is enormously or intricately detailed - there is a slightly cartoonish, colourful heightening to the general environs, and individual objects picked up, while nicely rendered, are not phot-realistic by any stretch, but there is a consistency and a pleasing style to everything.

 

In fact, it's worth pointing out the vivid colours and use of brightness and light, because it's unusual and deliberate. 
Open Roads, while something of a loose detective mystery, is not a game that is trading in scares, tension or spookiness...
... but because it has some of the hallmarks of the many, many, many games that are trading on those elements (exploring abandoned houses, finding details of past mysteries, piecing together a buried secret etc,) the visuals seem to be deliberately avoiding comparison. 
There are games - for example, Gone Home, or The Suicide of Rachel Foster, or The Town of Light, or even things like Layers of Fear, which are doing much of the same type of gameplay in similar settings, but where "eeriness" and "spookiness" are part and parcel of the experience. Since Open Roads very much isn't in that "spooky" wheelhouse, the developer seems to have specifically chosen the visual palate to be key in differentiating the game from that strain of gaming as far a possible, to the extent that even a trailer for the game would not be mistaken fora quote-unquote "horror" game.

 

Those environments work quite well - it's pleasant to explore the spaces, and moving around them feels like a fun family adventure, rather than a spooky or tense experience.

The other art-style is in the characters - they are 2D, hand-drawn cartoons, similar in style to late-80's/ early-90's Saturday morning fare, and are animated in a similar low-frame, motion-comic style. 

The things is - these characters also look good - the characters are distinct and well drawn, and emotive enough to convey the tone of the scenes...
...however, there is a bit of visual dissonance when they are placed into the rather more realistic looking backdrops and 3D environments. 

 

In the general "Hey Mom!" interchanges, (where Tess finds objects of interest, and can call her mother for a discussion of what they mean,) this is not a huge issue as the backgrounds are static for the most part, but when in the car scenes, for example, where the 3D environment of the backdrop is swooshing past the windows of the 3D environment of the car, with a 2D drawing of the characters inside, it has a tendency to look a bit odd... like two different media spliced together, and not quite existing in the same reality.

 

It's not a huge problem - as said, both individual styles are good - but it is something that never quite felt "right" throughout the game...
...and occasionally did give rise to actual, bonafide wonkiness.  Occasionally - rarely, but occasionally - the perspective of the 2D animation seems not to quite align with the camera position in the 3D environment, resulting in one or both of the characters looking like an actual 2D cardboard cutout placed in the world. 
That works in something like Tinykin, because it is part of the charm and the style, and looks quite deliberately funny...
...but doesn't work here, where it is only accidentally funny at times, and tends to pull the player right out of the scene.

 

Voice work is decent enough in the game - the two primary voice actors are Keri Russell as Opal (the mother) and Kaitlyn Dever as Tess (the daughter.) Both are extremely accomplished film and TV actors, and I am a big fan of both in that context. In fact, the two stars were the main draw that convinced me to purchase the game in the first place.

I will say though, while I do think the performances given by both actresses are generally good, there is a slight caveat to that.

The dialogue is delivered well enough, however, the actual writing can feel a little "day-time soap opera", with exchanges feeling less natural than they should. There is a tendency to want to imply friction or sassiness or tension, but still want to keep it all very light, and so the back and forth can feel overly tame, or like the characters are being more polite and less familiar with one another than a real mother and daughter would in a situation like the one presented.

The vocal performances can at times also feel a little stilted. 
Partly, that is as a result of the writing... but I don't think it's solely that.

Something that seems to happen on occasion, when primarily film and tv actors take videogame voice roles to which they are not accustomed, is that the delivery can take on a slightly over-annunciated, "radio-play" feel - where it feels like the words are being read verbatim from the page, with careful and specific attention paid to the stage directions, but lacking the naturalistic lilt. 
As if one can almost hear the directions given to the actor at the specific points they have been given.

 

It's understandable in some sense - a film or TV actor used to performing on camera and less familiar with the medium of games may not have the trust and faith in the media to carry the nuance of their performance in the same way a seasoned voice actor might - there is likely a tendency to feel like radio-play level diction and theatrical enunciation is more media-appropriate...
... but it can mean some of the interplay between characters, or quieter, more introspective or inner-monologue type readings can feel more stilted or wordy than they should. 

That does happen sometimes in Open Roads, though, thankfully, it tends to be more in the shorter exchanges, or most often in the single line reads for incidental dialogue, rather than the lengthier exchanges. In those more plot-critical, longer interplays between the mother and daughter, the conversations feel much more natural - perhaps owing to the two actors being present together for the readings rather than recorded individually, or perhaps simply due to the performances being longer and having more substance to them, lending the actors more runway to give a nuanced performance.

 

Overall, Open Roads is a neat enough little game, but one that tends to end up feeling a little underwhelming, despite some good aspects.

 

Tess and Opal are both perfectly good characters, and endearing enough, but for as much personality as the visual design and vocal performances give, and for as much information as we glean of their lives around the game, it's hard to be particularly strongly invested in their relationship, as the tone is kept "daytime television" enough that it never feels enormously under threat, even in the more heated moments.

While the mystery is curious enough, and interesting enough, with a decent enough payoff, it feels short and largely simple for the characters to figure out - to the point that it almost seems odd that the grandmother would have been able to sustain the secret as long as she did. 

Props have to be given for the combination of visual styles - they both look good in isolation, and the combination does give the game its own signature look that is relatively original...
...but despite the props for trying something different, I'm just not sure that it really pays off in that respect either, as the visuals tend to work against each-other.

It's not a bad game by any stretch, and is compelling enough a narrative with strong enough characterisation to just sustain over its short length...
...but that feels like faint praise, as the game is noticeably short. It feels like the same story, stretched out over a few more hours, with a couple more locations, and a bit more in the way of disguising the clues in each, would result in a much more satisfying experience overall.

 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So Open Roads was a bit of a disappointment, all told. It's not terrible, but it's fleeting and simple, and didn't really draw me in the way I might have hoped, so I started looking for other games that are sorter or more narrative in nature, that had promise, but didn't really deliver or had problems.

 

The three that came to mind were Twelve Minutes, Twin Mirror, and Knee Deep.

 

Now, Knee Deep is actually the more ambitious and curious of the three - but also the one that is least successful in execution, and is lowest ranked. I think Open Roads does beat it - the narrative is less compelling in the plot sense, but it's told and written better, and while Knee Deep has some really interesting stylistic leanings, they falter often. Open Roads also has some problems with its art style specifically... but they still work more consistently than Knee Deep, and when you couple that with the decent voice work and the better general visuals, Open Roads is the clear winner.

 

Twelve Minutes is the highest ranked of the three games, and while it does have a lot of problems in terms of user-experience, lack of signposting of its rigid structure, and letting the player get lost without any rhyme or reason...
...the narrative itself is more compelling, and more interesting. I also think the visuals work better, there is more meat to the gameplay (when it works,) and the vocal performances are the better ones.

It's also worth noting that Twelve Minutes is also a game using actors primarily known for Film, and they do a better job, I think, than the actresses in Open Roads do, and have better material to work with.

 

Twin Mirror is in between the two, and that is a closer fight. On the one hand, Open Roads is the simpler, less compelling story, on the other hand, the voice performances are better, as is the general writing. Twin Mirror has some clangers, and to be honest, despite spending more time with the characters in Twin Mirror, I felt more connection to Tess and Opal in Open Roads. 
While Twin Mirror does look better, I think it achieves it by playing safe -there's nothing interesting or ambitious about the visuals of Twin Mirror - they just look fine. Open Roads looks more interesting, even if its combination visual styles don't always mesh well.

I think on balance, Open Roads, despite being more fleeting, is the winner there. Twin Mirror is a game that just isn't memorable in any real positive way, whereas I reckon I'll remember the interesting, if not always successful visuals of Open Roads for longer, and with more fondness, even after the story fades.

There's not a huge amount of games between Twin Mirror and Twelve Minutes - and they aren't comparable genres, but simply on the old "Is Open Roads the better experience?" question...
...I'd say the answer is "yes" for Jusant, but "no" for the others, so I think the right spot of Open Roads is just above Jusant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game'!

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diaries finally remains as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game'!

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

 

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

 

Man, I am consistently impressed by your writing skills, that was a wall of text and every single word was engaging. I don't know what you do for a living, but if it ain't writing, then you're in the wrong job 😅.

 

Congrats on tackling KR0, I REALLY did not get on with that game, as you said, it isn't for everyone and that certainly includes me. But I'm glad that you found beauty in its very complex and, in my opinion, utterly insufferable design 😅.

 

A great read none the less!

[DrBloodmoney]

On 5/18/2024 at 12:38 AM, Platinum_Vice said:

Such a fascinating angle for a remake!

 

Yeah - it's a funny old thing when a game comes out and is shockingly better than you imagined it might be - never thought I'd be able to be be constantly going ohhhh - that thing I remember, while also being still surprised by what was going on!

 

On 5/18/2024 at 12:38 AM, Platinum_Vice said:

Sounds like a fair comparison point. I'll proceed with caution with KRZ and remember not to take it too literally. As this review falls into the category of 'games that look interesting but I haven't played... better see what the Doc thinks,' I'm glad you spoke about HOW to play it from an intellectual perspective in the review. 

 

You know - it's a  bit of an algorithm-breaker that one - difficult to predict if someone will love or hate it I think, but I suspect that your experience with games like Norco and Backbone and what I know of Disco Elysium probably stand you in decent stead to at least respect KZ0, and possibly end up loving it!

 

 

 

 

 

On 5/18/2024 at 1:29 AM, Breakingthegreen said:

 

I don't know if this is a term that other people use, but I've been calling FFVIIRemake a "Remaquel" (a portmanteau of remake and sequel), which is when a game (or other kind of story) remake fully assumes the audience has played the game that the remake is based on.

 

My favourite example is Kingdom Hearts Union X which most people assume to be a remake of KH X (Not unfairly since the original game never left japan and there's now no way to play it.)

In that game the player progresses and eventually ends up in the Keyblade war and nearly dies, to save them they are placed in a simulation of the original X game: this what Union X is, but in this simulation the war never happens and the game just keeps going. You wouldn't know this depth of the story without knowledge of the prior game, hence my label of "Remaquel."

 

That's interesting - I don't know KH at all really, but that's a cool weird take on sequels, and I see the connection you mean. Actually, one that did occur to me, though I ended up not referencing it, as - unfortunately, the movie was total ass, but.... in some ways that Dark Tower movie did the same thing - it's telling some of the same things as the early books, so it's sort of "remake", but it's also the next cycle in a never-ending loop, and there are some differences, so it's sort of a "remaquel", as you describe!

 

If it wasn't also total pish, it would be a good comparison point 😂

 

 

 

 

On 5/18/2024 at 2:51 AM, YaManSmevz said:

 

It's funny how it was even handled rather well in 1997 - like "just wait til 2020 tho, this shit will be progressive af!"

 

"A...f?"

 

"Oh yeah, they say that in the future."

 

😂

 

On 5/18/2024 at 2:51 AM, YaManSmevz said:

 

I am stealing the term vajazzle, but more importantly this is a perfect microcosm of why this Remake is so good - there was clearly so much love put into it, and a genuine desire to really make multiple angles work simultaneously, be it the tone, the combat, the very storytelling itself.. fuck, even the music! It's such an expertly done marriage of old and new, it's so good.

 

👆👆👆

 

 

On 5/18/2024 at 2:51 AM, YaManSmevz said:

Dude! Thank you for this one, I've been quite curious for some time... always seeing it mentioned in respected circles, but never enough to really know much about it. I will definitely give this one a try!

 

Hey - it's not a huge long game or anything, so absolutely I say give it a punt - it's a weird one for sure, and not really ike anything else, but at the very least, it's weird and interesting!

 

 

 

 

On 5/18/2024 at 7:06 AM, ProfSeajay7 said:

I noticed that a few games I played were low on the rankings, with Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom being #245. Then again, if I were to make a ranking system like yours, Nexomon would be #10 on the list and Dragon Quest Builders 2 would be #1. Then again, I don't play as many games as you do.

 

 

The thing with an "absolute" scale like this one is that 245th is actually not really a negative - because to be on this list, a game already has to be interesting enough for me to buy, and good enough for me to finish and plat - so the bar is pretty high already.

 

I liked that Monster Boy game a lot more than I expected - it has one of my personal bug-bares in games - MegaMan -style constant menu-switching of abilities, which I do think is real problem at times, slowing down the pace and making the game feel more fiddly than it should (Spoiler Alert - Animal Well, which I'm playing now, is going to suffer A LOT for that problem in the rankings!)  but it's still a much better designed and playing game than I initially expected!

 

On 5/18/2024 at 7:06 AM, ProfSeajay7 said:

 

Good reviews, and your attitude towards the mini-games in FF7 Rebirth make me wonder if I could stomach them enough to pay full price for a $70 download.

 

I did play Chapter 1 of FFVII Remake on my other account and while I did take a lot of damage on easy mode, I wasn't very familiar with the combat. Still, the narrative was decent. (The voices I put in French as I wasn't sure I wanted to hear them in English. If I replay the game I will do it right.)

 

The combat in those games takes some getting used to, but it's a great system, because once you get into the minutia of it, it has scope for some really cool tactics and a high skill ceiling - but for sure, it needs a bit of time and tinkering before you get into a groove with it. 

The plus side though, is it remains basically unchanged into Rebirth, so all the lessons you learn in Remake are still applicable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 hours ago, Rally-Vincent--- said:

 

Instant download. Playing delayed 'til after next milestone. I am curious.

 

Yes!!

 

Super happy I can encourage someone to check this gem out, because it's something else man - a total trip, and a hell of an achievement!

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, jonesey46 said:

 

Man, I am consistently impressed by your writing skills, that was a wall of text and every single word was engaging. I don't know what you do for a living, but if it ain't writing, then you're in the wrong job 😅.

 

Thank you sir! 🫡

 

1 hour ago, jonesey46 said:

Congrats on tackling KR0, I REALLY did not get on with that game, as you said, it isn't for everyone and that certainly includes me. But I'm glad that you found beauty in its very complex and, in my opinion, utterly insufferable design 😅.

 

Ha - yeah, it's definitely not the norm - and because the pace is quite throttled, and the ways to progress often hidden, I can see someone less invested in the tone and style getting frustrated with it - but there's something about that tone that just works for me, and the writing is something pretty special IMO, so it really hit for my personal tastes!

[DrBloodmoney]

 

!!SCIENCE UPDATE!!

 

 

The next (not at all) randomly selected games to be submitted for scientific analysis shall be:

 

 

 

New

 

Animal Well

Harold Halibut

Punch Club

Patrick's Parabox

Punch Club 2: Fast Forward

 

 

 

[No Priority Assignments this time - I'm still way behind due to a tight work schedule!]

 

 

 

Can 'Current Most Awesome' game, Hitman: World of Assassination, continue its glorious reign?

 

Is gaming turdlet Htol#niQ: The Firefly Diaries  going to lose its new crown of 'Least Awesome Game'?

 

 

Let's find out, Science Chums!

[DrBloodmoney]

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Judahs and Science-Princess Carolines, as promised (and in some no cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

 

Animal Well

 

Summary: 

 

A 2024 released, 8-bit-style Metroidvania from Billy Basso and Shard Memory, Animal Well sees the player take on the role of an odd, undefined little blob, who finds himself trapped in an underground labyrinth, filled to bursting with various flora, fauna, puzzles and secrets.

Exploring their way around the maze of biomes and individual puzzle rooms, they collects various objects and items to help traverse the byzantine pathways within the depths, collecting eggs, escaping close encounters with animal predators, and seeks to uncover the mysteries of the well.

Animal Well is, first and foremost, a puzzle platformer...
...at least on the surface. 
Certainly, when initially loading the game up, that is the gameplay as presented, and the abilities and move-set available are very much limited to a basic version of that style of game. The protagonist blob can move and jump, and that is pretty much it - there is no combat in Animal Well, (at least, no conventional combat,) and when presented with antagonistic or dangerous animals, all the play has at their disposal is to avoid them - either via pathing, evasion or puzzle solving of the various environmental elements.

 

That aspect doesn't actually change throughout the game - there is never any active "attack" functionality introduced - there are some areas, specifically boss fights, wherein the player will be passively "attacking" dangerous creatures via puzzle elements, but the many metroidvania items collected are generally ones to affect the environment and allow manipulation of environmental hazards or pathways and shortcuts, rather than affecting the dangerous creatures themselves.

 

The reason the game isn't necessarily categorised with other puzzle platformers primarily, however, is not due to the moment-to-moment gameplay, but rather the overall structure of the game. Animal Well is less akin to something like Teslagrad or Guacamelee or Dandara, and better categorised alongside games like Tunic, Fez, Braid and even Dark Souls - and for good reason. its because the game belongs in that more rarified category of games, where mystery and depth are the most notable thing about it. 

 

Animal Well is a game which offers very little in the way of guidance - at any point. 
The player is dropped into the well, without explanation or direction, and their ability to traverse the different pathways and puzzle rooms is as often contingent on their own ability to solve riddled hints and experiment with different objects collected than it is by actually finding keys or navigating enemies.
 
It is also a game which disguises - very successfully and cleverly - a level of depth and of compounding "levels" of gameplay loop that is far more elaborate and intricate than the initial gameplay would betray. While initially the player will likely poke around different directions, discover some paths, miss others, and eventually come to the realisation that they must defeat 4 bosses in 4 biomes to light up four statues at their starting point, they would be forgiven for assuming that doing so would result in the ending of the game. 
It DOES, in a sense - doing so will show them credits...
...however, upon doing so (no mean feat already, and already requiring far more elaborate and clever thinking than they might initially have expected,) they will likely have done so finding only a select few of the games collectibles - fancy eggs.
These eggs can feel extremely well hidden at times, and within the initial "first level" game, seem only a nice, non-compulsory easter egg...
...but come the completion of that loop, they begin to form part of the next one - where finding the eggs becomes the second "level" to the overall game, and are the key on the path to the second "ending" of the game - the second set of credits, and the beginning of the next phase.

 

That compounding loop is particularly difficult to pull off in a game, and as a result, is pretty rare. It requires a significant amount of "hiding mysteries in plain sight", where a player must be able to see whole portions of a future mystery multiple times, before even realising they are part of a future puzzle, and without them confusing them for part of the puzzle they are currently solving. 
Compounding that kind of "hidden depth" is not simple, and when it works, it can be very rewarding. In Animal Well, that element is both very well done, and extremely impressive. 

In some ways, Animal Well sort of amalgamates the Dark Souls model with the Tunic model - like Dark Souls, the player simply begins - underpowered, without clear direction, and with multiple paths available to them gated only by their ability, and the level of difficulty they encounter...
...but the lack of even the modest clues a Souls game offers (in the form of lore items, for example), and the more Metroidvania aspects of tying progress to the finding of specific items and the disguised level of depth give even games like Tunic or Braid or Fez a run for their money.

Those are lofty games in whose company any game would be proud to have their name mentioned, and in many of the tertiary and secondary ways, Animal Well stands proudly alongside them.

Where it breaks down a little, however, is in the specific game that that smart, mysterious depth is transposed onto.

 

While Animal Well can easily hold up against the best of "hidden, compounding mystery games" - the Tunics and the Fez's and the The Witnesses and the Dark Soulses - in terms of those mystery mechanics...
...it suffers in terms of pure fun and enjoyment, because the fundamentals core gameplay is so much weaker.

While the mystery is impressive and extremely fun to decipher, the actual core game - the movement of the little creature, the control of the special items, the UI and interface and the navigation around the well once it is opened up and more of the map uncovered are all...
...well...
...bad.

 

The game is throwing back to an 8-bit style, and it does it faithfully.
A little too faithfully, in fact.

Games of that era were - with a few specific exceptions - cumbersome and finicky to control.
So is Animal Well.

 

Games of that era had input method that were overly fiddly and awkward, primarily due to the limited input of two-button controllers. 
Animal Well, for some reason, chooses to import that awkwardness, despite having a full, modern controller at its disposal. 
While it would have been very simply for the controller to make use of more buttons, the game sticks rigidly to a "select the active item, and use the same button to "use" them all, meaning that any time the player is required to use multiple items to solve a puzzle, they need to individually select the item (either via menu-hopping, or a long "scroll-wheel") every time - and in the later game, when the player has 10-12 items, that becomes burdensome in the extreme. 

In a few situations, where timing is critical, or the player is being chased by enemies, it is downright frustrating - particularly since there is limited fast travel, and failure regularly requires lengthly treks to get back and try again.

 

One method of traversal - "bubble jumping" - is a good example to illustrate the level to which this is an issue.

"Bubble jumping" is something that is available to the player very early on - if they figure it out. 

One of the earliest special items they discover is a "bubble wand", allowing them to blow a bubble. Bubbles exist in other locations, generated by the environment, so the player is already aware of how they function in Animal Well - as single-use platforms, which float gently upwards if undisturbed, and if the player jumps on them they drift slowly downwards, but pop once the player jumps off them. 

Bubbles blown from the bubble-wand also pop if a second one is blown - so the player is not immediately aware that they could use the wand to effectively reach unreachable positions, as blowing a second bubble while perched on the first results in falling.
They can though. It is possible, as they will likely discover, eventually, after some experimentation, to blow one while jumping, and therefore, to "pop-hop" from one bubble to the next, in a zig-zag, and reach high, otherwise unreachable areas with enough persistence and practice.

 

The problem with this, however, is that it is incredibly awkward and unintuitive to actually do. So much so that the player will, most likely, initially assume it isn't an intended mechanic.
When they manage to get to grips with it, it is still so awkward and cumbersome that they will, in all likelihood, think they have discovered some clever, glitchy, game-breaking traversal method. 

They have not.
It is an intended mechanic...
...it is just woefully poorly implemented.

A generous interpretation on the implementation would be to assume that - in order to maintain the mystery, and to make it feel like a "player-driven" discovery, it has been deliberately made awkward, so they feel like they are "getting one over on the game"...
...but the result is a hollow victory if that is the case, because, once they do realise - as they eventually will - that using this method is a required mechanic to complete the game, it simply leaves a major method of traversal as a wholly frustrating and incredibly tiresome annoyance, that has to be engaged with...
....over and over and over.

The game also - in what is a truly baffling and counter-intuitive move - has a limited "fast-travel" functionality...
...but chooses to hide this behind a fairly esoteric and easily missed riddle.

This is a really silly decision, as navigating the game, even with the limited fast travel, is fairly cumbersome, and really deflates the fun out of what is already a relatively frustrating game to actually interface with. 
It means that in the late game, where the player is solving some much more "area-crossing" puzzles or riddles, the game really begins to feel like a chore to play. The player will likely be fully invested in solving the mysteries, and enjoying the "macro" of the game...
...but the "micro" is an irksome process, even with the fast travel... and a frustrating pain-in-the-butt without it.

its these elements that make Animal Well suffer in comparison - both to other metroidvania puzzle-platformers, and to the other games that deal in mystery elements and compounding curiosity like Tunic or Braid. 
As a pure platformer - comparing the actual, moment-to-moment gameplay to other, simpler, less mysterious puzzle platformers, the game suffers feels stilted and awkward and frustrating. The mere notion of comparing something as smooth and user-friendly and fun to play as Guacamelee or Dandara is ludicrous, as Animal Well feels stiff and irksome to the point of absurdity...
...but more importantly, even as compared to games like Tunic and Braid, it suffers. 

 

Now, to be clear - neither Tunic nor The Witness, nor Braid, nor Fez, nor even something like Outer Wilds, or - truth be told, most of that rarified category of games - trades particularly on the smoothness or excellence of their core gameplay. Even something like Outer Wilds is at best "decent" when it comes to the core movement mechanics...
...however, almost none of those games feel burdened by their core mechanics. 
They aren't the draw, but they also aren't a drawback.

In Animal Well's case though, they are a drawback - and a pretty big one.

At no point during my time with Outer Wilds was I ever blown away by how good the gameplay mechanics were - but they were adequate to the game, and didn't hold me back, or distract me from solving the mysteries. 
Multiple time while playing Animal Well, however, I found myself seeing the large distance I had to travel to solve a puzzle, and simply electing to turn the game off and wait until tomorrow, because while I was eager to see the resolution, or find out if I was right, I simply didn't feel like dealing with the awkward controls or the traversal to find out.
In fairness, the puzzles were good enough that I always did come back to do it the next day...
...but saying "the riddling was fun enough to put up with the gameplay" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the whole product. It speaks to how good the mystery elements are...
..but also speaks to just how poorly the core mechanics hold up their end of the deal.

Visually, Animal Well is very nice. It sticks primarily to the 8-bit style, with occasional 16-bit-era flourishes, but manages to inject quite a bit of atmospheric tension and creepy, woodland-style aesthetics into its environments - working to serve both the simple ambience, and in a lot of cases, to hide the deeper mysteries and riddles in the backgrounds. 
The different biomes within the well are distinct enough to feel both themed to their particular pathway (and final boss,) but still blend effectively into one another as they criss-cross and bleed together near the central hub. 

The game doesn't stick rigidly to the nostalgic era it apes - it uses some more modern overlay effects that could never have been replicated on the NES or SNES era consoles - but does these in smart moderation, so the effects feel appropriate, and impressive when they happen. It never feels like the 8-Bit aesthetic has been abandoned, but simply feels like something that might have been done in that era, if only the technology had allowed.

 

Audio is sparse, but well done too - the musical stings are few and far between, and what score there is sombre and low key, but the atmospheric ambient sounds are very effective and at times quite haunting. 
The game makes use of some input audio stings to further ape the 8-Bit era - the "bloop" when the player jumps, for example, feels very NES-style, but it works in contrast to the creepy ambient soundscape, feeling like the player is playing a simple game that has bled out from its usual shackles, into something more dark and mysterious and sinister...
...which is, of course, exactly what Animal Well is aiming for.

 

 

Overall, Animal Well is something of an anomaly, as it is feels like a game with lots of great elements, but that is let down immensely by itd core fundamentals. 
It's a game with surprising, intricate, elaborate depths in terms of puzzles, engaging riddles and consuming, compulsive mystery elements, but it's all mapped onto a game that is, fundamentally, not very much fun to actually play.

It's a game that one cannot help but feel they want to solve, but would prefer someone else was actually holding the controller while they do - a game more fun to riddle out the answers to, than to actively tinker with.

 

It's not a terrible game - it's one whose mysteries and clever elements are enough to make a player want to push through the poor gameplay to see, and to discover...
...but one wonders what a game might be like if the puzzles and the mystery elements contained within Animal Well were mapped onto a more competent base game.

 

I can't help, after having finished Animal Well, thinking that I sincerely hope Billy Basso continues to create puzzles and mysteries...
...but hires someone else to make the game they are included in.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

In ranking Animal Well, I started out thinking about other games that fall in the "deeper than they appear", compounding mystery category - things like Tunic, for example - however, that's not a particularly useful comparison, as Animal Well suffers far too much for its poor controls, awkward UI and troubles with its core gameplay, even if those mystery elements are able to compete with the best of them.

 

Instead, I started looking at games that have lots of good elements and ideas, but where the execution lets those ideas down a bit.

 

The first one that occurred for a comparison was Inked: A Tale of Love. 
That game has some good puzzle elements, and a fantastic art style, but the controls are quite awkward, and the narrative a little lacklustre. 
While the visual style of Inked: A Tale of Love certainly beats out Animal Well's look, I do think Animal Well pretty handily outclasses it. It has its issues, but the highs are much higher with Animal Well, and the quality of the puzzles, while still awkward to control, are still well above those in Inked: A Tale of Love.

 

Further up the list, there are a few games where good ideas still shine through, but are let down a bit by controls or UI or some other significant factor - Through the Darkest of Times, It Takes Two, Déraciné... 
...but while each of these have their own individual problems that drag down a core game, I do think in all those cases, the good elements being dragged down are not as good as the good elements of Animal Well. Animal Well's "drag" may be greater in some cases, but what they are dragging is starting from a lesser pedestal.

 

Where I think the breaking point comes, is between two games - Airoheart, and Dicey Dungeons. 

In the case of Airoheart, that game has a really good, really fun and smart Zelda-like retro game, which is pulled back a little by some minor trophy issues, some issues with narrative, and sometimes over-willingness to overcomplicate puzzles or action with one too many elements...
...and while those issues are far less egregious than Animal Well's issues, I do think Animal Well's starting point - its good elements - are higher. The net result puts the two games very close in totality - with Animal Well just squeaking past Airoheart, due to its interesting "multi-loop" game design and clever plurality of puzzles.

 

However, I do have a tough time seeing Animal Well beating the game right above it - Dicey Dungeons. 
Dicey Dungeons isn't really a game with many issues - it can feel a little over repetitive in the platinum journey, but aside from that, it plays pretty much perfectly, and is original, cool looking and smart in design. It also, as a side note, also comes from essentially a one-man developer, like Animal Well.

 

While I do think Animal Well is the more ambitious game of the two, points have to also go towards execution, and because Dicey Dungeons executes its ideas so much better, the fact that they are less ambitious ideas is less of an issue. It is original and smart in its own way, and if given the choice between playing either one, I know I would choose Dicey Dungeons every time.

 

As a result, Animal Well finds its spot, right below Dicey Dungeons, and right above Airoheart!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harold Halibut

 

 

Summary: 

 

A 2024 released narrative Adventure game from small German developer Slow Bros, Harold Halibut blends traditional stop-motion animation with videogame technology, to tell the unique and visually arresting tale of Harold - a downtrodden maintenance worker in a curious society formed within the derelict remains of a spacecraft, crashed, lost and submerged in the depths of an alien ocean.

 

Launched in the 70's in response to the escalating cold war, and on the assumption that the human race's time on Earth was coming to an end, the Fedora 1, a colonisation vessel controlled by the All Water Corporation, set out with a colonising population to find humans a new home. After a solar flare cause it to crash on an oceanic planet and sink, the population continued to exist and adapt to their new situation, while seeking ways to both exist, and to find a way to relaunch.

 

Set 100 years after the crash, the player takes the role of the eponymous Harold, assistant to top scientific researcher Jeanna Mareaux. Harold is a pleasant but put-upon chap, downbeat, and while not necessarily depressed, is clearly a disconnected and lonely soul, who spends his days doing menial tasks and odd jobs for Jeanna and the other various inhabitants of the Fedora 1 - none of whom appreciate him much. In fact, many barely bother to veil their own contempt or dismissiveness towards him.

These menial tasks form the early part of the game, allowing the player to get to know the lore and structure of the society, and the makeup of the Fedora 1, (which is surprisingly rich and well thought out,)...
... however, when two incredible things at the same time, they change the dynamic of Harold's life irrevocably:
the possibility of a window for potential escape back to orbit is discovered by Jeanna...
...and an alien Fish-being is discovered unconscious in the Fedora 1's filters, by Harold himself.

 

These events sets off a domino effect that sweeps Harold up in a magical tale of discovery - both of the world around him, and of himself - and form the catalyst to a chain of event that sees the mild-mannered handyman become the key to unlocking the whole societies future!

 

 

I rarely get into the visuals as the starting point for any of these write-ups, but when I do, it's generally because the visuals are remarkable - either remarkably good, or remarkably bad.
In this case, I have to - and it's absolutely for the positive reason.
Harold Halibut is - and I say this without hyperbole - possibly the single best looking game I have ever seen.
The visuals are unique, and absolutely astounding.

 

There are games that have done stop-motion effect, (Armikrog, for example, used real stop-motion photography, or games like The Puppeteer or Stacking, which did a graphical interpretation of that effect,) and there are games that have used real-life photography of objects to create unique looking visuals (The Swapper, for example, did that to very winning effect,)...
...however, no game I have ever seen has come even close to the level to which Harold Halibut is doing the technique... both in terms of fidelity and quality, and in sheer length of game or expanse of environments.

Harold Halibut doesn't simply look like "a game aping stop-motion animation", it looks like stop-motion animation. 
Or rather, it is stop-motion animation - every element has been painstakingly crafter in real life, photographed and animated in real-life, and scanned into the game, with all the "real-world" blemishes and nuances fully intact. 

Looking at the game, both in still screenshots, and in motion, it is virtually indistinguishable from not just stop-motion films, but the highest quality stop-motion films. In fact, the feeling when playing Harold Halibut is that of watching a 12 hour television show by Wes Anderson.

 

That style lends the visuals of the game a double level of impressiveness, because each element is both impressive in how well realised within the clearly hand-crafted models, and then impressive once more in how this is translated into game graphics, and made to work in an interactive game. 
The design of the Fedora 1 areas, the alien landscapes, the underwater areas and each new scene is both interesting and meticulous, but also very obviously "real". The high quality scans of real models means the way everything looks and moves is tactile and physical in a way that game graphics simply can't, and don't. 
It makes Harold Halibut feel unusual and artisanal to a degree that virtually no other game can compete with - the player feels they can almost reach out and touch it, and the painstaking effort and care that has gone into crafting it is obvious in every scene, character and object.

The Wes Anderson comparison is apt, not simply in visual style, but in story-telling too. 
Harold Halibut feels, tonally, very close to Anderson's Isle of Dogs, in that it takes a lofty and high-concept premise, with a surprising about of lore and backstory to the world, but tells a low-key, often humorous, and sometimes disarmingly emotionally-engaging story about smaller, more human characters within that high-concept world...
... and does it with a visual, audio and narrative slant that is both charming and unusual.

 

The story in Harold Halibut is fairly slow and gently told - the stakes, while high, are dealt with through very human, very "British", very friendly-and-polite terms, and with a light, almost child-friendly touch. 
In truth, while the narrative is genuinely interesting and well plotted, in a more traditional looking game, one would likely bemoan the languid pace of the tale - particularly in the early chapters, where every conversation and interaction seems to take quite a long time...
...but in this particular case, the game essentially bypasses any of these issues, because it such an unusual and fascinating style, and such a treat to see - even in the more staid moments - that the player is likely too mesmerised by what they are looking at to really care.

The fact that - certainly in the early game, but even throughout - the gameplay, which is relatively puzzle-free, essentially boils down to going from one place to another and talking to different characters, is largely immaterial...
...because the player is too distracted by the visuals to notice. 
Seeing the game is the game, so the gameplay simply serves as the simplest way to move them through the curious tale, and to explore the fascinating, ingeniously crafted underwater environments.

It's also worth noting that while the game can initially feel somewhat slow, this is somewhat helpful to the overall narrative - as it allows the game to get across the surprising amount of dense lore explaining the Fedora 1's current situation, and to introduce a surprising amount of individual characters with individual and distinct personalities and motivations, all of which allows the game to really connect with the player later on. 
Harold Halibut is a game which certainly isn't "plot-light", however, the real meat of the game, and what makes it engaging across its surprisingly robust length, is the investment with the characters around Harold, and Harold himself. That comes from the time spent speaking with them, and the early portions of the game, where Harold is simply engaging in his hum-drum existence, doing the same things he always does, and feeling disconnected and unappreciated as he does them, allows for the game to really make its point when Harold becomes integral to the whole future.
We feel almost as downtrodden and disconnected as he does after a while -  so when things really kick off, we are as excited and engaged by those events, and as eager to be involved as Harold is.

Gameplay-wise, Harold Halibut falls somewhere between a more traditional, old-school style Adventure Game, and the more modern post-Walking Dead Telltale style, though leans closer to the latter than the former. 

The actual input and moment-to-moment gameplay has a certain throwback feel to it...
... though a lot of that is down to the tone and pacing of the narrative than the gameplay mechanics. 
Because the story is slower paced, it tends to feel a little more antiquated, however, in terms of mechanics, Harold Halibut does fall in the more modern Adventure Game style, in that the focus is much more on talking to characters and making dialogue choices, than it is interacting with puzzle elements, or using items on other items. 

 

In reality, most of the gameplay of Harold Halibut is simply going from one place to another, and speaking to different characters, seeing plot unfold, and completing various small, interactive mini-games... though these are generally purely pace-breakers, and not challenging or heavily gamified. 
There is a slight sense, when encountering some of these mini-games, that there may have at some point been a plan to have more of that kind of gameplay, or to have a stronger focus on puzzles or more challenging elements, as the bones exist for more gamified elements, but that these were sidelined in favour of concentrating the game on its stronger element - the narrative.

While I would have preferred to see perhaps a little more in the way of these mini-games, and a little more challenge to them, the marginalisation of these element does make some sense - the fact is, Harold Halibut is a game that is absolutely astounding in terms of visuals, and the plot-heavy elements are the best area in which to show off those visual elements...
..and to be frank, while I am personally a fan of older-style Adventure Games, they aren't a genre much in vogue anymore, and the more modern, narrative driven Adventure game is clearly more appealing to a broader audience. Given that Harold Halibut is already very unusual in a lot of senses, I cannot blame the developer for steering closer to a more populist style of gameplay.

 

 

Audio is excellent in the game - in pretty much every aspect. 
The voice work is very well done - with even the stop-motion lip-synching working as well as it would in a feature-length stop-motion animated film, and the vocal performances do a great job of giving life to the various characters, injecting them with personality, and letting the player feel like they really get to know the population within the Fedora.
 
Foley work is on point, with the soundscape really working to bring extra life to the astonishing visual designs.

 

The score is generally fairly minimal, but there are a number of times throughout the game where full songs are used - either to punctuate montages, or to make specific points or set specific tones, and virtually every one of these is surprising, interesting, unusual and perfectly chosen. 
One later game moment, where some characters are exploring the underwater depths in a small submarine has Im 80.Stockwerk by Hildegard Knef playing, in a moment that should be both bizarre and incongruous, yet completely works, and is sure to bring a smile to any player's face!

Overall, Harold Halibut is a real gem.

It's a narrative adventure game that has surprising length and surprising depth in its narrative, an unusual, whimsical, pleasant tone, that is able to get a out-there and esoteric with its premise and style while maintaining a solidly emotionally engaging story...
...and does it in one of the most unusual and incredible visual palates I've seen in a game in a very, very long time.

 

It is a game that takes its time to tell its story, and can feel a little slower paced than many other games, but it uses that time to fill a genuinely intriguing world with an interesting and original plot, a butt-load of memorably and lovable (or lovably annoying!) characters, and more craftsmanship and visual flair in each scene than many games manage in their entirety! 
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Harold Halibut is a narrative Adventure Game with an emphasis on visual style, so the obvious comparison points are other games falling in that category - of which there are quire a few on the list!

The first thing I looked at was trying to find a starting scope - a rough "floor" and "ceiling" game in the same category, between which it feels like Harold Halibut belongs.

 

The first comparison point I considered was another narrative-focussed, visual spectacular - with, coincidentally, some of the same thematic content, vis-a-vis a displaced, downtrodden protagonist finding his place in the world - and that was The Artful Escape.

 

Now, The Artful Escape is a game that trades on awesome, interesting visuals too - and it looks great. On that metric alone, however, I do think Harold Halibut takes the edge. It almost has to - and to be honest, there are very few games on the list in any category, about which the same thing couldn't be said. Harold Halibut is one of the most unusual and gloriously well realised visual styles I've seen, period.

I do, however, think The Artful Escape has the lead in a lot of other areas - the narrative, the audio and the pacing, for example. Both are light on gameplay, but compensate with narrative and visuals. It's not a blowout in any category - in all the areas The Artful Escape wins, Harold Halibut is still a strong contender, and vice-versa...
...but I do think in totality, the win has to go to The Artful Escape.

 

Further down the list, is the more puzzle-focussed, but still visually interesting and well made The Cave.
The Cave is a game that, I think, stomps Harold Halibut in terms of raw gameplay and puzzling - there is really good, fun puzzle and point-and-click gameplay in The Cave, while Harold Halibut is lean on gameplay period...
...however, the extent to which Harold Halibut beats The Cave on visuals, audio and narrative is pretty stark.
As a result, despite my affection for The Cave (which is strong!) I do think Harold Halibut pretty handily takes the win.

Between those two games, there are two other games that I think have some legitimate comparison points with Harold Halibut - Goodbye Volcano High, and The Swapper.

 

Goodbye Volcano High is also a narrative adventure game, and it also has a pretty incredible visual style. In fact, I'd argue that Harold Halibut is the best ever realisation of Stop-Motion Animation in a game, and Goodbye Volcano High represents the best ever realisation of Hand Drawn Animation in a game.

Both have good audio, though I think Goodbye Volcano High does take the win there - its voice work is stellar, and the music is all originally written, and excellent throughout.
I also think the engagement with the characters of Goodbye Volcano High is marginally higher - at least for me - than the equivalent in Harold Halibut, so overall, I think Goodbye Volcano High retains its spot.

The Swapper is not comparable on gameplay terms - it is more a puzzle platformer - however, it does use real-life objects and models, photographed and mapped into the game to create a unique visual style.

While Harold Halibut (again) easily wins on visuals, and on audio, I do think there is some trouble with winning overall. The fact is, The Swapper still looks really good, and while its narrative is much slighter - told predominantly through gameplay, and via mechanics - it is still very engaging, and has a legitimately interesting and engaging final twist, which holds up.
I also think the gameplay in The Swapper is excellent, clever, quite original, and with some genuine "eureka" moments, and Harold Halibut doesn't really compete in those terms. 

It's a tough call, but I think The Swapper has to come out on top.

 

That leaves only a handful of games between The Swapper and The Cave - I think Afterparty, which while cool and fun and looking nice, is beaten in the end by Harold Halibut on the strength of its overall story and visuals, and I think a few wholly incomparable game on any metric other than "overall awesomeness" - Darksiders, Matterfall, Cocoon - do also have to make room for Harold Halibut...
... but I have trouble when it comes up to A Plague Tale: Requiem.

 

That game was too much of a set up from its predecessor - a little too narratively good, emotionally engaging, visually great and generally awesome for Harold Halibut to quite beat it out, even in spite of the astonishing visual style. 

 

As such, Harold Halibut finds its spot!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Punch Club

 

 

Summary: 

 

A 2017-released pixel-art Sports/Life Management Sim from Lazy Bear Games, Punch Club takes plate-spinning, meter-managing gameplay, combines it with a goofy, 80s-film-and-TV-reference-laden nostalgia, and tells a choose-your-own-adventure style rags-to-riches, (or rags-to-criminal-empire!) story.

 

While an initial look at the game via marketing materials or screenshots, the gameplay might initially be mistaken for a throwback, pixel-art fighting game, in the vein of something like FirePro Wrestling, or even a scrolling retro beat-em-up like Streets of Rage, that is really only an apt analogy in terms of tone and visual reference. 
The actual fighting in Punch Club, (of which there is a lot) is actually done automatically, with the player involvement being purely in both the macro "preparation" for the fight (via training, maintaining the character's physique and abilities, and managing their life and general state of wellbeing,) and in the micro - via selecting the specific tactics to be used in each round of the bout, done at the start of each round, by selecting specific tactics. 
In that sense, the most obvious analogue for Punch Club is actually something like LMA Manager or Championship Manager, where the management around the sport is key, and the sport itself is played out via dice-rolls and modifiers automatically.

In terms of the macro gameplay, Punch Club is very fun, and quite compulsive. 
The narrative sees the player work their way up from a humble beginning as a small-time amateur boxer, working through the amateur then professional leagues - either via official bouts, or via underground street fights and an Ultimate Fighter-type scenario - and work towards either championship glory, or controlling a vast criminal empire, and does so via the player's choices outside the ring.

Mostly, these are via a combination of their win/loss ratio, and what they choose to spend their time doing outside of the fights, and the constant (quite onerous) management of meters limits the player effectively this way. 

Every metric - from hunger, happiness, agility, strength, stamina, money, time - is constantly in flux and are interdependent, and managing them effectively, while maintaining a training schedule and being adequately prepared and ready for fights (which operate on strict schedules) is difficult, and requires quite a bit of thought and planning.

The key metrics for winning a fight are Strength, Agility and Stamina - and each one has its own skill tree of boosters and specific moves...
... and, crucially, each one is constantly depleting, day-by-day, and requires constant training to maintain and hone. 
It pays to concentrate on one or the other - it's virtually impossible to elevate all three areas, as concentrating on everything means specialising in nothing, and so the most effective method is to concentrate on one specific path, and min-max it...
...but even then, simply building and maintaining one specialised path and ability is not enough to guarantee victory. 

Even the most agile, agility-based fighter is not going to see victory if they enter a fight without adequate sleep or energy, or too tired or unhappy after working a double shift, or too hungry...
...and the game is balanced quite effectively to make management of all these elements tricky, and not always possible to perfect, but never SO hard that it feels impossible, or unrecoverable.

 

There are constant considerations having to be made, as each day passes. 
Having no money to buy food is a problem, as a hungry protagonist cannot fight well, or work to earn that money...
...but working reduces happiness. 
Hanging out with a friend might increase that happiness... but time spent drinking and socialising is time not spent training, and those skills are atrophying without maintenance. 
Training is effective, but tiring... so one needs to sleep... but you'll wake up hungry. 
You need some food in the fridge... and that training would be more effective if you were happy... and your girlfriend was happy and rooting for you... but you have to earn that money... to buy the food... to train... to win... to make money... 

... and of course, those sewer-dwelling crocodiles the pizza guy delivers too aren't going to fight themselves!

 

It's a smart system, and it works well. 
There is just enough time, with effective management, to keep your head above water and to keep on moving up the totem pole, while also exploring some of the game's many little side narratives and side stories...
...but the situation is precarious, and the player is never more than a couple of lost fights away from a really tough situation, that might set them back considerably in their training, or require recovery time, and need a wholesale re-evaluation of their priorities!

The micro gameplay, (the mid-fight round tactics) is, on the other hand,  fine...
...though a little surface level, and a little throw-away.

 

There is significant merit to constant training and effective training management, however, the actual effect on the outcome of a fight does tend to come far more from that "macro" preparation than the "micro" management between rounds. 
Individual opponents have their own sets of skills, special abilities and individual considerations, but truth be told, aside from a few very specific, highly-specialised or unique opponents, the best methods of fighting remain largely the same across the board. 

I played multiple runs of the game, and experimented with all three major fighting specialisations - a Strength build, an Agility Build and a Stamina Build - and while each is different, in reality, the process for victory remained largely the same - min-maxing to build up that specific stat, unlock as much of the "special abilities" skill tree as possible, and simply select the highest skills unlocked in every round.
Rarely did it ever feel particularly necessary to change up the in-use skills mid-fight, and when it was, these were generally simply a switch to a more effective build if the first round showed the current build was ineffective. That new build was then used for the remainder of the fight.

 

It's not a massive slight on the game - in reality, I'd imagine this is largely accurate, in that training and preparation is more valuable than on-the-fly tactics - however, it can have the effect of making a good build and effective "macro" management gameplay largely render the micro game obsolete, as the fight will be won regardless...
...and making it feel hopeless when battling a superior opponent, as no matter what the player does in the fight itself, they are destined to lose no matter what in-fight tactics they employ.

While I can see the benefit to the mid-round tactical element of the game as a narrative element, and making the player involvement in the fights feel more connected, the reality is that I don't actually think much would be lost if the game had excised this part, and simply had the player choose their tactics for the fight at the start, and just watch it play out in its entirety. 

 

Narratively, I really like the approach taken in Punch Club...
...and - spoiler alert - rather lament the changes made to it in the soon to be reviewed sequel!

What makes the narrative work in the game, is that it feels neither serious, nor - at least initially - like it is going to be the focus.
The game appears, at the outset, to be purely a management sim, with its narrative literally only existing as a vehicle for goofy references, but it gets more and more filled out and fleshed out as they go on.

 

To be clear though- the gams is full of references, and is goofy.  The overriding story is very much playing on the Rocky movies - Rocky is all over Punch Club, from the trainer who looks and acts exactly like Burgess Meredith's Mickey, to the love interest being named Adrien, to the best friend's fate at the hands of a Russian Goliath, and the protagonists' subsequent foray to Russia to train in the snow and battle said Russian Goliath...
...but that doesn't sop an absolute litany of other references being stuck in around the edges! 
Most are squarely from the 80's - Bloodsport, Cobra, Kickboxer, Big Trouble in Little China, Robocop, Don King, Hulk Hogan, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - but the game does stray outside of that decade when it fancies, to incorporate cultural touchstones from other eras, such as The Godfather, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction... hell, there's even a Jay and Silent Bob in there.

 

Those are fun and silly, but what the game does by having its story be rather back-loaded, is fool the player into being surprised when there is as much narrative as there is - and it being as malleable as it is.

Not only does the game go on, narratively, for quite a bit longer, and with quite a few more twists and turns than one might expect in the early hours, but it is only when playing a second or third time, and doing different things, or making different choices, that they realise that there are whole story plot lines that they likely missed, or chose between the first time round, and didn't know about. 

 

It was only in my third playthrough that I realised the entire main narrative is bifurcated around the mid-way point - if a different dialogue choice is made, the entire game is different, with different locations, mechanics, characters and elements...
...but even setting that aside, it eventually becomes clear how many of what seemed like simple little beats or incidental characters have a whole tract of narrative "side-quest" to them, if the player makes different choices at different point. 

 

For example, in one playthrough, I happened to do a lot of walking, and walking with money in your pocket can result in attempted muggings. I knew that from early playthrough, however, in that playthrough, I was mugged so often, that it actually started an entire side story involving characters I had seen in previous playthroughs, but in a whole different context - which then led to more story paths, which lead to more story paths...
...which eventually saw me battling my own pet cat who - spoiler alert - it turned out that this time, was a magically cursed criminal mastermind!

 

In a game like Punch Club, where the whole premise is built around playing multiple times, and trying to manage more effectively (beating the game in fewer "days" is part of the trophy list, and the game,) getting to see different story content in each playthrough is a big bonus - even if those story parts are deliberately goofy and silly - and having them be as malleable as this is a big boon to the game's longevity.

 

 

Visually, Punch Club is pretty nice. It's a retro-style pixel art, designed to ape the look of games like Streets of Rage or Double Dragon, and sticks to the throwback elements rigidly - without adding particular modern or technologically anachronistic flourishes. I think that decision is a good one. The art design looks retro in the right sense - one can feel the early 90's, unironic-Beat-'em-Up flavour throughout, but the pixel art fidelity and the art design are still good enough to convey the many, many filmic and TV references without having to hang lanterns on them, and to pull them all into that side-scroll-y-looking universe and look like they all belong.

 

The visuals during the fights are a little bit sparse - while there are some unique animations for different moves peppered in, and the characters (particularly the ones aping real-life references) look good in the fights, but for the most part, the fights play out looking like turn-based 16-bit RPGs, with the character simply making their moves towards one another, and then falling down. 
That's not a massive problem - after all, the fights play out automatically, and for the most part, the player will be playing these at 4x speed, at least, once the novelty has worn off - however, the player does still spend a lot of time watching these fights, so it's not something to completely ignore.

Audio is decent - the tracks that play in different fights and locations work, both as nostalgic throwbacks to 16-bit games, and as homage to 80s media, though they do get repetitive, as there aren't as many variations as there might have been. (The sequel, for what its worth, goes hard in correcting this!)
There's no spoken dialogue, just bleeps and bloops as different characters speak, and the sound effects are fine - nothing noteworthy, but also not offensive or annoying.

 

 

Overall, Punch Club is a smart little game - one whose gameplay is tricky and smart without getting too in-the-weeds, and who's narrative elements are both curiously deeper than one might expect, and hone in effectively on the particular brand of nostalgic throwback it is aiming for.

 

The game is laden with references in a way that could be overpowering, but picks the right elements to ape, that feel right for the tone and style. It uses these with a humorous touch and without taking itself too seriously, or requiring a player to "get" every single one of them, and the whole thing ends up being quite winning for anyone who was brought up in the 80s and 90s...
...which works for me!
 

 

The Ranking:

 

Punch Club is one of those (rarer now, but still occasional!) instances where comparative ranking based on genre or metrics isn't particularly useful, as there really aren't any comparison games within the same genre on the ranking. I don't actually play an awful lot of life-management or sports-management games, and what few management games of this style I have played, aren't generally on Playstation - I played things like Game Dev Story, for example, on iOS. 

As a result, it really comes down to the broader "find two games close together that feel correct for this game to be between, then spot check it against other games above and below, to see how that feels."  

 

I looked at (predominantly indie) games that might work for...
...and the two games that stuck out at me - and kept sticking out, for reasons that I couldn't quite summarise, but definitely felt right - were My Friend Pedro, and Concrete Genie.

Exactly why, I can't say, except that those two games are side by side on the current list, and I am pretty confident that Punch Club should fall below My Friend Pedro, but above Concrete Genie.

 

That seems "unscientific" - but the more I checked the games around that area, the more I became confident that it was appropriate - Punch Club feels right being below Thirsty Suitors,  Chime Sharp, Operation Tango, etc...
...and also feels right being above Gods Will Fall, Shady Part of Me, Rain, etc....

...and the more and more I looked at "spot-check" games above and below, the more happy I became with that placement.

 

As a result, I simply accepted that sometimes, gut feeling is the best measure - and sometimes gut feeling + spot checking is the only option...
...and so Punch Club found its spot on the list!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick's Parabox

 

 

Summary: 

 

A fiendishly clever "pure puzzle" game from indie developer Patrick Traynor, Patrick's Parabox sees the player presented with a huge swathe of individual, mechanically-themed "box puzzles, in which they must control a curious little square with eyes, who can move around and push other inanimate blocks, with a view to completing each puzzle, by covering specific, identified squared with inanimate ones, and stepping on the exit block.

That gameplay might seem simple on the surface - and initially it is - however, the ingenious trick to Patrick's Parabox is that the boxes themselves are non-Newtonian. 
Different boxes can be pushed inside other boxes, and shift their reality accordingly...
...so a box might contain a box, which contains a box, which contains the first box, in a mind-bending loop of infinite paradox through which the player must puzzle out the - often devilishly tricky - solutions!

 

As a "pure" puzzler, gameplay is the obvious draw here, of course.

Puzzle games all exist somewhere on a spectrum in terms of where the focus is placed - with Narrative at one end, and Puzzles on the other, and Patrick's Parabox is firmly rooted at the extreme "puzzle" end. There is not even a hint of context or narrative to the game - it is 364 discrete, specific and "pure" puzzles, loosely grouped together by focus on specific mechanics...
...but the though-line is purely one of mechanical diversity and difficulty. 
There is no narrative at all to the game, and therefore nothing for the game to fall back on if the gameplay was not compelling on its own...
...but luckily, it really is!

 

The puzzles in Patrick's Parabox are simple in terms of mechanics - at least in terms of input and control, and the difficulty curve and gradient comes purely from the increased complexity of solution, and the steady introduction of new elements to the puzzles.

Where in the early stages, the player will need to consider simply the order of block pushes and collisions to set up the correct solution, taking care not to box themself in, or push a block into a spot from which it cannot be recovered, the introduction of special blocks that change the playfield and the considerations comes steadily, carefully and cleverly.

 

This build up in difficulty does, fairly quickly, become extremely clever, and devilishly tricky at times. 

All puzzles in Patrick's Parabox tend to operate on three underlying principles:
1. The player block, and all other blocks, scale to the size relative to the box in which they occupy.
2. Every box contained within a box is retains its own internal rules for boxes it contains, but is subject to the rules of the box it occupies.
3. The "plain-space" the boxes all exist in is infinite, but creating infinite loops within the same box causes an unrecoverable paradox.

These principles never change throughout the game, but their application does - and the way the player must consider them in seeking the solution magnifies as the applications do.

 

For example, in the first 5 or 6 areas, (so, the first 100-120 odd puzzles) the player will, almost assuredly, accidentally create infinite paradoxes while experimenting and seeking the solutions. This is where a loop is formed where a box leads into itself infinitely, and tends to be a dead-end in that puzzle - shifting the player character into this infinite paradox simply results in being lost in an inescapable "void box". 

They will likely, as a result of accidentally creating these paradoxes, slowly come to be familiar with the rules of the paradoxes, and learn how to avoid them.

In some later, more complicated puzzles though, new elements are introduced than not only makes paradoxes not quite the "dead end" they originally seemed... 
....and make forming these paradoxes a necessary step in solving the puzzle.

The rules have not changed, and the learning the player has done has not changed, but the application of that learning is recontextualised. 
Now, what was initially a situation learned to be avoided, has become an element of the correct solution, and so that learning continues well past the level they initially did - as now they must learn how to deliberately do what they had been trying to avoid...
... and not only create paradoxes, but begin to learn how to create them within specific parameters, or in specific ways... or even create discrete and variable levels of infinite paradox that are contingent upon one another - create a "paradox squared", then a "paradox cubed", then a "paradox quadrupled" etc etc etc.

 

It is a tricky thing to articulate in text form - (in truth, it's a difficult thing to conceptualise, even while playing!) - but if the above makes no sense, and you are wondering "okay, so what is my take-away from all that?"...
...the answer is Patrick's Parabox is a game that takes very conceptually-confusing elements, and simplifies them to a degree that doesn't make their application simple, but does allow the player to learn the rules of them on a defined and simple curve - and enable them to build their knowledge of the rules to eventually master how to use them in a way that is complex, but remains fun throughout.

To be clear - Patrick's Parabox is hard.
The puzzle solutions are often fiendish and extremely clever - and it is certainly a game where coming up with the solution gives the dopamine rush of "holy, crap, I actually did it!"...
...but it is worth pointing out that while the solutions are often elusive and very tough, the game benefits from a lot of good gameplay mechanics designed to help the player reach these solutions without having to resort to outside guidance.

Firstly, there is the user-friendly element of the infinite "undo" and "restart" functions. 

Patrick's Parabox is a game where the player will, quite often, run into a "dead end" from which they cannot continue. That can be poison in a puzzle game, however, the game allows for every single input to be immediately "undone" at the touch of a button - and this function works for an infinite number of moves, as far as I could tell. 
No matter how much of a muddle I made of any puzzle, (and boy-oh-boy, did I make some muddles!), the game records every move in sequence, and can be "stepped-back" in increments, until the player reaches the point they want to roll back to - meaning they can feel free to experiment with any solution they can think of, at any point, free of punishment.

The game also has "restart puzzle" on another button, instantly resetting the puzzle - which most puzzle games do - but actually goes beyond that...
...in that "restarting" the puzzle is also considered a "move", and can also be rolled back from.

 

If the player, for example, gets in a mess, then resets the puzzle, then gets in another mess, and realises they'd like to roll back to somewhere in the first mess, they can roll back past the initial "reset", and keep going, to find the point they want to continue from.

 

That is a tremendously beneficial, massively user-friendly addition, which I'm not sure I can recall another puzzle having. To be clear - I doubt Patrick's Parabox is actually the first game to do it - I'm sure it has featured in some game before...
...but having played it, I really think it's something every "turn-based" or "move-based" puzzle game should try to implement, because the effective "fun-ification" that such a non-punitive and robust rollback feature has on tricky puzzles is difficult to over-state!

Secondly - and this is more down to the puzzle design than the game design - while the solutions are tricky - and sometimes downright fiendish - the actual puzzle areas are relatively contained.  Patrick's Parabox benefits from the fact that as difficult and convoluted and devilish as a solution might be, there is generally a finite, limited breadth of possible moves a player could make at any one time. 

Because of that - combined with the aforementioned ability to experiment and roll back at leisure - there is an extent to which the player can, if presented with a puzzle they simply cannot get their head around initially, simply play around with, and will eventually begin to work out what they need to do...
...and that experimentation will almost always lead, eventually, to establishing the parameters and working out what needs done, letting them get closer to a solution - all the while learning the more nuanced elements of the rules for future puzzles.

 

Over the course of the game, I became stuck numerous times, on too many puzzles to count initially - but it was only in a few specific cases that I really felt the need to seek some outside guidance. In these cases, it was almost always the case that I simply didn't realise a specific mechanic could be used in a specific way, rather than the solution simply being too convoluted to work out...
...and it meant that in the few puzzles I had to admit defeat on, and search for a solution, I almost always saw the beginning of the solution, went "OOOOOHHHHHH.....", and stopped watching the solution, in favour of now going back and solving the rest on my own, armed with my new knowledge of the mechanical rule I had overlooked. 
Once that mechanical rule was clarified, the actual solution could be toyed with and found naturally. 

All of those good elements apply to virtually all the puzzles in the game...
...with the exception of one specific type of "bonus" puzzle - the ASCII puzzles.

There are the one misfire in the game, as they feel like the one area where the game not only doesn't explain itself properly when presenting them...
...but truth be told, I don't think I could explain the mechanics of now, even after brute forcing my way through them!

 

These ASCII puzzles are special strain of (non-required) puzzles, peppered (in a mercifully limited number) throughout the various worlds, where the standard visual style is abandoned, and the puzzles are all simply coloured ASCII code letters and numerals against flat black, and where different rules from different puzzles are mashed together, without the visual overlay to explain them.

I believe the idea with these puzzles is to make discerning what the characters represent part of the puzzle itself, along with working out, through trial and error, which mechanical elements are being used, and then find the solution...
...but - at least for me - the fun of the game is rather lost when so many elements of the puzzle are in flux. Without the defined parameters offered by the common visual palate, they felt like a Sudoku puzzle with too few starting letters - everything was a mystery, so nothing could act as a "starting point."

 

In virtually every ASCII puzzle, I felt like I was pushing through via trial-and-error and with liberal use of the "roll-back" function, and even upon completing them, I rarely had any real understanding of what I had done, or why it had worked...
...and would likely be unable to repeat it, as I didn't feel I had actually worked anything out. 

 

Now - these puzzle, I think, are, in contrast to all the others - straight up not good.
That's disappointing.
They are, however, pretty much the only puzzles in all of Patrick's Parabox that aren't good... and there are around 10-12 of them across the game, out of a total of 364. 
So... less disappointing.

They are, in the grand scheme, not a massive problem...
...however, I do think they represent an annoying fly in the otherwise unblemished bowl of delicious puzzling soup!

They never really feel contingent on either the gaining of knowledge, or relevant application of previously gained knowledge - and to be quite honest, even after finishing the game, and looking for some explanation as to the make up of these ASCII puzzles via online sources, I still don't really feel any less in the dark about their design. It feels like very few players understand, or can explain the design of these puzzles, across the board!
While there are certainly some puzzles in Patrick's Parabox that I ended up solving - at least partially - through block-headed attrition and trial-and-error, at the end of them, I could still understand what the solution was, and how it made sense. I would be able to replicate that solution quickly.
Not so, the ASCII puzzles though.

The visuals of Patrick's Parabox are, of course, very basic, but there is a real smoothness to the animations and the movements - things like pushing a box into a smaller box, "squeezing" it has a tactile, very pleasing animation fluidity to it, and it's worth nothing just how rare it is that the player is ever in doubt about the parameters of a puzzle, considering how many different box types there are, considering how simple and clean the design is. 
There's an iOS style "sheen" to the style - a cleanliness and simplicity to the aesthetic, but it is a really nice one, and exactly what the game needs.

 

In fact, the game almost forces the player to see just how deceptively smart and well implemented the visual style is, in the end-game - by changing it! 
After finishing the main game, the player is given the opportunity to play a few levels - in the "appendix" section - using other, discarded "working" visual styles that were considered prior to settling on the one used in the main game. These alternatives could be described also as clean, neat, effective...
...but they don't work nearly as well, or as pleasingly as the final version does.
That really highlight how crucial a really good visual design aesthetic is to a simple geometric puzzle game like Patrick's Parabox!

Audio is pleasant too. 
There are two elements to that: the ambient music, which is all by Priscilla Snow, and provides a background soundscape that never feels overbearing or too heavily mixed, but befits the puzzle-solving gameplay; and the audio-stings when moving the box character around, or interacting with the different blocks.

 

Both are well implemented - part of the reason the game feels so good to play is the way the animations and the movements look and feel, and the audio-stings feed right into that, accompanying, for example, "squishing" a box with a satisfying "squish" sound, or giving a little "bloop" as the player moves from one box's spacial geometry to the next...
...and the background music, which changes slightly with each new area encountered, and provided an overall tone to the game works super well. 
Ambient music in a puzzle game is a tricky thing to get right - it needs to be pleasant and unobtrusive, so as not to distract the player too much, yet also not feel too repetitive or grating when repeated over and over in particularly tricky puzzles, and the music here hits all those beats.

 

Overall, Patrick's Parabox is a hell of a puzzle game. 
It's not a "narrative puzzler" - there is no story of any kind, and so it has the feel less of a game one consumes rabidly, and more as a game one can solve a few puzzles in a day, or complete a single area or set of puzzles...
...but that said, the bite-sized nature and the very well implemented escalation of mechanics and smooth difficulty gradient, combined with the great feeling controls, cool, simple visuals and pleasant audioscape makes it compulsive in a "just one more puzzle" sort of way.

 

It's a game that uses its simple but extremely malleable and clever basic mechanics really well, and teaches the player with each new variable cleverly, to the point that it ends up arming them to effectively solve complex, infinite-paradox type puzzles that might seem daunting, mind-bending and incredibly confusing at first, but become more and more manageable as they go.

 

It's smart, well made, good looking, nice sounding, and it has got more discrete puzzles in it than most puzzle games do...
... and as a pure-puzzler, it's tricky for me to recall a better one I've played in a long while!

 

 

The Ranking:

 

To rank Patrick's Parabox , I started looking at puzzle games on the list of all forms, as well as simple-visual games or pure-non-narrative, "gameplay-forward" games, to try and narrow the field.

The two games that I think provide a good top and bottom for a scope are one of each - Pac-Man Championship DX, and The Entropy Centre.

 

The Entropy Centre is, in many ways, the exact opposite type of puzzle game, it is a 3D puzzle game, with a heavy focus on narrative, as opposed to Patrick's Parabox's non-narrative, 2D puzzling, however, both are primarily spacial puzzles with mind-bending elements, and both are legitimately (and surprisingly) awesome!

 

The Entropy Centre, of course, has a more lavish visual style, given that it is telling a story in a location, and in full 3D, whereas Patrick's Parabox is purely presenting discrete puzzles to the player, however, I don't want to simply say "well The Entropy Centre wins on visuals purely on that basis", as the fact is, while simple, Patrick's Parabox's visual style is excellent for what it needs to be, and aids that game, arguably, more than The Entropy Centre's visuals help it.

 

The narrative in The Entropy Centre is very good - it caught me off guard with how good it was, and Patrick's Parabox can't compete with that, however, I do think on raw puzzling, Patrick's Parabox takes the win. Its puzzles are more abundant, more complex, and more varied and clever overall. 

The Entropy Centre is the more lavish game, so it would win on things like audio too - but fundamentally, one has to consider that the primary reason to play a puzzle game is the puzzles - and with Patrick's Parabox winning fairly handily on that metric, and also being no slouch on audio or visuals within its own terms, I think Patrick's Parabox has to come out the victor in that overall match up.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, on the other hand, is much more in the same wheelhouse as Patrick's Parabox - at least in terms of visuals, audio, narrative (or lack thereof.) One is a pure puzzler, and one is a pure action arcade game, but both really work for what they aim for.

 

 I think in terms of pure personal preference, I do like puzzle games more than arcade ones, however, I have to concede that Pac Man wins on visuals and on audio, and the mere fact that I enjoyed Pac-Man Championship Edition DX as much as I did, despite it not being one of my main preferred genres speaks very highly to it. Patrick's Parabox is clever and original, but Pac-Man Championship Edition DX manages to be clever and unusual within the rigid parameters of also being a throwback to a much beloved game - changing things, while staying true to the core and spirit of original Pac Man - and that is arguably harder, and even more laudable.

As such, I think Pac-Man Championship Edition DX retains its place in this fight.

 

There's a huge number of seriously awesome game in between those two, of myriad genres and styles, however, so some quick hits of "more or less awesome" have to be done!

 

I think on balance, Patrick's Parabox does beat RAD - that game is really cool and fun, but has some issues Patrick's Parabox doesn't, but I don't see Patrick's Parabox beating out Little Big Planet. That game was such an original and well executed first outing for what would become a franchise, that it has to retain its place, despite Patrick's Parabox's awesome puzzling fare. 

 

I think Rogue Legacy has to retain its place, but I can see Patrick's Parabox (just) beating out Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, as there is just so much of it - that Lara Croft game is great, but it is a little fleeting, whereas Patrick's Parabox really packs a punch in terms of sheer number of puzzles.

 

The field is narrowed at that point to a handful of games, and it comes down to the old "would I replay Patrick's Parabox before replaying this game?" question, (or, more aptly, "would I play a sequel to Patrick's Parabox before a sequel to this game," given that pure puzzlers are inherently less repeatable than most genres.)

I think that working up the remaining list though - that question gets answered pretty quickly: no at Laika: Aged Through Blood. 

While I really enjoyed both games, I do think I would be faster to buy a sequel to Laika than one to Patrick's Parabox, and so on balance, I think Patrick's Parabox has to fall below Laika...
...and so it finds its spot on the list!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Punch Club 2: Fast Forward

 

Summary: 

 

The 2023 follow up to Lazy Bear Games' 2017 pixel art Sports/Life Management Sim Punch Club, Punch Club 2: Fast Forward shifts the narrative forwards a generation, with the player controlling the son of the first games protagonist, in a neon-future dystopian version of the city they recognise from the original game.

 

The plate-spinning, time-management gameplay returns (somewhat) but this time, with a much longer and more involved narrative pulling more focus, some of the more difficult elements of the training softened, a more elaborate fight-style skill tree on show... and a whole new set of filmic and TV references to draw from.

Let's just state this right up front, as it's going to become clear when reading this review anyways...
...Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is not a terrible game, but it is a game that is demonstrably and unequivocally worse than its predecessor, in all but a few key ways.

 

There are a few areas in which is is significantly better though...
...so to be positive, let's consider those first!

 

Firstly, the game looks nicer. 
The pixel-art, "16-bit beat-em-up", Streets of Rage / Double Dragon aesthetic of the game is retained from the first outing, but here, there are more locations, slightly increased fidelity, and a much broader, more varied colour palate, which takes an already nice looking game, and really makes it look great. 
Obviously, it's not a technical powerhouse - these games are smaller releases, and are aiming for a specific retro feel, but they do it with style, and Punch Club 2: Fast Forward takes that style and runs with it really well.

 

Secondly, the audio is markedly improved. 
In the first game, there were some catchy and pretty awesome 80's flavoured chip-tune tracks, and those are not to be sniffed at, however, there was a fairly limited variety of them, and as a result, they got a little over-repetitive. In Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, there are not only more tracks, but they are - almost without exception - better tracks. There are some legitimate chip-tune bangers in here, and those really elevate the game in the audio stakes dramatically!

 

Unfortunately though...
...that's about the end of the praise, because virtually every other element of the game is at least slightly - and in some cases, substantially - less engaging or successful as they were in the previous outing. 

The primary reason for this is the narrative - and its prominence - and the problems are numerous.

 

The narrative is much, much longer, more involved and more convoluted. 
The narrative elements of Punch Club were abjectly, deliberately silly, and they worked a charm - primarily because they felt surprising. There wasn't so much narrative that it felt like it overpowered the game - Punch Club felt primarily like a management sim, with some unusually involved and curiously malleable narrative elements mixed in, adding flavour.

Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, has the unfortunate feel of a sequel where the developer has heard the well deserved praise for a specific element of their first game, and has tried to double down on that element in the sequel... but has massively over-egging the pudding by over-focussing on that area at the expense of others, and forgetting that the reason that element worked was because it was one part of a well-balanced whole.

 

It's a trap that many sequels have fallen into.
Recall, as an example, Hotline Miami 2. That game was still decent, but was markedly less good than its predecessor, and a lot of that came down to the developer over-focussing on one of the things players praised the first game for: its difficulty. 

The original Hotline Miami was a blisteringly cool game, and a part of what made it cool was the high difficulty...
...but in trying to "up the ante" with the second outing, the developer massively over-shot the difficulty, to the extent that the sequel became markedly less fun - the shifted from "tough but fair" to "trial-and-error bullshit" in quite a few cases, and difficulty became, not just an element, but the primary focus. It was no longer a distinctive part - it was the only part that mattered. It distracted and pulled focus from everything else the game was doing.

 

The same thing happens here, but with narrative focus. 
Punch Club had an unusually fun and surprising story element that few players expected to run as deep as it did, and that was well praised. In hearing this praise, the developer has clearly made the narrative the focus this time around, but in doing so, the game shifts dynamics - it no longer feels particularly a "management" game, and becomes more of a "Narrative Adventure Game with some management around the edges." 
That puts too much on the shoulders of that narrative, as it can no longer be a fun, frivolous thing in the way it originally was - it has to carry a game that is - this time - around 15-20 hours, as opposed to 5-6...
...but because the tone is still goofy and silly and nonsensical like the first one was, without the driving engine of the management elements it begins to lose the players interest much faster.

This time around, the games more substantial focus on narrative also changes the dynamic of the actual gameplay quite a bit. 
In the original, management of time, training, money, food and relationships was the main focus, and narrative elements were around the edges. The game was short, and the management elements difficult, and so many parts of the story - side content and different paths were choices - the player could likely see some of these, but would almost certainly not be able to see all aspects in a single playthrough. 
That was part of what made the game feel deeper than it maybe really was - because the player had to generally focus on what specific parts of the story they wanted to follow i each run.

 

In Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, however, the decision appears to have been made that because the game is markedly longer, the player should be able to see all aspects of the story in one go. That means no significant branching elements to the main story path, and in order to allow them the freedom to complete every side quest, the difficulty of the main game has been substantially reduced...
...but also, the desire to force the player into visiting more locations to discover all those side-stories in a single playthrough, means some additional routine-breaking annoyances have been added.

 

As an example, in the first game, the player could work in one of the jobs to get money at any time of day or night. It may have been anachronistic - yes, in real life, a person cannot work at a construction yard whenever they feel like it - but Punch Club and their sequel are not games striving for realism. They are games with talking malevolent pet cats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Crocodiles, Mystic, psychotropic pizza, and laser-beam theft. 
The important thing was the balanced gameplay, not the verisimilitude, and so the player would manage their schedule, not based on realistic timing, but to ensure at least some trining time per day, as their three primary fighting stats were in a case of constant entropy. Each one was slowly creeping downwards, and training had to be done to offset that entropy. 

 

In Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, the stats no longer diminish though - they only go up - and so the player can very quickly shift these up to a huge level, making their character virtually invincible in bouts. To offset this, there is a new mechanics - whereby specific moves use an additional "meter" of specific stats, which must be replenished with training... but even this doesn't force the player to train on a strict schedule, and so a lot of the original game's difficulty and formula are no longer required.

 

In order to stop this being too easy, many elements of the game now operate on scheduled "opening times" - some jobs can only be done at night, some only during the day, etc, which is presumably to force the player to mix it up a bit more...
...but the reality is that this just frustrates. If it's evening, the player can work in one location, but that will only last a small amount of time, then they have to switch to another job in a different location, adding a bunch of annoying busy-work into the schedule, while simultaneously making the core reasons for doing so less engaging.

 

There is also the introduction of jobs that have "quality" elements - ones with their own mini-management sims built in, where the player is paid based on how well they manage their time in the job, but these can also be an annoyance, as they are also scheduled - shifts come at set times, and must be adhered to - which can often conflict with story elements being done.

 

All these elements do work to a point - the game still has some management elements to it, but it does feel much less freeform - there are so many elements all operating on set schedules, that the player can go days and days of in-game time, feeling like they are simply doing what they have to do, without much actual thought or freedom...
...and crucially, very little of this is actually training or fighting - which is ostensibly supposed to be the whole point of the game. In Punch Club, all elements of the game felt like they revolved around the fighting. Here, the fighting feels relegated to just one of a number of side-activities...
...and rarely even the most important one. By around the half way point, in fact, it becomes the least important one, as most players will, by that point, be so over-levelled, that they couldn't lose a fight even if they tried to.

Another part of the narrative that doesn't work as well as it did in Punch Club is the numerous references and easter eggs from TV and Film and pop culture - because while they are as abundant and frequent as they were in the original game, they feels much less focussed this time around.

While the original game did pull in a few odd or out-of-place references that fell outside of the core focus of 80's and early 90's action movies (Jay and Silent Bob, for example... or The Godfather,) the vast majority were "of a piece". They felt like they were all drawn from the same approximate well. 

 

In Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, however, it feels like the developer had already run that well dry, so starts referencing all sorts of different pop culture touchstones, but this time, they are thick and fast from EVERY decade and genre... and so feel much more tacked on. 
What do Bladerunner, Braveheart, the Yakuza games, Snatch, Half Life, Total Recall, The Matrix, The Lion King and Futurama have in common?

Well... nothing really. 
Except that they are all referenced in Punch Club 2: Fast Forward.

 

There's nothing wrong with having little easter eggs in a game - and they can be to anything - but without the overriding theme tying them together, they feel more of a mishmash this time around, and as a result they begin to feel overdone, or forced in a way they didn't in the first game.
Ironically, the one "pop culture" reference the game makes that is the most consistent - and is well done usually - is to itself: The many references to the original game. Punch Club 2: Fast Forward makes a lot of callback references to Punch Club, and these are often funny, though it's hard to give special credit to a sequel referencing its own predecessor!

Gameplay-wise, as said, Punch Club 2: Fast Forward does make quite a lot of changes, but it feels like even the areas where it addresses legitimate issues from the first game, the improvement, while welcome, is lost due to the change in focus outside of them.

The skill-tree for fighting has been completely overhauled - this time, rather than having only 3 possible areas of focus, there are a bunch of "sub-specialties" within each primary stat focus, where the player can drill down and make specific builds. 
This time they can have multiple "load-outs" - and may need these to manage the finite in-fight resource stats that can become depleted during longer fights, and need replenished via training, and actually, the visual elements of fights have been improved somewhat, with more animations for the fight moves, and more to look at and manage.

 

That is generally all positive - its good changes to a simple system, working in new ways to make the mid-round management more useful and interesting...
...but fundamentally, it is all in vein, because of the changes to the out-of-fight gameplay. 
It is so easy, in this game, to become virtually unstoppable, that the player barely ever needs to engage with that side of the game, as they will likely be winning every fight with a single, unchanging load-out after the first few hours, regardless of their engagement with this newly overhauled element.

 

Overall Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is, sadly, a bit of a whiff. 

It takes a surprisingly fun, clever, not-too-serious but deceptively addictive run-based game, and expands it out in all the wrong ways - gets lost in its own references, focusses on a convoluted and flimsy narrative at the expense of gameplay, softens the difficulty, then adds frustrating busy-work to compensate... and becomes a duller game, who's best narrative elements all come from referencing its vastly superior predecessor.

 

It looks and sounds better than the original game, and that is laudable...
...but that original game looked and sounded decent enough. 

 

Crucially, that first game also had a wildly addictive, repeatable and fun gameplay loop, with a succinct, silly, fun, changeable and varying story...
...whereas Punch Club 2: Fast Forward just has annoyances, player-throttling frustrations and an overlong, flabby, rigidly unchanging story, with gameplay that gets marginalised more and more the deeper the player goes.

 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, is a sequel that massively disappointed as compared to a previous outing, and if there's one franchise that comes to mind when considering that, it's Far Cry! As an initial look, I thought about the two disappointing entries in the Far Cry series - Far Cry 5 and Far Cry 6, and started looking at the games around them on the list.

 

Far Cry 5 is actually ranked a far bit lower than Far Cry 6, primarily because they are disappointing on different ways, but in terms of as a comparison point, the fact is, Far Cry 6, while terribly boring and narratively flat-lining, it is still a competent and somewhat good shooter. It looks great, and is fun to be in that world - there just isn't anything of interest beyond that.

Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is a game that looks good also - within its specific retro style, of course - but is almost the inverse of Far Cry 6. Its gameplay is the primary reason it is disappointing, and while its narrative is also a problem, it is so by being too much the focus, rather than simply because it's boring and dull. 
While I do think Punch Club 2: Fast Forward is the more interesting game - and is at least trying and failing, as opposed to not trying and failing, I do have to concede that the moment-to-moment gameplay of Far Cry 6 is still fun, and more abundant, and given the choice, I would likely replay Far Cry 6 before replaying Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, so Far Cry 6 has to come out the victor.

 

In truth, the alarming fact is, even for the lower-ranked Far Cry 5, the same arguments hold true. Far Cry 5 comes by its disappointment more honestly - it tries something different, and it doesn't work - but the general gameplay and overall game is less good than Far Cry 6...
...but I still think given the choice between Far Cry 5 and  Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, I'd play more Far Cry 5.

 

Working down from there though, there are some really disappointing games - and the first one, working down, where I can categorically state I would prefer to play Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, is the well-meaning, but really quite acutely issue-ridden 3D puzzle game Faraday Protocol.

I feel a little bad, as that game did have a kernel of a good idea to it, but it fumbled the narrative, and simply didn't have the puzzle variety to make it work, and the fact is that while Punch Club 2: Fast Forward has a lot of problems, it is still a fun, fleeting, frivolous thing to engage with for a while... as long as one tries to forget how much better its predecessor was!

 

I still think I'd replay Punch Club 2: Fast Forward before replaying Faraday Protocol though, so it has to beat it...
...and finds its spot, right above it.
 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game'!

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diaries finally remains as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game'!

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

 

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking' - I will get back to doing those at some point, I hope! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

[grayhammmer]

8 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

I played things like Game Dev Story, for example, on iOS. 

This intrigues me. Are there any games you would place highly on this list if not for the fact that they aren't on PSN?

 

Also, on the mention of a tight work schedule, please don't burn yourself out if too many things are going on. Your life is more important than a silly game forum.

Edited June 22 by grayhammmer

[DrBloodmoney]

6 hours ago, grayhammmer said:

This intrigues me. Are there any games you would place highly on this list if not for the fact that they aren't on PSN?

Oh, absolutely!

 

I mean, for sure there are many games that predate the playstation trophy system that I still hold dear, which I would think would absolutely make a strong showing on the list - just off the top of my head:

 

Chronotrigger

Super Mario World

A Link to the Past 

Illusion of Gaia

Marble Madness

Kirby’s Dream Course

Mario Tennis 64

Goldeneye

Speedball 2

Earthbound

MarioKart

Mario Paint

 

would be contenders in the top 100 or so (and some VERY high!)…

 

…and a whole litany of SNES, NES and Megadrive games would certainly do well.

 

There’s also plenty PS1 and PS2 games that were not given trophies, or I didn’t replay new versions of, but I hold dear:

 

The Tenchu Games

Timesplitters 2 / Future Perfect

Driver

Stuntman

Dead Ball Zone

Shadow of Memories

No One Can Stop Mr Domino

Azure Dreams

Bushido Blade

Pandemonium and its sequel

 

…just to name a few!

 

 

In terms of stuff that came out since trophies, but isn’t on PS though, I don’t play on PC and don’t have a Microsoft or Nintendo console, so most stuff I play that isn’t trophy-enabled would be mobile. There’s not a massive list of stuff that would be a real contender there, but for sure:

 

Device 6

Her Story

Monument Valley

Ridiculous Fishing

Desert Golf
Paint It Back

Letterpress

Threes

2048 (that actually came to PS as “Weben Blocks”, but it’s not a game I think I’d want anywhere but on a touchscreen)

 

…would all do well somewhere on the list.

 

To be honest - if I sat down for hours and just kept adding to these lists, probably all three of them would end up being at least 50-100 items long! 🤣

 

Edited June 22 by DrBloodmoney

[shadaik]

15 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

I do, however, think The Artful Escape has the lead in a lot of other areas - the narrative, the audio and the pacing, for example. Both are light on gameplay, but compensate with narrative and visuals. It's not a blowout in any category - in all the areas The Artful Escape wins, Harold Halibut is still a strong contender, and vice-versa...
...but I do think in totality, the win has to go to The Artful Escape.

Huh. The review intrigued me, but seeing how I didn't enjoy the narrative of The Artful Escape at all, this is leavign me in doubt. I mean, that one had a story so commonplace, I last saw it in an insurance commercial. So, now I am intrigued but conflicted.

[DrBloodmoney]

5 minutes ago, shadaik said:

Huh. The review intrigued me, but seeing how I didn't enjoy the narrative of The Artful Escape at all, this is leavign me in doubt. I mean, that one had a story so commonplace, I last saw it in an insurance commercial. So, now I am intrigued but conflicted.

Fair enough- I’d say if you couldn’t find joy in The Artful Escape, then this thread and my reviews won’t be of much value to you TBH 😂