Rayman Legends (Video Game) - Review

2D platforming is such a simple genre and one so full of games, that I sometimes worry we'll eventually reach a time when the genre as a whole grows stale. After each time I play one, I get more and more concerned that developers will just run out of ideas. Rayman Legends is the kind of game that restores my faith, but with some strings attached. Rayman Legends is a great game rife  with clever design and superb aesthetics, even though it left me without a proper sense of satisfaction after the credits rolled.

Rayman Legends is a joy to play. The controls and physics are very solid, meaning that the inputs are merely an expression of your skill. There are some hairs to split, like wall-running getting a bit disorienting in terms of which direction to move the stick/d-pad, but overall, again, very solid overall. The level design is truly remarkable. Most levels are designed to be ran through quickly in a sort of rhythm. This makes things exciting and fast-paced, even though technically only some levels actually force you to maneuver quickly. Throughout the duration of the game's main five worlds, original concepts are sprinkled into the bowl. The best example is the stealth portion that is mixed with swimming, which offers a pretty unique experience. It's also the little things that really stick out, like the cleverly-placed hidden collectibles. 

Rayman Origins got the attention it did thanks in large part to its gorgeous visuals, and the ante has only been upped in Legends. This game is beautiful, with intricate and fun animation and bucket loads of color. The music is also quite good here, offering enjoyable tunes that both enhance the feeling of playing and are good in their own right. The aesthetics are remarkable.

Each world ends with a boss and then a music level as a bit of a reward, essentially. The bosses are polygon-based 3D, which is a cool way to contrast them off of the rest of the graphics. Taking down the bosses is good, patterned-based fun, even though none of them are particularly anything to write home about. The music levels are definitely cool, offering a really entertaining mixture of level design and music to enjoy, but they are somewhat lazily put-together. Gameplay footage makes it seem like these are interactive-rhythm segments, but they're actually a fake version of that, as your interaction doesn't create the music, it just goes along with static music in the background. A string of lums (coins) is set to a series of guitar strings, for example, but if you don't collect the lums, the guitar strums still happen. I did enjoy these, even though they don't involve the player in a way that makes game like the Bit.Trip series so neat.

The big disappointment here, though, is just that the main game ends abruptly, leaving me still wanting. The story is a load of nonsense, which means that there is no added sense of satisfaction at the conclusion because there's basically nothing here. Narratives in games like this don't need to be anything more complex than a hero saving a princess from a monster, but something should be here to give a sense of purpose and conclusiveness to the adventure. It would probably seem silly if that was the thrust of my explanation of my biggest problem with the game, but that is just secondary. The short feeling of the main game adds much more to this abruptness. These five standard-length worlds don't feel like enough. I wanted more.

That's not to say that there isn't a lot of content here, because there is. Legends does a brilliant job of constantly holding a carrot in front of your face, giving you new challenges like short time trials (as well as daily ones that are ranked online!), and new rewards like character skins. It's quite addictive! There's nearly an equal amount of remade Origins levels here, which are still incredibly fun despite feeling jarring and useless, considering this game is lacking on new levels and since Origins was so recent. 

I get the sense that Rayman Legends could have so easily been an incredible or even masterful game, when it's really just a great one. So you could fairly say that I'm disappointed. But really, I love this game. It is an absolute blast and very smartly designed. Its aesthetics are wonderful. It's great.

***

~  Reviewed on Playstation 3, single-player ~

The Last of Us (Video Game) - Review

The Last of Us is special in many ways. It marks the first time Naughty Dog has started a second new IP on the same platform. It's essentially the last big release that is exclusive to the 7th generation of consoles. And it's also not only one of the finest video games of said generation, it's one of the finest ever crafted. With its unparalleled, visceral combat, jaw-dropping aesthetics, and unprecedented storytelling, The Last of Us is truly masterful.

The Last of Us is another story about a zombie apocalypse, but it does enough of its own to ensure that doesn't make it feel stale in any way. For example, these zombies are not even quite zombies, but a growth after affliction from a fungus. As time goes on, the growth gets worse, first making one lose control of his or her body, then taking away vision, etc. What's smart is that not only does the growth get worse with each stage for the victim, but the further along a particular victim is in their sick state, the more difficult of an enemy they are to deal with in the game. This game builds its own world, with a crippling government run via Martial Law, and a rebellion group against the government known as The Fireflies. 

Soon enough the player finds himself in control of a man named Joel, escorting a fourteen-year old girl named Ellie somewhere because of a prior agreement. They're great characters, Joel a shell of a once normal man with remnants of his humanity left, and Ellie a chipper girl that has adapted very well to the only world that she's ever known. The game very easily got me invested in these characters as well as the various other characters along the way. Comedy, drama, and horror are all elegantly represented here. It's very funny, and it's very sad, and it's very intense, and each of those types of story-telling are balanced remarkably well. 

The game is absolutely stunning. The beginning of the game actually isn't, I should say, with lots of unimpressive textures, but once the game really gets started, the beginning's lack of graphical flair is easily forgotten. The facial animation is top of the line, not looking awkward at all and getting across the emotion of the characters well. The world is packed with detail and may just be the most impressive display of visuals on this generation of consoles. The great contextual animation that Naughty Dog gave to the industry with Uncharted 2 is here, which means that when a character approaches a wall, for example, their hand will casually touch and push off of it for no reason other than aesthetics. The score is also fantastic, drumming up the proper emotion for each particular moment.

I have always wanted combat in video games to be as good as it is in The Last of Us. Many action games of this kind, with varying levels of detriment to their respective qualities, come off as artificially challenging, through lazy design like enemies that take a ludicrous amount of bullets, but not this one. It's perfectly challenging, with every death feeling like my fault, partly due to the multitude of equally viable options available. The fusion of gunplay and stealth feels more natural than other games that attempt to do the same because one does not feel cheap because of the other. It doesn't feel like a shooter with stealth tacked on, and it doesn't feel like a stealth game with shooting tacked on. 

The AI is very well-done and impressed me more than I've ever been impressed by such a thing. Enemies react dynamically to how you play, in familiar ways such as flanking you when in a bad position, but also in new ways. For example, if you are dominating your opponents, they will run away from you, frightened. Your allies also have impressive AI, helping you in a way that doesn't make the game too easy, but in a way that makes sense. The AI overall comes off as organic.  

The violence is very brutal, which made me feel genuinely bad about my actions, but the tense, survival-horror atmosphere makes me empathize with the character I'm in control of. He's just trying to survive. This game had me of two minds, one of my own, civilized perspective, and the other of Joel, this man whose sense of morality is mostly broken due to a country whose order has crumbled. This makes the combat even more engaging. I feel like the successes of my character are truly my successes, and when I finished off a large group of dudes, I needed a breather.  The only other types of gameplay to be had other than combat are good puzzles that don't ask much of the player and serve as a nice break, and RPG elements that eschew things that bog down gameplay like inventory management and stick with completely fun things like upgrading weapons and your character. 

That level of empathy for actions that are unacceptable when scrutinized under civilized morality is a concept that runs from the beginning of the game all the way to its controversial ending. Many have reacted differently to this hard-to-swallow ending. I think the ending solidifies a pretty clear theme: In this world where everything has gone awry, many have dropped their sense of morality because their own survival seems more important to them. This is a theme that can be picked up from things like The Walking Dead, but The Last of Us hammers it home more strongly than any fiction I've ever experienced. And part of its effectiveness lies in the emotions that being forced to take the role of someone in a world like this intrinsically bring about, which is revolutionary for gaming. 

The Last of Us also features a multiplayer component, which presents a unique type of gameplay. You choose a faction to align yourself with and you play alongside other real people. As you do well, your camp of people grows and remains healthy, and vice versa. The combat of the single player is recreated pretty well in multiplayer, and it comes off as a well-thought-out diversion. It's fun, but it's not the star of the show here.  

The star of the show here is this masterful single-player experience. Naughty Dog has crafted a piece of high art. The Last of Us is a pretty much perfect experience. It is one of the finest achievements in the history of video games. I laughed, I cried, I nervously clenched my controller, and I wrote this glowing review with optimism for the gaming industry. 

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (Video Game) - Review

Sly 2: Band of Thieves is my favorite video game of all-time. It's more or less a flawless game, which heavily plays into its place as my all-time favorite, but it also has a lot of nostalgic significance to me. The story of the Sly Cooper series was one of the first, if not the first, video game story to really click with me. Young Matt would just skip the cut-scenes in the games he played, but Sly 2 didn't give the player that option. Young Matt was forced to watch the cut-scenes, and Young Matt became engrossed in the tale of a mischievous trio of anthropomorphised animals. So engrossed that he hunted down the first game in the series, and so engrossed that he excitedly got in on the third game when it released back in 2005.

And then, the series was gone for awhile. Developer Sucker Punch moved onto the more popular Infamous series on the Playstation 3. Imagine my excitement when the Sly Cooper HD Collection revealed that a Sly 4 is in the works. It was first slated for a 2012 release on Playstation 3, but that was changed to a Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita release on February 5th, 2013. I loyally went down to the game shop on its day of release and bought myself a copy.

The first game in the series, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, was, for the most part, a standard, linear-style 3D platformer that uniquely mixed in elements of stealth, had a quirky story, and used an interesting visual style. The second game became less linear in its progression, beefed up the story, vastly improved the graphics, and allowed the player to take control of more than just Sly Cooper. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves used the same framework as Sly 2, but threw even more gameplay concepts and characters into the mix. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time continues the story of the series by using the same structure of the second and third games, but scales its gameplay variety and character roster to something comparable to the second game. The game is out on both PS3 and Vita, the PS3 version includes a free download of the Vita version, and players with both can take advantage of a cloud-save function used to continue progress across platforms [which works brilliantly]. It's successful in capturing the magic of the older games in the series and is a great game in its own right, despite hitches such as consistent technical problems and an unsatisfying conclusion to its narrative.

The plot of Thieves in Time takes place directly after the events of  Sly 3. The Sly Cooper gang, a ragtag trio of master thieves, is split up after the climatic events of the third game. Sly is hanging out with police officer and love interest Carmelita Fox, whom only allowed this because she believes he has amnesia [he doesn't... hopefully things didn't get weird behind the scenes]. Meanwhile, Bentley, the brains of the Sly Cooper gang, successfully created a time machine with his love interest Penelope. The premise of Thieves in Time forms when the gang learns that Penelope is missing and there is a baddie with his own time machine thwarting Cooper ancestors throughout history. Each chapter takes place in a different time in history, and features a different, playable Cooper from the past.

The story's lots of fun and mostly maintains the tone of past games. It is a lot more comedic (Murray, the third member of the Sly Cooper gang, is more or less completely comedic relief in this entry) and often laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it still has a reasonable amount of smart, inventive drama that I more than appreciate as a fan of the series. It’s ridiculous, just like past games – the wheelchair-bound turtle Bentley doesn’t just have the rocket packs and hydraulics from the last game, but he also has Doctor Octopus-style mechanical arms this time around. There's a big plot twist around 80% through the game, and it hits hard and surprises. Overall it’s great, but the conclusion is weak and wholly unsurprising, despite the satisfying and engaging final boss fight.

And the game is quite striking. On PS3, I can confidently say that these graphics are some of the very best of its kind. This is very impressive cartoonish celshading, with intricate and expressive character animations and colorful and interesting vistas. On Vita, it looks pretty good, but the resolution and draw distance take noticeable hits. In both versions, the 2D animated cut-scenes are massively cut off by black bars on the television, but what’s there looks great. Voice acting is similarly impressive, with goofy and fun performances that fit the over-the-top characters. The original cast from past games more or less reprises its roles, as well.

The biggest problem with the game is something on a similar note, and that’s technical issues. The framerate on the Vita version is not awesome, as it frequently drops throughout the whole game. On PS3 it’s mostly pretty smooth, until the final chapter in which the framerate is just as unimpressive as the Vita version always is. Load times on both platforms are exceedingly bad, which may be the worst of the technical issues. I had the audio cut out while playing on PS3 at one point, and I got stuck in objects once on each platform, as well. These technical issues bring the overall experience down, but never made me think twice about booting the game up to play.

And that’s because the game is lots of fun. The gameplay is comprised mostly of sequences combing stealth and platforming. The game introduces new concepts enough to keep things fresh, and the organic nature of the level design makes the platforming engrossing in a way that games like Super Mario 64 just aren’t. During gameplay, it doesn’t feel like jumping from platform A to platform B, it actually feels like jumping from the chimney of a roof to a cable line. Every now and then the game will throw sections of brawling, or of dual-stick shooting, or of third-person shooting at you, and they’re fun while they last.

The game is rife with collectibles, creating an incentive to continue playing after the credits roll – or at least to make you play more carefully the first time through. The game is split into five chapters, each taking place in a secluded, [small-scale] open-world. Each has their own set of three types of collectibles. The bottles and treasures of past games return, the latter of which providing in-game money as well as the pride of collectorship that the former solely provides. The game also has masks, which are sometimes hidden within missions; all of which are replayable. I love the idea of exploring these little worlds to find treasures and bottles, but the prospect of replaying missions for masks seems exhausting. It’s just extra, so it’s hard to complain too much, but this is preventing me from doing the 100% completion I was more than happy to do with the second and third entries in the series.

As a big fan of the series, I’m happy with Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. It’s unfortunate that the game didn’t get the extra time needed to stamp out the technical quarrels, and it’s unfortunate that the end to the story is as lame as it is, but the game succeeds as a whole. Sanzaru Games was able to make me smile in the same way that Sucker Punch did with the original trilogy on PS2. The story is taken in a fun direction, the goofy comedy squeezed out some Petras laughter, the leap in generation does wonders for the visuals, and the organic, engaging platforming is as good as it’s always been in the series. Bring on Sly 5, Sanzaru.  

Top Five Favorite Video Games of 2012

2012 was not an exceedingly exciting gaming year for me. Despite the birth of two brand new platforms, both of which I got in on, my interests veered more towards things like comics and film. I enjoyed enough games to fill a top ten list, but really, there were around five to seven games that really stood out to me. So I decided to do a nice, round 5 games. I love these games, and they left a real impact on me.

I'm pleased to present my top five favorite games of 2012.

5. New Super Mario Bros. U - (played on Wii U)

Christmas day - and the rest of my Christmas break for that matter - was Wii U week for me. The game that really captured my attention, and that really got me excited for Nintendo's new console, was New Super Mario Bros. U. Easily the best of the New Super games, NSMBU fills eight worlds with energetic and interesting level designs that look better than ever, thanks to Nintendo embracing high definition visuals. The new squirrel suit and the pink baby Yoshi are two of the coolest power-ups in any of the 2D Mario games, both giving the player a joyous sense of flight. The Miiverse integration smartly gives the experience a social flair, even when playing alone, and the option to play exclusively on the Gamepad is convenient. Nintendo still knows what it's doing. 

4. Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational - (played on PS Vita)
Yeah, I got on board with the Vita as well. Game releases sure are slow for the system at the moment, but that's partly due to its crazy launch day, filled with tons of big first-party titles. The first game I bought to go along with my Vita was Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational. Not Uncharted, not Wipeout, not Lumines, no - I went with the quirky, arcade-style gold game. It was great fun! The graphics are gorgeous, and do a great job of showing off the Vita's impressive display. The course design and character customization are great, as I've come to expect from this series. Golf games bore some people, but for me, there's not many things more exciting than an impressive shot across the map that lands right in the hole.

3. The Walking Dead - (played on iOS)
When Telltale's The Walking Dead set the gaming community on fire, with glowing reviews, game of the year nominations, and personal stories of tears, I was quite surprised. It seemed to me like it would be a "pretty good" series that got less and less relevant as it went on, but boy, was I wrong. The first season of The Walking Dead, which lasted five episodes, is a memorable emotional roller coaster. I was pleased to find that Telltale veered away from confusing puzzles and instead focused on storytelling, and I was even more pleased to find just how good the story it has to tell is. The game is incredibly tense all the way to its depressing conclusion, and it manages to give the player a tangible sense of moral responsibility for his actions. The game is also easy on the eyes, with a distinct comic-book-inspired look. It is a fulfilling experience that I am glad to have had.

2. Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale - (played on PS3 and Playstation Vita)
Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale gave me a feeling that I haven't had in around seven years - The feeling of playing Super Smash Bros. for the first time. Which is not to say that PS All-Stars isn't unique, because, as IGN's Colin Moriarty said in his review, "the two games are as different as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat." Its focus on Super Attacks is what sets it apart from Super Smash Bros., giving the game a much more strategic feel. The game's inclusion of solid online play and the option to play on the go [with the Vita version, which comes free with a purchase of the PS3 version] made the game incredibly addictive for me, and it's important to note that its inspiration can't boast those features.

1. Lollipop Chainsaw - (played on Xbox 360)
I'm not nearly as loyal and passionate as many other fans of Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda 51, but Lollipop Chainsaw blew my mind. I love practically everything about this game, from its goofy, stupid and sexy sense of style to its thrilling gameplay, rife with old-school sensibility. The developers clearly chose not to censor themselves much, filling the game to the brim with sex, violence and overall crudeness. All of that, mind you, juxtaposes with rainbows, cheerleading and light-hearted 80s pop music. The game especially shines in its aesthetics, but the solid score-based beat-em-up action does not get buried in the barrage of sensory gold. I almost immediately jumped in for a second playthrough after my first, which is something I never do. This game is easily my favorite of 2012.

***

What were your favorites? How awful is my taste in games? There's a comments section below, bro.