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Since last year, I've had the chance to play the Wii U for the first time, trying out Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and the new Super Smash Bros. game, and after that, I can say without a doubt that I have no interest in ever owning a Wii U. I hate the controller – and yes, that means the pro controllers, too; who puts the sticks at the top of the thing!? – and if you can't sell me Smash Bros. with The Blue Bomber as a playable character, you're probably not going to be able to sell me anything. So, that knocks Alphadia Genesis, Captain Toad, and Yoshi's Wooly World off of the list, and upon further inspection, Alphadia Genesis doesn't look that great, anyway. INSIDE faces a similar problem of being exclusive to a system that's going to have to work a lot harder to sell itself to me… at least for now; this whole timed exclusive thing is easily the most pointless marketing strategy I've seen in gaming in recent years. Abyss Odyssey turned out not to be what I'd hoped, and apparently, you have to not suck at Shooters to be any good at Destiny; so much for that. Having seen some actual gameplay of Shadow of the Beast, I was shocked to hear that the developer actually had played the original games; it's trying a lot harder to be 2D God of War than Shadow of the Beast. Then, there's Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed, and we all know how that turned out.
On the positive side, I also got to play End of Serenity, which is nothing more than an overly polished faux-16-bit comfort food RPG, and that's exactly what I wanted it to be; it's nobody's masterpiece, but I did enjoy it a great deal. The only real snag with it is that you have to pay more to access all of the areas in the game, lest you spend hours tediously catching 850 fish, and I most certainly did, because it gave me something to do on my lunch breaks. I've also gotten my hands on Hohokum, but it's still in its digital shrink wrap for now, so I can't speak to that; I'm going to savor it when my backlog is almost gone. Both ABZÛ and No Man's Sky got a follow-up from last year, and while very little new was said about either, they did say the most important thing: they're not going to be a total disappointment; now that I've seen more, I'm still pretty excited to play them some day. While it wasn't addressed at E3, I've seen some demos for Final Fantasy 15, and it still looks incredible; if that stuff is even just most of the game, I'm totally sold. The protagonist has this dark-haired, punk, femme boy – anyone aside from Adult Contemporary stations remember Adam Lambert? – thing going on that I find very attractive; that's how you make the Squenix aesthetic work for your character design! Rime still looks good, too, but no real news on that one. Now, for the new stuff.
Perhaps the most interesting game of E3 this year was Dreams, which is a program that allows you to easily create dreams for other players to watch. As you can imagine, my dreams are pretty strange, so I have an odd fascination with them. The ability to transition easily between them is a huge draw for me, too, since my dreams are like if someone consumed more LSD-covered 'shrooms than anyone ever should, and started channel surfing. Most games with user-generated content fall flat for me, because I'm not always good at creating it, but I have so much material here that it could be my proverbial "stuck on an island with only one game to play for the rest of my life" game. I'm a little put off by some of the visuals, but there might be a wider array available for use.
Remember how Child of Eden used synaesthesia as a basis for a game? Well, Beyond Eyes seems to do that as well, but as a means to an end. You play as a blind girl finding her way through the world. This alone fascinates me to no end – yes, I enjoy Lifetime movies; what of it? – but since it is a video game, the player needs some sort of visual feedback. The way it looks is that she doesn't see anything, but her other senses are conveyed to the player visually, which is how insert sense here-to-sight synaesthesia works. This one seems highly experimental – though not entirely unlike Where Am I? – but in a good way, rather than being different for its own sake. While it relies on the old cliche that blind people always have their eyes closed, it still looks pretty interesting.
So, Squenix revealed an interesting set of paintings that seem to take their inspiration from Vanillaware's games, specifically Odin Sphere. Oh, but this is supposed to be a game; I swear that these plot twists just keep getting earlier and lazier. I can't really say much about it, because it was only mentioned that this is going to be a thing. Nothing about gameplay, nothing about story, not anything other than some landscapes. In fact, it might not even be called Project Setsuna. You know those newscasts that should have subtitles saying, "Well, Tom, we're reporting that we have nothing to report,"? Picture that in E3 press conference form, though the artwork does look kind of neat, so I will be following this one as it develops.
Recently, there was a Final Fantasy game released for mobile devices that was an oldschoool Final Fantasy game with characters from all over the series, and it looks awesome. The problem is that I can't operate a touchscreen, because they go by thermal technology, and my body temperature runs at about 92.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That and I have an EM field that destroys clocks, and often disables touchscreens even if I'm just standing too close. Well, World of Final Fantasy seems to be a very similar idea, but on actual consoles. I'm not sold on the cutesy aesthetic that started with the Playstation remakes of the old Final Fantasy games and has become a full-blown visual convention for spin-offs ever since Theatrhythm came out, but the actual gameplay looks pretty solid. Even if it's just average, the smashing together of worlds alone should make for something interesting; it's like Kingdom Hearts without all of that Disney nonsense (I've always been more of a Looney Tunes gal; burn me at the stake).
As with last year, there are a few games that don't interest me as a player, but I do feel as though I should address them. First up is Rare Replay, which is interesting, because to my knowledge, it's the only one of these kinds of compilations that has games as new as the Fifth Generation, not to mention Kameo: Elements of Power. It has games that everyone knows, like Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Battletoads; games that the older crowds will know, like R.C. Pro-am, Solar Jetman, Cobra Triangle, and Snake Rattle & Roll; and games that nobody's heard of, but name me a compilation that doesn't have those. I should be interested in something like this, but it's mostly the old games that interest me, and I still have those. It is kind of interesting, though, that the have the Battletoads Arcade game; I hadn't even known that it existed until a few months ago.
Now, to point out the Neo Garula in the room, since this particular world doesn't have elephants. Yes, they're finally remaking Final Fantasy 7, so I guess I have to talk about it. Overall, I'm pretty indifferent to it. I'd love to play a version that has a translation that isn't a horrible broken mess. Sure, there are translations out there that seem worse, but you can at least figure out what's going on when you're playing something like Suikoden 2, Breath of Fire 2, or even Zero Wing. On the other hand, remember the other remakes? Squenix is extremely fond of revisionism; just look at how Cloud in Kingdom Hearts was changed from his Final Fantasy 7 incarnation to be more like how he shows up in fan fiction. The narration in the trailer almost made it sound like a sequel, detailing the game's events – pretty major ones, too – in the past tense. So, this remake could be a really great thing or a trainwreck to rival the failure outcome in the Mt. Corel scenario, but one thing remains certain: Squenix is going to make more money from this one game than most of us will see in our lifetime.
As I've said, this year's E3 was a pretty big snooze for someone who doesn't care about endless reboots of outdated franchises and continuations of franchises that are part of the uninspired legion that give the term AAA gaming the negative connotation that it has among most gamers. Where was Final Fantasy 15? Where was the NX? That said, some interesting things are happening. Nintendo is finally releasing Star Fox 2, no matter how hard they're working to hide that fact by naming it something else. The X-Bone is introducing backwards compatibility, which, as desperate as it may seem, is a pretty impressive accomplishment for the post-production stage of a console, and may cause other systems to allow you to do that with games from even older generations. Sony is… well, Sony is getting very close to selling me an Eighth Generation console much closer to its launch than anything has since the N64, and that might be the most impressive feat of all, even if they are "cheating" by using actual games to do it. Here's to a much more exciting 2016! Please?]]>
Many may be surprised at the breadth of ideation and innovation found in games when there's no monetary commitment attached, offering a unique learning experience for players and developers alike. Taking together all the flash and browser games, freeware downloads from the independent scene, speed programming archives, free-to-play business modules, and even promotional re-releases from big name publishers, there's a never ending supply of great games new and old waiting to be played, and it's our goal to play them all!
Genre: platformer
Link to Game: http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/your-bizarre-eyes/59769/
Game Info: Added to Game Jolt by developer Shilov in April 2015
Your Bizarre Eyes is a rather silly, yet fairly relateable story about our innate desires to help our loved ones with their troubles and the creative solutions that can be conjured as a result. At the start of the game, we are introduced to a loving couple distraught over a recent development in their lives (the woman was blinded), and our character comes up with his own grandiose plan to get their lives back on track. For a 5-10 minute game to so succinctly capture a person's willingness to move mountains for others along with the self aggrandizement that follows is an impressive feat by itself and worth recommending the game for its story alone, however Your Bizarre Eyes is also a competent platformer with desirable character physics and a design that forces precise jump timing.
What I want to talk about are the visuals that frame the game, and how simple effects can contribute to the overall story. Starting at the beginning, the opening cutscene is black and white, and shot through a screen filter that distorts the scene as it scrolls by; being as much an indicator that the couple's present situation is not right as the dialogue between them. It's an easy effect to enable in Construct 2, but here it was used with meaning. I would argue the filter is representative of how the main character feels; unable to accept his wife's blindness as a reality. The filter goes away once the game starts, and I would argue this is reflective of the character's assertion that his path ahead is the right one.
Visual accompaniment also continues during the gameplay as we move from abstract black & white scenery into color and a greater level of detail. This graphical change manages to serve several purposes at once, being an indicator of progress within the levels as encouragement for players to continue, as well as being thematically appropriate for the character as he sees his plan coming to fruition. The opening wasn't the character's reality, he's looking to get his reality back.
Huh… I only now just noticed that in stills, the character's jumping animation makes a lot more sense in motion.]]>
Many may be surprised at the breadth of ideation and innovation found in games when there's no monetary commitment attached, offering a unique learning experience for players and developers alike. Taking together all the flash and browser games, freeware downloads from the independent scene, speed programming archives, free-to-play business modules, and even promotional re-releases from big name publishers, there's a never ending supply of great games new and old waiting to be played, and it's our goal to play them all!
Genre: Puzzle/Exploration
Link to Game: http://nineroomsgame.com/
Game Info: Released online by Noah Berkley in April 2015
Nine is an aesthetically pleasing Flash game available in browsers where you navigate a series of nine (oh, I get it) vertically inclined rooms to acquire keys and interact with your surroundings. It's isometric; meaning it's a 2D game with a 3D perspective that's perhaps best completed with your keyboard held at a 45-degree angle. The physical puzzle aspect is relatively light, being fairly easy to acquire the four keys, however in the same way FEZ was not over with those golden cube shards, Nine still has some intrigue even after every door has been unlocked.
What I find fascinating about this game is how it retains its own mystery as the game goes along; a mystery not only for the additional scenes and objects that seem to play out in rooms you've already visited, but also the mystery of how it all seems to work. One of the locked doors leads to a treasure chest. The first time I visited this room the chest contained coins for the little prince to dive in. Every playthrough since, the chest opens to reveal a strange floating crystal. I've tried to recreate everything I thought I did in that first game, but I can't get the coins back.
Similarly, the mysterious girl character that starts to appear in earlier rooms is not a 100% guarantee. I've only gotten her to appear in the library once; likewise for the room with the cat. The book that spawns by the lightpost is clearly triggered after a visit to the library, but the purpose of the book is mysterious by itself. For a game which rests on a player's willingness to interact with the room objects they've been given, it was a good idea to include these extra behaviors as it makes the rooms enticing to revisit. It may be a game that's only about 5 minutes in length, but it can still leave you feeling there's more you might've missed!
Many may be surprised at the breadth of ideation and innovation found in games when there's no monetary commitment attached, offering a unique learning experience for players and developers alike. Taking together all the flash and browser games, freeware downloads from the independent scene, speed programming archives, free-to-play business modules, and even promotional re-releases from big name publishers, there's a never ending supply of great games new and old waiting to be played, and it's our goal to play them all!
Genre: First-Person Adventure
Link to Game: http://thetendercut.info/
Game Info: An interactive inspirational tribute to the 1928 Dali/Buñuel short film Un Chien Andalou, released in April 2015 by developer No, thanks.
When Un Chien Andalou originally premiered to the Parisian elite it was met with praise and applause; something unanticipated by its creators Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí as they had actually intended to insult their audience. Not only had the film's imagery been loaded up with all manner of grotesqueries (an eyeball being sliced open, a hand covered with ants, rotting livestock, etc), but their creative process was entirely dismissive of the status quo; pulling contents from their own psyche with reckless abandon while peers would assign meaning and applied symbolisms to every aesthetic action and object on screen. The film, by way of how it was constructed, is effectively meaningless.
In the leaflet provided at the premiere, Buñuel himself wrote: "NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." With that all said… there's a lot of penises in this game.
Surrealist innuendo aside, the game provides a fun interactive toybox featuring several objects from the short film; some appearing as before, and some re-purposed into light point and click puzzles. The game is on par with the film itself for length (about 15 minutes), and tracks progress of how you interact with the world with an ending screen hinting at the interactivity you didn't discover, not dissimilar to the points scoring and alternate endings of graphic adventures past.
It also makes really great use of something not everyone's a fan of, and that's temporarily removing the player's control to force the camera to turn in a certain direction. This is a frustrating concept used by many games in the first-person as they tend to be a)reminders that we're in a virtual world and b) usually they're a cheap fail-safe mechanism for developers to ensure the player sees whatever visual spectacle they've cooked up in a particular direction. I tend to see these camera tricks as a breach in player trust with minimal exceptions, but it's used effectively here as the reason for moving the camera in the first place has been reversed; instead of pointing the camera toward what the player should see, the camera shies away from it – teasing the player with tantalizing glimpses without the ability to study further. The movement itself fits very well into the surrealist dreamscape of the film and game, and it helps to keep the intrigue of certain events high when full camera control would have satiated the player's fascination to the point of boredom. It's always great to see that even some of the most objectionable design choices in modern games can be implemented well when in the right development hands.
There was a great amount of content on hand to play; here are 10 titles we're looking forward to their full release!
Ridiculously billed as a "Competitive Educational Puzzle Platformer Shooter," but the game amazingly earns each label with style and thankfully it has color blind options for those of us that have trouble between shadings. Pixel is currently on Steam Greenlight, and a free demo can be downloaded from the developer site.
A tactical strategy game in the vein of Fire Emblem and Shining Force with the benefit of destructible environments, terrain variables (the high ground extends the reach of your ranged attacks) and the pleasant option to turn off permadeath (hey, sometimes we just don't like the added stress). Lengthening the game's quality beyond the campaign is the option for 2-6 person multiplayer and a full map editor for an endless supply of user generated content. The game is currently in development, but you can back their kickstarter for immediate access.
Expanding on the original prototype for the game made for a Ludum Dare competition (pictured), Hexarden is now becoming a more visually pleasing puzzle/strategy game set on a hex grid where you tend a garden to produce fruit with a variety of actions to complete between growth cycles. There's a lot of balance to the game's components; one clever idea is the game's use of rocks; initially they're a burden to unearth, but they eventually have not one, but two benefits to keeping around later on. Rabbits can also act as both assets and threats, to either steal your berries, or help chomp down grass that would otherwise cost you a turn to clear yourself. Access the Ludum Dare prototype to try the game for yourself.
Here's one for the Wii U crowd. A fun sidescrolling spaceflight sim with a less than optimal vehicle; this game will have you pulling out your hair and laughing while you do it as you toggle between a series of meters and controls to keep the engines running and spacecraft in one piece; bringing humor into the experience entirely through gameplay. Set to release April 9th on the Wii U eShop.
A visually stunning non-combat MMO where players solve a collective mystery of how they got to the game's island (all constructed; the terrain isn't procedural), and collect different beast forms that will add new ways to explore once they're unlocked (including the eventual powers of flight and underwater swimming). You can buy the alpha now, or you can wait for later in the year when it formally rolls out to Windows/Linux and PS4.
Formerly known as Apsis, this is a beautiful game that's all about the tranquility of a bird in flight; able to ride wind gusts, explore, and collect other birds to form a flock. It's quite peaceful, and is artfully effective in communicating its controls and mechanics to the player. Coming to Android, iOS, and Steam.
A cooperative multiplayer (or highly frantic single player) experience where a tightly-staffed spaceship is piloted and defended by two small characters. The player will man turrets, set up laser fields, and drive the ship around the level searching for pickups, all the while fighting off enemies and being sure not to crash into any walls. The game will be heading to Xbox One and Steam.
A first-person game that's high in concept and in line with the growing trend of treating games as the pieces of software they are; players find themselves in a virtual world that's been in development hell for 20 years (don't worry, in actuality it's only been 2 for this team) with basically a set of developer tools instead of weapons and items to aid in the adventure.
Sometimes games don't have to be inventive, they just need to do what they do consistently well. That's the case with Perennial, which is a highly competent platforming adventure that sets up some great scenarios for you to learn as you go. It's already reached Greenlight status for a Steam release, so we'll hang on to our hats until then… seriously I wonder what that game's hat does.
Alright, this title has already been making the rounds at different shows across the country, but that doesn't stop Titan Souls from being an absolute joy and a serious game of the year contender just watching it in motion. The game's pint-sized hero will explore some highly expressive pixel landscapes from a top down perspective and face off against some huge beasts, golems, and monsters for some wild and painstakingly difficult battles. Watching the show demo's cube boss flip around on screen in all its pixelated glory is an incredible sight, and that was just one of many fights to come. We'll see more later this year once it hits Steam, PS4 and PSVita.
PAX East was a great show this year; so much so that we could probably fill another 3-5 lists with high-quality content worth looking after. A few more noteworthy titles include Jotun by Thunder Lotus, Never Ending Night by Dot Dream, and Induction by Bryan Gale; we're looking forward to seeing these and many more continue their march towards 1.0 and the success they deserve.]]>
Every now and again, there is a game that doesn't make your analytical eye glaze over; a game that forces you to think like a programmer. These are the games that are so complex that you have to spend a great deal of time figuring out how they work in order to even play them. SaGa Frontier is one of those games; if you approach it with the attitude that it's just another standard RPG, I can almost guarantee that your party will be hopelessly slaughtered within the hour. It should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever played any of his other games that SaGa Frontier was designed by Akitoshi Kawazu, who is best known for the oddball Final Fantasy 2. Kawazu has little interest in making good games – and has admitted in an interview that none of his games are any good – but he does love to tinker, and from a programming standpoint, he makes some of the most fascinating games around. Despite being one of the most brutal RPGs that I have ever played, and a set of rules that would make any first-time player's head explode, I think that SaGa Frontier has a very solid design. It's hard to say whether it's a masterpiece or a trainwreck – and maybe, it's a little of both – and because of that, it is something that absolutely every budding game designer should play as both a solid example and a solid non-example of how to design a game.
In most RPGs, you have a predetermined list of party members, and all you need to do is raise their experience and buy them equipment. SaGa Frontier has the most complicated growth methods for each of the four different species. Humans are the most basic species in most any game, but here, they are one of the most complicated. Like in Final Fantasy 2, characters' stats level independently of each other, but unlike Final Fantasy 2, the growth system is done extremely well. No matter what you do, it is possible to gain in any stat after battle, but different kinds of actions have a greater proclivity toward the growth of certain stats. For example, using magic can make you stronger or faster, but you have the greatest chance of increasing your intelligence and justu points (MP for magic). Likewise, using a sword can increase your intelligence, but is more likely to increase your strength or waza points (MP for physical skills). Each individual character also has his or her own leanings, so while you can build any of them in any way that you want, they will grow more efficiently to be what they were intended to become. Most importantly, though, is that this independent stat growth encourages building your characters through actual combat, rather than having them just beat the stuffing out of each other.
Perhaps more important than stats, though, are skills. Sword skills and martial arts both work the same way: you attack, and if you're lucky, a little light bulb will flash over your character's head, and instead of the intended action, he or she will execute a brand new move, permanently learning it in. It is a very random process, but there are plenty of things that you can do to increase your chances. Fighting stronger enemies makes you more likely to learn something, and each move can only be learned from certain other moves, each one having a different rate of success. Of course, it couldn't be that simple; each character has a different set of affinities for both sword skills and martial arts, having "talent" for some skills and not others. Each enemy also has a "spark value", as does each individual move from the move to learn it. For example, Sky Twister has a spark value of 33 if you're trying to learn it by using Triangle Kick, but a spark value of 40, if you're just trying to learn it by punching. The idea is to get the highest possible enemy spark value and the lowest possible skill spark value. Well, most of the time; there's a sweet spot if you match the two numbers exactly, so if the enemy's spark value is 1-3 greater than the skill spark value, you actually have less of a chance than if the numbers are the same. Oh, and if your character has no talent for the move, your chances of learning it are 1/256, no matter what the spark value, so good luck. By the way, that's the abridged version; fully understanding how sparking works is far more complicated.
Humans also have two other kinds of skills: gun skills and magic. These skills are another pair of sorts, because they work similarly to each other. Enemy spark values still apply here, but each skill has its own innate spark value; you can learn any gun skill from any other gun skill, and you can learn any spell from any other spell in the same school of magic. Gun skills can be built from the ground up by simply firing a pistol – not a cannon, which has the same menu icon, mind you – but with magic, you must both buy at least one spell from that school and have the gift for that school. In order to acquire the gift, you have to complete a side quest, some of which are very lengthy, and some of which are pathetically short. Each school also has an opposite, and they cannot mix, so if you have Light Magic, you cannot have Shadow, nor can you have the gift for both. Once you've gone through everything to make it possible, all you need to do is tell your character to use a gun or a spell, and whether or not that character even gets to do so, you have the chance of learning one skill or spell at the end of battle, when stat increases are being handed out. You might hope to coast through the game just training your humans with guns and magic, but that will never happen, because their offensive capabilities alone are insufficient to winning any of the seven scenarios.
Moving on, we have mystics, which look like characters from late '80s/early '90s anime, due to their unusual skin and hair color. One would think that they work just like humans, because their equipment slots are relatively the same, but they have only four skill slots, as well as three unremovable skills: Mystic Sword, Mystic Glove, and Mystic Boots. Mystics are completely unable to learn sword skills, martial arts, or gun techniques, leaving them only with magic. There are only two points in their favor: the fact that they are the only characters that have the gift for the Mystic school of magic, and their mystic weapons. The Mystic spells are mostly worthless, sadly, and the only one that you can't just buy is Mirror Shade, which is a less useful version of the Arcane school's Magician, which isn't terribly useful to begin with. The mystic weapons, however, can "eat" any enemy that isn't a human, mystic, or mec. If you hit any other kind of enemy – even some bosses – with a killing blow with any of these three skills, that particular one will absorb it, giving you a boost in stats, and attaching a monster-specific skill to it. For example, if you absorb a Treant with your Mystic Sword, you will have a boost of 18 to your intelligence and psychic stats, and you will be able to use Magic Heal until you absorb another enemy with it, which will replace that. Had you used the Mystic Glove, your boosts would be the same, but you'd be able to use Feeler, rather than Magic Heal. It sounds convoluted, and it is, but learn to exploit the system, and you'll have powerful attacks, finally giving you a way to spend your mystic's waza points, and can grow to be very powerful very quickly. Learning which enemies are best to absorb is essential, because the only stats that grow naturally for a mystic are HP, JP, WP, and the utterly useless charm.
Mecs are very solid fighters; they're powerful, durable, and can only be dealt status ailments by a select few attacks. As you might imagine, mecs never grow; their stats are determined by their equipment. Their slots have no restrictions, aside from a few unremovable items in most cases, so if you want to equip a mec with nothing but Powered Suits, you're free to do so. Naturally, each piece of equipment gives mecs an additional stat boost that no other species gets, and they're mostly logical, weapons boosting strength, and the like. Their skill pool is fairly limited, but what they can learn can be quite useful. Every enemy mec has a different set of skills that can be potentially downloaded after battle; when the battle ends, your mec will have the option of trying to download a skill from one of the enemy mecs that you just defeated. It's just as random as learning spells and gun techniques, but you can get some decent skills. Where mecs really shine, however, is in self-development. Yes, mecs use spark values, too; there are 8 different types of mecs, and each one has its own set of skills that it can learn if none of the enemy mec's skills are learned by downloading. There is a bit of overlap, and some types have more skills or better skills than others, but the neat thing about that is that it makes them a much more diverse bunch than any other species.
Monsters are the most complicated species, and if you ask me, the least worthwhile. Unlike the other species, monsters cannot equip weapons or armor; they have only four equipment slots, which can be filled only by accessories. They also cannot unequip skills, like other species, and whenever they learn a new skill, whatever is in their eighth slot will be lost. Like mecs, they acquire skills from defeated enemies after battle, but do so from all types of foes, except for humans and mecs. The game also keeps track of which skills that monster has absorbed at some point, and gives an additional 4 maximum HP for each, but you don't ever get to see that list, and each monster comes with several skills pre-absorbed that you will never know about. It is neat to play around with them and absorb different skills, because your monster will change into different monsters each time, based upon the skills it has in its current set, and its basic stats are determined by the form that it is currently taking. It's fun to see your little green fox thing turn into a flying sword, a triceratops, and a massive dragon, and it's also neat to finally get to use monster-only skills in an RPG. The problem is that most of the monster skills are worthless in the grand scheme of things; they will almost never out-hit a human, and will rarely out-hit a mystic or mec, and the amount of time spent into building them up into a good form with a lot of HP is much more than the amount of time you'd spend building up fighters that will actually become competent in the end. Some people really like monsters; I avoid them whenever possible.
As you can see, there are so many choices for species alone, and within those are choices as to how you're going to build each individual member. The game does do a good job of telling you how to build your humans by starting them out with skills that double as hints. For example, if you decide to get Gen – and you should – you'll notice that he's loaded with sword skills, and unsurprisingly, he's very good with swords. The only notable exception is Annie, who is loaded with sword skills, but is terrible with swords. It's not a complete contradiction, though; she's terrible at most everything, though I've found that she's least awful with martial arts, so I usually go that route with her. The most interesting thing with Annie, though, is that while she has talent for learning very few sword skills, they are very carefully chosen in a way that funnels her into Rosario Impale. Rosario Impale isn't the very best sword technique, but it's up there, and watching her, you can start to get a vague idea of which skills lead where, especially if you're like I was when I first played, and just use the strongest techniques that your characters have.
Mystics, sadly, are not so lucky; you'd think that they're excellent with magic, since that's the only of the four skills that they can learn, right? Well, there are many factors that help with learning magic, but the most important ones are mastery, intelligence, and gun/magic talent. Mastery is simple: have at least 6 physical attacks and no magical attacks in your 8 skill slots to achieve physical mastery, which cuts WP cost by 1 point and makes physical techniques easier to learn, and the converse is true for magical. Oh, but mystics only have four skill slots, so tough luck. Gun/magic talent is an innate value that varies by character, ranging from 0-8. Every single mystic in the game has a gun/magic talent of 0. Well, when all else fails, fall back on intelligence, right? Yes, you can certainly absorb only enemies that boost your intelligence, but they're hard to come by, especially early on. Mystics can become powerful allies, but they're easily the biggest false positive that this game has when it comes to teaching you how to play it.
Perhaps the best thing about building parties in SaGa Frontier, though, is that you do have so many options. Don't like mystics? Don't use them; every single scenario has so many possible character choices that you're rarely forced into cramping your own playstyle. You also have three separate parties, and don't always have to use the one with your protagonist, unless you're fighting certain bosses, so you're free to experiment, and completely ditch one that doesn't work. Humans and mystics also have four hand slots each, all of which are available in battle, so it's very easy to switch from swords to magic to fists to guns on the fly, making battle strategy pretty deep. It's a good thing that you have so many options, too, because this game is going to kick you in the mouth repeatedly until you're spitting teeth, blood, and probably little pieces of your tongue.
SaGa Frontier's story is comprised of seven smaller stories, each centering around one single character. Many of these characters can be recruited in other characters' scenarios, and considering all of this and how RPGs with this kind of story structure usually go, one might assume that it all overlaps and comes together in the end for one fantastic conclusion. To assume this, however would be wrong; each story is self-contained, and characters' stories rarely overlap in any kind of meaningful way. You might consider this a missed opportunity to craft a grand story, detailing how it affects so many different lives. I, however, disagree; the result of eschewing the grand finale method is a set of short stories that have incredible depth and ground-breaking themes. Granted, they're not all masterpieces, but at this length, it cannot be said that any of them Drag-on needlessly, like a certain 8th Quest with which you may be familiar.
In fact, Lute's story doesn't drag on at all; if you were to use a Game Shark and give yourself infinite HP and LP, you could finish his whole scenario in a little over an hour; it'd have two minutes of story, five minutes of the only mandatory dungeon, and an hour-long marathon of one of the most brutal final bosses I've ever encountered in a JRPG. So, why does this even exist? Well, you'd have to ask Kawazu, but I played Lute's scenario first, and since it has likely the hardest of SaGa Frontier's final bosses, I did a lot of grinding and exploring. Lute's scenario doesn't just give you the freedom to wander around; it almost forces you to do so, which just might be the point, since it fits his character perfectly. This, of course, is a completely moot point if you don't play his scenario first, but if you do, it's a great way to see what the game has to offer, allowing you to use that knowledge to figure out where you want to take yourself in future scenarios. There's nothing particularly special about Lute's scenario – especially since you can recruit him in any other scenario – but he is the only character able to recruit the badass Captain Hamilton, and she's worth the price of admission.
Riki's scenario isn't anything special, either. The premise is that his home region is dying, so the elder sends him to find the color-coded Magical McGuffin Rings (no, they're not actually called that) to revive it. Each ring is acquired through a different quest, and they can be done in almost any order. This is easily my least favorite scenario, not only because you're stuck with a monster as your main character, but also because the final dungeon has a room that is beyond infuriating; you have to follow a girl, who walks an invisible path over spikes, but you have to run into them to get your character to jump onto said path, and you're never told this. Stepping even slightly off this path – again, unless you run full tilt at one of the also-invisible jump points – will cause you to get into a fight, and usually not an easy one. The boss of this dungeon doesn't take damage, either; you have to pull off combos that impress him. Now, combos are made when certain moves are done in a certain order, and they form fairly automatically. The problems are finding out the order in which to use which moves, being faster than your enemy to prevent it from being interrupted, and the fact that you never know the order in which your characters will act; the quickness stat is more of a suggestion. Now, he does give you a free round, in which it is fairly easy to perform a combo with all five members of your party, but it takes two such combos to take him down, and even more, if you're using combos with only three or four members; you're unavoidably going to have to deal with potential interruptions.
Red's scenario seems a bit shallow if you take it at face value, but it's really a satire. He and his father are attacked, and in the process, his father is murdered, his mother and sister are kidnapped, and he's badly injured. In comes the superhero, Alkarl, to save the day and turn you into the superhero, Alkaiser! You spend the rest of the time fighting crime and vowing revenge against the organization that murdered your father; Alkaiser's official artwork even combines the epic superhero crouch with the typical fist-shaking revenge pose. Each of the crime bosses has goons dressed up in differently colored Super Sentai – think Power Rangers – outfits, and that's just the tip of the superhero-lampooning iceberg. It's also pretty neat that in order to transform into Alkaiser – who's much stronger, and has some unique moves that only he can perform, but cannot grow – you have to be fighting alone, with only mecs, or in a dark place, in order to protect your real identity. He's also one of the only main characters to really interact with another main character; it seems that he and Asellus know each other. Again, not a masterpiece, but certainly a lot of fun to play.
T260G's scenario doesn't have my favorite story, but is my absolute favorite to play. It begins with an intense battle in deep space that goes poorly for you; you crash in the middle of an aptly-named region called Junk. Your core is found, and a body is built for you out of scrap parts, and though you like like you're put together with cardboard and bubblegum – T260G even complains about it, and he's the typical robotic personality – you're actually a pretty solid combat model. After a little while, you set out to travel the regions, trying to find out what your mission was before you were blasted to scrap, an interesting twist in the usual deus ex amnesia plot crutch. The best part is that after finishing one of the earlier quests, you can change your body type; throughout the game, you can get different types of mecs to join you, but T260G gets to become any of them and more at will, which also means that he can learn all of their self-developed skills. It's an absolute blast to build your ultimate walking (rolling, floating, whatever) death machine, and you can also build an all-mec party, but if you do, just hope against all hope that the final boss doesn't use Magnetic Storm, or else your totally boned. What T260G's scenario lacks in story depth, it more than compensates in atmosphere; you travel to such unique places, and the atmosphere in the first half of the final dungeon is nothing short of horrifying.
Emelia's scenario is where things start to get really interesting. She's a supermodel, whose fiancee was murdered. Said fiancee was a cop, and she's framed for his murder. Once she gets out of jail, she's saved by an underground resistance to SaGa Frontier's corporate superpower: Trinity. It's never really explained what Trinity is, but this is a JRPG, and they're some kind of corporate… empire… thing… they're bad. Anyway, she's after this Joker character, who she saw fleeing the scene of her fiancee's murder, and the resistance, Gradius, is a means to that end. The whole story is about watching her grow stronger – even her stats and skills are pathetic in the beginning – both physically and emotionally. A neat aspect is that in each mission, she gets a different outfit that is supposed to enhance her ability to learn different kinds of skills; one for each type. Emelia also has two endings, determined by whether or not you pursue Joker in the third mission. If you don't, you'll get the happy ending, which makes so little sense that it's an insult to your intelligence that you're holding a controller as it happens; it's almost as though Kawazu is punishing the player for chickening out. However, if you pursue him, you'll get the sad ending, which is this beautiful, emotional scene that perfectly ends the story of her growth into a very strong, independent woman.
The first time that I played, Blue's scenario was my absolute favorite, and it still rates very high. The premise is that you're a magician raised in the Magic Kingdom, and as such, your goal is to learn all of the magic that you can to kill your twin brother, Rouge. Now, Rouge is available in most other characters' scenarios, but you know very little about him, aside from that he's trying to learn magic and that he's the only character with the gift for Realm Magic. In fact, you've probably used him quite a bit, because he and Blue are the fastest magic learners in the game, and are both pretty good with swords. If this is one of the later scenarios you've played, most of it will be old hat, since it's just going through the magic gift sidequests that you've likely completed in every other scenario. The only thing that's really new is the Region Map, which lets you instantly warp to any region you've previously visited through a beautiful menu that I used for the featured image in my Kyo article. Once you have your gifts, you and Rouge have your epic duel – and it is pretty epic – but since you've done all of this before, you, the player, get to thinking. "Hm… You know, Rouge has been my companion before, and I don't know much about him; is he really evil?"
The battle concludes, and the results are awesome; whoever wins is the protagonist for the rest of the scenario, and has the gift for all of the opposing magic schools, and now, you also have a new school called Life. You've spent the entire game carefully choosing your magic, and now, you have it all! So, you return to the Magic Kingdom to find it in utter ruin. As you make your way into the smoking crater, you learn more about yourself; apparently, Blue and Rouge were always the same person, but were split at birth in order to obtain all opposing schools of magic, and merge to create the ultimate magician to protect the region from the horrific entity that lies beneath. Unlike in most RPGs, though, in this case, you're too late, and that'd be kind of neat just to not have that happy of an ending, but you get no ending at all. You go down in, battle the evil big-bad, and as you deal the final blow, the screen just fades to sepia in the middle of your attack; you don't even get to see the amount of damage you've dealt. It's sad that one of the most interesting story premises is so greatly depreciated by such a crap non-ending.
I don't know whether Blue or Asellus has my favorite story in SaGa Frontier, but it's a close call. Asellus is run over by a carriage and almost killed, and wakes up in the dark region of Facinaturu to find that although many years have passed, she hasn't aged a day. It turns out that the lord of the region, a mystic named Orlouge, gave her some of his blood, turning her into a half-mystic; she grows and learns like a human, but has the mystic weapons and the gift for Mystic Magic, so she can become insanely powerful. She escapes with a mystic named White Rose, and returns to her aunt's house, only to find that her aunt is terrified of her; White Rose is now all that she has left in this life. What makes this interesting is that she and White Rose are more than just friends; they're also lovers. It is likely the best lesbian love story in a game to date, because it's about love and discovery; not just blatant fanservice to the horny teenage male crowd to whom most video games are purportedly targeted. In fact, it's so subtle that you might not even catch on the first time you play, if you're not paying attention. Asellus also attracts the attention of a budding bisexual named Gina in Facinaturu, and no matter which of the three endings you get, you get a glimpse of Gina's self-discovery of her sexuality. In fact, in the half-mystic ending, Asellus and the mystics go to visit an aging Gina, whose son or daughter (the sprite is ambiguous) refers to Asellus as "the love of [her] life". Being a half-breed of two groups that don't get along – or at least didn't while I was growing up – I could really identify with Asellus, and each of her endings made me want to cry for different reasons.
An interesting thing to note is that if you make your way to the Debug Room in SaGa Frontier, you can see a few sprite sets that didn't make their way into the final game. Among them are naked sprite sets for both Asellus and White Rose. I know what you're thinking, and this does lead to a missing scene, but as it turns out, the text from it tells a very different story. Originally, to leave Facinaturu, Asellus and White Rose jumped into Kurenai, the eternal flame, which burnt their clothes to a crisp. So yes, they did get to see each other naked, but immediately thereafter, they went to Mosperiburg, where Virgil gives them some new clothing. Naked sprites in a lesbian love story that isn't sexualized; so it can be done!
SaGa Frontier's proudest feature is the Free Scenario system; it even says so on the back of the jewel case. So, what is it? A fancy way of saying that you can go pretty much anywhere almost anytime you want. I suppose that one might call it the prototypical Sandbox, but it's not nearly so unstructured; you can go anywhere at anytime, but you can't do anything that comes to mind; it's still a JRPG. So, what's the point of freedom to explore without freedom to do? The very point that an open world should be: it is a world worth exploring.
Each different area is called a region, and while it isn't quite clear exactly what they are – they could be different countries, different planets, or even different dimensions – you travel across a blue, ripply void in space-age flying ships to get to them. There is no free travel, like in typical RPGs, in which you get a ship to traverse the water or air; you go to the port, choose a region, and watch a cutscene of the flying vessel traveling the void. I'd say that there is maybe a little lost potential here to make a Wind-Waker-style ocean of sorts to explore and find all sorts of tiny, well-hidden regions, but it's not a huge loss, especially because 3D technology in the Fifth Generation was pretty lousy. If you think about it, most RPGs have really boring scenery; it's just grass, grass, grass, a couple of mountains, grass, a forest, grass, a desert, grass, a snowy area, sometimes underwater or underground, maybe some sort of evil-looking death field, oh, and grass, grass, grass, grass, GRASS! Yes, I get that it's supposed to be a cohesive world, but just think of how many towns exist in grasslands in a typical RPG; I've typed the word so many times that I had to look it up to make sure the spelling was correct! With these regions being separated the way that they are – whatever that is – they can exhibit some real diversity without worrying about making a game world that looks like a fingerpainting 3-year-old sneezed onto a canvas. We have enough RPGs that take place (please read the following quotation in Don LaFontaine's voice) "in a world much like our own, but with monsters and impossible hairstyles and zippers and stuff"; there should be more that are designed like this!
Koorong is a good place to start your adventure. Granted, not every character is going to actually begin there, but this blazing neon nightscape is a good first goal to reach. It's a sort of hub area in that you can travel from here to regions that you cannot reach from anywhere else; the only main region that you cannot enter from here is Nelson. Koorong has a wealth of information, tons of different specialized shops – many selling the best equipment that money can buy – and even a few characters to recruit and sidequests to undertake. It may seem a bit cramped – and it is – but it serves as a great place to get your footing in your main quest, especially if you need to head to the sewers and grind for a little while.
The best, but hardest, places to grind are Yorkland and Shrike. In the rural Yorkland, you can enter the dreaded swamp, which has countless amphibians that are two ranks above what you're supposed to be fighting. Shrike is a bit more suburban, but in addition to several vital sidequests and the only robotics shop in the game, there is the Bio Research Laboratory, which is like Yorkland's swamp, but with many different kinds of enemies and the brutal guardian of one of the best shields that you can find. The sunny suburban atmosphere of Shrike makes it one of my favorite "normal regions", though Manhattan's equally sunny urban – though not quite as urban as Koorong – landscape is nice, too.
You might expect some kind of casino area with this many regions, and you'd be right: an entire region, Baccarat, was dedicated to filling that void. It's a nice, extravagant nightscape that has a bit of a retro vibe to it, though you can't actually gamble on anything. Apparently, the developers decided to focus on the main game, rather than wasting precious time on a bunch of minigames. Didn't they, modern game developers? Speaking of nocturnal retro vibes, another favorite region of mine is IRPO, the Inter-Regional Police Office. Now, IRPO is a single screen, aside from a second screen that appears briefly during the Arcane Magic sidequest, and a title card, but it creates this neat atmosphere. IRPO is so '80s that just thinking about it makes me feel like I'm sitting in my old house on the worn orange shag carpet, watching Night Court. It doesn't quite rival Mother/Earthbound Zero, but it's just as strong, for what little traversable real estate it has.
Devin is a strange place populated almost entirely by different types of fortune tellers. This is where you begin the Rune and Arcane sidequests – note that both runes and tarot cards are methods of fortune telling – but you'll also find more off-the-wall "psychics" that tell your fortune via methods like the stains left behind after you've finished your coffee. My favorite thing about this region is that when you leave the port, there are a ton of signs telling you where to go, but they're all pointing in the same direction. There is also a very beautiful section at the top of the shrine with lots of deep red leaves falling to the ground. While the main part of the region is just grass, there are enough little quirks to make Devin stand out.
Owmi appears to be a small harbor town; while it lacks a lighthouse like the harbor town I used to visit in South Carolina in my early childhood, it does have a lovely atmosphere, crafted mostly by the warm, emotional music that plays there. This is where you wind up when you leave the aforementioned dark, foreboding, yet beautiful region of Facinaturu via the plane hidden in the cave beneath the bar. Owmi is also the only port from which you can reach Nelson, another port region that has a few unique items for sale. Nelson is supposed to be a very unsavory place with lots of pirates and other criminals, but the atmosphere just looks like a stylish old town, like you'd see in detective movies, and the music really helps to paint that picture. It's kind of a hidden region, and within it is a hidden secret called Takonomics, which you can exploit to make yourself absurdly wealthy, if you have the patience.
There are a few regions that are not very exotic in biome, but have an interesting culture. Shingrow is a jungle region, but has ruins and an East-Asian style palace that wouldn't look out of place somewhere like Indonesia. Wakatu resembles Feudal Japan, but is in complete ruin, so it has things like ninja ghosts. Also interesting about Wakatu is the well-hidden Blade God statue in the basement; it does have a purpose, but I have the official guide book, which doesn't even mention it (surprise: it's by Brady Games), so it was a good 15 years before I figured it out. Kyo, which I have discussed before, is a lovely Autumn landscape that is vaguely reminiscent of World 6 in Yoshi's Island. What you may not know, though, is that the region is so beautiful that it actually changed my life. I was going through a pretty dark time in my life, and when I got to Kyo, the beauty combined with its mellow atmosphere just overwhelmed me. The sunset was so soothing that my personality almost immediately began changing into a much more laid-back one. So yes, a well-thought-out landscape can be just as deep and life-enhancing as the stories to which so many modern RPG developers love to cling.
Some of the regions are truly unique in nature. Luminous is a dark, mountainous region that glows in the moonlight. The residents of Luminous live in caverns, which are furnished like normal houses to look surprisingly cozy. Mosperiburg is another mountainous region, but is far more foreboding; though the ground is eternally covered in snow, the skies are eternally on fire. The only place that you will ever see, unless you're after the Shield Card, is a dark mansion, through the windows of which, you can see only the black sky and burning flames, making a pretty horrific scene. Perhaps even more horrific is the lost scene from Asellus's scenario; after jumping into the flame and having their clothing burn to ash, she and White Rose land naked in a snowfield under this flaming sky. I've walked barefoot through deep snow, and I hope to never have to do that again; I cannot possibly imagine doing so completely naked with a flaming night sky above my head. Those poor girls must have been terrified; most anyone would have been.
These regions are just a taste of the main ones; there are several other incredible places to go in SaGa Frontier, many of them scenario-specific. Just hearing about them, though, don't you want to get right into exploring them? Beginning your first game of SaGa Frontier is a very overwhelming experience. However, you are always free to experience as much or as little as you want; I didn't even know about the Time and Space Magic sidequests until the last scenario of my first playthrough, so even by the end of the game, I was still exploring, and there were still things I'd completely missed! I'm still discovering new things fifteen years later! Do you just want to blast through the game? You can. Would you rather take a break and just wander for a dozen hours or so? You can do that, too. No matter whether you like a completely on-rails experience or a more open-ended one, SaGa Frontier has you covered.
Whenever an unusual mechanic is introduced to a game – whether it be uncommonly utilized or actually new – the developers walk the innovation tightrope, with gimmicky and underutilized on either side. It's a difficult line to tread, because the slightest misstep can cause critics and players alike to destroy your game. So, how does one stay aloft; safe from the pit of ravenous gamers? The answer, quite simply is focus; you build your game around that mechanic. You don't advertise something that makes your game stand out, and just throw it in on top of what you've already made; you start by implementing the concept, and then building the game around it.
SaGa Frontier does an absolutely fantastic job of building itself around the Free Scenario System. Though it is as much of an attention-catching buzzword as Blast Processing, it truly is one of the things that makes the game stand out to those who've spent enough time with it. With the Free Scenario System at the very core, the game world, the character stories, and even the game's battles were built onto it, all making a cohesive package. On the surface, the game looks like an absolute mess, and to be fair, that's not entirely unwarranted. However, beneath that mess is a very well-designed core; it's like making a tiny dollhouse inside of a plastic Easter Egg, closing it up tightly, and piling all sorts of grass, dirt, and other detritus on top of the egg. To appreciate it, though, you'll have to learn to play in an unorthodox manner.
I've lived in or near the woods my entire life, so I know very little about the urban lifestyle. I've been told that it's actually a bad idea to lock your car, because if someone wants to steal your stereo, it's going to happen; leaving your car unlocked at least prevents your doors or windows from being broken. Several aspects of playing SaGa Frontier are like leaving your car unlocked in a bad section of town; despite seeming like a terrible idea, they're actually the best course of action. For example, if a character has no talent for learning a skill, the best option is to achieve the minimum possible value to spark it, in order to save your WP and to save the stronger enemies for those who do have talent for what they're trying to spark. It took me quite some time to train myself to have my talentless characters slack off, even after having studied the algorithms presented by someone who has spent much more time with this game than I have, and objectively asserting that to be the best option. It's almost like befriending a weird person; once you get used to our quirks, you'll find that we can be pretty good company.
Now, I'll not deny that the game is extremely buggy. The algorithms that govern Asellus's endings don't work at all like they're supposed to; you can actually develop her Mystic Glove and still get the full human ending. Emelia starts her scenario getting one of the runes, and despite not having actually accepted the Rune Magic sidequest, she cannot trigger any of the Arcane Magic sidequest events until she finishes the Rune Magic sidequest. Her costumes don't work the way that they should, either; the martial arts one gives you the spark tree of Liza (who's good at everything), the sword one gives you the spark tree of Annie (who's terrible at everything, especially swords), and the magic and gun ones don't actually do anything at all. There's the aforementioned sweet spot in the sparking algorithm that really shouldn't be there, and if you don't have mastery for the skill in question, will actually be the greatest probability for learning something. These issues are just a small sample of a very large pool, and that is why this game gets a bad rap from a lot of people. Many are tempted to just write the entire game off as a buggy mess, when it's mostly just quirky. It's hard to blame them, though; when you encounter so many bugs, it's easy to confuse quirks for more bugs, especially when you're so frustrated from having your head handed to you so many times.
As I have said, the difficulty in SaGa Frontier is absolutely brutal. People love to complain about the Shin Megami Tensei games' difficulty so much that ATLUS Hard has become a term. I've played through several ATLUS games, both old and new, and I can say that without a doubt, not a single one of those people have played SaGa Frontier; Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne gave me trouble in exactly three spots – two of which were optional superbosses, so that's to be expected – and I still had a lot of trouble with SaGa Frontier. The point of this little rant? SaGa Frontier uses this difficulty to its advantage. Pop quiz: What do you do when an RPG is kicking your face so hard that you need plastic surgery just to avoid frightening small children? You grind like a professional skater, and that comparison is fairly apt, given that you might slam your mouth on a few rails just from regular battles in SaGa Frontier.
"But Alice," you implore, "grinding is really boring. I don't mind grinding a little bit here and there, but to spend most of my experience grinding doesn't seem fun at all!" I've played Vay on the SEGA CD, and I totally agree with you, but SaGa Frontier isn't such a slog. One thing that helps a great deal is that your progress isn't measured only in levels – in this case, stats – and credits (gold); you also have a ton of different skills to learn, regardless of which path or species you've chosen. That alone makes a huge difference, but do you know the best way to keep grinding interesting? Disguise it as something else. Think about it: would you rather just pace back and forth until something attacks you over and over again for a few hours, or would you rather do something exciting, like battle your way through a ruined city filled with ghost ninjas? The beauty of SaGa Frontier is that it has quite a lot of sidequests, so when you need to grind, but don't quite feel like it, you can just go on an adventure that's separate from your main adventure. So, not only do you have the sheer satisfaction of finally learning that move that you've been wanting for hours, but you can also explore the vastness of the regions, collecting very valuable rewards in the process.
Perhaps, you're still not convinced, and I don't blame you; the reason that newer RPGs have almost no grinding is that more than anything, they desperately want to tell you a story. If you're eagerly anticipating the next event in that story, grinding seems like the biggest chore; the wait to get back into the inaction is absolutely torturous. Yet again, SaGa Frontier has you covered; each of the stories is broken into little self-sustaining bits that pertain to the mission at hand, but each of the missions' stories comprise a part of the larger story. This is some of the best story design that I've ever seen, because not only do you have a bunch of smaller stories that both are self-contained and come together to form a cohesive greater plot, but the game also does this in every scenario. Okay, so there are two notable exceptions: Lute and T260G. Lute is an exception, because his story is about 2 minutes long, so there's nothing to break up. T260G has one long continuous story, but he's a mec; mecs don't grow, and his story missions are filled with mecs from which to download and self-develop great new skills for him and his crew, assuming that you use a good number of the 4 other mecs available in his scenario, so in his case, you're doing most of your grinding in the story missions.
So, if there's a lot of grinding in each scenario, and a great deal of that grinding is doing the same sidequests each time, doesn't it get a bit repetitive? Some might say so, but I'd be inclined to disagree, because not only does the brutal challenge keep things fresh, most of the scenarios also do something different switch it up a bit. Asellus has all of the best aspects of being a human and a mystic, so you can turn her into an absolute beast. Blue has that ultimate magician twist toward the end, allowing you to experiment with almost all of the magic in the entire game. Emelia is a supermodel, so you can try on different costumes with her, each of which enhances a different one of the four types of skills that humans can learn; my favorite is the dancer. T260G can have his body modified into any of the 6 types of mecs that you can recruit throughout the scenarios and 2 exclusive types (I am aware that there is a Type 7 character, but he's dummied; you can't use him without a Game Shark) only available to him! I never found myself grumbling about the scenario ahead… except for Riki; I hate that little Lummox. No, really; that's the name of the monster form that he takes when you begin his scenario or first recruit him.
SaGa Frontier has several deep, interesting stories that the developers want to tell you, but they're patient about it; they don't shackle you in, and that's very important in a game that encourages you to explore at your own pace. If its desire for you to continue the story were so strong, they might as well have just trashed the entire Free Scenario System, because it'd be useless. Say what you want about storytelling in modern games, SaGa Frontier totally nailed it in a way that most games don't, and that was back on the Playstation 1. They're all short and self-contained, but they don't suffer from it, and have little to no unnecessary padding as a result; if you're exhausted from the one you just completed, it's also quite reasonable to take a long break from the game before starting the next, because there's nothing that you need to remember. They're like that half-hour-long game on the NES that you love to death and back because it knows exactly what it wants to be, and doesn't try to be anything more.
Even many of the dungeons have clever designs. Kylin's Paradise has a maze that is extremely simple to navigate, but is so visually busy that it distracts the player into thinking that it is overwhelmingly complex. As much as I wish that the burning sky would fall onto it and reduce it to ashes, the mansion in Mosperiburg has a few rooms that have some fairly clever puzzles, like monster bowling. Mu's Tomb has two different entrances, but the one that leads to an event for the Rune Magic sidequest is marked with a humorous sign, reading, "Danger! Gefaar! Peligro!" and when prompted whether or not to enter, the negative response isn't just a simple no, but, "I'm too young to die!" Even more humorous is that the Dutch word for danger is actually spelled gevaar, and in the big ending that you get after completing each of the scenarios, one of the programmers says that he hopes "we didn't mis and spellig erors." The game is littered with all sorts of neat little ideas like these; some are noteworthy because they're great, while others will make you grumble every time you have to encounter them. Either way, it's hard to accuse SaGa Frontier's dungeons of being boring.
In the end, SaGa Frontier has, at best, a cult following, largely because few want to spend the time necessary to understand it. It's a bit sad and paradoxical that this happens while people complain about how stale the genre is and dump hundreds of hours into the latest Final Fantasy without blinking an eye. believe the reason for this to be that the difficulty curve is such a different kind from what the typical RPG has to offer. Most RPGs just have harder and harder battles to fight, where this has more of a meta-difficulty; it is the player that "levels up" by expanding his or her knowledge of how the game works. The only other game like this that comes to mind is the French indie RPG called OFF, in which the difficulty curve lies in interpreting the increasingly surreal and obtuse story, which is made out to be a fairly obvious satire at its beginning. While I cannot recommend SaGa Frontier to everyone, there is no doubt that it should be required material for anyone wishing to get into game development to understand just how to and not to design a game.
A big thanks to anyone involved in decrypting this game, but most of all, to Zaraktheus, who's done an incredible job with it. If you're interested in reading the massive encyclopedia that is is work in SaGa Frontier, you can find it here.]]>
Many may be surprised at the breadth of ideation and innovation found in games when there's no monetary commitment attached, offering a unique learning experience for players and developers alike. Taking together all the flash and browser games, freeware downloads from the independent scene, speed programming archives, free-to-play business modules, and even promotional re-releases from big name publishers, there's a never ending supply of great games new and old waiting to be played, and it's our goal to play them all!
Genre: Story-driven point-and-click adventure
Link to Game: http://freebirdgames.com/2015/02/18/sigmund-minisode-2-released/
Game Info: A second continuation of the story to To The Moon (2011) released on February 18, 2015 for free download, and automatically added to purchases of To The Moon on Steam and Gog.
It's already been established that we love To The Moon here on Gaming Symmetry. Mechanically, it does nothing special, it's not particularly long, and it retains little replay value. At the same time, it delivers one of the most incredible stories ever relayed; uniquely setting up its expository elements through repeat actions while holding back on their true meaning for an eventual breakthrough in understanding (usually followed by lots of tears). The game can leave players in a sobbing mess once they reach "and… that's… why… she… makes… PAPER… RABBITS" all the while keeping their emotions balanced out with good cheer and humor, usually courtesy of Dr. Neil Watts.
Like the first Sigmund Holiday Special released in 2013, this second minisode follows the continued story of Drs. Watts and Rosaline of the Sigmund Corporation back at their headquarters for their holiday break. The game's sense of humor is well intact, continuing to poke at the more questionable corners of video game conventions along the way; in particular a charming comment about how the playable character seems to be the only one to work the company elevators properly.
The structure of the writing also continues to be top notch in how it uses foreshadowing to introduce concepts for their eventual fulfillment in meaningful ways; even offering multiple peaks to enjoy and even obscure the true purpose behind their introduction as they had already begun to pay off. Such is the case with the ambient sound maker given to Dr. Watts with the ability to record a custom track he might find pleasing. Neil suggests how he could gain his own amusement with the device, and soonafter the device finds itself in a very different conversation that'd be worth having on record, although for slightly more dubious reasons, but of course these ideas were simple distractions to the final payoff before the game comes to a close.
Sigmund Holiday Special 2 is a great piece of writing with its own satisfying story arc to experience, and offers several intriguing hints at what we might expect should the series continue to develop. In particular I'm curious about something Dr. Rosaline had mentioned in an off-handed conversation about building security, and whether or not her comments are entirely accurate… but we shall see!]]>
Many may be surprised at the breadth of ideation and innovation found in games when there's no monetary commitment attached, offering a unique learning experience for players and developers alike. Taking together all the flash and browser games, freeware downloads from the independent scene, speed programming archives, free-to-play business modules, and even promotional re-releases from big name publishers, there's a never ending supply of great games new and old waiting to be played, and it's our goal to play them all!
Genre: Browser-based CYOA
Link to Game: http://www.clickhole.com/clickventure/mysterious-shadows-skullshadow-island-1880
Game Info: multi-click adventure game that materialized on ClickHole (a website owned by Onion LLC) through the "miraculous process of spontaneous genesis" on February 19, 2015
When I started this feature back in 2011, I simply wanted to call attention to some great games that were fun to play at no cost to the player. In picking this feature back up I hope we'll continue to do so, but instead of continuing the standard review format of the past (which rarely serves for a product whose review may exceed its own playtime in length) I'd like to focus more on select ideas and concepts at play that may be worth a second glance to understand how they work, and why in their particular case they were a success. Not every game will excel at graphics or offer an intriguing gameplay mechanic, but good or bad, many games will have a certain something about them worth discussing in greater detail that might not always factor into a general review score.
Skullshadow Island is basically a product that turns clickbait into a game (or what they call a "clickventure"); a choose your own adventure sprawled across a hundred or so different web pages each lined with different ad placements for many more "so clickable" links. It's a rather unique solution for ad-based freeware that certainly the site's owners (The Onion) are all smiles at implementing. It's an absurd setup; but to their credit, it's also absurdly funny with some highly entertaining writing, endearing characters, occasional profanity, and running gags, with the Coleman Brothers coming off more Hank & Dean Venture than Frank & Joe Hardy.
With that said, it's not the eventual advertising profits that I'd like to focus on; instead its the action/dialogue choices used in the game that end up being the standout feature of the game; often carrying a voice of their own. Many games often focus on choices as a direct response to the text dump before it (be it a question prompt, or a description of the scene). Skullshadow Island, on the other hand, writes its choices as a component of the content to be read and understood against the premise, as well as its alternatives. It creates some additional hilarity when the player encounters options that don't go as expected; at one point in the game for example, the player is asked if they think the figures they see are ghosts, to which all the available options are a variation of "yes" including the over the top "Brock! Come on! I definitely think that!"
How the game visualizes the dialogue prompts also allows for some easy interpretation, separating out actions/internal thoughts from spoken dialogue. These differences come to a head when spying on enemies where based on your choice you'll either remain hidden or shockingly blurt out a sentence (ending with a prompt game over). One wouldn't normally think that the way choices are graphically depicted could add further humor to the writing already in them, but Skullshadow Island shows us that there's a number of ways to make people laugh; the way you reveal the joke being equally important to the joke itself.
Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed was a game that had interested me ever since I'd heard about it from E3 2014, and remained one of those few games that still interested me and didn't wind up exclusive to a console I will likely never own. In fact, my dad picked it from my holiday wishlist based solely upon its title. The premise, if you remember from my E3 commentary, was that you fight a bunch of invincible vampires by wearing them down and tearing off their clothes to make them explode in sunlight. Oh, there she goes; that pervy old lady playing a game about ripping off people's clothing. Listen, I've been living with the same woman since 2006; I'm not so hard-up for bare skin that seeing someone in his or her underwear is going to send me spiraling into debauchery. Just put aside your inner pervert for a second and reassess this; doesn't it just sound so bizarre that you want to try it? Well, I can say without a doubt that Akiba's Trip certainly delivers a unique experience.
Akiba's Trip centers around the theme of clothing, and like any good game, it is built very well around this core theme. Not only do you have over 450 pieces of clothing available to collect and wear, but also 80 different weapons. The equipment is equivalent to that in a Dungeon Crawler in that there is no Ultima Weapon or Erdrick's Armor, but rather each item has a randomly-generated attack or defense value, which can be improved through crafting and the like. If you're into playing dress-up, you'll have a great time matching garments together to make outfits, so that your significant other can sit in her armchair and roll her eyes at you, declaring, "You're such a girl." You can go around town, fighting to rack up money and steal new items to build yourself up, and there are tons of different shops to visit. In fact, it's almost like a 3D spiritual sequel to River City Ransom… with people exploding once you strip them down to their skivvies.
Great! So, how's the combat? Well, you're gunning for three different garments: tops, bottoms, and headgear. Each button is mapped to a different zone, so to attack someone's shirt, you press square, circle for someone's pants/skirt, triangle for someone's headgear, and X for a useless jump kick that you should never use, but with a system this well thought-out, you won't have to. Tap the button repeatedly to form combos, press the button while moving away from your target to perform an unblockable attack, or press and hold the button to grab the garment. If it's been worn down enough, you'll snatch it right off of him or her; if it's close, you enter a button-mashing sequence that wears it down further, possibly resulting in snatching it right off; if it's nowhere near ready, the person will shout something at you and just brush you off. It's very well structured, and you never have trouble hitting the right part, like you would in something like Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. Once you successfully rip of a garment, you may enter a quick-time event that lets you chain strip your assailants, but the button you need to press corresponds to the garment you're about to rip, so at least you know what to expect. In large groups, it's best to be strategic, wearing down all of everyone's garments, and then go for the big chain-strip finish.
Great! So… how's the combat? Well, it's a complete trainwreck. On paper, the system works perfectly, but then again, so does Communism. When you're actually in combat, the buttons do pretty much whatever they want. Sure, circle will make you attack the person's bottom, but will you sweep kick, grab, or do this weird thing where you get down on all fours and do like a cat… head ram… thing…? Well, that's up to the game to decide; you know how the controls work, but they don't actually, you know, work. So, rely on one of the many weapons, right? Sure, there are several different types, but there may as well be only two: clunky garbage that takes 3-and-a-half-years worth of wind-up to actually swing, and gloves. Now, I didn't expect much finesse out of swinging a computer monitor at someone, but I thought that at the least, a plastic bat would be useful; I've had plastic bat duels in real life, and they can get pretty intense; some of the neighborhood boys were a little frightened of me.
To make matters worse, people can just randomly join in the fight; each person takes a while to strip down, and in that time, four more can swarm in, making the fight not only harder, but impossibly long. On top of that, the camera never moves on its own; you have no lock-on button center your camera on him or her, so you have to keep tilting the right analog stick, lest you spend too much time punching (or missing) someone off-screen while four other people are beating the stuffing out of you and undressing you from behind; it's like recess all over again. So, you keep attacking, hoping that you execute the attacks that you want, and that would be enough of a hassle, but you have a hypothetically unlimited number of reinforcements to battle, and while juggling all of that, you have to keep adjusting the camera. Better yet is when, in the midst of all of this, you want to switch targets; good luck. Your target is chosen automatically, so you just have to kind of walk around and jiggle your position until the game chooses the person you want to hit, and in a crowd of eight opponents, you do really need to pick them off strategically. Oh, and hope against all hope that the police don't notice your scuffle and join in to arrest the lot of you, because they're almost invincible, at least at the beginning of the game; you may as well be attacking the town guards from Ultima 3: Exodus.
As you'd likely expect from something like this, the game has a cel-shaded anime aesthetic, and while I'm not generally a huge fan of the modern anime look, it gets the job done. The city looks like a city, and there are these occasional weird Earthboundesque ads that are photo-realistic, creating an amusing contrast. What really shines in terms of visuals is the clothing. As I mentioned, there are countless different outfits that you can put together, and the developers actually did put some thought into making several different garments go with several different other garments, just like in a real person's actual wardrobe. Building a wardrobe starts with having two things that match and expanding in either direction, branching out where you can, and Akiba's Trip does a good job of simulating that. There isn't any kind of style rating or anything, so it doesn't actually matter, but it's a really nice touch.
The graphics also provide a very good feedback in battle. You have durability meters for your clothes, and as the numbers decrease, the color of the font changes. If you pay close attention, you'll also notice that when you hit an enemy's clothes, that article will flash a certain color. Said colors mimic those in your own meters, so you know how far down that particular garment is. It's very helpful, too, since enemies don't have their own meters, but then again, when you're fighting eight at once, you really can't do something like that, so this is a very nice compromise.
My only real visual gripe may or not even be really visual in the strictest sense. I have trouble navigating 3-dimensional environments; you know this. Akiba's Trip throws you into the city with a map so useless that it may as well be called the mini-crap, and no compass. That's right: you have no idea in which direction you're actually facing until you memorize the layouts. Worse yet is that there are always tons of people on the street, each with their own name tags of varying colors, and said colors each mean something different. Imagine walking down the streets of New York City at about 1 in the afternoon and having a brightly colored bubble over each person's head, and try to find a specific person when their name tags are things like "Otaku" and "Privileged Skank". Again, neat in theory, but in practice, there are so many stimuli that I felt like my eyes were going to burst out of my head and flee in terror shouting, "NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!"
The basic premise of the game is absolutely fantastic and easily enough to carry it through to the end. Even after you get to the point at which you can strip people down without drawing the curtains or giggling like a little schoolgirl, it holds up, because there's more to it than just novelty. Taking away the obvious truth of what you're doing, mechanically, it's just like if Devil May Cry were to have one of those gigantic ship bosses from R-Type that has several different parts to destroy. After a while, it does take on that sort of sentiment, too; the novelty fades, and it becomes no stranger than eating a mushroom to make yourself large enough to break bricks that used to be little mushroom people. I suppose that it is with a bit of irony that in an industry with so much hypersexualization, a game about ripping the clothes off of people in broad daylight doesn't really sexualize its characters beyond the obvious.
In fact, even though the characters are little more than just bland tropes, they aren't used as mere vehicles for sexualization. You have the mysterious girl, the childhood friend, the stereotypical "wacky foreigner"; you know the drill by now. Yes, it's one of those games where you build up affection points to follow the "path" of winding up with a specific girl, leading to a bunch of different endings, but it's not a hentai game. Aside from having to play the same game over and over again just to see how each crappy love story plays out, I don't necessarily mind this sort of thing, but what bothers me is that it affects character customization. You have the ability to build any kind of character you want, but you have to play as a male your first time through. It's fine to have to unlock things, but if the reason is, "I really, really want you to experience this crappy love story that we've thrown together in about 5 minutes, and I don't want you to ruin it with same-sex pairings," then there isn't any point to it. Actually, one of the minor NPCs is a girl that is absolutely obsessed with male same-sex relationships – a self-proclaimed yaoi queen – so the absence of such a possibility seems odd. Speaking of NPCs and anime tropes, when you bump into most anyone on the street, they make this exaggerated stereotypical noise that gets really irritating when you're just trying to walk to somewhere, though it is kind of funny to Magenta Thompson them to the side.
Aside from that, the writing is pure gold; the basic plot is that you got turned into a vampire by a pharmaceutical corporation because you permitted them to "run some tests" in exchange for a rare anime figurine. Forget what people say about Travis Touchdown; the protagonist of this game is the real otaku. The satire runs pretty deep here, too; your menu is actually a collection of apps on your smartphone, my favorite of which is a not-so-subtle jab at Twitter. Now, I'm not actually on Twitter, so I'm not exposed to its climate, but I'm guessing that this is pretty true to life. You have all sorts of people ranging from the bombastic dolt that tries to speak in Elizabethan English (and fails pretty miserably) to immature trolls that take jabs at one of the transgender users, repeatedly calling her "trap". I am, of course, in no way okay with the term, trap, but, as this is a satire of internet culture (and if my time spent on forums is any indication, a pretty accurate one), then yes, you would most certainly run into people who use these kinds of slurs. Your little sister nails a lot of the rest of the Internet conventions, coming up with countless new ways to call you Bro. It is pretty entertaining to hear someone refer to a boy as Bro-ccoli, when that boy actually is that person's brother, and gives one cause to wonder exactly why this whole "Bro" thing has decided to resurface from the depths of our cultural wastelands. Plot twist: boys used to call each other "Bro" back in the early '90s; it isn't a new thing.
The audio department isn't terrible, but it isn't great, either. The music isn't the usual bland, orchestral dead horse that's dragged out to continue rotting in the sun for most modern games, but it isn't terribly memorable, either. The sound effects do their job; nothing atrocious, but nothing particularly cathartic or interesting. The voice acting is the only audio element that really gives me much of anything to say. For the most part, the actors do their job well enough, but there are two notable exceptions. The first is Kati, the "wacky foreigner" from Finland. Now, I know people from Scandinavia; I had a professor in college from Finland, and have a very dear friend who lives in Sweden. I know how a Scandinavian accent sounds, and not only does Kati's voice actor not get it, but she also constantly slips in and out of this poor attempt at an accent; it's like calling Miss Cleo for a free tarot readin'. It's pretty clear that the entire voice acting budget was spent on was spent on the brotagonist's (I couldn't resist) little sister, Nana. She has this weird, low-volume, fast speech that perfectly fits her character and wouldn't seem at all out of place in a Scott Pilgrim adaptation. Combined with her strange lexical features, it makes her the only memorable character of the lot.
Akiba's Trip has a lot going for it, and not all that much going actively against it. I'm really not sure what kind of score to actually give it, and I know that sounds like a cop-out. Were I to rate it based upon its stylistic merits, it would easily be a solid 8/10; the premise is great, and the writing was some of the few legitimately funny scripts I've seen in video games. Were I to rate it as a game, though, it'd probably be somewhere around a 2/10; for as much as I liked about the game, I couldn't stand to actually play it. Were this an anime, I'd probably watch it and enjoy it a great deal, and I'm not a huge anime fan. I do find it sad and perhaps even a bit ironic that in this age of clones, one of the few unique games to come out would've done well to steal its gameplay from other, more popular games, like Devil May Cry or God of War; tighten up that combat, and you'd have a very solid game.]]>
"Standing on the shoulders of giants. And Batman."
Let's tackle the elephant in the room. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is unbelievably derivative. The battle system is blatantly copied from the more recent Batman: Arkham games, right down to having the exact same finishing moves unlocked after the exact same combinations and activated by the exact same button presses. Given that WB Games developed both Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor and the most recent Batman: Arkham game, and given that Batman: Arkham Origins was little more than a content pack for the Batman: Arkham City engine, I would predict that Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor actually shares a lot of code with the Arkham series. Others have pointed to the similarity to Assassin's Creed, but to me, most of the shared features with Assassin's Creed were also present in the Arkham series, so in my eyes it's fair to point to Batman: Arkham as the source for most of the mechanics in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor.
However, that's not automatically a bad thing. It's good to be revolutionary, but it's not bad to not be revolutionary. Accusations of mimicry and impersonation are not criticisms. No game exists in a vacuum. All games borrow features, ideas, and mechanics from other success games. Most don't do so as liberally and directly as Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, but they all do it. If you're going to do mimic (or rip-off), though, we have to ask: is the game good in other ways? Did the game mimic a good franchise? Did the game improve on the franchise it mimicked? Did the game add new features beyond simply the elements it borrowed from an existing franchise?
Fortunately, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor does all three of these things. It borrows liberally from the Batman: Arkham and Assassin's Creed, but those are two of the best video game franchises of the seventh console generation. If you're going to rip someone off, at least rip off the best. Second, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor executes the features that it borrows much better than even the games from which it borrows them. It doesn't merely rip-off the features, but rather it improves them in subtle but significant ways. Third, it adds significant new content of its own. A collection of three new mechanics supplies enough new content to differentiate Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor from the games from which it is derived.
It is difficult to talk about Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor without acknowledging how much of its design it derives (or steals) from other franchises. However, despite the liberties it takes, it's still an incredibly fun game with enough new content on its own to separate itself from the series that came before it. With a better plot and ending, I would have even put it into me top echelon of recent games.
The Game
In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, you take the role of Talion. A former ranger, Talion was killed during an invasion, but a wraith prevented him from entering death. The wraith needs Talion to help him on a quest within Mordor, so you take the role of Talion and his wraith buddy to avenge Talion's family's death and discover the secrets of the wraith's history. This takes you through two large areas of Mordor, both controlled by Sauron's orcs who are constantly on the lookout for the "Gravewalker", their name for the undead ranger.
In terms of gameplay, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is a third-person open-world (TPOW) game with heavy overtones of the Batman: Arkham franchise backed with undertones of Assassin's Creed. You'll wander around Mordor, fighting off orcs and taking on missions like with any other TPOW. The combat is lifted essentially straight from Batman: Arkham: square to attack, triangle to counter, circle to stun, X to dodge. Build up combos to release powerful finishing attacks, allowing you to fight off several enemies at once. That combines with some stealth elements from Assassin's Creed and a simplistic first-person ranged mode to form the brunt of the gameplay.
The game differentiates itself with three major new systems. The first is the Sauron's Army system, where certain orcs will get named and promoted, receiving their own sets of strengths and weaknesses and become much more difficult to fight when you encounter them in the world. The second is the Nemesis system, which takes one of these orcs and knits a little emergent narrative around your battles with them specifically. The third is the Branding mechanic, which allows you to brainwash enemies to your side and turn them to fight for you in battle. These three mechanics, along with some significant environmental interactions and emergent behaviors, add some variety to the elements of the game that are more directly derived from earlier franchises.
The Good
Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor has three types of good qualities. First, it blatantly rips off some very good features from other games. Second, it improves them, to the point where even in the features it rips off, it surpasses the games from which it stole those features. Third, it adds three excellent new mechanics that are sufficient to set it apart altogether.
Natural, Organic Gameplay
As referenced above, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor almost completely rips off the gameplay from the Batman: Arkham series. There are three gameplay "modes": melee, stealth, and ranged. Melee and stealth are exact recreations of the analogous modes in Batman: Arkham, and ranged is a pretty straightforward implementation of a standard bullet-time first-person shooter. But I'm getting ahead of myself; I'll spend plenty of time later describing how derivative the gameplay is.
The more important thing is that the gameplay is fun. Sure, it's borderline copied from Batman: Arkham City. Arkham City had one of the best combat systems of any game released in the past ten years. It took years' worth of progress toward the one-vs.-many counter-heavy combat of Assassin's Creed and other games and added an incentive to initiate combat rather than mashing the counter-attack button. It created a rhythmic, flow-inducing, fun system that simultaneously rewarded risk-taking and facilitated novice gameplay. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor may have copied its battle system, but at least it copied the best, and the combat in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is almost every bit as engaging as in the Batman: Arkham series.
But to its credit, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor didn't just copy the system; it made it better. I'll take at length later about the specific improvements to those elements of the game borrowed from Batman: Arkham and Assassin's Creed, but what is important first and foremost is that the result is fantastic. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor has one of, if not the, best combat gameplay of any game I've ever played.
The first strength of this system is that the multiple gameplay approaches are integrated beautifully. As mentioned, there are three gameplay modes: melee, stealth, and ranged. One of my criticisms of the original Batman: Arkham Asylum was that it, too, had multiple gameplay modes, but they were never mingled. There were situations where you were required to use each. In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, the different systems are beautifully, naturally integrated. In one instance, I snuck into a little gathering with around 20 enemies, stealth-killing three orcs before they even noticed. After the third one, the other enemies noticed me, so I started fighting them head-to-head. After taking down a couple, I became aware there were two archers up high shooting me, so I quickly entered ranged mode (which comes with limited bullet-time) and picked them off, then seamlessly went back to fighting head-to-head. As the orcs fell, three started to run aware in fear; I re-entered ranged mode and picked each off with a headshot from behind. Switching between the different modes was simple and natural, making it seem like all three elements were extensions of one underlying gameplay style.
What makes this possible is the game's controls. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor has among the most natural controls I think I've ever encountered. In melee combat, the controls are straightforward: square to attack, triangle to counter, circle to stun, X to dodge (sound familiar, Arkham fans?). In stealth combat, the controls are straightforward and analogous: square to stealth kill, triangle to stealth annihilate, circle to stealth stun (kind of, more on that later). In ranged combat, the controls are straightforward: one control stick to move, one to aim, R2 to fire. So, internally, each mode is simple. Switching might have been tricky, but the game accomplishes it with a beautiful parallelism: hold down L1 to enter ranged mode, R1 to enter stealth mode, or neither to stay in melee mode. The symmetry of using L1 and R1 to switch modes helped keep the transitions smooth. Requiring them to be held down to remain in that mode cleared up any question as to what mode you were in and how quickly the game switched you between them. Keeping the controls consistent across modes allowed switching without a cognitive leap to remember the new controls. Overall, the controls for Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor were fantastic, and played a major role in facilitating the natural, organic gameplay.
If that was all there was to the gameplay, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor would be a great game. The game would have three modes that are each internally entertaining, externally consistent, and easily switched. That would be great. However, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor doesn't stop there. The gameplay in the game gets an entirely new depth through the addition of an enormous number of available environment interactions. There are bees nests you can attack to cause a distraction to the other orcs. You can lure or release caragors, giant wolf-like reptiles that attack friend and foe alike (that can be tamed as well). You can use ranged mode to create distractions and lure enemies to particular places, sneaking past them or killing them from behind. You can use attract in stealth mode to lure enemies to your current location for a sneak attack. You can detonate campfires, vats of alcohol, or explosives to take out numerous enemies at once. All of these features lead to some incredibly natural, improvisational gameplay.
The only real way I can think to describe how fun these environmental effects are is to describe some of the scenes from my game. In one place, I inadvertently got myself into a fight with way too many enemies at once. I entered Wraith mode, noticed a big pile of explosives nearby, and defended myself while working my way over to it. As soon as I got near it, I built up a combo, then entered ranged mode and used the ranged mode finishing move to detonate the explosives (which don't hurt you), killing over 20 orcs all at once. In another situation, I was hunting a particular captain deep within an orc stronghold. Going in head-to-head would involve fighting off over 50 orcs, and this enemy was immune to either stealth or ranged attacks. So, I stood far outside the stronghold, shot down three pieces of caragor bait to lure some caragors to the stronghold, and waited while they took care of the enemy for me. In another, I was surprised by a captain invulnerable to ranged attacks and much stronger than my melee attacks during a regular battle. I was easily overpowered by him and near-death, until I entered ranged mode and shot the beehive above my head. That caused a distraction, during which I leapt to the top of a nearby building. When the bees subsided, the orcs had lost track of me, and I was able to sneak around on the rooftops until the captain came close enough to launch a stealth attack that killed him in one hit. In every situation, I had to look at the current state of the battle and the setting around me and devise a plan of attack based on those unique circumstances. More importantly, in every situation, I was able to quickly and naturally.
The potential to play the game in such flexible and natural ways is awesome, but making the game even better is that there are missions that actually specific demand and encourage it. There's one mission, for example, that requires you to kill ~20 orcs in multiple locations without raising an alarm. You can approach that mission head-on, making sure to kill any orcs (designated by an icon) before they can raise an alarm while killing the targeted enemies. You can approach it using stealth, sneaking around and using the distract mechanic to ensure no enemies detect you while taking out the marked targets. You can take a ranged approach, finding angles on the rooftops to allow for shots from your bow and arrow and using the distract mechanic to lure enemies into the open. You can free some trapped caragors and let them do the work for you. Or, you can do a combination of all four approaches, as I did. The missions are specifically constructed to allow the flexibility of the gameplay to shine, rather than to force the player to play a certain way (like Assassin's Creed is often guilty of doing).
That's the real beauty of the gameplay in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor: it is entirely natural, organic, and improvisational. At no time do you feel like there's one particular narrow way to play that you just haven't mastered. Throughout the gameplay, you're constantly looking around for different ways to approach your current battle and improvising based on the circumstances of the particular fight. It's an incredible amount of fun just to run around and start battles to see where they end up.
Brilliant Gameplay-Plot Symbiosis
I often talk about gameplay-plot symbiosis as one of those things that great games manage to accomplish. In great games, the plot explains the gameplay, and the gameplay in turn justifies the plot. Lesser games often essentially use plot developments are rewards for progressing in the gameplay, but the gameplay mechanics themselves don't connect to the plot, nor does the plot actually explain those gameplay elements.
Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor manages to pull off this criteria incredibly well. As I'll discuss at length in a bit, the game has three main new mechanics that aren't borrowed from the Batman: Arkham or Assassin's Creed franchises: the Nemesis mechanic (featured most prominently in pre-release hype), the Sauron's Army mechanic (which others lump in with the Nemesis mechanic, but which I consider separately), and the Branding mechanic. Each of these are gameplay mechanics that impact the way you play the game: the Nemesis mechanic and Sauron's Army mechanic give you powerful and dynamically-created boss battles, while the Branding mechanic lets you turn enemies to your side.
What's crucial about these is that they all play central roles in the game's actual plot. Sauron's Army is effectively the driver behind the plot of the entire game; one early mission requires you to essentially kill all the leaders of his army to progress. This isn't just a sequence of boss battles like in many games, however. These enemies, called war chiefs, are dynamically managed by the game. If you kill one, another might take his place. The names, classes, combat styles, strengths, and weaknesses of all these war chiefs are randomly generated. The system is dynamic throughout the game, which I'll talk about in a bit, but more importantly the system is deeply integrated into the plot of the game.
Branding allows you to convert enemies to your side. As a gameplay mechanic, it's fantastic, and is one of the main things that actually sets Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor apart from the games it mimics. It comes up significantly in the plot as well, though. Just like a portion of the plot requires you to decimate Sauron's Army through the system in the game, so also a portion requires you to raise an army of your own through branding. This army that you raise becomes a significant (although not central) development in the plot as well, but again, it is driven by the systems and mechanics present in the gameplay.
The Nemesis system isn't quite as central to the game's prewritten plot; it has a small influence at the end, but nothing notable. The significance of the Nemesis system to the plot, rather, is that it actually writes emergent plots of its own. I'm not sure whether the rest of this paragraph qualifies as a spoiler because it doesn't spoil what will happen, but rather just what can happen; however, if you're ultra-sensitive about spoilers, you might not want to read the rest of this paragraph. Simply put, the anonymous orcs you run into in the game world can kill you, and if they do, they become captains in Sauron's Army. When you encounter them again, they'll reference your past battles; in fact, that applies to any captain you encounter a second or third or fourth time, as they'll all reference what happened in your previous battles. In this way, a neat little plotline writes itself based on your interactions with the orcs.
Of course, embedded in that was this idea that orcs can kill you, and it actually becomes a part of the game. That's potentially one of the most interesting elements of gameplay-plot symbiosis in the game. In almost every other game, when you die, it's game over: your death didn't happen, but rather you're returned to the last save point before your death and forced to try again as if the portion of the game in which you died hadn't happened. In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, however, your death is actually explained within the plot. There is no 'game over', there is no reloading the last save, there is absolutely nothing that happens within the game that isn't part of the narrative. Even your deaths are explained in the plot, and that's the ultimate example of gameplay-plot symbiosis.
Sauron's Army Mechanics
In the above section, I explained how the Sauron's Army gameplay mechanic is weaved very nicely into the plot of the game. Aside from that, however, Sauron's Army is a nice gameplay mechanic on its own. Sauron's Army is a collection of around 20 "captains" and "warchiefs" in the enemy army that, for all intents and purposes, are like bosses. They have their own strengths and weaknesses and demand specific strategies to defeat them. The only thing that differentiates them from bosses is that while bosses usually play a specific function in the plot, these enemies can come up at any time and in any place.
First and foremost, that leads to several interesting developments over the course of a single game. Several times throughout the game, while fighting a seemingly routine battle, the stakes suddenly jumped as one of the boss captains appeared. Sometimes it happened during plot missions, sometimes it happened in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes it happened with multiple captains at once. Their presence can completely change the stakes of a battle at will, and the threat of such a captain appearing prevents the gameplay from ever feeling too routine like it does in Batman: Arkham or Assassin's Creed. In those games, you can always see the significant battles coming in advance, but in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, they can come up out of nowhere.
What also makes the Sauron's Army mechanic, however, is that each captain has its own list of strengths, weaknesses, immunities, and vulnerabilities. This means that not only are these bosses very strong, but they're also all unique. More importantly, entering a battle with a captain without knowing his weaknesses can make the battle very tough. Some are essentially immune to melee attacks, others to ranged attacks, and others to stealth attacks. Others are particularly vulnerable to one of the above; for a certain captain, for example, you may be able to take him out in one hint if you ambush him with a stealth attack, but if you fight him head-on, he's much more formidable. Knowing information about the captains is crucial to success.
The strengths and weaknesses aren't limited just to ranged, melee, and stealth attacks either. Some enemies become terrified in the presence of Caragors, for example, while others actually become stronger. Some enemies are particularly vulnerable to their allies turning against them. Some enemies are actually resistant to all of your types of attacks, and essentially the only way to defeat them easily is to find a clever alternate method, like bringing a beast to the battle or poisoning their grog. The incredible number of approaches to the combat and gameplay meshes perfectly with the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies, ensuring that at some point you'll have to use nearly every single kind of attack and approach in the game.
So how do you find out their strengths and weaknesses? Like everything else in the game, there are a number of different ways. You can interrogate certain flagged orcs, you can find intelligence lying around the game world, you can ask freed slaves for what they know, or you can interrogate any high-ranking captain (the warchiefs) for information about any of the others. If you don't have the information about a certain captain, you can still fight him, but you're left guessing as to what the best approach might be. In one instance, I came up against a captain that was strong against seemingly every one of my attacks; it was only after getting defeated twice and gathering intel on him that I discovered he was easily beatable by bringing a Caragor to the battle.
Another interesting consequence of the captains simply being enemies around in the game world is that they can die as a product of seemingly unrelated actions as well. For example, I once approached an enemy stronghold for the first time (an area where enemies can sound alarms and summon more enemies). Rather than trying to go in and face the dozens and dozens of enemies head-on, I instead entered ranged mode and found that several pieces of Caragor bait were lying around, and several Caragors were locked in cages. So, without entering the area, I summoned a bunch of Caragors and watched as they wreaked havoc. That on its own was pretty cool, but making it even cooler was that twice during that melee I received the alert that one of the captains had died; although they were powerful "boss" characters, they also could die as a result of a normal battle.
All of that covers the Sauron's Army mechanic as it manifests in the actual game world, but the mechanic goes beyond that. Of course, the Nemesis system is a part of it as well, but I'll talk about that a bit more later. What's also very cool about the Sauron's Army mechanic is that it's entirely dynamic. As you defeat captains, new captains will get promoted to take their place, with their own strengths and weaknesses. As you play the game, captains will fight amongst themselves, level up, earn extra promotions, and gather more influence among other orcs. If you ignore an orc's ascent too long, it will become more and more powerful, ultimately becoming more difficult to defeat. Special missions allow you to derail their ascent even if you don't successfully kill them. This type of system would risk putting the player on a treadmill where success is never possible (as all bosses are eventually replaced), but it is paced well enough that the player isn't constantly fighting off new orc captains rather than pursuing the main plot.
The only weakness in the Sauron's Army system is that while it's used quite well in the gameplay in a couple instances, it's pretty underused overall. Two missions leverage the mechanic heavily, but outside that there's not much incentive to pay it much attention beyond defeating the captains when you run into them. It would have been interesting if the game had arranged special rewards or missions for certain levels of domination over Sauron's Army, but with a couple exceptions, the only reason to actually pay attention is if you're bored.
Nemesis Mechanic
The Nemesis mechanic is a part of the Sauron's Army system, but it goes far enough beyond it that it deserves special attention. The Army mechanic could have easily been implemented without the Nemesis system, and the Nemesis system similarly could conceivably exist without the Army behind it.
One major role of the Nemesis system is in writing its own dynamic plots around your character and your enemies; that strength of the system is documented under the gameplay-plot symbiosis section above. The strength of the system goes beyond just the plot that it provides, however. On the gameplay level, it brings something nice and extra to the gameplay, and from a strictly technical point of view, it's very impressively executed.
At the gameplay level, the Nemesis system does a good job of creating increasingly difficult battles against a common adversary. That's one of the interesting dynamics that many games try to create but fail to accomplish. Familiarity is a powerful mechanic in gameplay design as the player feels a certain sense of accomplishment and comfort with facing the same enemy over and over again; this can then lead to interesting added challenges on top of the familiarity the player has already developed. Encountering your rival over and over again in the game provides an immediate heightening of the gameplay experience.
Other games do accomplish this, however, simply by scripting who the recurrent enemies will be in advance. What makes Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor interesting is that it manages to generate this dynamically. In many cases, your Nemesis starts with an unnamed orc that manages to kill you (usually just the orc that was lucky enough to strike the finishing blow during a big group battle). That orc is immediately promoted to captain, giving him a name, new armor, new strengths, and new weaknesses. Thus, your Nemesis is tied to your character from the very beginning. Then, over time, your Nemesis can grow and improve in the Army, and eventually taking him down grants you a better reward.
At a technical level, this is a very interesting process. There are several "templates" for orc appearances, and then several customizations to those templates. When an orc kills you, the game retains its face and body and adds in new armor. As the orc is promoted, new armor and customizations are added. During the process, the orc is also given a randomly-generated name and multiple catch phrases or lines of dialog to speak to you. The character ends up coming across as fleshed-out and detailed as any other character in the game, yet your Nemesis is nonetheless dynamically generated based on the results of your particular game.
Branding Mechanic
The third mechanic that actually differentiates Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor from the similar games in the industry is the branding mechanic. Branding allows you to convert an enemy to your side, having them fight alongside you instead of against you. It can be done in two primary ways, each of which leads to interesting gameplay.
First, you can stealth brand enemies, having them pretend to be enemies until you "activate" them. This lets you set up very cool ambushes. For example, you might come across an area where there are several enemies with several archers around on the rooftops. You can stealth jump around, branding them, until you're ready to launch your assault, and then you can activate them and have them all suddenly attack the enemies on the ground. You can also brand enemies as you're playing normally and leave them unactivated; inevitably this will then lead to you noticing branded enemies intermingled with the other enemies around the world, allowing you to always have a secret edge in potential upcoming battles.
The second way is through branding in the middle of combat. This, too, can be done two ways. First, there is a button to simply brand an enemy at will; Talion performs a "choke hold" on the enemy, and if you can complete it (hold it for ~5 seconds without getting attacked), the enemy will be branded. Of course, in group combat that can be very difficult, so there's a second option: one of the combos allows you to immediately brand an enemy. Using this, if you build up a good combo in battle, you can start very quickly branding enemies to your side, easily turning the tide of the battle. Even if these branded enemies don't stand much of a chance, they at least take the attention off of you long enough for you to escape. In other cases, this mechanic allows you to defeat certain captains much more easily because few captains are immune to their own allies' attacks.
The combat in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is all about depth, and the Branding system simply adds yet another level of depth to the system. Taking all of these things together – the solid foundation drawn from Batman: Arkham, the Sauron's Army system, the Nemesis system, the Branding mechanic, and the strong plot ties among all of these – and Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor has quite possibly the best gameplay of any game I've ever played. It would be a 9/10 easily if it even managed to have a serviceable plot.
Improves on Source Systems
As referenced earlier, if a game is going to be derivative, it has a few obligations to meet. First, it must actually be derivative from good games, and we've covered that Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor meets that criteria by borrowing from two of the strongest franchises of the last generation, Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham. Second, it must add its own content as well, which it did with the Sauron's Army system, the Nemesis system, and the Branding mechanic.
The third thing it must do, however, is improve on the systems that it builds from. It isn't sufficient for the game to simply copy and paste the old systems into itself, but rather it must actually execute them better. In this dimension, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor succeeds again.
First, the game makes significant iterative improvements on the engine it borrows from Batman: Arkham. The combos are more forgiving in the game, letting flow emerge more naturally than the Arkham franchise's more strict requirements. Certain unlockable upgrades can also improve this even further, allowing more time before a combo is broken or allowing you to take a hit without resetting the counter. The game introduces a "last chance" mechanic that gives you one last chance to recover if you find yourself about to fall in battle, which helps immensely when it's difficult to tell how many more hits you can take.
There are only a couple ways in which Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor improves on Batman: Arkham's systems, but honestly, that's forgivable – the system was strong to begin with and left relatively little room for improvement to its core mechanics. The inclusion of a ranged mode, the easier transitions amongst the modes, and the Branding mechanic can also be considered improvements to the systems that the game borrows from Batman: Arkham.
The more significant improvements actually come in comparison to Assassin's Creed. I'm dubious as to just how much of Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor can truly be considered derived from Assassin's Creed as the majority of the common elements are also shared with Batman: Arkham, but these were more apparent when comparing to Assassin's Creed. The game plays in general like a version of Assassin's Creed trying specifically to be less annoying. Climbing happens much faster as Talion basically leaps to the tops of buildings in a single bound. There's no penalty for dropping from a tall height, explained as a product of the Wraith that is keeping Talion from truly dying in general. The game won't let you jump or fall if the jump or fall would kill you, either, saving lots of aggravation especially from misinterpreted inputs. The game even does several little things to stay out of your way, like automatically refilling your arrows at the starts of missions so that you're always facing the mission parameters at full strength.
Assassin's Creed's notoriety system is one of the worst inclusions I've seen in a franchise in years, but Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor makes the wise decision of leaving it out entirely. Talion is essentially "notorious" throughout Mordor, attacked on sight by any orc. The game compensates for this by lowering enemies' reaction times and making it far easier to run away; Talion can actually outrun enemies altogether, and because there is no notoriety system, simply escaping the enemies is enough to allow you to resume normal gameplay. Similarly, the game opts for a more natural approach to stealth. In Assassin's Creed, you must maintain stealth, but as soon as it's broken it's difficult to get it back. In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, if there is no enemy staring at you, you're already back to being able to use stealth. You can take out five enemies then immediately sneak behind a wall to ambush the ones that are coming to find you right that second.
Assassin's Creed has also introduced optional objectives that contribute to "full synchronization"; Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor has these, too. This game, however, executes them better: the reward for these optional objectives is simply extra EXP, meaning that if you fail to complete one, you don't need to go back and replay the mission just to truly complete the game. For that reason, they also feel more natural; it seems normal (to me) that your character would gain extra experience for doing the mission a more difficult or more natural way (although using EXP in this day and age is just laziness).
Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor allows a wide range of ways to manipulate enemies, but that's an area that Assassin's Creed truly pioneered. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor perfects it, though. In Assassin's Creed, the ways of manipulating enemies are often too complicated or require too much planning to really be practical; yes, you can plan such approaches, but why bother taking the time to do so when you can usually run in sword blazing and take them all out easily? Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, however, moves these ways of manipulating enemies to being one touch away. For example, in ranged mode, it's simple to quickly attract enemies to a certain location to sneak around behind them. Attracting enemies works far better than whistling in Assassin's Creed. Actions like poisoning the enemy's grog or knocking down a bee's nest can be done on a moment's impulse. There's no planning really required; it can all be improvised as you go along.
Nice, Natural Sidequests
One of the frustrating things that often happens in open-world games like Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, Assassin's Creed, Batman: Arkham, and Grand Theft Auto is that the world map becomes a massive, overwhelming to-do list. Watch Dogs was particularly guilty of this; the game world was just completely overloaded with sidequests and activities. Most were just thrown in without much context or thought.
In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, there's a manageable number of sidequests. There's two groups of items to collect, around 20 in each, marked on the world map once you climb the high points. There's a hunting quest and a gathering quest, similar to Red Dead Redemption, but both are relatively easy to take care of throughout the normal course of the game. They're examples of light sidequests done right: you don't need to completely diverge from the regular plot to take care of them, but they're worth noting anyway. They're not well-explained, which is detrimental, but they're also so lightweight that they don't need much description either.
There's a sidequest that revolves around freeing slaves and then completing additional slave-freeing missions, but to be honest, I don't know if it's optional or not; it was presented as optional, but it unlocked some of the main missions that seemed essential to completing the game, so it's not totally clear to me if it was mandatory or not. Either way, however, it was presented with the right level of light simplicity and accessibility (although it did get a bit repetitive over time).
My only potential criticism of the sidequests is that with the excellent mechanics outlined above, there was actually room for more sidequests. I can envision lots of interesting stories taking place within Sauron's Army, and a sidequest more directly driven by your Nemesis would have been welcome as well. However, I must praise the sidequests that were present; they were fun without distracting from the main storyline, and they never felt like a list of items to check off a to-do list (even when the game literally gives you a to-do list).
Faithful to the Source Material (I think)
For this, I have to issue a disclaimer: I'm not a big Lord of the Rings fan. I don't know the source material. I'm not a good person to comment on my own on the faithfulness of the game to the source material.
Instead, I prodded one of my best friends on some questions that the game brings up, and nearly everything I asked him checked out. There are new characters, sure, but the game takes place in an area of Middle-earth that is not thoroughly documented in the original lore, so there is room for an original character. The events of the game don't strongly interfere with the events of the other media; you don't kill any main characters or free any territories or anything. Your mission is more about personal vengeance, which leaves plenty more room for the game to be creative without stepping on the toes of the original lore.
More importantly, the game includes numerous call-outs to the original stories as well. Like BioShock and Assassin's Creed, you find items throughout the game world that trigger memories or recordings of prior events, many of which tell stories straight from the original Lord of the Rings literature. You also encounter some characters from the original series, but not in ways that interfere with who they really are in the books. So, overall, it seems to me that the game is faithful to the source material, and perhaps even adds to it – but, I'm willing to be corrected on that if I'm off-base.
Excellent Audio, including the Controller Speaker
I think it's good to point out when a game manages to actually use an interesting piece of hardware effectively instead of in a more gimmicky fashion. The PlayStation 4 has a speaker built into the controller, and Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor actually manages to use it effectively. The speaker is used frequently throughout the game to indicate when hidden items are nearby, to play certain voice clips, and to provide audio information when moving in stealth mode.
Because the controller speaker is actually separated from the regular speakers, and because the sound coming out of it is of a different nature, it becomes easy to discriminate audio information through the controller from the rest of the game's music and sound effects. Because of that, it's much easier to actually use that audio information to guide your ongoing gameplay and decision-making. That, in turn, allows the information presented through that speaker to actually be more useful. On top of that, it really adds to the atmosphere when you're in close quarters and seemingly listening to your enemy breathe. Overall, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor does a great job at using the new piece of technology.
The audio of the game is also more generally strong. The game has some great music, and it's used nicely throughout the game to heighten the tension and complement the action. The best application of this is the dedicated theme songs for some of the war chiefs, which involve vocal chanting of the war chief's name. The voice acting in the game is incredible as well. I thought some of the characters shared with the original Lord of the Rings movies were voiced by the same actors, and the dynamically-generated lines for the procedurally-generated orc enemies really add some immersion to the game.
Generally Well-Used QTEs
Quick-time events are one of the worst features of modern gaming, but like the controller speaker above, I think it's important to point out when a game does them well. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor does them well.
The main problem with QTEs is that they usually come up randomly in the middle of cutscenes and boil down to "Press X to not have to watch this scene again" – or, "Press X to not die" as some others say. They're rarely worked into the actual fabric of the game, and they do little more than distract from the cinematics.
In Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, QTEs are actually worked into the fabric of the game. Before dying, you typically have a QTE that allows you one chance to get back up and keep fighting. Taming certain wild beasts take the form of QTEs, asking you to move the control stick and press a button quickly to accomplish the goal. Other times you can defend yourself against an attack through a sudden rapid-press QTE.
This avoids the two main problems of QTEs. First of all, the stakes aren't too high: you only experience a QTE as an opportunity to accomplish something or at the end of a long battle. Either way, it's not a matter of playing just fine and suddenly dying because you didn't press triangle fast enough. Either failing the QTE doesn't kill you, or it kills you because you already lost at the main combat for a while leading up to it. Secondly, these QTEs are recurrent and predictable. You know when you're trying to tame an animal that you're going to see one. You know when you're running low on health that you might see one. They don't come out of nowhere, and so you can actually be prepared for them rather than dying because you put the controller down during what you thought was just a cutscene.
Acceptable Online-Offline Merger
One last minor note, and really, I'm only including this because the game I played before Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor was Watch Dogs. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor actually manages to incorporate multiplayer elements into the single-player in an acceptable way. Generally, I hate any attempts to force multiplayer on the single-player experience, but in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor, this takes the form simply of missions against captains that aren't in your game's army to avenge the deaths of other players online. They don't interrupt you, they aren't mandatory, they don't affect your progress through the single-player game at all, and you can complete them without ever even really realizing that they came from someone else online. Of course, because of all that, they don't add much to the game either, but hey, they're an example of how that type of feature might be able to be incorporated acceptably.
The Bad
I just said a lot of amazing things about Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor. Honestly, I keep trying to convince myself that it's a 9/10 game because it does an amazing number of things so well. The problem, however, is that when comparing it to other truly great recent games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Last of Us, and Assassin's Creed IV, there's something just… missing. When I really sat down to think about it, I realized there's two things missing (in addition to a handful of other issues).
Wildly Derivative
I described above that the incredibly derivative nature of much of the gameplay in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is somewhat excusable. The game borrows from great franchises, it improves on the mechanics that it borrows, and it supplies some good new content as well. But despite these things, the depth of the derivativeness in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is something that is still difficult to see past. Sure, every game borrows things from earlier games, but I've never seen a game that borrows as much as this one.
The resemblance between the combat in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor and Batman: Arkham Origins is so strong that I earnestly believe that the two actually share some of the same underlying code. There's precedent for this: WB Games developed both games, and Batman: Arkham Origins was essentially new content for the same engine developed by Rocksteady for the superior Batman: Arkham City. WB Games has already, to me, demonstrated willingness to leverage old code (or at least old designs) in a new game, and it's not a jump to think they did it with Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor as well.
The core melee combat in the game is literally identical to Batman: Arkham Origins. Well-timed attacks build up a combo meter. After a combo of length eight, you can unlock a superpowered move. Super moves are executed by pressing two adjacent buttons. An upgrade knocks the requirement down to five. Stunning an enemy allows for a series of rapid-fire attacks culminating in a finishing move. Enemies announce their attacks with an icon above their head, allowing you the chance to counter-attack. Square attacks. Circle stuns. X dodges. Triangle counters. Once an enemy is stunned on the ground, you have to do a finishing move to actually knock them out of the fight.
The variety of enemies is identical, too. There's the shielded enemy that requires you to vault over him before landing any hits. There's the enemies with ranged weapons that attack from afar. There's the enemy with the super-powered attack you can't block, only dodge. There's the enemy that prevents you from vaulting over him. There's the enemy that can't be hit without being stunned. There's the two enemies that attack at once, forcing you to press counter twice. The only thing missing is the knife-wielding enemy that must be dodged three times, and I certainly wouldn't call removing an enemy type an improvement.
Perhaps nothing can describe the depth of the similarity between the combat in the two games better than the finishing moves. Each game has four finishing moves, executed by pressing two adjacent buttons at once. In both games, one move instantly defeats one enemy. In both games, one move immediately knocks out any currently stunned enemy. In both games, one move immediately stuns all enemies in the area. The only difference is the fourth move, which brands an enemy in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor but disarms an enemy in Batman: Arkham Origins. I could be wrong, but I think it's even the same combinations of buttons that execute the combos.
The similarity goes beyond just the combat as well. The stealth in Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is actually more similar to the stealth in Batman: Arkham than Assassin's Creed. A button keeps you in stealth mode, allowing you to sneak around unless an enemy is staring right at you. The game has a Wraith mode that allows you to see through walls, track enemies, and do everything else that Detective mode in Batman: Arkham lets you do. Like Batman: Arkham, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor dodges the need for a notoriety system by leaving civilians out entirely (except slaves, which play little role in the gameplay).
Much of the game might just be effectively a palette-swap with Batman: Arkham, but there are elements that are definitely more reminiscent of Assassin's Creed as well. Climbing high points to reveal the area around you is borrowed pretty directly (although several other games have done that as well). Icons indicate to what extent an enemy is aware of you, growing slowly over time until they begin an all-out pursuit. The aerial and stealth takedowns mirror Assassin's Creed precisely. Wraith mode could just as easily be labeled a derivation of Eagle vision. Throughout the game, you find items that trigger memories or scenes from the character's past. Running along rooftops, catching enemies running to ring alerts, free-running and climbing – it all feels strongly reminiscent of Assassin's Creed.
As I said before, every game borrows something from the games that came before it. The problem with Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is that it borrows a lot, and thus there is a question of how much to actually give it credit for doing. This is the same problem I encountered with my review for Batman: Arkham Origins: the game is pretty fun, but the fun of the game is entirely because of features it borrowed from the previous game. Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor isn't nearly as egregious an offender here as it supplies a lot of good new features, but the core gameplay that takes up 70% of the game is completely derivative. This doesn't necessarily count against the game, but it's the absence of something that would otherwise count for the game.
Weak Plot
What really counts against the game, though, is the nearly complete lack of a compelling plot. When I really sat down to think about how Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor compares to some of the other games I mentioned earlier, what came to mind was that while the gameplay was strong, there was a certain memorable quality to it that was lacking. It was just as fun to play, but it didn't keep pulling me back the way the other games did, and I think the reason for that is the game's lack of a story.
As the game's box describes (in other words, this isn't a spoiler), the central motivating plot behind the game is that Talion wants to avenge the death of his family. The game reveals bits and pieces of that throughout, but all it really reveals is that, yes, his family did die, and these are the enemies responsible so go kill them. You also have a wraith that cohabitates your body with you, and part of the plot is discovering who he is. But then you discover who he is, and that's pretty much it. There's a plot surrounding freeing slaves and a plot surrounding a conspiracy to do something with your wraith, but all of them are entirely underwhelming.
Despite this, though, the game was still a 9/10 for me until the end. I figured it would at least deliver an impactful final sequence of battles and some closure, but it did anything but. The final battles were among the easiest in the game, leaving me to expect a secret battle after the end credits. The plot fizzles rather than climaxes, finishing with all the pomp and circumstance of crossing an item off your to-do list.
Without a decent story or compelling cast of characters, Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor is Tetris. Sure, it's a lot of fun to play, but there's nothing deeper to it. In today's gaming climate, to be a big-budget hit you need something on the narrative side, and Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor simply doesn't have it.
Occasional Frustrating Moments
The game also isn't without somewhat common frustrating moments. These aren't enough to be a major knock against the game, but they're worth mentioning to point out that the gameplay isn't always perfect. First, the game uses ranged attacks more frequently than Batman: Arkham, and it compensates by lowering the damage they do. The problem is that the damage is so lowered you're not always even aware that the damage is happening until suddenly you get the alert that your health is running low. It's a poor feedback loop when this happens: you don't know what you could be doing differently to avoid all this damage, but yet it's also keeping you from succeeding. It ought to be more clear where the damage is coming from whenever you're getting hit.
There are also a couple frustrating attacks that enemies have that are more annoying than challenging. One is poisoning, an attack that prevents you from seeing counter-attack icons as well as slowly lowers your health. Another is bleeding (I think), which instantly knocks your health down to the critical level. Neither of these can be dodged and both instantly ruin your chances at success in the battle. The game is nice enough to give you an upgrade that prevents the poisoning (or at least, I received one), but the bleeding remained an annoyance throughout the entire game.
The third annoyance I hesitate to mention because there is something that can be done about it. There are certain enemies in the game that are effectively impossible to defeat. They're immune to any finishing moves, immune to ranged attacks, immune to stealth attacks, and take damage incredibly slowly. The problem with these enemies is that they can be easy to dominate, just difficult to defeat. Get them by themselves and you can hit them with an infinite chain of hit-hit-hit-hit-stun-repeat, but their health goes down so slow that you have to build up a 300-hit combo to even make a dent (seriously, 300 – that's the highest I got before I accidentally attempt). As it turns out, these enemies can only really be defeated by branding their allies and turning them against them. On the one hand, this is a cool instance where knowing an enemy's weakness plays a major role. On the other hand, I hadn't unlocked branding yet, so at that time in the game, there was nothing I could do but avoid that enemy.
So, the battle system isn't perfect. It's excellent, but not perfect. I would say that perfection isn't possible, but had Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor not included these elements, I would have called the combat system perfect.
Lazy Upgrade System
This is a minor point, and I'm not even going to bother going into detail about it. It's 2014. There's no reason any game besides an RPG should have a skill system that involves earning EXP points and exchanging them for skills. We've used that system for 25 years now, it's time to move on. Every other element of the gameplay is explained within the plot, but there's no way to explain EXP points. Come on, do something more interesting.
The Verdict
Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor stands on the shoulders of giants. It took two of the best franchises from the last generation, borrowed their best features, improved on them, and threw in some new elements of its own. When all is said and done, it has arguably the best combat system of any game I've ever played. But it's hard to give the game all the credit for that because it basically ripped off the game that used to hold that title for me, Batman: Arkham City. But the game definitely adds enough to that formula that had it been perfect in every other way, it still would have done enough to be one of the greatest games I've ever played.
Instead, like I said previously, it's Tetris: solid gameplay with little more. The plot is overly simplistic, the characters aren't compelling, and the ending is anticlimactic in both the gameplay and the story. Yes, it's fun to turn on and play, but there's nothing more driving continued engagement with the game. Given that it's set in one of the richest fantasy worlds ever created, that's a massive missed opportunity, and ultimately it holds the game back enormously.
My Recommendation
It's a must-play, but let's hold off on the Game of the Year awards.