Okay, I know I always try to go for something "witty" in my blog titles, but I don't even know how that is what I came up with for this. I'm kinda tempted to wait until after I've played a bunch of Watch_Dogs before writing another blog, so I have more than one game to work with. But as tempted as I am, I think Transistor is due a blog dedicated to itself, because I think it deserves words written about both the game part of the game, and the not game part of the game. You know, the part where people talk and the plot is advanced. Or, "story," as some people call it.
Having finished the game, and gotten maybe 40% of the way into a new game plus (I had wanted to finished it a second time before writing this, but playing with all the Limiters on is CRAZY (but more on that later)), I feel confident in saying that there are aspects of this game that I absolutely love, and some other things about it that I don't think work as well as they could. I'll start with the part I think works the least well, the story.
This game drops you in without telling you anything, and slowly reveals things about the story as the game continues, while also moving the story forward from the point where it begins. That's fine, I know I've done similar things in my writing, but the issue I have is that I don't think the game gives all the answers that I think it should. I don't think that every story ever made has to share every last detail of everything that has happened in it. But there's a fine line between leaving unanswered questions and feeling unsatisfying. I admit that it is possible that finishing the game in Recursion Mode (new game plus) gives more answers, but based on what I've played so far, there aren't any significant story differences between that and playing it the first time.
I know there are people out there that will talk up the benefits of not knowing being better than knowing (or whatever nonsense it is that JJ Abrams goes on about). It's like that new Godzilla movie. There's a ton of buildup to Godzilla appearing, which is fine, but it takes it too far. You wait half the movie before Godzilla shows up (not counting a few glimpses in the opening credits), and then it says, "Cool, now you've got to wait before you see him again."
That last paragraph doesn't make any sense. I should probably just delete it, but I'm not going to, because Godzilla. I did actually like that movie a lot, but in a, "This is good, but if the next one is another movie done in exactly this style, with these same actors, then that's going to be a complete and utter bummer, because the best actors in this movie aren't in it nearly enough, and there is nowhere near enough Godzilla."
The point I was trying to make is that Transistor goes too far in the not giving answers direction, and I was trying to give an example from popular culture to help better make my point. But I can't really say much more without getting into spoilers, of either Transistor or Godzilla, and I don't want to do that for either of them here. So I'm just going to move on, after stopping for just a moment to say that I like the voice acting in Transistor.
Then there's the game play. Before watching the Quick Look, I knew absolutely nothing about the way this game played, so I just figured that it would play like Bastion. And, in a way, it does kinda play like a clunky version of Bastion, at least when played in real time. But unlike Bastion, which is very fast and responsive, most of the abilities (or Functions) in Transistor are slow and have a lot of down time between attacks. But that's because the game isn't meant to be played that way, at least not most of the time.
Instead, you're supposed to pause the game and plan out attacks. Honestly, strategy type games aren't really the sort of thing that I usually get into, whether they're turn based, or real time. With "traditional" strategy games that I've tried playing in the past, like Advance Wars, or XCOM Enemy Unknown, I enjoy it at first, but grow to hate the game over time because I'm so bad at it. But there's a few things about Transistor that address all of the issues that I've had with more strategy focused "strategy" games in the past.
The first one is that, unless you're using the dog Function, there's only one character to control. Rather than a whole army, or unit of dudes, I only have to worry about one person. And even with the dog power, if they die, then I just summon more, it's not like I "have" to reload a save like I would if I lost someone in XCOM. It's so much easier to only have to focus on one person that it makes a dummy like me able to get through the game without too much trouble at all.
Similarly, the fact that all the battles take place in small zones, and there's no fog of war makes it much easier to keep track of everything. Not as easy as it should be, however. While the battle zones are small, they're usually big enough that not all of it can fit on the screen at once, and there's no way to zoom out the camera. Normally that would be fine, but I had more than a few instances where I couldn't see where to aim at an enemy because it was hidden behind the interface at the bottom of the screen. I get not wanting to show everything to the player, but not being able to aim properly because of HUD issues is something that shouldn't be in a game as well polished as this one is. But it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, and I don't think I ever got killed over it.
Another thing that sets it apart is that it never (or rather, rarely) forces you into use the time stop and plan your Turn out stuff. Unless you're waiting for the post Turn cool down to end, you're always able to just hit a button and use whatever Function it is that you have equipped. And there's very little in the way of dice rolls in this aspect of the game (at least so far as I can tell), so it's not like XCOM where a guy can miss with a shotgun from eight feet away. If you miss, it's probably your own fault, and that's a much better way to make a game than to have random chance force misses onto you, at least for this game.
Speaking of Functions, the level of customization that this game has in the Functions is crazy. There's four slots, one per button, each of those has two augment slots, and there's four passive ability slots. You don't start with all of those, because of course this game has RPG elements (like everything else), and what you can equip is dependent on available memory. But beyond that, the only restriction is that you can't augment the same function with twin functions. In other words, you can't augment the Breach Function with two Crash Functions. All of the Functions have different effects. Crash is a simple attack when used in a main slot, but as an augment, it confers a stun bonus. But as a passive skill, it makes you immune to being stunned or slowed. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but there's a pretty decent number of Functions in the game, and a pretty decent variety in them. There's regular melee attacks, projectile attacks, debuffs, status effects, one that can summon a dog, and even a good old fashioned dash, just for good measure.
The combat has way more depth to it than I expected from Supergiant Games, not because I doubt their skill, but because they're such a small team. Bastion was a really fun game, but also quite "simple" when compared to this. I know they acquired more people since Bastion, but even so, the depth to this game is nuts. Especially given how balanced most of it feels. Aside from being able to stun lock most enemies (something I never got into until trying to get the Trophy for completing five battles with all ten Limiters on), I haven't really stumbled onto anything that feels like it breaks the balance they were going for. Obviously some things work better on certain enemies than others, but for the most part, it's balanced, and it's fun.
(And then there's the Limiters, which make the game harder and give bonus XP for having them on. There's a couple that I don't think are very rough, but there are some REALLY rough ones. That Trophy for beating five battles with all ten on is quite hard. For all I know, maybe there is one set of Functions that is completely broken, and I just haven't found it yet, but I don't know.)
Although, one of the problems that this sort of design runs into is when players get into a groove of using the same abilities they like, and not changing things up as they get deeper into the game, despite unlocking new Functions. But they managed to create a couple systems that encourage, or in one case, force players to vary things up.
The encouragement comes in the form of the challenge rooms in the game. Rather than letting you go into them with whatever you currently have equipped, the game either forces you to use a set of Functions, or lets you choose from a much smaller pool of them. And as you might expect, being thrown into rooms of enemies without being able to have full control over the Functions you have equipped forces you to think and adapt on the fly, which is really fun. There's tons of combos and things that I probably would have never tried on my own, so having this in the game was a brilliant move on their part.
And the forcing comes in the form of how this game punishes "death." Rather than instantly dying upon health reaching zero, under normal circumstances, Transistor goes into Emergency Turn mode. This gives you a chance to do some extra damage, or run away before you die. And if you can avoid being hit until the Turn cool down ends, the game will go into Emergency Turn again the next time you get hit. BUT, if you get hit during that cool down, the game disables one of your Functions, and restores full health (but one of the Limiters disables Emergency Turn, and goes straight into disabling a Function). And you don't regain access to that Function until you've been to a couple Access Points, which is where you can equip the various Functions and Limiters. It's not until you've lost all your active Functions that the game goes into game over, though if you're relying on a certain one, you might want to reload anyway. At least that's what I've been doing with all the Limiters on, because MAN, the game gets hard with all the Limiters on.
Hm...Is there anything else that I want to say about the game play? The frame rate is mostly stable, but I have noticed a little bit of choppiness when I use a bunch of Functions in quick succession that have a lot of effects and stuff Bouncing from enemy to enemy in Recursion Mode, when there's a lot more enemies on screen than there would have been the first time through. But for the most part, like I said, it runs fine on PS4. But the game does have this weird thing where the fans in the PS4 get really load in menus, like at Access Points. I don't really know why, either. I mean, this game looks absolutely beautiful, but it's not pushing the PS4 hardware. I'm not really complaining, or worried that Transistor is going to destroy my PS4, but it's weird either way.
I already mentioned that the game is beautiful, especially on my big TV. I know that I'm a sucker for colored lighting, and similar things, but man, it just looks gorgeous. These screen shots don't do it justice either. At least not on my laptop's screen, because the colors don't look nearly as good as they do on my TV, but I know you don't want to read my gushing over my TV's colors (again), so I'll stop.
And I think that's everything that I have to say about Transistor. If you haven't played it, you should.
I don't think I have anything else to say about anything else.... Not much happened over Memorial Day weekend. I've seen a few movies, like Godzilla, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. I liked the new X-Men, but First Class is still my favorite, largely because it had a plot more focused on the Cold War, and it had more Michael Fassbender than this movie did. That said, I'd say it's my second favorite X-Men movie, so you should see it if you like X-Men stuff. Or even if you don't, it's still a good movie.
I haven't made a ton of forward progress on my book, but I'm still chugging away on it. I have not put as much work into my new, secret project as I had wanted to, but hopefully I will soon. That's a smaller thing that I can get off the ground more quickly, and hopefully you guys will like it once I do. I don't want to spoil what it is, but I will say it's another writing focused thing, because that's about all I'm good at doing.
I'm thinking about doing some live streaming from my PS4. Would you guys watch that? I'm not going to make promises, mind you. I don't know if my internet upload speed is fast enough, and I don't know about providing commentary over it. For one thing, I can't stand the sound of my voice, at least not any time that I've heard it recorded and then played back through something, so I don't think my talking over it would add to people's enjoyment. And if I don't comment over it, what's the point of live streaming, when I could just edit the best parts into a YouTube video? Also, I do all my video game playing in the living room of my house, and I don't want to be talking to myself out loud when my dad is around, because when he is, he'd be able to hear everything I'd say. So if I do stream, it'd have to be at weird times when he was out working, or something.
Anyway, that might happen, it might not. If it does, I'll tweet a link to it, and you can watch if you want. Or not, it'll just be me doing dumb stuff in Watch_Dogs or Ground Zeroes, probably.
That's it! I'm going to go get Watch_Dogs right now, so look out for me tweeting screen shots from it, and maybe a live stream? As usual, I didn't proof read any of this, so beawre of tpyos.
Praise the Sun! \o/
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