I haven't done a proper PS+ Catch Up in a while, and I'm sorry for that. Hasn't stopped me from writing about PS+ stuff. Well, really just The Swapper, but that was THE SWAPPER. You should play that game. Anyway, I'm still not completely caught up on everything PS+, and I don't know that I ever will, really. Not unless I feel the desire to play several PS3 ports of PS2 Hitman games. Which, I'm sure they're fine games, I just don't feel like playing them for the first time in the year 2015. I still intend to play the Deadly Premonition Director's Cut. Someday...
inFAMOUS: First Light.
First Light is a completely competent small game built on the foundation that is the core mechanics and systems from Second Son. It's fun, it looks nice, and it has a better protagonist than Second Son did. Beyond that, there really isn't a whole lot to say about it that wouldn't just be retreading what I had to say about Second Son last year.
I was able to finish it, and collect all the collectibles in a day. I didn't 100%, because there were a bunch of combat challenge rooms that I didn't do, and Trophies for various combat related things that I didn't get. But I am glad all that filler I don't want to play is in the game, because everyone knows that if it isn't a small independently developed game, all games have to have at least eight hours of content in them. That's just science.
Yes, that was a reference to the (as of this writing) recent hubbub about The Order's length. For all I know there may be more concrete info about that game and its length by the time I actually publish this, but I don't care. If they wanted to make a five hour game, that's fine. If you want to play full price for that, that's fine. If you don't (I don't), that's fine too. Don't put up a stink about it, don't go arguing on forums. Just let people play what they want to, and buy what they want to. It's not worth fighting over. Not unless the game is secretly incredibly racist, or something. Then feel free to put up a stink about it.
And while I'm using First Light as a platform to talk about other things, let's talk about minimaps. I've been meaning for a long time to write up something good and proper about them (and I still might), but First Light made me remember that I really don't like them. They're bad design. They're an excuse to not figure out ways to give the player information in the environment that the player needs. Like knowing where to go.
First Light is one of those games where I spent a large chunk of it either glancing at the minimap, or just staring at it as I navigated through the environment. Granted, part of that is on me, for my brain being the sort that wants to keep looking at the map if I don't have a big glowing icon in the world showing me where to go, but I still don't like it. I think the game would have been better if it showed stuff like your objective in the world as an icon, or at least gave the option to do so.
I think this minimap focused design is especially crazy in this modern era where games looks as good as they do. A ton of time and effort was put into creating the city in this game. Tons of time was put into making the lighting look as good as it does, and all the other details in everything. And to think that they then made a game that you have to spent a significant chunk of your time looking at a tiny circle in the corner of the screen, instead of this beautiful world that they crafted? That's ridiculous. And I hope that more games try to move away from minimaps in the future. Not necessarily get rid of them completely, but at least focus away from them. Anyway, I might try to write up a proper long/well written thing about minimaps, might not. I dunno. We'll see.
The only other thing I think worth mentioning about First Light is that Sucker Punch still needs to hire some new audio people. The game is just too damn quiet. Not in combat, the game has an adequate sound design for that. It's the ambient noise, or rather, the lack thereof. The game takes place in Seattle, which is a bustling city. I know that achieving one to one realism is impossible, and not the goal of the game, but they basically achieved one to none realism with regard to ambient city noise. The city is quiet! Hell, the tiny town in the middle of nowhere Massachusetts where I live is louder than the Seattle in this game. And it was exactly the same in Second Son too. Hopefully whatever game they make next (inFAMOUS III: Electric Boogaloo because Cole is back because we somehow think that'll help improve sales) will have some better ambient sound.
Oh, another issue I have with the game, and it's an issue I've had with other games, is the discrepancy between in cut-scene facial animations, and in game facial animations. Facial animation is something I think about a lot with regard to video game. Partly because I still think LA Noire has done it better than every game since, but partly because poor facial animation is one of the fastest ways to ruin immersion in a game for me. But something that really irks me about games like First Light is that the facial animation is fantastic in the cut-scenes (I believe it was all facial scanned (or whatever), but I can't say for sure), but looks lousy/isn't there in game. I understand that there are reasons for things like this. Things like some games that just straight up use better character models for cut-scenes because the cut-scenes will look nicer. Or maybe it's for the frame rate, or for any one of a myriad of other reasons.
Doesn't change the fact that when the character is talking while I am controlling her, and her mouth is either not moving at all, or just barely moving, it takes me out of the experience. I've had the same thoughts while I've been playing The Last of Us Remastered, actually. But it's more noticeable in The Last of Us because there's so much more in game dialog than in First Light. And it's a bummer, because it just reminds me of the old days when games would have all pre-rendered cut-scenes that look WAY better than the actual game, which only makes the game itself look worse.
And when I say the old days, I mean last year because I just remembered Advanced Warfare did that too. And The Last of Us does it too. Bit less noticeable in the Remastered version because the in game does stuff look a bit more on par with the non-real-time-in-game cut-scenes. I want to say I read that they made the cut-scene character models the in game ones, but I obviously didn't take the time to fact check that, so I'll just move on. If I want to actually write about The Last of Us Remastered, it'll be after I finish it (and the DLC which I've never played, remastered or otherwise), and it'll be a longer, more looking back on thing. Maybe.
That's all I have to say about First Light, and all I have to say about The Last of Us Remastered for now. First Light is fun, and worth playing if you enjoy the inFAMOUS brand of open world combat and running up buildings. And like I said, it's short, so it's good if you want a bite sized chunk of inFAMOUS. I wouldn't be upset at all if more games used this model of putting out a smaller, lower priced game that uses a lot of the same mechanics of the core game. Far Cry 3 did it with Blood Dragon. I feel like Blood Dragon was maybe a better example of this, because that was a unique island, and it had a lot more unique art assets not in Far Cry 3 (also it's a better game overall than First Blood, but that's neither here nor there). You could say that Ground Zeroes was the same thing, only it came out before the main game.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that short games are fine, facial animation should be more consistent with cut-scenes, and Sucker Punch is run by people who don't like sound.
Apotheon.
Apotheon is an interesting game. For one thing, I don't know that I had ever even heard of it before it was announced as a PS+ game. Maybe amongst a list of other games coming to PS4 during some Sony marketing trailer at one of their events, or something. But it's not something that I remembered existing. I ended up liking a lot about the game, despite some design issues, and a lot more technical issues than I was expecting.
But I'll cover the stuff I liked first. The most striking thing about the game is the art. It's a game set in ancient (mythological) Greece, and the entire game looks like ancient Greek vases. It's a look that I've never seen any other games attempt, it's pulled off absolutely perfectly from start to end, if fits the game, its design, and tone perfectly, and it gives the game a unique look. Amongst games, at least, because as I said, it's based on a historical art style. Everything animates in the intentionally stilted way that you would expect people and creatures drawn in that style would. About the only thing I wish the game had tried would be to have some section of it actually set on a vase, with the game wrapping around it in 3D. Not for the whole game, that wouldn't have been fun for more than a few minutes, but it would have been neat. Either way, the art is fantastic, and I wish more games would try to do art styles that look like no other games out there. Not just ape this one, I don't want Greek case looking games to be the new pixel platformer, but I wouldn't be opposed to more games aping the art styles of antiquity.
Or if these developers made an ancient Egypt game that looks like hieroglyphics/whatever that ancient Egyptian art style is called; you know what I'm talking about. I'd play that game.
The game itself is pretty interesting too. It's a sort of Metroidvania style game with Dark Soulsian combat. Right shoulder buttons are mapped to the right arm (which has weapons or items), and the left shoulder buttons are mapped to the left arm (which has a shield or a torch, for dark areas). There's a stamina meter that depletes upon attacking (but not jumping or rolling), and a variety of upgrades and abilities that unlock throughout the game. Weapons and shields degrade over time, and a lot faster than in most games. But the game also doles out new ones so quickly that I never found myself without ample weapons, both melee and projectile. You can actually throw any weapon, but I wouldn't really recommend doing that with some of the rarer ones, in case you lose it.
The way this game handles difficulty is interesting as well. Rather than just making the enemies have more health, and do more damage, upping the difficulty affects things like enemies being able to knock you out of animations by attacking you, and stamina usage. I forget exactly what it is off hand, but I remember thinking it was cool, and better than the way more games handle difficulty. Not that I actually tried playing on that difficulty, because I was fine just cruising through the game wrecking stuff up.
Speaking of which, this game also has elements from games like Grand Theft Auto that I wasn't expecting. In between the various zones of the game (which can be tackled in a fairly nonlinear order), there are a couple towns to run around in. There's shops, and some side areas with hidden goodies and some side quest type things. These areas are populated by civilians, and guards, and the game just lets you kill any of them, and destroy all sorts of personal property if you want to break stuff for money and crafting items. But if a guard sees you, they confront you, and demand that you pay a fine (20 gold, which is super cheap). Or you can just fight back, which at least on the default difficulty, never really resulted in much of a challenge. So I ended up playing the game as kind of a psychopath that I usually don't play in games like this.
Actually, now that I think about it, that system is a lot more like something you'd see in a game like Fable than GTA. My mind just went straight to GTA when I was playing the game, for whatever reason. It's not like Molyneux has been in the news lately or anything. Nah, I'm not going to get into that, I actually have more things to say about this game.
The problem the game runs into in terms of game design is that every area is basically the same thing. You go to either deal with a god/goddess, or solve a problem for that god/goddess (though most of them ended up getting murdered God of War style (more on that in a bit)), which results in being told to do three or four things in an environment. Which means running to each arrow and doing whatever that is. Not really much in the way of puzzle solving, though there are a couple areas later on (one of which was optional) that do require a fair amount of that. And it's kinda just lazy game design, and not to get back to game length, but it feels like padding. Not that I mind padding, but exploring this game wasn't really fun enough on its own to justify it. The platforming is fine in this game, but it's kinda clunky, and not as fun as the combat.
That said, it's still a fun game, and I still enjoyed playing it...at least while it was working properly. For whatever reason, this game has kind of a lot of frame rate problems, and crashed. A lot. I lost count of the number of times it crashed, but I'd guess it was around ten or so (I lost track after four because it crashed several times in short succession). And for a game that is not a sprawling open world game like a Skyrim, or a Fallout 3, that's not really acceptable. The slow down, which happened a lot is easier to forgive, but I can't really let this game slide with the number of times it crashed. Especially when it crashed immediately after I beat the second to last boss in the game. Granted, since I already knew the "trick" to that boss, I was able to beat him more quickly the second time, and I saved immediately after, but that's still a bummer.
It did, however, give me a newfound admiration for the fact that when games crash on the PS4, it doesn't always hard lock the console like older systems did. I might have given up on the game if I was playing on PS3, and had to get up and manually restart the console every time it crashed. I'm willing to forgive that in hundred hour epics like Fallout 3, but not in a ten hour sidescroller I downloaded because it was free. At least not in this one.
So, that kinda leaves me in a weird spot. I want to recommend the game, because I did enjoy a whole lot of it, and it is free. And really, for the price of free, you should absolutely at least redeem the game in case you want to play it in the future. But maybe look into if the developers have said anything about trying to fix the frame rate, and the number of times the game crashes before you play it. It's a good game that's worth playing...if it works. I don't know how much the game costs otherwise, and I assume there's also a PC version that is probably better optimized (insert joke about underpowered consoles here). I dunno!
Oh, yeah, the story. Like all modern stories about ancient Greece (by which I mean God of War and that Clash of the Titans remake I saw), it's basically just about a mortal wronged by the gods who goes on a quest to stop the gods, or save his village, or whatever. The story is basically the same as God of War, just with a silent protagonist who is literally not a character at all, unlike Kratos. Despite what people say, Kratos actually had a decent story arc if you look at the GoW series as a whole, or at least the main three numbered games. Bit spoilery for those games, but Kratos ends up being a tragic figure that is the cause of his own downfall, but realizes it at the end, and I appreciated that because it felt very Greek to me.
Apotheon's story doesn't really feel Greek to me. You just play as a guy that starts out trying to save his village, but ends up murdering his way up Mount Olympus. It's the sort of story that is adequately well told, and adequately well voiced, but doesn't really do anything super interesting or noteworthy. About the only thing it does that I think is worth mentioning is that it doesn't use Hades as a bad guy, or even a boss fight. That happens at a lot in modern media about ancient Greece, and I'm glad that this game didn't, because he was actually pretty chill compared to a lot of the other gods. At least he didn't go around raping people like some of them (cough, Zeus, cough) did. (At least I don't think so, my Greek mythology knowledge is VERY rusty compared to what it used to be, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
Speaking of, I do think this game handles that aspect of ancient Greece well enough. It doesn't really touch upon it aside from a few comments from Hera about Zeus, or some nymph that turned into a tree because Apollo was after her, but it at least acknowledges that aspect of Greek mythology, which is more than most things do. Game has a lot of casual nudity in it too (male and female), which I also like because that's also pretty Greek.
And I think that's everything I have to say about Apotheon. Interesting game. I'll definitely keep my eye on whatever these developers do next, because I feel like they were very close to making a truly great game. If things had fallen into place just a little bit better, and if the game didn't have so many technical issues, it could have been something special. It's the sort of game that makes me think they could achieve something like that next time around. And I hope that they do.
Rogue Legacy.
Rogue Legacy is a fun game. It's also a hard game that I've not yet finished, not yet come close to finishing, and might not ever finish it. But I'm okay with that. I've gotten a lot of fun out of it, and I think I still have a lot of fun left to get out of it. But it's also hard and I'm really terrible at it. Not that I'm surprised, I tend to be bad at a lot of these procedurally generated permadeath games that have aspects that are not unlike that old game but the core game play is nothing like that old game so people like myself get hung up on that stupid name because semantics but whatever who cares.
Rogue Legacy's a side scroller, all the areas are different, and when you die you keep your gold which you can use to buy upgrades. That's about it. Simple, right? It is, which is why I end up feeling bad after playing the game for an hour and a half or so at a time. Because while I do manage to make enough gold for an upgrade enough of the time that my runs aren't completely fruitless, I die a lot. More than I feel like I should be based on the amount of damage I'm doing to the enemies. I feel like most people would have been able to beat more than one of the bosses by the point I'm at in terms of upgrades. I haven't even made it to any of the bosses after the giant eyeball (which I did beat).
There really isn't a whole lot of other things to talk about the game. I like a lot of things about it, to be sure. I like that the game has all sorts of weird traits that potential characters can have, some of which really screw with the game. I also like that there's a gay trait that has literally no impact on how you play the game. That makes the LGBT in me happy. I do, however, think it's a bit silly that the ladies in the game have bows in the hair Ms. Pac-man style, but some of them are also bearded, and I think that makes up for it. Also, for whatever reason, I feel like the game has given me way more ladies to play as, because I've definitely picked ladies way more often over the dudes.
I guess I should explain how death works in this game, for those that haven't played it. When you die, you choose an heir from one of three choices. There's a variety of different classes, and different traits that can either help you, or hurt you. A character with peripheral artery disease (PAD) won't set off spike traps, for example. But that same character might also have a trait that means the character can't tell people apart, which means the next time you die, you won't know any info about the three heirs the game presents to you, so you literally have to make a blind pick. They can also be male or female, but that only changes the game cosmetically, with slight appearance changes, and a different voice for the character making attack grunts and stuff.
Upgrades are really significant and have a lot of impact, which I like. Or, at least some of them are. For example, I have some runes equipped that let me triple jump, glide in the air for a second, and then air dash once. And I have another rune that drains health and mana on each kill. Those are all cool. There's also other upgrades that do things like slightly increase health, mana, attack damage, armor, etc. And there's new classes to unlock, and upgraded versions of classes that have a special ability, like a short range teleport, turning invisible, or turning on a light on a mining hat (or showing the locations of chests and other things on the map, if you want something that actually improves the Spelunker/Spelunketee class).
But now I think I've actually said everything I need to say about the game. Well, I'll say that I like the look of the game, and the music. That's actually everything I have to say. Other than that I will keep playing it, and hopefully beat it one day. If I do, I'll make sure to mention it in a blog. I eventually beat Spelunky, so I can beat this game too! :D
Anything Else?
Like I said before, I have been playing The Last of Us Remastered, thanks to the boundless kindness of @yummylee. But I've played and written about the PS3 version, so I don't know that "it looks better and the frame rate is nice" is something I can stretch into more than a few sentences. I'll probably have something to say about the DLC that was included with the Remastered version, once I get around to playing that.
I also bought a few things last weekend during the Flash Sale on PSN. I got Rayman Legends, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (including the "season pass," because that was only $3 more, despite my having no idea what that season pass includes), and I bought Divekick again, because it was only $4. You can thank me later, Dave Lang.
Eh, whatever, I like Divekick a lot, and $4 isn't that much to ask in the grand scheme of things, even if I think the PS4 version should have been cross buy with the PS3 one like the Vita version is. I also understand that the PS4 version came a long time after, and the added work probably justifies charging for it again. Either way, now I can fulfill my goal of having both the latest version of Divekick, and an older version on my PS3 where classic The Baz and classic S-Kill are intact. Even if I actually enjoy new S-Kill more. He's easier to play without every jump being a teleport.
I'll have stuff to write about the other two games I bought. I really liked Rayman Origins (which I think I 100%'d), and the previous Lara Croft game, so I suspect I'll enjoy these ones as well. But that's it for now! I hope you enjoyed this blog!
Oh, one last thing. I might (might) be branching out and doing some more, not video game related writing on the internet. Just for fun stuff, don't go thinking I got a job writing online (I wish!). But I've been feeling the creative writing itch, because I haven't really worked on anything like that seriously since last July (when I last put a lot of work into my third novel). And I might be posting short stories or something, I dunno. Probably not here, and definitely not to the forums, because that's not what GB is about. Anyway, if I do, I'll try to keep everyone informed, in case someone wants to check that out.
But that's it! Thanks again! Bye!
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