Nintendo Switch

Untitled Goose Game & UI

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When I first heard  of Untitled Goose Game a few years ago I wanted to play it immediately. I didn’t know anything about the game besides the player takes control of an annoying goose and runs amok in a rural country village. It all sounded so fun and silly and unique that, in the following years, it became my most anticipated game, my most “hype” game. Well the game came out a couple weeks ago and, after playing through it immediately upon release, I can say it is exactly what I wanted.

The main loop of the game is very easy to explain. In fact, it’s so easy that I’ve already explained it. As the titular goose, the player goes around a village and irritates every human being they come across. I wouldn’t say they wreak havoc on the village, more so they wreak nuisances. They make a boy trip in a puddle, take away a man’s stool right as he’s about to sit down, and, in my personal favorite section, force one neighbor to throw the others belongings back over the fence when the goose drags them over. 

It’s all very cute and quaint, but there’s a level of polish to the game that shows how well designed the game is. First: the art style is perfect. Everything is simple and low textured, with deep colors and thin outline that makes it look right out of a children’s book. Second: the sound design is great. I was thrilled every time I picked up a new item and learned it affected my honk, like a glass bottle muffling it or making a harmonica sound when holding one in my beak.Third: the characters are expressive. The humans in Untitled Goose Game, while being simple by lacking fingers and even faces, show a range of emotions from fear to anger to confusion. This is done by all of them using overthetop gestures, but that just feeds into the slapstick tone the game. This also is an example of my favorite thing about the game, it’s integrated UI.

Most user interfaces in video games tend to appear above the game, in a layer between player and game. They appear as button prompts to open doors and climbable ledges, enemies’ health or level appearing above their heads, or informational text floating above a weapon you might choose to pick up. They exist only for the player, not the character in the game, and can add slight fractures to the immersion the game is trying to build. Some games, however, choose to have the UI existing in the world of the game. Notable examples of these are the map and compass in Metro 2033 that the player has to pull out to  check objective locations and in Dead Space where the player’s health is shown through a glowing bar on the back of their suit. These are what I think of as integrated UI because they integrated, explained, and exist in the world of the game.

The UI in Untitled Goose Game is integrated into the world more thematically than physically, but it works extremely well. I mentioned before that the art style of the game resembles a children’s book. Well the UI uses that style to feel a part of the world. Honks appear as lines from the goose’s mouth like in a cartoon, indicated to the player that is a noise that will alert other characters to them and other items with similar indicators act the same way. Items the goose can pick up also has the white lines appear around them when they can be grabbed. It’s a clever way to show what’s intractable in the world while being thematically and stylistically coherent with the game’s world.

Untitled Goose Game is one part stealth game, one part puzzle game, with all the fun of annoying your neighbors in Animal Crossing. The stealth and puzzle genres of games have some overlapping rules used by them. They both work with predictable character AI and set patterns for those characters so the player can anticipate their movements and so the results of actions can be consistent. 

A lot of stealth sections in games will have enemies walking back and forth along one path so the safe areas are clear or they will have a way to show the enemies’ range of sight so the player can work around them. Untitled Goose Game’s world feels so much more alive than that. The villagers in the game have patterns they will go through in a section, but they do might do four or five different things, making their paths and movement ever changing, but still predictable. There is a video game shorthand for when the player has been spotted in enemy territory and that’s the sudden exclamation mark appearing over an enemy’s head.

Untitled Goose Game is not above using the same cliche, but that’s only if the player is caught doing something the people don’t care for, like stealing an item or being where they are not supposed to be. Other times, if a village spots the goose but the player is not doing something that warrants being chased after, the people will simply stand there, staring at the goose, perhaps stroking their chin a bit. This is a really well done system. While the ! or ? appearing above a character’s head when they notice something out of place feels slightly out of place in the world of the game, the pencil style font melds well with the art style and the two different ways characters react to the player clearly shows them when they are in trouble or not.

Last bit of UI in Untitled Goose Game I want to mention is how the game tells the player the characters’ intentions. As a puzzle game, the player needs to know what each villager is intending to do so they may use it to solve the check lists of objectives. The game shows this by having a thought bubble appear over a character’s head with an image of the item they intend to grab. This is one of the biggest things that endeared me to the game. It’s true that the thought bubbles exist only to the player and not the goose in game, but it feels completely in place in the world. Utilizing the strong art style of the game, the characters’ thought bubbles heighten the children’s book aesthetic. They are not integrated into the world physically, but artistically, like the honk and grab lines.

I love Untitled Goose Game. I found it endlessly charming and silly when I first booted it up, and it bloomed into a very clever and well designed game. The first time I noticed its genius was in the simple and integrated UI. But I’m now a little sad that it’s out because I need to find a new game to be my most anticipated game to be released. At the moment, honestly, it’s got to be Team Cherry’s Silksong.

Doom (1993) – Critical Miss #8

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I’m not a PC gamer. A gaming PC is something I would like to get at some point, but cost always prohibit it. Because of this, I had never played Doom until recently. Doom is easily one of the most influential games of all time. It may not have created the FPS genre, but it popularized it and help shape it into what we know today. But the game came out for home computers in 1993, tech has advanced so much in the 25 plus years since its release and we can now true 3D games. Can Doom really hold up that well in the current day? The simple answer: yes.

The player takes control of the “Doom Guy” and the goal of the game is to kill a bunch of demons. There is a story that’s told to the player in between episodes, but it’s so hacked-out and insignificant that I don’t remember much of it. The focus of Doom is on combat and level exploration and it does those two things to near perfection.

In Doom, the player has two things protecting them form the hordes of Hell: guns and speed. Doom Guy moves extremely fast from the get-go and this is even without holding the sprint button. While there are walls and corners to dip behind to avoid oncoming enemy projectiles, taking cover is never as efficient as strafing to the side. This avoids the attack while still being able to fire at the enemy. Learning to strafe around enemies at incredibly fast speed is crucial to surviving. Sprinting can definitely feel too fast at times, but it is a necessary skill to learn for later levels, not only to avoid tougher, faster enemies, but to make it across gaps in platformers because Doom Guy can’t jump.

A great FPS is judged on the quality of its guns and Doom does not disappoint. All the guns are impactful and satisfying to use. The sound design for all the weapons is crunchy and loud, the enemies stagger and flinch when hit, and there is a variety of guns to use, each fitting different needs in combat. The shotgun is useful for enemies that chase you down like the Pinkys. The chaingun’s bullets are weak, but it fire so quick that it tends to stun-lock enemies and is good for Cacodemons. The rocket launcher will damage the player if they are too close to the blast, teaching the player to make space before firing, and is the best way to kill the Barons of Hell without burning too much ammo. And, of course, there is the BFG, the Big Fucking Gun. This gun is pretty much a screen nuke with a trigger. It explodes in a huge radius and melts basically any enemy in the range. The weapons add variety to the combat that’s already fast and fun, but when the excellent level design is added on top the combat is when Doom becomes something truly great.

All the levels are mazes, increasing in complexity as the game goes on, with enemies, medpacks, and secrets scattered throughout them. The only real requirement to finish the level is find the literal exit sign and go through the door. Sometimes there are colored key cards to progress, but everything else is done for the sake of fun. The player might need to kill enemies because they are in the way, but most can be ran past. They really fight the enemies because it’s fun. Secrets are well hidden, satisfying to find, and filled with goodies like extra guns, ammo, and power-ups like overcharged health. That’s reason enough to seek them out, but the game can be easily beaten without finding any. That main reason to search for the secrets is because it’s fun.

There’s a special kind of logic to the level designs. Doom couldn’t do true 3D level design which means no room can be on top of another room. This makes the bare, top-down map surprisingly useful and intuitive to use. Looking for holes in the map is the only real way to search for secrets in the levels. There is hardly any unused space in Doom, so if there’s a chunk of the map with nothing in it, there’s a good chance that’s where a secret hides. The 2D-3D visuals the game is built on has obviously aged in the decades since the game was released, but it all works. The art style is extremely strong and consistent and there’s something very charming watching flat 2D sprites spinning to face the player as they move around them.

I played on what I would consider casual mode. With difficulty set on the Hurt Me Plenty, or medium difficulty, I still found it necessary to save at the start of every new level and load that save if I ever died. Death is punishing in Doom. All weapons, ammo, and health gets carried over to new levels, but if the player dies, everything is taken away. Doom Guy respawns at the level entrance with just his pistol and fists. The other weapons can usually be found again in the new levels, but surviving to get to them is not easy. Later in the game, when the difficulty really starts to ramp up, I had to start using save slots more and more.

The difficulty curve is one of few issues I have with the game. The difficult jumps up and down throughout the 4 episodes. Episode 2 gave me more trouble than any other and maps 1 and 2 in episode 4 are noticeably harder than the rest in the episode. Part of this could be me getting better at the game as I played, but there are noticeably leaps in difficulty at odd points throughout a playthrough. While most levels are great and fun to explore, some are very unintuitively designed, especially the levels that rely heavily on teleport pads. Lastly, some of the music is plain bad. One later level theme uses a very high pitched guitar synth and, during a solo, it holds a piercing high note for at least five second. It’s very ear grating. Most music is excellent, especially the theme song, which is a video game classic, but later songs just have odd choices in them that feel out of place.

After playing Doom, it’s clear to see why it’s still so highly regarded. It has its faults, like every game, but it’s finely crafted with excellent level designs, great gameplay, and is simply fun to play. And that’s what I admire most about it. It is my belief that video games should strive to be fun before all else. A game can have a strong story or offer a unique experience, but if it’s not fun to play then I lose a lot of interest to continue playing it. Doom manages to be cutting edge, innovative, and influential while never sacrificing any fun.

*Writer’s note: 

I originally intended to have this review be on both Doom and Doom 2, but I couldn’t finish both in time. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting Doom to be as big and tough as it is. I will have either a small bonus review of Doom 2 by the end of the year, or an update post with my thoughts on it.

Top 5 Dodges in Video Games

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I picked up Astral Chain the other week and I have really been enjoying it. I didn’t have many expectations for the game besides that it was made by Platinum Games and I tend to like the games they develop. I had a hope in the back of  my head, however, that it would have a good dodge button. I am a sucker for a dodge button in video games. While I’ve been playing through Astral Chain, I’ve been thinking of other games with great dodge mechanics.

#5 – The Mario and Luigi Series

The Mario and Luigi series is an assortment of RPGs that I’ve dabbled in a few time, mainly Partners in Time when I was younger and Dream Team a few years ago. I was always interested in the timed action mechanic in the games. By hitting the attack button at the right time while attacking an enemy, you can do extra damage. This also works in reverse. If you press the button corresponding with either Mario or Luigi when an enemy attacks them, you can dodge all damage. This is a great mechanic in a turn-based RPG because it keeps the player focused and engaged during battles instead of mindlessly mashing the confirm button. While the Mario and Luigi series wasn’t the first RPG to use this style on timed action button presses in battles, I think it’s the best example of it.

#4 – Hollow Knight

There are many upgrades for the player to find in Hollow Knight, with one of the first ones being the Mothwing Cloak. This gives the Knight a short air dash that can be used to gain access to new areas, move more quickly through the world, and even dodge incoming enemy attacks. It is tricky to use as a dodge because it doesn’t grant the Knight any invincibility frames though. That is until the player finds the Shadecloak. This upgrade means that the Knight is invincible when using the dash, though on a short cooldown after use. So if the player doesn’t have the timing needed to dash out of an attack, they can still escape unharmed. The best part, however, is that the Shadecloak give the Knight the ability to dash through enemies themselves without taking damage. It helps the player avoid damage and gives them a brief moment of safety when reaching the other side of the enemy. It even makes some bosses, like the titular Hollow Knight, much easier than without the Shadecloak.

#3 – Enter the Gungeon

As strange as it sounds, I’ve always liked dodging towards and through enemy attacks instead of away from them in video games. What feels counterintuitive at first starts to feel very satisfying when the player understands that going through an attack is safer than dodging away from an attack. Created by Dodge Roll, Enter the Gungeon, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a great dodge roll. Gungeon is built on dodge rolling through enemy bullets. There are many different types of enemies in the game with many different attack types. Many bosses in the game will force the player to dodge through waves of bullets to survive. The Dragun is a great example. Its second phase fills the screen with bullets but there are holes where the player can stand safely. As the bullets move across the screen, the player will have to roll from hole to hole to stay alive. But, honestly, the best part of the dodge roll in Enter the Gungeon is sliding across tables with it. That is just plain fun.

#2 – Dark Souls

Dark Souls’ dodge roll is a lot like other games because it grants invincibility frames to protect from enemies. There is ending lag with Dark Souls’ dodge, which is the time it takes your character to get back up from the roll. What Dark Souls does that is interesting is how equipment weight affects the character’s roll invincibility and lag. There are three types of rolls being fast, medium, and slow (or “fat”). Fast grants you the most invincibility frames and the least amount of ending lag, but the character’s equipment weight has to be 25% or less, meaning they will most likely be wearing light armor which provides the least amount of defense. Slow rolling is what happens when you have 50% of equipment weight or higher. It has almost no invincibility frames and has the most ending lag. Dark Souls’ equipment weight and dodge rolling mechanics are so deep and subtle, I never knew that there are actually 3 different speeds of each of the different types of rolls.

#1 – Bayonetta 2

Bayonetta 2 is exactly what I look for in an action game. The combat is fast and fun, enemies are varied and awesome in design, the levels know when to be linear to guide the player but also when to open up to let them explore, and the story is absolute nonsense that’s self-aware and silly. I had a blast playing through the game for the first time and often go back to just play random levels because I enjoy the game so much. And a huge part of that enjoyment is due to Witch Time. This is my favorite dodge mechanic is games. Bayonetta can dodge any attack coming in with a simple button press, but if the player dodges at just the right time, just as an attack lands, they go into Witch Time. This is a state where time slows down for a few seconds around Bayonetta and she is able to punish on the nearly motionless enemies. Entering Witch Time never stops feeling good. The timing to dodge is narrow enough to take attention from the player to do, but wide enough where it never feels frustrating or unfair. The combat in Bayonetta 2 is tough, but never feels impossible and I think a large amount of that has to due with Witch Time. It is so good that it is not only my favorite dodge mechanic in video games, it is one of the most satisfying things to do in all of gaming.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Climbing and Freedom

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An open world game is at its best when it makes the player feel like they can go anywhere and do anything. They should feel completely open to the fun of the player. While open world games are not my favorite genre, I do enjoy them. I’ve especially liked the Fallout series, Witcher 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn to name a few, one thing all these games have in common is that I tend to get stuck on things. Whether it be on a piece of furniture in a building, a sign next to a wall outside, or simply a hole I could climb out of, I have gotten stuck on something or in some place where I had to fast travel out.

I was thinking about this issue many AAA open world games have as I recently replayed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I realized this issue never occurred in that game. While it’s not my favorite game, I would be foolish to argue that it’s not a masterpiece. It’s a beautiful, pain-painstakingly crafted world that the player is set out into to explore. It manages to feel so much bigger than most other open world games. With much more freedom to the player and with more fun to be had in it, it feels more alive and moving than other games in the genre. This is due, in large part, to Nintendo deciding that the player should have the freedom to climb on particularly everything they see.

Breath of the Wild wasn’t the first Zelda game to introduce climbing, but it was the game to take it to its logical conclusion. In Breath of the Wild, Link can climb any surface, besides ceilings and the walls of shrines, as long as he has stamina left, which is indicated by a green wheel next to the character. This means the player can climb anything their heart desires: walls, mountains, trees, houses, flag poles, etc. This is the best part of the game for a multitude of reasons.

As the player plays through the game, completing shrines and collecting spirit orbs, they can increase their max stamina. This means that Nintendo had a way of subtly guiding the player through Hyrule at the start of their journey without any walls or locking areas off the map. Some mountains might be too high to climb with Link’s current stamina, encouraging the player to find a way around them, while things like towers, high hills, and flag poles are the best place for scoping out shrines and other points of interest. This guides the player with an invisible hand. It leads them away and around certain tall structure but towards others needed to get the lay of the land. The high mountains also hide some of the tougher mini bosses and harsher climates that require more preparation to deal with. It is smart to block new players from these challenges and let them discover them later in the game. It’s no wonder then that the fiery Death Mountain and frigid home of the Ritos are located in the north of Hyrule, the furthest areas away from where the player starts their journey.

When I said that some mountains are too high to climb in the early game, that’s not exactly true. There are a few small things the player can to ensure they can climb any height from the beginning of the game. First, and the more obvious one, is food. Some foods in Breath of the Wild can give Link extra buffs along with healing his damage. Some can provide extra stealth or defense while others can even increase the speed in which Link climbs and can replenish his stamina. A good combination of these food items will ensure Link can climb to the top of anything as long as the player has cooked enough food. The second thing a player can do to regain stamina while climbing is just stand. You can usually find little nooks in mountains cliffs that Link can stand on to regain stamina. This is trickier as a lot of time the places you can stand are extremely hard to find with only a slight difference in angle of the mountain side dictating where you can and can not stand. I’m not sure if this was an intentional decision on the developers part or not, but it reminds me of other small, secret techniques in Nintendo games they don’t show the player, but can help break the game. The most notable example of this is the bomb game in Super Metroid.

These ways to refill Link’s stamina to climb seemingly impossible mountains is important to Breath of the Wild because it adds the aspect that the game is best at: freedom. Simply put, Breath of the Wild is the most free and open open world games that’s ever been made. Being able to climb everything gives the world a true go anywhere, do anything feel. I was honestly surprised by how much the game still felt fresh during a replay. Climbing opens up an infinite number of subtly different paths the player can take that I traveled to Kakariko Village on my second playthrough taking a completely different route than my first.

Breath of the Wild’s is not the largest world in all of video games, but it damn well feels like it. That is do to the freedom climbing offers to the player. With games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, you know that some chunks of the map are inaccessible, be it behind an impenetrable mountains or buildings the layer can’t actually go into. There’s no areas like that in Breath of the Wild because, with the ability to climb everything, the player knows that every mountain is another vantage point, every ruin wall can be scurried over and hidden behind when a Guardian is aiming its beam at you, every flag pole or tall pillar could be hiding secrets at the top. There is nothing standing in the player’s way because they can just climb over it.

There is one area that the game takes away your ability to climb and that’s in the shrines. These shrines are scattered around Hyrule and act as tests to the players. Most are puzzle shrines which test the player’s ability to use the Seika Slate and other tools to solve problems. While these puzzles often don’t have just one way to solve them, they are more linear than the overworld, more focused and designed to test the player in a specific way. Naturally then, Link is unable to climb the walls in the shrines because most would be broken by that ability. I always find it telling what ability developers of games find important, or even overpowered, by what they will limit or take away to crank up the challenge. The reward for completing a shrine is a spirit orb, four of which can be exchanged for a heart or stamina piece, increasing health or stamina respectively. It’s no surprise that in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild increasing stamina is an equal reward to increasing health. 

Limbo – Critical Miss #6

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Independently developed games have been around nearly as long as video games have existed, but they really came into their own through the mid 2000’s to the early 2010’s. Games like Cave Story, Braid, and Super Meat Boy all helped establish indie games as a source of excellent titles. Even Minecraft, one of the most successful and popular games ever made, was an indie game developed by the tiny studio Mojang. Indie games have been a fascination of mine ever since my reintroduction to video games around 2014. In fact, Cave Story + was one of the first games I bought on my 3DS. One indie game I always heard a massive amount of praise for was Limbo, but I only recently sat down to play through it.

Limbo was the poster child of early 2010’s indie games. Developed by Playdead with a team of around 8 people, it emphasized a striking art style and atmospheric storytelling while cutting gameplay down to its core. I came out in 2010 to instant critical acclaim and was the indie darling of that year. Being a platformer, it was a very familiar style of game, but one that was done so differently and artistically that people took notice.

Limbo is focused to a laser point. It gets rid of everything unnecessary to the game, leaving only two actions for the player to do besides moving the character: jump and interact, which means either pushing/pulling an item or hitting a button. Everything single thing and mechanic in the game revolves around these two actions. The anti-gravity affects how and where the boy will jump, a bear trap might need to be pulled into the path of a murderous spider leg or a box pushed to climb pass a high ledge, the section were the level rotates around the boy moving the layout of the platforms constantly, making the timing for jumps constantly changing. 

This strong focus is Limbo’s greatest strength because it extends out of the gameplay and into the presentation. The art style is the first thing any new player will notice about the game. Limbo’s visuals use only light, shadows, and the shades of grey found between. This style shows the character and the world around them as silhouettes from distant light and helps builds the bleak atmosphere of the game. The world the boy must travel through is utterly indifferent except when it wants him dead. It forms an oppressive loneliness around the player that sticks with them well after the game is over. Personally, the loneliness of the atmosphere is what affected me most about Limbo and what I continued swirling around in my head when thinking about the game because the Limbo seems to actively work to make the player dislike it.

The puzzle solving loop of the game relies heavily on trial and error. Nearly all the puzzles and platforming challenges in the game are close to impossible to solve on the first try, either due to very strict platforming timing or some of the pieces of a puzzle being obtuse without the player dying first. Trial and error gameplay has always been a touchy subject for games as it often seems unfair to the player, who couldn’t predict an obstacle until it’s killed them. Limbo can be frustrating with its trail and error design, especially when the player is expected to interact with a new mechanic they have no idea how it will act, but it doesn’t hurt the overall experience too much. Death, for one, is always interesting since the boy’s body will rag-doll and react to the game’s physics engine and respawning is extremely quick, meaning the player doesn’t have to wait to play the game after an unfair death. Secondarily, the trial and error design feels intentionally hostile to the player themselves and this helps with the atmosphere of dread and oppression. Ultimately I believe gameplay should come absolute first for any game, but I begrudgingly respect Limbo for sacrificing smooth gameplay to heighten atmosphere.

The first half of Limbo is the stronger one. The moment the player is sunk into the game’s world and take in the bleak landscape around them is one of the most off putting in gaming, the blurry outlines of shapes in the background looking like they’re about to jump out at the player at any second. The game feels like a horror game at first, with a giant spider trying to hunt the boy throughout much of the first half and a strange group of people trying to impede your progress forward. 

By the second half of the game, though, much of the horror for the forest is gone and replaced with more physics-based puzzles of the industrial area. The player will have to explore run-down buildings with electric signs, buzzsaws, and machine gun turrets that never truly feel like they belong to the world in which the player explores. More frustrating, though, is that the puzzles become much more strict. It’s only natural for puzzles in a puzzle game to get more challenging as the game progresses, but they would be expected to add difficulty by making the puzzles trickier or require more thought and exploration of the surrounding area. In Limbo’s case, the difficulty is increased by narrowing the margin for error. Timing to move boxes or complete a task will rely on frames of timing and platforming challenges often come down to pixels between success and missing a swinging rope needed to pass. I was nestled in for a slow, puzzle solving game and was not prepared for platforming challenges later in the game.

Even with these issues in the game, however, Limbo is still good, but I have trouble deciding whether I think it’s great or not. My opinion of the game wavers between loving the game and thinking it is fine. Moments like the spider chase and the section where the player rotates the area around them are great, but the frustration felt with some of the later, stricter puzzles means I not itching to replay Limbo anytime soon. The thing I know for sure, though, is that I respect the hell out of Limbo for it’s tight focus on core elements and it’s willingness to emphasize atmosphere over everything else. These are choices not often seen in games by AAA studios and is the reason I can easily recommend Limbo, and independent gaming in general.

Mega Man X & Level Interconnectivity

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I first played Mega Man X about a year ago and I had fun with, but when I recently replayed, I had an absolute blast. It was thrilling to dash jump pass enemies and using boss weapons to dispatch of enemies enemies. It’s the type of game that warrants multiple playthroughs after the player get used to the stiff controls and learns the layout of the levels, which can be tricky the first time with obnoxious enemy placement and hazards. The game is very replayable since the levels can be competed in any order and the upgrades collected along the way will help makes certain parts easier. There is a great sense of interconnectivity between the levels, but there is one smart aspect of the design on Mega Man X that is criminally underutilized.

First, I want to discuss boss weapons. The most basic and obvious benefit of  boss weapons is that every boss is weak to a certain weapon. This has been a staple of the franchise since the very first Mega Man released on the NES in 1987. This directly guides the player, who will most likely want to go against the boss who’s weakest against the weapon they just acquired, but there are also more subtle ways these weapons incentivise players to complete levels. 

Some basic enemies throughout the levels are easier to beat with certain boss weapons. The turtles and sea dragon mini bosses in Launch Octopus’s level die in a snap with the Storm Tornado acquired from Storm Eagle and Boomer Kuwanger’s Boomerang Cutter is useful against the Hoganmer enemies whose shields will block every projectile coming from the front. This helps experienced players choose what level to play next if they have a good idea of what enemies to expect and nudges newer player to experiment with weapons to see what works best. It also works as a guide similar to how it was handled in the older NES Mega Man games where it was sometimes best move to a different level if an obstacle or enemy was too tough because there was probably a weapon or upgrade in another level that will make it much easier, like the Magnet Beam in the original Mega Man.

During my most recent playthrough, I wanted to get the Buster upgrade as early as possible. To do so, I got the helmet upgrade from Storm Eagle’s stage and then went to Flame Mammoth’s stage. It was interesting to see that the levels were set up in such a way that both the helmet upgrade to break the blocks to the Buster upgrade and the effective weapon against Flame Mammoth were found Storm Eagle’s stage. Since I started with Storm Eagle, instead of Chill Penguin as usual, I also remembered that Flame Mammoth’s level is supposed to have fire throughout the stage.

Chill Penguin’s stage is the easiest Mega Man X stage and it is also where you get the most important upgrade: the leg’s upgrade, which lets you perform a short, quick dash. This upgrade is so useful and important to the game, that the developer’s didn’t even hide it in the stage. It’s right in the open on the only route through the level. I believe that the creators of the game intended Chill Penguin to be the first stage of the ideal playthrough because it is relatively easy with one of the most simple bosses in the game to defeat, there’s an important upgrade that impossible to miss, and it even has a new feature to the series being the ride armor. Another interesting thing that happens after defeating Chill Penguin is that the rivers of fire in Flame Mammoth’s stage completely freeze over.

There are a number of ripple effects that defeating certain bosses will have on other stages in the game and they are the most interesting thing about Mega Man X. Most notably of these is when defeating Storm Eagle. The boss fight takes place on top of an airship and, after defeating the boss, the ship comes crashing down onto Spark Mandrill’s level. This cuts off the electrical currents running through the floor in the beginning of the level  but also causes blackouts later in the level that momentarily hide the bottomless pits. Another example of this would be defeating Launch Octopus and flooding a pit in Sting Cameleon’s stage, which is needed for a health upgrade. 

These changes based on boss defeats show a lot of interconnectivity between the level and not only helps to encourage replayability, but also makes the world of Mega Man X feel alive and functioning. It feels like the world exists without the player, like it’s a clock with its gears turning to keep it ticking, and that the player is actually disrupting the natural pace. It’s a very uncommon feeling for a SNES action, in my experience, and is more akin to an epic RPG like Chrono Trigger.

While these changes across levels are brilliant, they are sadly underutilized. There really aren’t that many examples of them in the game. In fact, I named the three biggest ones in this post. I would have loved to see more like if defeating Flame Mammoth caused the trees in Sting Chameleon’s level to be on fire, exposing new enemies and making the player dodge periodic stampedes of frighten robots. Or is beating Spark Mandrill electrified the ocean in Launch Octopus’s stage, making the water dangerous and creating a more standard platforming level above the surface of the sea.

Mega Man X is a game I love and is a perfect example of why sometimes leaving the player wanting more is the smart option. While the interactions between levels due the boss weapons and stage changes give the game great replayable and help it feel alive, it’s hard not to want every boss defeated to affect the overall game in some way. The effects of defeating bosses like Chill Penguin and Storm Eagle are great, but they are so few and underutilized, it leaves the player wanting more in the best way. If nothing else, this is an aspect of the first game for Capcom to expand on if they ever make Mega Man X 9. 

Cuphead & Attack Patterns

/ atomicbobomb / Leave a comment

So I finally got a chance to play Cuphead and I’m now here to lay any arguments about its quality to rest: Cuphead is dope. The game caught my eye, like it caught so many others’, first with its art style. Hand drawn in the style of a 30’s cartoon, it was immediately unique, gorgeous and fresh. When the game came out and I saw it was a challenging boss rush with Megaman type run and gun levels, I knew I had to play. I knew the game was going to be hard, but I wasn’t expecting how bad I would be at it Eventually I overcame the game and realized that this was something special I had to write about.

Cuphead is a game about dodging and shooting. You have to make sure to aim so you hit the enemies during a fight, but you have to do this while avoiding all the attacks the enemies throw at you. This is pretty basic stuff and a description that 90% of all video games can fall under. But it is the way that Cuphead challenges the player to memorize attack patterns and move during the fights that sets it apart.

All the bosses in the game only have a handful of attacks they utilize. The attacks are clearly telegraphed due to the obviously cartoony art style with shorter attacks having smaller telegraph windows and longer, harder to dodge attacks have longer telegraphing. It takes some time to learn all the patterns and tells for attacks in any given fight, but after a couple tries the patterns should be ingrained in your muscles. The fights always remain challenging though. Some attack patterns, like the dragon’s fireballs, can have different points of contact while some bosses, like the genie, can have a vast pool of different attacks to draw from. The player themself also has to be taken into account. While you may know the patterns and their tells like the back of your hand, effectively avoiding them and still managing to land your attacks is still a challenging task.

Every boss in the game has multiple phases where they change forms and attack patterns. You might start off fighting a blimp only for it to turn into a giant mechanical moon by the last phase. This helps Cuphead remain challenging as each phase has unique attacks to avoid, but it also helps to push the player to keep playing. You want to learn a phase’s patterns of attacks to see what sort of crazy form the boss will take next. Each time you die a line appears showing you just how close you were to a new phase or how close you were to defeating it, making you want to give it just one more try.

There are a variety of attack patterns on display in Cuphead. Some bosses will shoot projectiles and others will move around the screen trying to hit you. Bosses like the bee lady, Rumor Honeybottoms, will have mini bosses for phases and others like Beppi the Clown will summon basic enemies as part of the fight. There are attacks that chase you around, projectiles that spin in a loop de loop pattern or fall from the top of screens, and constant bullet spirals more commonly found in bullet hell games. Some bosses will even limit where you stand during the fight, be it from having moving platforms or by taking away the ground you stand on with thorns or spikes.

The best example of all these mechanics working together has to be the pirate boss, Captain Brineybeard. He is a pirate standing on top of his ship, meaning he has a smaller hitbox than most the other bosses because it is tucked away in the upper left corner. To hit him, you’ll either need to jump or stand still to aim diagonally, making it tougher to avoid any incoming attacks. Luckily, the first phase is pretty easy with only two attacks to worry about: a barrel that will move left or right across the screen and drop to the ground if you go under it and projectiles from an octopus that the Captain will shoot at you. If you stay on the move and hit the boss when you have a safe opening, this phase won’t take long.

Phase two, however, gets trickier by limiting the players ability to avoid attacks and giving them shorter safe windows to aim and shoot. Along with the attacks from phase one, Captain Brineybeard will now summon other enemies by whistling. There is a shark that will come from the left side of the screen and take up most of the space the player has to maneuver in, a squid that will pop out in the middle background and splash ink to darken the visibility of the screen unless the player kills it quick enough, and a dogfish that will jump out of the water on the right side and slide across the ground in a set number and distance. These force the player to play within momentary limitations; be it smaller space to stand in, harder to see attacks, or just by making them decide whether it is better to jump at possible inopportune times or focus on hitting the enemies instead of the boss.

Phase three is just phase one and two but with the Captain’s ship now joining the fight by spitting cannonballs across the ground, telegraphed by an obvious chewing animation. However, phase four changes everything by having the ship throw the Captain overboard. Now the ship’s mouth is the hitbox and all that remains of the familiar patterns of phases one through three is the barrel still moving and dropping when you are under it. The boss has two new attacks you must learn. The first being fireballs it’ll spit in a devilish loop de loop pattern that I never really got a perfect grasp on. And second is a giant pink laser that you’ll either need to duck under, which means you won’t be able to move safely if the barrel moves above you, or continuously parry the laser, a far more tricky task, but one that grants more movement options.

This boss is challenging, but when I finished the game, it was my clear favorite. It’s so finely crafted to keep the player constantly on the move while the attack patterns work so well at stacking on top of each other. This limits the player in interesting ways and gives them a lot to focus on and juggle during the fight. All the bosses in Cuphead are frantic and fast-paced, but Captain Brineybeard’s fight seems the most kinetic. I lost a lot during the fight but i was never frustrated at the game. I was only ever frustrated with myself. I knew all the patterns and how to avoid them, but executing that knowledge was the tricky part. This boss works well as an example of the entirely of Cuphead itself. It’s frantic and challenging, but completely fair. The attacks all have patterns and tells, but it’s up to the player to read and avoid them.