I've spoken frequently about my struggles with Caravella Syndrome, that pervasive need to complete a game thoroughly before I feel OK to move on, but while there's the obvious time vampire issues and endless scavenger hunt busywork that comes from such an obsessive approach, what is less known to normies is the dispiriting "screw you, completionist" ending that pops up every so often in a game. Granted, it's a lot rarer than the "holy shit, you got 100%? Here's a present for you, weirdo" ending, but there are times when those of my completionist persuasion can feel a little... prejudiced against. Just a little.
The "screw you, completionist" ending doesn't actually make me feel bad about my situation. On the contrary, the dressing down feels a lot like another reward in terms of its rarity and the fact that the developers are choosing to engage with that particular segment of their audience, albeit in a somewhat rude manner. I've only seen it happen in a handful of games, and all of those were of a generally meta or just plain weird sensibility already. I want to talk a little bit about a few examples, just to illustrate what I'm describing here, but I realize that talking about endings will involve some spoilers so... I'll cover each game in a separate paragraph and mention which game it is right at the offset, so you can feel free to skip past it if you'd prefer. I'll have my usual links and weekly game discussion at the end, if you just want to start from there.
Undertale's a good example, since it's a game a lot of people are familiar with. The hypothetical completionist in this case would want to see what all three endings entail: one of which is the default ending, unavoidable in the first playthrough due to a certain late-game fight which you can't talk your way out of. The path to the best ending is unlocked immediately after, and it only takes a few hours from the player's last save to explore the additional content and see how the game is supposed to conclude. However, there's also a third ending that involves playing the game "wrong" and requires a whole lot of grinding and... well, let's say some reprehensible actions. The game attempts to persuade you several times to not look for this extra content, despite including three unique bosses and a completely different story. It really makes you suffer too; those bosses aren't easy (well, two of them aren't) and the ending leads to catastrophic consequences that actually carry over to any subsequent playthroughs. You're essentially becoming a monster and irrevocably ruining the game (for that install, anyway) just for the sake of being the sort of player who has to see everything, and the game's quick to call you out on your completionist bullshit. Their sermonizing isn't necessarily unwarranted, but at the same time it's an interesting way to treat a player who is simply eager to see everything a game has to offer without considering what their actions are doing to the pixels and polygons whose virtual lives they're destroying.
Pony Island has you fight a three-phase superboss if you happen to find all its collectibles, many of which are very carefully hidden. You'd think this boss would be punishing you for obviously referring to a walkthrough to find the collectibles, but nope. He's more aggrieved by the fact that you stuck around to collect arbitrary tickets than free him; at the conclusion of the game's story, he helps you escape the Hellish arcade you have been trapped in, but then implores you to rescue him in turn by uninstalling the game. That you refused to do so for the sake of collectibles is enough motivation for him to attack you, though he's still mostly dispassionate about it. It feels like he's more disappointed in you for choosing a collectathon side-mission over fulfilling his simple, earnest request. After the boss is done, he spites you further by refusing to give you the satisfaction of a secret boss victory or anything like a true ending. Both the player and the boss just sit there, staring at each other, until the player finally quits the program and acquiesces to the guy's original appeal for freedom. Can't help but feel a little sheepish about it, honestly.
Drakengard is the last I want to approach: a typically Cavia game that has a lot of original ideas and a particularly insane story, but some mechanically weak Musou-style slash-'em-up gameplay that is not so much enjoyed as tolerated if you wanted to see where the story goes. Drakengard's endings get progressively more troll-y, both in how they play out and the requirements necessary to reach them. The first ending, which is both the most thematically apt and "happiest" ending, comes naturally after beating the game's last mission. Successive endings require additional work, from completing side-quest chains to finding every single one of the game's many weapons, unlocked through various arcane requirements such as killing specific groups of enemies in a level or waiting for the clock to run out before they appear. It's the fourth and fifth endings where the game loses its damn mind, with the arrival of invincible eldritch space babies who devour almost the entire cast. The fifth ending in particular infamously sends its heroes through dimensions to appear in modern day Tokyo, where they enter a protracted rhythm game-based boss fight with the leader of the interdimensional monsters shortly before they're shot down by Japanese fighter jets. They die, humanity dies (as we find out in Nier, which inexplicably makes this final ending canon), and the player has nothing to show for hours of grinding and obnoxious gameplay besides a thoroughly downer ending and a "thank you for playing" placard. Now that's how you give completionists the metaphorical middle finger.
Anyway, while I'm not getting yelled at by games for trying to earn that elusive 100% score, I also write occasionally. Here's this week's musings:
- The Top Shelf broke its item limit this week, moving from five games to ten. We had a number of welcome additions to the shelf - Wild Arms 3 and Kingdom Hearts join Jak and Daxter as permanent fixtures in my "best of" shortlist - and managed to squeeze an extra five games through to the second round deliberations. Unfortunately, unless I get my busted PC fixed any time soon, I may have to take a brief sojourn on the feature until I can recover my notes. If all goes well, though, we should see the next ten games on Tuesday as usual.
- The Indie Game of the Week this week was the aforementioned Pony Island: an ostensible action game which is more like a clever meta twist on video game design and the afterlife. It's a bit Frog Fractions-y, and when reviewing the game it was hard to talk around the meat that is its many twists and turns not only in its narrative but how it regularly subverts its simplistic gameplay mechanics. If you like your games a bit on the meta side and aren't completely spooked by manipulating looping code routines, I'd suggest giving it a shot.
- I also want to give a brief mention to a list I've recently updated with many new items: the Super Famicom Super Also-Ran's Super Sequel's Super Sequel. A loquacious name for what is really just the third chapter of my cataloging SNES/SFC games that I've personally added to the wiki as part of a larger project to ensure we have mostly full pages for everything SNES related. I've probably spoken enough about that project on here before now, and will again once I hit another significant milestone, but that list is interesting for what it reveals about the Japanese SNES's library. They sure like their virtual gambling and board games over there.
Just Cause 3
Well, there's no denying that Just Cause 3 ended up as something of a disappointment. I guess the vox populi does get it right on occasion. It's not so much the game's content but the lack of forward progress the series has made since 2011. While the wingsuit was a worthwhile addition, it feels like a very minor improvement and nothing else the game has changed has really enhanced the overall gameplay loop that is waltzing into a base and completely demolishing it. There's still enough leftover DNA from the previous game that the destruction is still fun - especially if you decide to just tether everything together and yank them apart - but there's little reason to explore what the game has in store beyond destroying its handful of repeating base types.
For instance, the driving can be really bad. It's fine for getting halfway to a new place before you inevitably launch off the road and decide to parachute the rest of the way, but it's tough when you're trying to complete one of those racing checkpoint challenges. Even the planes, which I got the hang of eventually due to the weird way it has turning controls on the square and circle buttons on top of the banking you can control with the analog stick. Because the flying uses those extra buttons, the nitrous boost - a handy bonus ability you can unlock through earning enough "gears" on race challenges - is attached to the same button as the acceleration, which you need to hold down anyway to rise from cruising speed to the vehicle's top speed. In other words, they ran out of buttons and had to double up the nitrous with standard acceleration. The whole game is kinda sloppy in similar ways. I managed to 100% the challenges - as stated at the start of this blog, I'm crazy like that - but I learned early on that there are certain vehicles you simply avoid because they aren't programmed right. Motorcycles and ATVs are especially finnicky, despite theoretically offering better control over uneven terrain. The game's frequently flexible enough to give you a choice of vehicles for each race, however, though it's sometimes it's nigh impossible to win the race with the default vehicle they give you, and you have to come back once you've found a better vehicle in the world and driven it into the chop shop.
The wingsuit challenges, too, can be a real pain in how inconsistent they are. For the most part you're looking to glide through the center of each ring for the maximum score - it's 2000 for every ring you "perfect", and around 500-800 otherwise depending on how close to the center you manage to get. With some wingsuit courses, you can potentially miss the direct center of about 20% of the rings and still get the highest target score for the challenge. Others, especially late on, you have to be damn near immaculate for twenty rings or more. The later challenges are already difficult enough with the amount of precision required (not to mention that they're generally longer to boot, requiring you to focus for longer stretches) without having to modify the win conditions. If the game didn't stick all its upgrades, some of which are downright necessary, behind completing its challenges they'd be one aspect of the game I'd easily recommend people ignore for the sake of the game's core of blowing shit up. As it is, they're a necessary evil that drags the game down. And man, the glitches. The endless glitches. Here's a few of the more amusing (if still annoying) ones I've encountered: un, deux, trois.
I can't fault the game too much, since most of what makes Just Cause 2 such a cathartic and entertaining chaotic mess is still present and accounted for, it's just a bummer that the game couldn't meaningfully improve on that format. More so, it managed to make certain aspects of the experience worse. I don't hate it, but given where open-world games are at currently with the likes of MGSV and Zelda BotW, it's getting harder to excuse the many so-so open-world games in my backlog (looking at you, Ubisoft). I say that having moved onto the new Deus Ex in the meantime, so here's hoping I don't discover another example of a long-awaited sequel to a 2011 smash hit that only offers diminishing returns.
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