How good is Ori and the blind forest?

Really good. I think I wrote about it before. All the different parts have interactions between each other that enable you to do a lot of crazy things. The Bash skill in particular is a work of inspiration, the ability to grab any enemy or projectile and boost off them, sending them the opposite way. Then they let you cancel downward momentum from it with double jumps, and keep horizontal momentum from it by releasing the control stick.

My main qualms about it are that the metroidvania structure is all segmented off into these little areas that you deal with for a while before moving onto the next one, and there’s no warps. They expect you to go back and forth across this place focusing on areas at opposite ends of the map intensely, but don’t provide fast travel. It’s more tolerable in a game like symphony or super metroid, because your objectives are all over the place, so you get lead around a lot, and you don’t need to get too focused on any individual region, but you practically exhaust areas in Ori in one go, and individual areas can be rather linear, even if the world structure as a whole is nonlinear. Then they hide ability orb caches in places you need powers from later on to access, so you gotta backtrack across the whole world for 100%.

That and there’s not much of an end segment where you can use all the powers, hell, there’s not much of a middle segment where you use all the powers. I felt like I just barely got the superjump and already the game was ending.

Oh, and the speedrun really highlights the depth of interaction between the movement mechanics and level design. Like watch older runs first, then move up to newer runs. It’s really astonishing how much the game changes between them.
http://www.speedrun.com/ori

There’s also some clever things like having door keys not be specific to areas, but general things you can use anywhere, so you can pass door keys from some areas to others, and I think even duplicate them under some circumstances. It’s interesting how the pace at which you gain energy cells is controlled in the early game, allowing them to use those as doors, and how it counts from the usable cells, so you can spend all your cells on a door, kill an enemy, then spend the cell you get from that. The cutscene system is interesting in the way it actually manipulates objects in the world, or sets triggers for them. And the shockwave from stomp works in the air off enemies, bash resetting jumps, charge flame reflecting projectiles. The whole savestate system that costs an energy cell and has a cooldown. Barriers that can be broken with charge flame, stomp, or enemy projectiles.

There’s a massive number of subtle touches that create depth between the components and allow for alternate solutions. The game can be fairly challenging at times too and tries new things all the time.

What do you think of Beyond good and evil?

Has some stealth that isn’t horrible, but also isn’t really amazing, mostly just a timing puzzle, but you can distract guards with the first person projectile. The combat is nonsensical mashing. Has a bunch of lateral thinking puzzles, which I’m not that fond of. Lots of contextual interaction points, which I think were considered fairly new back then. Tries to be like zelda in a lot of ways, like the automatic jumping on reaching the edge of a platform. Has some collectathon elements I’m not fond of. The boss battles are all rather rote in the usual way. No risk/reward element. Has some alright boating sections, some use of physical space in a mildly interesting ways for the various obstacles. There’s some slight overlap in certain mechanics, like the shooting in first person view allowing you to solve certain puzzles and enemy encounters in alternate ways, from points where you normally shouldn’t, like sniping enemy’s cannisters on their backs or picking off small enemies from high ground, but it’s not terribly significant.

It’s been a while since I played it. My standards were lower back then. Isn’t it kind of funny how a ton of 6th gen games, even ones attempting a semi-serious theme like Beyond Good and Evil, went with a cartoony mascot type of theme? The Propaganda song is great though. A game like this, with its theme, definitely wouldn’t be constructed the way this one is. Games in this vein all had a very strong “telos” for absolutely every element in them which limited their depth. That’s part of what makes interactions feel puzzle-y rather than game-y. Like, every enemy is less like a combat encounter of risk and reward, and more like, follow this sequence and you won’t get hurt and the enemy will die. Like the enemies that shoot lasers at you that you need to push into electrical barriers. The pearl collectibles don’t really seem like an optional powerup currency nearly so much as something you need to get all of in order to complete the game, which feels limiting to me. They’re not measures of progress or optional challenges with positive feedback for completing them or something like a currency at all. It’s like, yeah, collectibles are nice, until you need to collect all of them to finish the game.

Probably the strongest thing that it can be complimented on is managing to create so many alternate enemy types and obstacles that are unique in function, but without a deep foundation, deep interactions with any of them individually, or interaction between the parts, it’s ultimately shallow overall. Much like Zelda, it spreads itself too thin trying to accomplish too much.

What do you think of Mark of the Ninja?

It is actually one of the best stealth games ever. I was working on a style video for it, but I never got around to finishing it. As I got better at the game, I kept trying to bypass every area without being seen, using only the bamboo dart. The final level is weird though, they put out some of the hardest level designs in the whole game, but give you a ton of grapple points that let you just skip all of them without effort, very high affordance.

It has a really great detection and investigation algorithm, and a large number of tools useful for distraction, including environmental features as well, like lights, gongs, and more. The levels simultaneously create challenges for you, and provide different options for progression. It’s really beautiful how the vision cones of the guards was made to be just barely small enough that you can jump over them in the dark without being seen. Many of the smaller options, like the hover, have a great feel to them.

The feedback about where enemies can see and how far sound travels and your last known location is great for understanding how the system works. I love the NG+ mode that obscures a ton of that information, because by that point you’re already familiar with how all the systems work, which is something I think other stealth games have something of a problem with.

I found that the noise maker tool was a bit overpowered, which is why I eventually did nearly all bamboo dart, because it draws enemies to me directly, it can stun them temporarily, and interact with certain environmental setpieces, as well as being easily usable without needing to focus. There’s a lot of depth to that simple bamboo dart in a way that is also challenging. I also overcomplicated many of my paths through the level for the sake of making it interesting.

One negative remark I’d like to make though is the game really encourages save scumming for perfect stealth. They make it really easy. That and the scoring system isn’t terribly interesting. Also many areas could stand to not give you easy ways out of confrontations, and I don’t like the sleeping gas upgrade of the smoke bomb, which moves it from a rather balanced distraction item to practically OP.

The DLC is great, as well as the DLC character, better level design than much of the main game and I always like nonlethal.

Here’s the rough cut of my best mark of the ninja tricks (I wish I paused a little less to consider my options):

I want to go back to the game some day and get more footage of the later areas.

What drew you to get undertale? looking at its trailer, it seems like an amalgamation of different small games mixed up to keep interest, and that made me suspicious of it being shallow, making me not get it.

A friend on facebook that I trust posted that he liked it and people should play it. He then told me to play it directly, and I said I would without looking up any information on the game, and with no further questions, besides knowing there’s a pacifist and genocide route and it was an RPG with shmuplike battles. I did this out of trust to him and general impulsiveness.

It is kinda shallow. All the fights are segregated from one another, and there isn’t much context bridging them. You’re allowed to heal very very frequently with save points, before every big fight. Healing items carry over, and you use money from fights to buy them.

Despite that, it’s a hard game, and the battles don’t have that element of repetition that I hate in games like super meat boy, down to the point where you’re memorizing every single input practically. Even the rhythm game boss integrates a large amount of randomness into her patterns. Many of the enemies have partially randomized patterns. However they still follow a very consistent pattern, and show you what is coming before it hits you, and always allow ways out, so it’s extremely fair in that way.

Beyond that, many of the shmup style avoidance minigames are rather unique. They mix it up a lot and as far as I know try a bunch of unique things. Like some enemies have blue or orange attacks, blue attacks can only be avoided by standing still, orange only by moving through them. The bosses each change the control style of your heart, like one is a platformer, rhythm game, actual shmup where you shoot, and a weird one where there are these 3 lines and you can jump between them instantly, but also move smoothly down each line, and one attack has you race up a bunch of lines to escape from an enemy at the bottom while projectiles are moving all over them. Also interestingly, in normal enemy encounters if you get multiple enemies at the same time, their bullet patterns get mixed together, making more complex bullet patterns.

In a genocide playthrough, you gotta sit through a lot of tedious enemy farming, but it has two bosses that are really intense, a ramped up version of the rhythm boss that is even crazier, and a final boss fight that is still kicking my ass.
I did a little rant on twitter about something I felt was lacking, like it felt like there was no dynamic really guiding when you should heal in battle, it didn’t make sense to heal right before a big attack, or during a lull, since both will drag the battle out for a turn longer, then I realized that because you take less damage when you’re at lower HP, that healing when you’re low effectively allows you to take more hits, because healing is for a static amount. So I learned a new game dynamic right there.

I gotta say that I like the game overall. It’s been really fun in a gameplay way, and it’s not completely shallow and repetitive, and it innovated. The room to grow as a player isn’t very big, but there’s some stuff there, much like an NES game.

What do you think of pokemon games? I imagine you don’t enjoy them but I’d like to hear your thoughts

I’ve played, Red, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, Platinum, Soul Silver, and White. I beat all of them except for White, where on victory road I realized I was so tired of playing Pokemon, and quit.

Pokemon Red was the first game I ever owned, though not the first one I ever played.
Of all the RPGs I’ve played, Pokemon is perhaps one of if not the most complex. You’re given a huge number of different characters you can capture, they all have different types, they all have different moves that themselves are of different types. Some of these moves are strong or weak against other types of pokemon, the moves get a boost if they’re of the same type as the pokemon using them. The Pokemon have 6 different stats that affect their moves, which are increased both through their level and EVs which are distributed by the pokemon they beat. Pokemon all have different abilities that occasionally affect combat. Pokemon can hold items that affect combat.

Downside, none of that shit matters for clearing the game. You don’t need to know the intricacies of the system, at best you need to memorize the elemental table. Most of beating the game is just grinding and picking pokemon that are super effective against enemies without letting enemies have anything super effective on them. Most enemies, especially in the newer games which are easier than the old ones, don’t carry 6 pokemon and tend to pick entirely the same type for their team. They also quit doing the end-game content like battle frontier or battle subway with tougher challenges that play to the competitive meta.

On the upshot, the multiplayer can tend to be rather complex, with team composition being rather tricky with all the crazy variables you gotta keep in mind. Down-side, EV training used to be bullshit (I heard it got better), and a lot of the battle system comes down to dumb luck. Chances of missing, chances of inflicting status conditions, chances of critical hit. Even though you can use a simulator these days to skip all the tedious pokemon training, competitive play is still pretty much a wash. I’m sure there’s more to it that I’m skimming over because honestly I never got involved in it, but it sounds like a pain to me. There is probably a fair amount of depth to it, but I don’t want to get involved enough in it to find out. In that regard it is probably the most successful RPG in the multiplayer department, and in comparison to most other JRPGs, it also succeeds in pure complexity/differentiation between game states, because even ones like Shin Megami Tensei have a ton of redundant spells that are just stronger elemental damage, where Pokemon made almost all of its moves unique from one another and a massive amount have additional effects. Shin Megami Tensei games succeed on the single-player level because they stress the strategic parts of their system a lot more and aren’t afraid of stacking the deck against the player, though I think they would fail if they ever had a multiplayer component.

Yeah I’ve always felt that they could really bring pokemon to the next level by adding a higher difficulty campaign that stresses the strategic part of the game. I was honestly expecting you to bash the game.

Hahaha, I love how they were asked about adding a hard mode by a fan at one interview, and the guy was just like, “What? But then nobody would be able to finish the game.”

You know I’m harsh on RPGs and kind of a hard-ass and cynic in general, but you also know I’m gonna tell the truth as I see it, and try my best to tell the whole story without distorting anything.

What did you mean by “Pokemon (lots of configurable parts, every monster you encounter is made from commonly accessible parts)”? From: https://critpoints.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/games-for-learning-about-depth

Every Pokemon has 6 stats, HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense. They have a level. They have EVs and IVs. A Nature. They have 1 or 2 elemental types. They have 1 of 1 to 3 abilities. They have a gender. They have a happiness level. They have 4 moves, each of which has an attack power, an accuracy level, a certain number of PP, an attack type, an elemental type, and sometimes an additional effect. These moves can be one of a pool of moves that they either learn at specific levels or can learn from a TM or HM.

These are all the things that can possibly affect the outcome of a battle in even the smallest way.

Beyond that, and unlike most other RPGs, every single enemy you will encounter for the rest of the game follows the above rules. There is no enemy in the entire game that you cannot possess and make an identical copy of.

In Shin Megami Tensei, a lot of wandering encounters follow those rules, but then the bosses don’t, and of course there aren’t nearly as many configurable attributes as above. In Final Fantasy, you can forget it.

Beyond having so many different attributes, isn’t Pokemon shallow because encounters are just about optimization, it’s just that there’s a lot of knowledge involved in it due to so many parts? I think you’ve said this yourself? so is it a good depth example in that it shows how *not* to do it?

I’ve covered pokemon before. Yes, the direct act of interaction during a battle is kind of shallow. It’s mostly about deckbuilding. The standard campaign doesn’t force you to get good. However it’s still an example you can learn from, because few other RPGs do the same thing pokemon does. Few other RPGs have characters that are that complicated.

Is MGS5 any good?

I’m enjoying it so far. Seems to have a ton of stealth tools to fuck around with. Missing maybe a couple that were in MGS3, like you can’t keep animals in your inventory anymore, or food. Doesn’t seem to have the porno mag anymore. The controls feel really nice, but the Dive move sucks when it could be awesome. I wish that you could press or hold space to make the dive into a roll back up into standing or crouching position, and that the dive could go over obstacles. In MGS3 you could roll over low bearing obstacles, like a railing, or through a window. The jump command is also a bit weird, working like a zelda jump, except there’s also a button press too. It seems like the complete product, tons of missions, tons of people to kidnap, you can analyze their skill rank before you kidnap them, you can shuffle people around in mother base to open up different upgrades. They recycle some buildings within the same area though, I’ve run into the same prison building in Afghanistan like 3 times. They have a really clear differentiation between the benefits of lethal and nonlethal play. If you play lethal, then the guy will never come back to haunt you, but he’s dead, which is a waste of resources. Nonlethal tends to be quieter up front, so you’re not calling in an alert, but you have to deal with enemies waking up later on, and your resources are more limited, so you need to aim well. You can run super fast and never get tired, which rocks. If there’s a sandstorm going on, or rain, then you can even do it really close to enemies. The cardboard box was expanded excellently, and rain will destroy your box. A lot of the technology doesn’t match up with the time period, and seems really inconsistent with the later games, but I’m honestly happy they did this, because its given us one of the most expansive toolkits in any stealth game. And HOLY CRAP my first encounter with the new metal gear was crazy.

I once hit a guy with a tranq in his chest, causing him and a buddy to come after me on the rooftop, as they were climbing up the ladder, the guy I hit passed out, and fell, knocking out the guy below him, so they were both unconscious. There’s some stylish stealth potential possible, and a ton of ground to do it across.

In another part I had two guards really close to one another in a tiny room, I knew that if I tried to take them out, at least one would see me, and no matter how many magazines I threw, they wouldn’t budge. So I threw a smoke grenade at the door to cover myself, then tossed a stun grenade inside the room, stunning them so I could knock them out, and it totally worked.

Other major criticism is that many things require real time to build, like base platforms which can take 1-2 hours to complete, and later upgrades start taking 18 minutes, maybe longer as I get further in. There isn’t a way to pay to make it go faster, I don’t know why this feature is there. Also the timer only counts ingame time, so you can’t quit and come back later.

Is MGS5 have as many options gameplay wise as the thief series? Are the levels as wide open?

It has way more, it’s from the series that had MGS3 after all. Thief 2 has like, Blackjack, Sword, Broadhead Arrow, Water Arrow, Fire Arrow, Moss arrow, Gas Arrow, Noisemaker Arrow, Rope Arrow, Vine Arrow, scouting orb, Flash Bomb, Explosive Mine, Flash Mine, Gas Mine, Explosive Charge, Frogbeast Egg. You can also jump to make a loud noise, or throw environmental items.

The Phantom Pain has, just to focus on stealth oriented items, The tranq gun (which will vary how long it takes to knock someone out based on where you hit), tranq sniper rifle, the cardboard box (which you can now pop out of to toss items or shoot, also stand up or crawl in), unlimited supply of bullet magazines for tossing as a distraction, C4 which can be remote detonated as a distraction, smoke, which gives visual cover and stuns people, stun grenades which actually stun people, sleeping gas grenades/mines, decoys that are remote activated (enemies will start to use these themselves), the stun arm which allows you to electrically shock targets, your various choices of camouflage as usual, stealth action camo, you can do melee attacks to take people down, knock your bionic arm to make noise drawing people, or grab them and drag them around before interrogating them, then knocking them out, you can hold enemies up much like in older games, even CQC them to take their weapon and hold them up, and of course the fulton recovery system for cleaning up bodies. There’s even a squirt gun you can unlock, which is uniquely useful for silently shorting out electronics equipment and putting out fire based lights.

There’s a lot of options and a lot of ways to use them. Missing a few of the older options like the porno mag, but it’s whatever. Also cool is that if you overuse certain types of approaches, the enemy will begin to deploy countermeasures, like putting helmets on the soldiers you headshot, gas masks if you use smoke, higher grade body armor, deploy decoys in their base, night vision goggles and flashlights if you attack at night a lot, and of course more powerful lethal weapons.

The levels are all part of a huge interconnected world, so for many areas you can infiltrate from a lot of angles. There are cliffs and walls and other terrain features limiting you in some ways, and the areas used for story related missions are frequently on the edges of the map where they can make it more linear using the cliff faces, they’re still a lot larger and more open than prior MGS games, with more enemies. Pretty sure more so than Thief games too.

Thoughts on the older castlevania games?

I’ve played Castlevania 1 and 3. I beat CV1, and I’m stuck on this river/waterfall part in CV3. What I’ve gotta say is, there is no game I’ve played that requires quite as much intense focus as CV3. The game is constantly throwing things at you as you go, and requiring you to commit extremely hard to every button press you make. You need to jump at exactly the right points, you need to jump at exactly the right angle, at the right times, or you will fall to your death. You need to whip exactly when enemies are at the right range. You need the right powerups, need to use them at the right times and absolutely not whip a candle and just grab whatever comes out, because you might replace your level 2 bottle with a level 1 cross, which sucks.

Classic Castlevania finds its depth through level arrangements that force you into enemies in ways that synergize with their movement and attack patterns, giving you slight chances to overcome them. It has enemies work together in ways that are tricky to deal with, often exposing you in the attempt to fight off one. It’s almost always throwing multiple things at you. Like in the early levels of Castlevania 3 you get medusa heads and platforms which flip if jumped on. You get stairs you need to walk down onto skeletons throwing bones up at you (stairs which lock your movement much like a ladder you cannot jump off of). Sure, you only get 3 jump paths, but the level layouts stress the difference between those 3 much more than most games with more flexible jump arcs. The distance of the jump is tuned to require you to walk partway off of blocks as you make the jump, then they’ll throw in a ghost following you around to make the jump even harder or more stressful. Many of the bosses and enemies are simple, but because you spend so long on each attack, it’s a strong commitment in order to deal damage. It’s a question of whether you can get that hit in or it’s unsafe. Because of the restrictions on movement, enemies frequently came at you from places that were difficult to hit, such as above your head or from below you, or in the case of medusa heads, both. One arrangement has an enemy on a platform one block lower than you, requiring you to find a space in its back and forth movement and sword thrusts to move down in order to attack it, but then they stick crumbling blocks at the point you need to drop down. The whole game loves to be an asshole in this way.

It is VERY MUCH like a 2d form of Dark Souls, and I don’t do the Dark Souls comparisons lightly, the games feature very similar characteristics, strong commitment to actions, aggressive level designs and enemy placements. Later games in the Castlevania series even got a nonlinear structure like Dark Souls, but unfortunately their level design had grown thin, and the concept of commitment wasn’t held with as much regard anymore. I feel like Order of Ecclesia was the game that finally got the whole newschool and old school castlevania formula together in one game

What do you think of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare?

It’s a proof of concept. That melee combat works and can be interesting or even unique in the first person.

I first heard of it when trailers were made for the standalone version demonstrating how swords are actually tracked in the engine, and how facing direction affected where the sword was.

A few years ago I picked it up for myself in a sale and was lucky enough to get a huge group of people to play with me, including Allosaurus Rex, Ryan Perez, Devi Ever, Mark Ceb, and some other people from GYP.

At first I didn’t really get what the fundamentals were, I was just swinging and more often than not I got butchered. The sword swings are all slow. You have 3 types, one that slashes across (most area coverage and active time), one overhead (most damage, weird hit angle), and one thrust (most range, least active time and area coverage). You can cancel a swing as a feint before it becomes active. Blocking with a weapon is time specific, but the swings are so slow you can usually time it fairly well. Shields let you block as long as you want, but they block your vision. Kicking pushes people around, and deals a ton of stamina damage and no recoil on shield. Almost all actions require stamina.

The obvious things I picked up were to either swing first to catch them before they caught you, or to wait their swing out and hit them while they were recovering. Or of course block and catch them during the stun inflicted on them. Kick acts sort of as a poor man’s throw option, much like Dark Souls, as do stamina limits in general. So to succeed, I found I needed to read when they were going to swing, and do it first,

Beyond that, I found feinting would fuck up people’s attempts to guard, so I would start a swing, feint, they’d time their guard for when I’d swing, but when the guard let up, I was coming in with another attack. People in shields couldn’t see what I was doing, and they would block in similar patterns. Of course the counter to someone feinting is just to swing at them, because you get a massive time advantage.

At other times, I would swing deliberately early, but in a position where they couldn’t punish it, just barely missing them, so that when they did try to punish, I would be able to punish them for trying.

Another trick is turning myself so I’d hit opponents with my sword sooner, then turning the camera the opposite way the sword was going to keep it pointed at them as long as possible, making the active time effectively longer. You could even slash around people’s guards, over their head, at their feet, etc. Turning helped hit people sooner for a bigger advantage on pre-empting their swings. Turning could give thrusts a wider area of coverage, and help overhanded swings hit over people’s blocks.

The different weapons swing at different speeds, so you’d need to swing sooner to beat out a faster weapon, or could afford to swing later if yours was faster. Archers with knives could get in close and fuck your shit up by continuing to interrupt your attacks if you weren’t careful.

Overall, it’s not the most complex system, but it’s unique.

What do you think of Skyward Sword?

Fucking FILLED with mini-cutscenes constantly fucking grabbing your control away.

I bought this at the same time as Dark Souls, and was playing both of them back and forth. I found myself playing Dark Souls more, and was like, “Why am I not playing skyward sword? I was majorly anticipating this?” Before release it seemed to me like they had seriously opened up the game, they added a sprint option, you could sprint up walls, you could finally slash using the Wiimote and not just as a replacement for the A button. You had a realtime weapon switch menu, you had a real outlet for all those rupees you’re constantly collecting in the form of upgrades and shield durability.

I didn’t get why I was only playing it for short periods of time and got tired of it so quickly. One of my chairs is still leaned over from the way I used to sit in it more to the left side while playing a lot of the slower paced games I used to play, including twilight princess. It was like a chore that I was waiting to be over with.

I read this piece by Tevis Thompson roughly when it was originally published: http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/ I thought it was ridiculous at the time, how could you say Zelda’s bad? However it planted the idea, and as I continued to play, I saw a strong parallel between the lock-and-key design and generally everything in zelda. Zelda doesn’t tend to provide you with anything like Beowolf in DMC3, you don’t get a new weapon like a dark souls zweihander. When you get a new item in a Zelda game, it is good for this one specific thing. When you see the hookshot symbol, that is the place you can hookshot. When you see a pile of sand, you can use the gust jar there. When you see an eye, shoot it with an arrow. It’s not a question of what’s your playstyle? What items do you prefer? What is this item good at doing versus other items? Nothing overlaps at all. Sure, everything has its own niche relative to everything else, but things have no interaction between each other, things have no multiple uses, and they do not allow you to obtain varied results through the application of skill or in differences of context.

Of course, when going back through Tevis Thompson’s work, I found he was really really pretentious. He intentionally uses descriptive adjectives or onomatopoeia in the place of describing things because he thinks it’s stylistic instead of annoying. Beside the point.

Skyward sword is probably the most rote and formulaic zelda ever made. It’s filled to the goddamn brim with tons and tons and tons of things that take away your control to tell you this unnecessary thing. Even the stamina system is limited by running out quickly and essentially forcing you on narrow paths to pick up regenerating fruits.

Watch this shit, look at HOW MANY GODDAMN CUTSCENES PLAY EVERY 5 MINUTES. I question how long this would be without the cutscenes. And that “secret” tune that plays so often it’s practically patronizing.

What do you like gameplay wise about Vanquish?

It’s a third person cover shooter that actually takes advantage of being on console to use third person motion well, which is what the controller excels at where mouse and keyboard fall behind. They put a lot of work into making it so every part of the system has some function, many of them interrelated. Similar to FEAR, you can toss grenades, go into slo-mo and detonate them in the air. Grenades can be tossed from a rocket dash to get a lower angle. You can cancel reload animations by switching weapons. They have the cigarette to distract enemies and give you a chance to act out of cover. In general the game is really tuned around letting good players get out of cover, making cover more a crutch for players that let themselves get hit. The dodge function is brilliant at this, especially because you can dodge boost for more distance and staying mostly invincible. They let you jump out of cover, go into slo-mo to shoot while rocket boosting. The game really wants you to play the offensive.

The enemy designs are excellent in the way they’re tremendously varied and have a number of attack options. Even the basic enemies sometimes go into suicide mode to try to detonate on top of you if they’re low on life, which is an amazing behavior. They have bigger enemies and smaller enemies, some can fly, some roll around, some stand up and have weak points behind them. They have all different bosses that attack in different ways. Some literally unfold into mobile cover. The final boss battle has all this cover that comes out of the ground, and changes over the fight. They actually have good boss battles for a shooter game, which is rare by itself.

Beyond that, they actually offer a fair range of weapons with differentiation between them. Sure, the assault rifle, heavy machine gun, and boost machine gun overlap each other, but you also get the Shotgun, which rips apart anything at close range, the LFE, which is a slow moving orb of death which kills any lesser enemy, and stuns greater ones, rocket launcher, big damage, low ammo, disc launcher, has its own melee attack which doesn’t overhead you, can dismember multiple enemies close together, lock-on laser, can hit a bunch of targets at the same time, sniper rifle, snipes, Laser cannon, draws from the suit power for big damage, anti-armor pistol, slow accurate, low ammo, big damage, and the two types of grenades.

My only gripe is that there isn’t more vertical play. You can’t jump (except with the wallboost trick), can’t fall off ledges, don’t really have any air physics. It doesn’t need it, but it would be nice. Also melee attacks completely drain the suit’s power, leaving you close to enemies without much way to defend yourself. Would have been nicer to drain like half, or all of it without overheating.

Thoughts on shadow of the colossus?

I could have sworn I did in the past, but I can’t find anything on my blog?
I’m gonna be brief, sorry. The primary success of SotC in my opinion is the balance between grip versus the bucking of the bull. It’s like a bullriding simulator, except you need to climb across the surface of the bull between its buckling. Beyond that, the movements of the colossi can propel you forwards by holding and releasing at the correct times. I think the weaker sections of the game are the more puzzle oriented colossi, like the one in the lake, or the two tiger shaped ones.

I believe the presence of the time attack mode means that the developers knew there were more elegant ways to beat the various Colossi. That’s why the time attack mode is in Braid for example. I think in general the presence of a time-attack mode usually means that a game is either race oriented, or the developers want to push the players in trying for more elegant solutions, because they know there are easy and high affordance, but slow, solutions, and more elegant low affordance solutions which are faster.

I think the game took one of the most developed parts of Ico, the climbing and pendulum physics, and applied them in a context where there is genuine risk and reward for those things, making a rather static and dull type of action into a dynamic one. You can jump over the bodies of the colossi to avoid them shaking you, you can advance a bit further at the risk of being thrown, you can stab them to change up their AI cycles. You can climb up slowly at the expense of the grip meter, while playing it safe should the colossi try to buck you. You can lure them around, or use their own attempts to throw you off in order to propel yourself higher. Occasionally on a first or second playthrough, you’ll need to find the next weak point while standing atop them, adding more sources of risk to the challenge. It’s possible to jump stab them too, and charging to stab itself is a risk/reward thing. How much can you risk to charge before inflicting damage. You want as much damage as possible, but the whole time you charge you’re also losing grip, and the colossi could shake any moment. The grip jump works the same way.

A friend, Hamish Todd, wrote this for Kotaku (weird choice, I know, he said he wanted to get the information out there): http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/04/its-the-gameplay-stupid-shadow-of-the-colossus/

It helps show one of the elegant solutions the creators were probably intentionally pursuing with the game, and at minimum it’s something that can be learned from. Avion’s attempts to buck you by spinning in the air can itself be used as an opportunity to go from wing to wing because they’re so close together in that moment.
In short, cool game. Great experiment in use of physics to create risk and reward systems. Weird that it would come from the guys who made Ico.