Hyper Light Drifter

Having been watching this game off and on since it was announced, I’ve been curious just how Hyper Light Drifter would finally turn out. It has some very eye catching visuals with very pretty pixel art that really helped the game to get its foot in the door, but it’s followed up with a Zelda-inspired experience filled with opportunities to explore and some reasonably challenging baddies to cross swords with.

There have been no lack of games to come along in recent years to go the pixelated route with obvious nods to games of the past. Some of these have been good, others not so much. HLD is definitely in the first camp. It’s visiting a lot of stuff we’ve seen before like the aforementioned Zelda series, but there’s just so much polish here. Combat is fluid and fast-paced, there’s a heavy emphasis on exploration and non-linearity, environments and characters hint at a massive backstory, and the aesthetic of the game is its own instead of just being another pixel art game that looks like something straight off the NES or SNES. This is the sort of game that serves as an excellent example of something that taps into retro games without feeling derivative; at the same time tapping into a lot of modern sensibilities.

At its heart, the game has a lot in common with old classic Zelda titles with its overhead view, combat style, and so much exploration. In fact, combat feels smoother and faster than anything I’ve ever come across in a Zelda game. Given what HLD throws at players, though, it’s easy to see this being a necessity. It’s definitely a challenging game. That being said, I think most people’s opinion of this will hinge on how much they’ve played old 8 and 16-bit games of this ilk. If you have indeed played a number of those types of games, HLD will seem reasonably manageable, though still fairly challenging, but those who haven’t may run into difficulty.

Enemies all have patterns and tells to their attacks. One needs to simply pay attention for a moment and watch the baddies do their thing while making use of the dodge button so they don’t get hit. It doesn’t take long to figure out what types of attacks enemies do and what sort of animation they perform before unleashing it so that players have the good sense to get out of the way. It only gets really intense when a room locks the player in and a bunch of enemies spawn at once to swarm the hero. In this case, things do get dicey, requiring some fancy footwork to dodge everything enemies throw at the player. Even then, it’s not insurmountable. The game doesn’t just drop players into these situations. It eases them in. Players are slowly introduced to the different enemies, and only after making it a fair way into a given dungeon do they find themselves in such situations.

Bosses too are a matter of learning patterns. If anything, I found these guys easier than some of the swarming incidents. They have very discernible patterns that don’t take long to learn, and it’s simply a matter of execution after in order to take them down. Really, these were the most reminiscent element of 16-bit gaming in HLD for me.

Your character also has a variety of unlockable abilities that can be purchased from trainers in the hub town of the game. While wandering around the countryside, players will gradually gather little yellow tokens and once they have enough they can be exchanged with the trainer for a new skill. These tokens are actually quite rare. They aren’t like coins that can be farmed to one’s heart’s content. They’re hidden in boxes and sometimes drop from enemies, but once they’ve been collected they never respawn. Also, once they’ve been spent there’s no turning back because the game automatically overwrites your last save after purchase, preventing save scumming whereby if players don’t like the ability they can just load up an old save and try something else. That just isn’t allowed here. As such, players need to think long and hard before buying a skill because once they have it that’s it, they’re stuck with it. If they want another they’ll have to head out into the wilderness and figure out where the rest of the hidden tokens are. So, in that regard there are some choices that have consequences in this game.

All the while, there’s quite a bit of exploration to be had. Players start in a hub town situated at the center of the world map with four exits: North, South, East, and West. From there it’s up to the individual to where they want to go. Generally each path leads to some sort of major temple where a boss is waiting to be defeated and some ancient device needs to be activated, but along the way there are no lack of detours to go on. There are a number of smaller power devices and keys that need to be found in order to get to a boss, so players need to wander around and find all of these as well, venturing down different paths. Some of these can be quite hard to find, and actually require you to run your character against the edges of an area. At some point, they may pop into a hidden passage tucked away behind a building or beneath a canopy of trees. They can be tough to see, but once found it’s quite satisfying, especially because they usually lead to useful goodies like more yellow tokens, health packs, or dungeon entrances.

As one wanders this world, it’s hard not to wonder about its past. Just from looking at the surroundings, it’s obvious that players are in some sort of post apocalyptic setting. There are ruined buildings, old broken down robots, and dilapidated cannons everywhere, overgrown with foliage, being clear remnants of a fallen civilization. With all of this, though, we don’t get much explanation of how all this came to pass or why we’re doing what we’re doing in HLD. This is a very intentional approach, as the game has no dialogue in it. Any time the player talks with an NPC, they aren't greeted with a text bubble. Instead, a window opens with a series of still images depicting a short story. It’s enough to get the idea across but leaves a lot open to the imagination. While it does leave the player with some questions, at the same time it helps build a sense of wonder about HLD’s world as one tries to fill in the blanks on their own.

Also building this sense of wonder is the game’s aesthetic, as it has some of the nicest pixel art to come along in the last little while. HLD’s graphics very much have a personality of their own in terms of character and enemy designs, environments, and even the color scheme. As mentioned earlier, far too many pixel art games simply mimic things we’ve seen in 8 and 16-bit consoles, but this one does its own thing, allowing HLD to clearly stand out from other pixelated projects available.

The music also helps to enhance the experience. It has a very analogue synth feel to it reminiscent of Blade Runner. The game has the same composer as Fez, so it’s easy to see the similarities between the two. It works quite well here with the generally mellow, whirring minimalism of the synthesizers building the sense of wonder and loss permeating through HLD’s world.

In the end, Hyper Light Drifter is a game people who like Zelda-esque action adventures should consider spending some time with. There have been plenty of other games to come along and provide similar experiences, but HLD is so much more polished while developing a personality of its own. The game is fairly challenging, but by no means impossible (if anything, I’d say that the Dark Souls series gives me more trouble than this did). With games like Dark Souls III, Quantum Break, and the HTC Vive coming out about now, there’s a chance HLD might fall between the cracks, but it’s a game that really deserves to be played. It just does so many things right, and looks great doing it.

Read Only Memories: A Love Letter to Snatcher

While point-and-click adventures dominated PC gaming in much of the 80s and 90s, we largely saw a Western interpretation of the genre. Games of this ilk were a rarity in Japan, as RPGs were what folks tended to gravitate toward over there when they wanted a narrative heavy experience. That's not to say no adventure games ever came out over there, because they did, but they were a rarity by comparison, and developers' take on the genre was quite different. These games, while still having puzzles and whatnot to solve, were often much more focused on story and visuals with two of the most well-known games of this sort being Snatcher and Policenauts.

Both of these were created by Hideo Kojima before Metal Gear Solid became his primary focus in development, being heavily inspired by films like Blade Runner and The Terminator with their cyberpunk, film noire undertones. The games were a fascinating take on adventure games as they went about story, puzzles, and ambience in their own way. These days, they're largely viewed as classics, and only now are we seeing people put out a game that is very much an homage to them with Read Only Memories, a game that goes for this much more Japanese approach to adventure games.

Just like the games it's emulating, players set on a cyberpunk romp, exploring Neo San Francisco as they help a little robot named Turing figure out what happened to its creator, who also just so happens to be an old friend of the main character. All the while, visuals akin to late 8-bit and early 16-bit games fill the screen, and synth-heavy tunes stream from the speakers. It's something I'd expect to see on a Sega Genesis with a slightly more modern sensibility in terms of artistic style.

Playing through it, the game ticks a lot of the right boxes as a fan of Snatcher, although it does feel a tiny bit more like a visual novel than an adventure game. A lot of one's time is spent in conversation with people either chatting or trying to get information out of them. So, the most players have to worry about in these situation is the kind of persona that they want the main character to project, usually selecting from a nice guy answer, a dickish answer, and something in the middle. The answers do matter in that there are multiple endings to the game and they're impacted in part by what Turing thinks of you once it's over, making it something to keep in mind.

This isn't to say you'll spend your whole time talking to people, trying to solve a crime. There still are some puzzles to solve and other non-conversational activities, many of them quite novel. Nonetheless, that is what a majority of one's time will be spent doing, so have a cup of tea ready and settle in for some reading.

Thankfully, the story is good. Solving the mystery of Turing's missing creator takes a fair bit of sleuthing, and feels very noire while going about it. There isn't anything that is hugely novel about it, but a cast of charming characters with some nice plot twists keep things interesting. ROM does try to touch on some social issues, but it doesn't feel like the game is being preachy about it. If the player wants to sit down and have a good think about them, they can go down quite the rabbit hole, but that's on the individual, as the game doesn't dwell on the stuff, simply putting it out there as food for thought instead.

Fans of games like Snatcher and Policenauts should seriously think about giving Read Only Memories a shot. It really does a good job of revisiting the sorts of games these were, rare gems in their own time that didn't get the attention they deserved when they first came out. From recapturing the aesthetic to giving us a nice little cyberpunk story, the game will be most welcome to folks who miss this sort of adventure game even if it does lean a little bit more toward feeling like a visual novel.

World of Final Fantasy Trailer

Square-Enix announced that they were working on World of Final Fantasy at this year's E3, discussing how it will be aimed at younger players to introduce them to the series. It'll have a chibi art style to the main characters with quite a lot of monster collecting, as they will help the party fight in battle. It's planned for both the PS4 and Vita with cross play support to help with the monster collecting.

All things considered, it sounds like a pretty safe way of going about things. Adopt a cute, inviting visual style with simplified battles and toss in some vaguely Pokemon-esque monster hunting, and it seems like a good way to try and get the young'uns interested in the series.

With Jump Festa 2016 underway, the company has now released a lengthy trailer for the game. So far it looks pretty good in terms of environment and character designs. Now it's a matter of speculating what the full roster of characters and monsters will be. Square-Enix tends to be quite thorough with games that span the entire Final Fantasy series, so I expect quite a lot of popular choices will make the cut as well as some more unexpected ones.

With that, does it make me a bad person to be looking forward to this more than Final Fantasy XV or the Final Fantasy VII remake?

Final Fantasy VII Remake Going Episodic

It looks like people interested in snapping up the Final Fantasy VII remake will be doing so in bits and morsels, as Square-Enix is saying that it will now be a series. While I've raised an eyebrow at the decisions that the company has made regarding the game up to this point, I accepted it as a means of modernizing it for the present day while making it more appealing to a new audience that was too young to play the original FFVII when it first came out.

Tempting as it is for me to transform into some kind of hard-lined traditionalist demanding stuff like a turn-based battle system, I understand that now, almost 20 years on, that sort of thing is getting to be old hat. As someone who grew up on console RPGs in the 80s and 90s, that sort of thing was with me for over a decade, so I'll think nothing of it. People who grew up with later games had a lot more to choose from with much more robust, and not necessarily turn-based combat in their experience. If the FFVII remake was a by the numbers recreation of the original just with better graphics, that old battle system would be a kick in the teeth for many.

However, this new announcement that the remake will be a series, ie. episodic instead of one complete game, is something else entirely. This does feel like Square-Enix is taking the piss here a bit, going for a wee bit of a money grab. How many parts is this going to be and how much will it cost? These are questions that have yet to be answered, and makes me wonder if it'll wind up being much more expensive than a regular game in the long term.

Episodic content is a lot easier to swallow when it was designed as such from the onset. Telltale Games' various series are a good example of this. We know that this is how they do things, so people are far more ready to accept this business model from them. With the FFVII remake, though, we also know full well that the original was a single game, and it's going to get a lot of people questioning why it's being chopped into separately released chapters now instead. I'm sure PR folks will try to spin it, but the move sure seems slimy.

I can't help but wonder if they're doing this to rush it out the door faster and cash in on hype. Sure, they could do it all in one self-contained game, but that would take longer to release, and as I suggested already, it could wind up selling for less since it would be a single title at what would probably be a fairly traditional price point, say $50-$60. Now, since they're going episodic, they can belt out chapter one all that much quicker and worry about the rest of the development later. This is the company that decided to milk Final Fantasy XIII, giving us not one but three games with Lightning in it, so fear of similar shenanigans filtering into an episodic Final Fantasy V remake aren't completely unwarranted.

Just a cursory jaunt around the internet shows that this is causing quite a bit of heated discussion. Will folks be okay with this and buy the remake in droves, or will the switch to making FFVII a series put people off and negatively impact sales. Only time will tell, but in the meantime it is interesting to see this development split the community so much. There could be potential for this to be a good thing with staggered content that gets really fleshed out with side quests and the like, but this is Square-Enix after all, so a healthy dose of cynicism is a must.

If you haven't seen it already, here's the trailer for the remake.

I Still Can't Decide Whether to Be Excited about Final Fantasy XV

Since the very first game, it's been easy for me to get excited for Final Fantasy games thanks to a combination of the series generally being quite good and a borderline unconditional love for JRPGs. However, the more I see of the fifteenth installment currently in development, the more my enthusiasm falters and I find myself not sure what to think of the thing.

A big part of this is probably the protagonists, as the game looks like Pop Idols Go On An Adventure more than anything else. To a degree it smacks of a "design by committee" approach where people in high places that really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the design process looked at some consumer purchasing statistics, noticed what way the wind was blowing and went in that direction. Part of me wonders if this will devolve into Uta no Prince X Final Fantasy at some point when my cynicism gets going.

On the plus side, I suppose one could look at this as a bit of an about face in terms of character design, though. Instead of going with a cast of buxom beauties that have their tits jutting out, which is often the case in this industry, the game is going for some rather handsome men. So, now the female segment of the series fan base has some characters to oggle, and a slew of FFXV boys love fan art will surely proliferate through Google image search in the coming years. So that's something.

Questionable cast aside, combat is the big thing that makes or breaks an RPG for me, especially if it hails from Japan. There's something so charming about how developers from that part of the world put so much effort into this aspect of their games with unique systems ranging from resource management to party composition to special abilities. The fact that Final Fantasy XIII had a good combat system was one of the very few saving graces of that game, preventing me from completely hating it.

So now I'm left feeling a little bit uncertain about what's planned for this game, as the combat is very action-oriented and very simplified. It's more like something out of Elder Scrolls or Dragon's Dogma, which makes sense as Final Fantasy XV is planned to be an exploration-heavy open world game, just like those two. As such, this action RPG approach seems more logical in the greater context of the game. That being said, part of me can't shake my decades old expectation of a more traditional approach to combat in a JRPG that the Final Fantasy series has been known for. It's obvious bias on my part, but at the same time it leaves me wondering if this will feel like a Final Fantasy game or will it just be an open world action RPG with the Final Fantasy label slapped on the box cover. I don't think this would be such a big thing for me if this wasn't a mainline Final Fantasy, and initially it wasn't since the game was originally supposed to be Final Fantasy Versus, but with a mainline installment in this series comes certain expectations, and a much more robust battle system is one of them.

So, with that, I'm having some very mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XV based on what we know so far. XIII made me very skeptical of the series and XV isn't doing anything to change that so far. It may turn out decent, but the cast of characters look set to be more annoying than Snow, Vanille, and Hope, while the battle system comes of as anything but what I've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game. Square-Enix will have a lot of convincing to do to make me want to try this game when it comes out.

Review: Tower of Guns (PS4)

Tower of Guns aims to try and mix a few popular ideas that show up in other indie titles, with the biggest one being procedurally generated levels, but a floaty control scheme and generally unintuitive gameplay makes this tower not worth the climb.

Preview: Mortal Kombat X (Multi-Platform)

Is it Mortal Kombat X or Mortal Kombat 10? It likely doesn't matter. After all, what's in a name, especially when it comes to Mortal Kombat. The series has proven that it's not afraid of trying new or unexpected things, like ravelling a story together that -- forgive me for saying this -- makes sense. So, what's new this time around? A non-linear storyline set 25 years beyond the events of the last game that features new characters, aged versions of familiar characters, and the progeny of some classic characters like Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage. 

Preview: Batman: Arkham Knight (Multi-Platform)

If there's one thing that Batman is really good at, it's making twisted enemies everywhere he goes. Besides Arkham Knight, a lethal Batman doppelganger created for the game, there's the usual Rogues Gallery of villains including the Riddler (in a more active role this time around), Penguin, Two-Face, Harley Quinn, and Scarecrow, who appears to be the mastermind behind the terrible things that happen in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Review: Dying Light (PS4)

Normally we only have one reviewer assigned to each title, but Dying Light presented an interesting opportunity.  With two review codes and two reviewers – one who likes zombie themed TV shows and games and another indifferent to them – you get two unique viewpoints on Dying Light.

Story/Gameplay Mechanics
Dying Light is Techland’s latest foray into the Zombie genre, after the release of Dead Island (2011) and Dead Island Riptide (2013). This is their first entry making use of next gen hardware, but has the transition been kind to them?

Review: WWE 2K15 (PS4)

Last year's WWE 2K14 was one of the best sports games (or sport entertainment games if you will) released for the previous generation consoles. Needless to say, after setting such a high water mark for the franchise any reasonable expectations would have to live up to, if not better, their previous results. Well… we have a partial success in this case.

Visually the design team did an excellent job of rendering the wrestling talent. All the wrestlers look even more real to life than they have in the past. The rings, crowds, and sets look a little sharper but not as drastic an improvement that the wrestlers have. That being said, there are some cases of the team reusing art assets from the previous game except not cleaning up anything. So we get storylines where last generation rendered Vince McMahon comes out to talk to current generation rendered talent. It would be like substituting the design of Mario from Super Mario on the NES into a modern Wii-U game. It almost feels though the sting of getting a yearly released game out the door meant that certain things would have to be skipped or left as is.

Review: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4)

For me Call of Duty: Ghosts was a low point in Activision's much beloved series. The game represented everything I had come to expect from a franchise being released year after year.

Too much familiarity. For every moment of brilliance in the game, there were ten more moments of familiarity. Going into Advanced Warfare, I was both skeptical and excited about the new direction the franchise was headed. I knew that Activision could only make so many games based on Modern Warfare and that eventually we would see a game set in the future with new weapons, gadgets and vehicles. Advanced Warfare represents the biggest jump for the series since the game shifted from World War II to Modern Combat.

Raving Rant: The Year in Review - 2014

Another year come and gone. The old saw about time flying when you’re having fun seems apropos for gamers. Especially when some of the stuff is not fun in the slightest. But it’s been interesting nonetheless. We’ve had all new heroes and villains, as well as some old familiar faces popping up, and it’s worth taking a look back to see how we got through it.

GamerGate
I’m going to get this one out of the way right now. I spoke at length on it earlier, and I’m not going to beat a dead horse, but this is probably the single biggest story of the year. I wish it wasn’t. Arguably, the shitstorm that is GamerGate is still ongoing, although it’s now down to a dull roar. A certain segment of the Internet is being incredibly shitty to a few particular women, and pretty much anybody of a certain degree of visibility who calls them out on it. I don’t agree with Anita Sarkissian’s work, I don’t agree with her positions, but I will defend her right to make them and distribute them. People are, likewise, free to disagree with her and not support her if they choose not to. But this shit has gone way too far for way too long.

Review: Skylanders: Trap Team (PS4)

I first became aware of Skylanders last year at Activision's multiplayer event for Call of Duty Ghosts. We were whisked away on our last day to a hotel room that was showing off Skylanders: Swap Force. I was in awe because it was my first time playing a PS4 and seeing the Skylanders series. I rediscovered my inner child! This year sees the release of another Skylanders game called Trap Team. Trap Team introduces an interesting new concept that allows you to trap enemy bosses and play as them for a period of time.

Review: The Last Tinker: City of Colors (PS4)

I love third person action adventure games.

In fact, it is my favourite genre. Games like Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper and the 3D Mario games are among my fondest gaming memoreis. I am not sure why the genre has declined but I'm glad to see games like the Last Tinker try to revive it.

You play as the Last Tinker in a world where the colours are like races and are no longer getting along. The bleakness has arrived to take all the colours away and you must figure out what happened and get the aid of the various colour spirits along the way in order to do so. Once you gain their trust and confidence, they provide you with their powers (conveniently mapped to the D-Pad) and you can progress further in the game.

Review: The Last of Us Remastered (PS4)

Like a handful of successful PlayStation 3 titles, The Last of Us has been remastered and brought to the PlayStation 4.

My first encounter with the game was a little underwhelming to say the least. I played Last of Us on the PS3 last summer for a few hours and couldn’t really get into the game. I found the pacing too slow and quickly stopped playing the game. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I even remember walking from electronics store to electronics store being told by the cashiers that all their copies of the title were sold out. Naturally, I just downloaded it from the Playstation Store and it say on my hard drive not being played.

Review: EA Sports UFC (PS4)

It seems like every time a console cycle starts, there's always a title or two that shows off the graphical powerhouse of the next gen consoles.

On the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it was Fight Night; for PlayStation 4 it is UFC. It just happens to be a "coincidence" that both Fight Night and UFC are published by Electronic Arts.

UFC is a drop dead gorgeous game. Little details like sweat, muscle and tattoos look photorealistic. Even the instant replays show off the games graphical prowess. Seeing every muscle react to an opponent being punched in slow motion shows what these next generation (now, current gen) consoles are capable of.

Preview: Skylanders Trap Team (Multiplatform)

Just like all those times when Joker breaks everyone out of Arkham Asylum, Skylanders: Trap Team features a dramatic prison breakout thanks to the perpetually evil, Chaos, which plunges Skyland into a diabolical hell of violence, drugs, corruption, and organized crime. (I may be slightly overstating this.) Only this time, once the crazy guys are captured, they work for Batman.

Preview: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare *Hands-On*

Last week, Activision held a press event to unveil Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare's multiplayer in San Francisco. Activision flew us out to get a first glimpse at the game's multiplayer, prior to it's "official" unveiling at Gamescom. The Developers talked about the new features in multiplayer and gave us some hands-on time with the game.

Preview: Destiny (Multiplatform)

Unless you've been sleeping for the last fifteen years or so, it should be a point of common knowledge that Bungie makes some really excellent shooters.  They did it with the Marathon series, they did it again with the Halo series, and they're looking to make the hat trick with Destiny.  Bungie faithful have been following the project closely and with their public beta test coming up, it's shaping up very impressively.

Review: Guacamelee - Super Turbo Championship Edition (PS4)

Guacamelee steps back into the ring with a “Game of the year edition” treatment: Super Turbo Championship Edition! Aside from being a nod to Street Fighter, this rendition gives us an overhauled story which features some new abilities, enemies, and the surprisingly satisfying ability called INTENSO, but is it worth donning Juan's mask once again?