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MediEvil – Critical Miss #32

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Spooky, Scary Skeleton

It’s Halloween. The kids are trick or treating, the jack-o’-lanterns are alight, and the sheet ghosts are looking for souls to steal. I didn’t play a horror game this year for Critical Miss, but I did play a horror-themed game. MediEvil is an action platformer that released on the PS1 in 1998 and Sony decided that over 20 years was long enough of a slumber and resurrected the game in 2019 with a remake. I played this remake for PS4 and it was a great choice to play during the Halloween season. As we all know, skeletons are the spookiest thing imaginable—well, besides a bad port perhaps.

The story in MediEvil is very simple, but charming. Sir Daniel Fortesque is hailed as Gallowmere’s greatest hero after he led his army against and defeated the evil wizard Zarok and his undead hordes. Only thing is, Sir Daniel was the first to perish in that battle with an arrow through his eye. He never even faced Zarok, but has been falsely remembered in history as the hero of the day. So when Zarok returns and green misty magics the land of Gallowmere to shit again, Sir Daniel rises from his grave as a skeleton and has a second chance at being the hero he failed to be. As far as a redemption story goes, it is extremely bare, but it works well because Sir Daniel is such a pitiable character. The first action he takes upon waking from death is to pull cobwebs out of his empty eye socket, he mumbles and is misunderstood constantly while talking to others because he is missing his jaw, and his armor looks at least three sizes too large for him. Everyone you come across in the story like the ghosts of other heroes and gargoyle statues know the fraud Sir Daniel truly is and constantly shit on him about it. All this adds to give the put upon skeleton a true underdog feel and it’s hard not to relate with him.

While the art style is strong, I found myself less impressed with the graphics in MediEvil as I was with other remakes of PS1 games like the N. Sane Trilogy and the Spyro remakes. It is partly due to the MediEvil remake’s graphical style feeling so similar to those other games and I am starting to feel fatigued with it. But there are also the issues with the performance of the game. Character models are covered in jaggies, the frame rate plummets when the screen is busy, and textures pop in constantly. I played this on an original PS4 model so that contributed to these issues being ever present, but the game doesn’t seem to be well optimized at all based on reviews I’ve read saying the game doesn’t run great on the PS4 Pro either. It’s a shame too because underneath all these issues, the core game is still rather solid.

Sir Daniel feels right at home in the lands of Gallowmere which are dipping with the classic gothic horror atmosphere. Crumbling castles, flooded battlefields, medieval villages, asylums, and graveyards all need to be explored to complete the game. Most levels are linear with paths criss-crossing each other or opening up with the help of different colored runes à la Doom, but the goals and gimmicks of the levels vary a lot. One level you just have to make it to the end, another you’ll solve riddles in a hedge maze or just fight waves of enemies, or you will have to collect the souls of fallen soldiers. Although the levels can be so different, the game still feels like a cohesive whole since Gallowmere is perfectly suited to these areas and the gameplay never strays far from the basic mechanics for any new gimmick to feel out of place.

The core gameplay of MediEvil is exploration, some light platforming, and combat, and boy I wish the combat was more engaging. It’s not terrible, just some of the most bare bones combat I’ve ever played. Sir Daniel doesn’t swing his sword as much as he just wipes it in front of him like he’s boringly painting a wall. There’s no feedback when hitting an enemy—no grunt from them, no slight pause as the weapon hits flesh and bone, nothing except some enemies get knocked back to a comical degree. I can deal is lackluster combat in a game, good game feel isn’t absolutely everything, but when there is no indication from the game when I get hit, no rumble or crunching sound, and my health mysteriously drains to zero in fight because I couldn’t tell I was being hit, that sends a fire of frustration up my lungs.

You don’t only have to deal with the combat in order to progress through the game, but also to unlock the Hero Chalices in each level. You’ll notice that sometimes after you kill an enemy that their soul will float up and dart away. This goes to help fill a chalice hidden somewhere in the level and, after killing enough foes, can be collected before exiting the level. Usually, the chalice is hidden somewhere near the level exit or along the path you would need take to the end, but sometimes it is at the very beginning. This requires you to backtrack across the entire level before leaving to grab it and, with all the enemies dead, it’s very boring.

The chalices are the best way to upgrade yourself throughout the game. If you beat a level after collecting its chalice, you will be taken to the Hall of Heroes before returning to the map screen. Here in the Hall, you can find the glowing statue of a hero and they will talk to you a little bit before giving you an award for collecting the chalice. The reward is sometimes an extra life bottle or some gold, but it is usually a weapon. These weapons are important to collect for the higher damage output because the ghouls and monsters you fight in levels just continue to get tankier. It’s extremely disappointing that all the weapons feel like all the others in their types—swords all swing the same, hammers and axes slam on the ground, all the range weapons like throwing knives, bows, and crossbows all feel like the same weapon with different firing speeds. As someone who relishes games with many different weapons and combat styles, I was disappointed every time I got a new weapon in MediEvil only to find it’s just a copy of a weapon I had already been using. 

The only real time I felt I was strategizing in the game was with the Life Bottles. Once Sir Daniel’s HP hits zero, he will automatically heal with a Life Bottle, provided you have one to use. These bottles can be filled at Life Fountains or by picking up smaller Life Vials. The rub comes when getting a game over or moving onto a new level because your health and Life Bottles do not refill—so if you limb to a level exit on death’s door with no back up bottles, that’s how you will be starting the next one. I found myself having to plan out when to grab health on the tougher levels in order to most efficiently fill my Life Bottles. This could be tricky though in the later levels since they start getting pretty stingy with healing items available.

Apart from combat, MediEvil also challenges the player with some platforming, but not a whole lot of it. This is smart of the game because controls are dreadful for it. Sir Daniel is surprisingly agile for a dusty old skeleton in a giant suit of armor. He is fairly fast and shockingly light, but he also has some strange momentum behind his movement. This makes sections where you have to jump on small platforms infuriating. Even if you line up the jump right, Dan will often just slide off the ledge due to the momentum you don’t have a good feel for. The collision dictation in general is garbage. Jumps get cut short cause Dan’s feet get caught on an invisible ledge on a small step, he slips off ledges that he is clearly on, and I got trapped more then once in a haystack or a step, leaving Dan floating off the ground in a perpetual animation of falling until I restarted the level. 

To use a pun, MediEvil is a fine game in its bones, but all the issues and annoyances in the game left me feeling pretty low on it. The frame rate dips and terrible collision detection, the lackluster combat and samey weapons, and the frustrating controls when having to platform all led to a pretty irritating time with the game. I often agonize over whether I should play the original versions of the games I review here, but I most often choose the most available version, be that a remake or just a port on modern consoles. I want to review the games most people are able to play and, while I do like collecting and playing old games, a lot of them are too expensive or hard to find for me to get. I found myself thinking about this more often while playing this MediEvil remake. I can’t help but wonder if my time with the game would have been enjoyed more if I played the original. Maybe someday I’ll find a copy and see how it stacks up to this remake, but, for now, all I can say is the remake is fine, but very clunky. It stumbles around and trips over itself like a dead body reanimated to life.

Resident Evil (Remake) & the Spencer Mansion

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It’s spooky season and I’ve had a hankering to play the Resident Evil remake again. I first played the game a little over two years ago and loved it. You can find my thoughts on it in the Critical Miss post, but I wanted to take a deeper look at one of the most interesting aspects of the game: the Spencer Mansion. A mix of atmosphere, great design, and just the right amount of goofy locks, the Spencer Mansion is one of the most memorable settings in video games. While it’s not the only location in the game, it is the main one and any player who can brave its halls until the end will come out with an experience they will not soon forget.

The main hall greets the S.T.A.R.S. members as they burst through the front door and it perfectly encapsulates what to expect throughout the rest of the mansion. Large, dusty, and desolate, the mansion is dripping in the lonely, moody atmosphere expected of a horror game. But the interesting thing about the Spencer Mansion, the thing that sets it apart from other horror game settings in my mind, is that the mansion isn’t completely run down, decrepit, or ugly. Lots of the rooms in the home are gorgeous and pleasant—it doesn’t look like a bad place to live. Where most horror games tend to lean too heavily on settings that are overtly grimy and blood-splattered, so over the top they become desensitizing, Resident Evil shows the Spencer Mansion shortly after its fall. You get the sense that people lived in and cared for the home until recently from the brightly lit rooms and tables still set for supper. It’s not until you explore deeper that you start to find the unkempt, unused rooms and dank, dingy cellars, the blood-soaked carpets and filth crusted walls.

This restraint and subtlety with the environmentally storytelling in Resident Evil helps heighten the horror of the game. Once your character separates from the rest of the S.T.A.R.S. team, they are alone in this hostile home, and you, as a player, are also alone with just your imagination and echoing footsteps throughout the halls. With the fixed camera angles and loading-screen doors between every room, you never know what’s coming up and the developers use these blinds spots to hide zombies and other nasties to jump out at you. It makes every corner anxiety inducing, every door threatening, every window possible of crashing apart as a monster flings itself through it to grab you. 

The game uses the presence of monsters to great effect as a way to pace itself for the player. As the game progresses, the player finds more ammo, more health items, and better weapons that make short work of the standard zombies roaming the halls. So bigger and badder foes start appearing in the mansion and surrounding areas to make sure the player never feels too comfortable. The enemy type that requires a special mention are the Crimson Heads, which were introduced in the remake as a nice surprise for veteran players of the original. Unless a zombie is killed with a gushy headshot, their body remains laying on the floor throughout the rest of the game. They literally lay there and wait to return as a Crimson Head, a faster, stronger, more deadly creature to face. Besides a headshot, the only way to prevent a zombie returning as a Crimson Head is to burn its body before the transformation takes place. This requires the use of a limited quality of kerosene. Giving the player this autonomy of where to burn bodies makes them look at the mansion and think about what rooms or halls they want to be safe from hazards. Clearing hazards out of the rooms and halls is extremely important because you will be traveling back and forth across the mansion consistently, but in doing so, the true depth of the Spencer Mansion’s design becomes apparent. 

The Spencer Mansion is essentially a giant puzzle box that you are dropped into in order to discover a way out; it’s basically an escape room before they were popular. The mansion is full of items to find, puzzles to solve, and the most impractical locks you’ll ever see in a game. Hidden passages behind walls that up open by playing the Moonlight Sonata on a piano, doors that inexplicably unlock when emblems on placed on them, and gates that open once some weathervanes are pointing in the right direction are all different ways the Spencer Mansion is designed to keep prying eyes from its secrets. While it makes sense that the people in the secret lab beneath the home would try to keep people out, the methods of the locks make no goddamn sense and are even silly sometimes, but I feel that adds to the charm and memorability of the mansion. 

You will also remember the mansion intimately after a playthrough or two due to how much you will be running back and forth across it. It’s easy to get lost in the mansion; it is a maze of halls and rooms, one way doors and locks. You will eventually get maps of every area you explore and they are life savers. Clearly showing which rooms you have visited, which doors are still locked, and what rooms still have items to find let’s you know where you need to explore further for progress. I find myself pulling up the map every minute or so while playing Resident Evil, which some people may find tedious or immersion breaking, but I love it. It makes me free stuck in the world, trapped in the mansion along with my character desperately trying to find a way out. The map helps you know where to head in the moment, but what helps you retain knowledge of the Spencer Mansion between playthroughs is backtracking and designs of the rooms.

When I booted up Resident Evil again after a couple years, I was surprised how much I remembered of it—certain rooms and halls were burned into my brain and I knew exactly where on the map I would find them. Of course, some things got lost in the fog of the time, but I remembered a lot of rooms and what to find in them immediately upon entering them. I tend to forget a lot of the little details after playing a game and only remember the board strokes like different sections or biomes. So Resident Evil must be doing something right for me to remember so much of the mansion after only playing it once before. And it does something right: backtracking. When I said before you will travel back and forth across the Spencer Mansion over and over again, I was not understating that. Oftentimes, you will find a key or item used to unlock a room on the complete other side of the mansion, requiring you to hussle across the building, avoiding or killing any zombies you left in rooms along the way—this is why burning bodies in areas you know are going to be well tread is so important. But with each trip across the mansion, you learn a little more about it. As the mansion opens up more and the area you have to explore becomes larger, the time it takes to travel across it becomes shorter thanks to better knowledge of the layout and doors you will unlock creating shorts between areas.

The Spencer Mansion is a mastercraft of level design and atmosphere. The fact that the designers use its echoing halls to heighten the tension of the game, make backtracking rewarding as players learn quicker, safer routes across it, and making each room distinct enough to be memorable long after putting the game down is truly incredible. And Capcom would show time and time again they understand how important and well designed the Spencer Mansion is as they revisited the same mentalities for the police station in Resident Evil 2 and the Baker’s home in Resident Evil 7. It’s easy to see why the first Resident Evil is so highly regarded after so many years, why the series is still one of Capcom’s most successful after so many games. It is built on such a solid foundation. 

Ape Escape – Critical Miss #28

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Image by KFHEWUI. Found at gamefaqs.gamespot.com

Just Monkeyin’ Around!

Over the past few years, there have been a slew of remakes of PS1 games coming out. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and even MediEvil all have seen great success with updating their PS1 games with modern graphics—hell, Crash just got a brand new game in the series focused around its classic gameplay after the success of the N. Sane Trilogy. It’s a trend I’ve honestly been loving. While I did have a PS1 growing, I didn’t really have the classic games one would associate the console with so it’s been great experiencing these games with modern graphics. There are a lot of games from the console that would be great to see remade, but one series always seems to dominate the conversation when PS1 remakes are discussed and that is Ape Escape. Released in 1999, Ape Escape was an in-house Sony developed 3D platformer closely tied to the Playstation for being a console exclusive and being the first game to require a DualShock controller to play. While I agree that it would be amazing to see a modern remake of this first game (or, better yet, the series as a whole), after playing it, I think I understand why it hasn’t happened yet or may not ever happen.

The story of Ape Escape is very straightforward. A little white monkey named Specter gets his hands on a helmet that makes him super intelligent and he hands out similar helmets to all his monkey friends. Using the Professor’s time machine, he sends all these annoying apes throughout time in order to rewrite history in their favor and make them the dominant species on Earth. It’s up to Spike, a neighborhood boy who is friends with the Professor, to travel through different time periods to capture all the menacing monkeys before they can cause too much mayhem. 

The set up is enjoyable and very silly, feeling like a goofy Saturday morning anime, but it’s not particularly engaging. This is due partly to cut scenes between levels being rather static and just dropping exposition, and partly due to the rather odd audio mixing in the game. Characters all seem to speak at different volumes with the likes of Spike and the Professor’s assistant, Natalie, being perfectly fine, while Specter and the Professor are distractingly quiet. I’m not sure if it was due to bad recording or direction given to the actors, but it makes some lines incredibly hard to hear at a normal volume.

The time travel set up is a great idea, lending itself naturally to a huge variety of possible level settings, but it’s never explored to its fullest. You start in the prehistoric ages with dinosaurs and lust jungles then move on to the ice age, all snow and mammoths and glittering white. From there you find yourself in feudal times, a few Japanese castles and a European one, then go into the modern age where you explore a Japanese town and a tall television station tower. These are the really the only time periods you explore spread out across over twenty levels and I feel like the idea could have been expanded more. I would have loved to see some see some other periods with more human structures for the monkeys to mess around with, like an ancient Egypt or Greek level, a pirate level, or a cowboy level—besides the one room in Specter Land, which feels more like the developers were reusing a scraped idea from earlier in development.

Image by TerrorOfTalos. Found at apeescape.fandom.com

The lack of time periods to explore is really only disappointing because the levels themselves are mostly well designed and fun to explore. There are a handful of apes to capture in each level, but only about half of which are needed to move on to the next level, with only a few needing new gadgets from later in the game to nab. This gives the player options in which monkeys they want to go after so it’s never too stressful if a particular monkey is giving you trouble or you miss any while exploring. The art direction is colorful and pleasant, seemingly taking inspiration from kids anime like Samurai Pizza Cats and Pokémon, giving the game a strong sense of identity within the confines of the limited hardware. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the draw distance. Limited draw distance is not uncommon for fully 3D games in the fifth generation, with structures popping in when close enough as if coming out of a fog (or sometimes literally with games like Superman 64 and Silent Hill). While poor draw distance is hardly ever a deal breaker, especially in older games with more limitations, I have never found it so distracting as in Ape Escape. Anything more than fifteen feet away will pop in and out of existence as you move around—trees, walls, platforms, even enemies themselves. It’s only slightly immersion breaking when the world seems to materialize around you, but the biggest problem with this is it can make the levels hard to navigate since it can be difficult to know if a path leads to a new part of the level or a dead end until the walls pop in to block you. 

The core gameplay loop of running around level to catch monkeys is still very fun and engaging. It feels a natural evolution to 3D collectathons like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie since now the collectables will try to evade you or fight back. Each level offers a good balance of deliberate platforming and fast-paced monkey catching. You will be equipped with many gadgets throughout your journey across time—starting with just a net and stun baton, but acquiring more as you progress through the levels—and this is what gives Ape Escape its unique selling point.

As said before, Ape Escape was the first game that required the DualShock controller to be played and this is because it necessitated the use of both joysticks. The left stick is used to move your character around like any other 3D game, but the right stick is used to control your gadgets, which are selectable with the face buttons. This means you swing your club or net by flicking the right stick, the Dash Hoop and the Sky Flyer by rotating the stick in a circle, and slingshot by pulling back on the right stick. It adds a lot of unique charm to the game as well as control since items like the baton can be used in any direction at a moment’s notice. However, this unique control method also leads to some strange choices. Since the face buttons are where you equip the gadgets to be swapped at any time, the jump button is relegated to the R1 button. This is a little clunky at first, but I got used to it in time and really only suffered from muscle memory pressing the X button to jump in the beginning of the game. The camera can be pretty awful at times, though, with the only real way to control it being with the L1 button that immediately swings it behind the character. This isn’t a huge deal to me since bad cameras are pretty much synonymous with 3D platformers of the time—especially on the N64 with it’s weird, single-joysticked trident controller. 

The gameplay could become repetitive to some since you are only catching monkeys, but I found that each monkey offers a fun and frantic little challenge to nab. The game’s pacing is quick and fairly easy throughout the playthrough. At least, until the end. Specter Land, the final level in the game, is just too long, taking me around two hours to beat. It’s just a gauntlet of monkeys to catch and platforming challenges to beat. These challenges are where the game’s poor draw distance and stiff camera decide to team up for a final desperate attack of frustration. The only saving grace of this final level is the amount of checkpoints and the fact that shortcuts you unlock are still active after a game over. If this was not the case, I may have pitched my controller out the window—but most likely I would have just stopped playing.

Ape Escape is still a fun, charming game. I liked running after the monkeys, bonking them over the head and scooping them up in the net. I enjoyed the different locations you visit even if I would have liked to see more. I went into the Monkey Book after every level to see the names of the apes I caught and the few word descriptors the game gives them. But I’m not sure it will ever get a modern remake like Crash or Spyro’s games did. The video game industry has become more homogenized since the Wild Western days of the PS1 with more conventions that player’s expect, especially with controls. I can just imagine the backlash an Ape Escape remake would get if the right stick was kept for controlling gadgets and not the camera, if the jump button was still mapped to R1. There are ways around this—as the version on the PSP can show—but for a big shiny new remake I think the game should stay as close as possible to the original. I still hope Sony does remake the series. I would gladly pick it up whether they remake all the games or just the first one. But I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they ever do. 

Image by Golden Spect. Found at apeescape.fandom.com

Bioshock & Plasmids

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Bioshock could have easily been just another 1st person shooter, one destined to fade out of memory soon after its release. But nearly 15 years after appearing on store shelves, it’s still a highly regarded and discussed game to this day. It sets itself apart from other shooters of its time, and still those of today, in many ways: the setting and atmosphere of the underwater city of Rapture, its commentary on freewill and the politics of Objectivism, its strong writing and memorable twist. However, I think the major thing that made Bioshock stand out are the Plasmids, how they affect gameplay and the story, and most importantly how it ties the two together.

In the context of gameplay, Plasmids are upgrades. They range from offensive abilities like starting fires, freezing enemies, and summoning swarms of bees, to passive buffs like increased defense, attack, and improved hacking skills. They are found throughout Rapture, encouraging exploration, and bought using ADAM, the material taken from the Little Sisters. ADAM is also used to purchase more slots that additional Plasmids can be equipped too. This system gives the game RPG elements without relying on skill trees or upgrade points that would infest similar games in the 2010s. This allows players to create their own playstyle and RPG-like builds that best emphasizes that style.

As with most 1st person shooters, firing weapons is mapped to the right trigger. However, instead of the left trigger being used to look down sights, it is mapped to using Plasmids in Bioshock as that is the hand the character uses them from. This is very intuitive and oddly immersive as you watch the character mimic the same movements you make. It draws you into the game and helps you step into the shoes of the protagonist. Having the left trigger control Plasmids does mean that typical down-sight aiming controls had to be moved and are instead mapped to pressing in the right trigger. While this is clumsy to use, it’s not a big issue since the tight halls and enclosed spaces of Rapture ensure that precise aiming is not really needed. I found myself perfectly capable of fighting off enemies with just the regular aiming icon and found the iron sights to be more difficult to use in a heated fight. While it at first feels like a weird omission, the game is built around not needing iron sights and is worth the exclusion for the fun of easily using Plasmids with the left hand.

In combat, Plasmids have many uses. There are the typical damage causing skills like Incinerate and Insect Swarm, but there are also ones with more indirect uses like Enrage, which makes enemies attack each other, and Security Bullseye, which causes enemies to trigger security cameras and turrets. Some even have secondary effects. Winter Blast freezes enemies making them easier to kill at the cost of loot, Incinerate can melt ice to open doors or reveal items, and Electro Bolt can electrify water to hit multiple enemies at once. It’s a little disappointing that not all Plasmids have these secondary uses, especially with Winter Blast as there are tons of puddles on the ground or streams of water falling from the ceiling. It seems like a missed opportunity to be able to freeze the puddles to trip enemies or the streams to create a shield.

While there are not many drastically different ways to build a character, there are many options and combinations of Plasmids for the players to choose. Some players may see the value of Plasmids I did not. Maybe they want to equip all the modifiers for the wrench and try a more melee focus build. The Plasmids instill a sense of creativity in the player not offered by many other 1st person shooters. And with health and EVE, the material needed to use Plasmids, needing to be kept track of, there is an additional layer of complexity. You can choose to go for an easy freeze kill if you are low on health and medkits, or you may rely solely on your weapons if EVE is precious and Plasmids not available. A have and have-not system that would be all too familiar to the city of Rapture.

Bioshock critiques Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism by showing the inherent greed, selfishness, and unsustainability present in it and the Plasmids not only represent the downfall of Rapture, but a direct cause of it too. Since Plasmids were such an addictive substance, it was highly sought after in the city. The citizens started taking more and more of it until they mutated in the Splicers you fight throughout the game. Through audio logs, you learn that the founder, Andrew Ryan, refused to regulate the creation and use of Plasmids, instead trusting the free market to sort itself out. He even encourages other businesses to offer a better product if they wish to compete with them. 

These revelations add a lot of context to the things the player sees throughout the game. Obviously Rapture is nearly completely dismantled when you arrive, but figuring out how it got that way is up to you to discover. It makes the Splicers sympathetic but past the point of reasoning with, it makes the leaders standing by their zealot beliefs almost cartoonish when they are faced with the tragic outcomes they’ve created. The whole game paints Ryan and the other notably people of Rapture as highly intelligent, creatively ambitious, and extremely driven, but also incapable to accept the consequences of their choices, responsibility for the seeds they have sowed. 

This is the type of storytelling that games thrive in over other forms of media like books or movies. With the interactivity games offer, there is more engagement that comes from the strong context and connection the player can feel when gameplay and story are woven together. Players feel more involved in the story, even in linear games like Bioshock, when the story informs the gameplay, it feels like you are part of the world of the game, it helps with immersion while playing and satisfaction when they succeed.

The Plasmids help with all this. They are simply fun to use, but also help players feel more freedom in their playstyles in a genre that typically doesn’t offer much differences between playthroughs. They are a great example of story informing gameplay, making the entire game feel more cohesive as a whole, not like gameplay or story was the main focus with the other being an afterthought. They are the main reason why Bioshock is still so much fun today while other 1st person shooters of the era have aged poorly or drifted out of memory completely. It’s a great example of how much a little creative, intuitive gameplay design well tied into a story expands the experience of a game

Dying Light & 1st Person Platforming

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I’ve never been much into zombies. While they are not something I purposefully avoid, I don’t find myself drawn by media revolving around them. Before playing Dying Light, the last game I played involving zombies was Death Road to Canada. There is an interesting similarity with how both games handle the zombies hordes; that is, as something that should be avoided wherever possible. In Death Road to Canada, a 2D indie roguelike, there’s not much to do but try and kite around the zombie, keeping as much distance between them and you as possible. Dying Light, a full 3D, 1st person open world game, uses a parkour mechanic to let the player jump, climb, and run high above the zombies’ reach. And it is some of the best use of platforming I’ve seen in a 1st person game.

Platforming in 1st person games is nothing new, of course. Doom had “platforming” elements in 1993 by asking players to run across gaps in the floor. Half-Life had the infamous Xen levels, where the player was expected to platform across an alien planet. Mirror’s Edge was a 1st person game built around freerunning and parkour in 2009. Even more modern games like Doom (2016) and Titanfall 2 use double jumps, ledge grabs, and wallrunning to add a sense of platforming to set them apart from other FPSs. But none of these games have the openness and freedom to explore as Dying Light offers.

Set in the fictional city of Harran, the game is split into two large maps: the Slums and Old Town. The Slums are made up of buildings and shacks closely confined together. There is a giant highway overpass above and cutting through the map. Old Town, on the other hand, feels more like a Mediterranean city, filled with narrow streets, taller brick buildings, towers, and chimneys jutting out of slated roofs. Both maps are tightly packed, sometimes even cluttered, and they would have been frustrating to navigate in another 1st person game limited to the ground, but the close proximity of the buildings in Dying Light makes it easy for the player to jump and climb, saying off the zombie infested ground.

The design of the maps focuses on the freerunning. There are routes specifically designed not to break the player’s flow with street lights placed the perfect distance apart to jump to, boards curving around building corners, and ramps to jump from lead you open windows or piles of garbage to staying fall into. This can guide the player along easy paths, but the almost chaotic nature of the maps’ designs also allow free exploration. Every building has a way to climb, be it window grates, awnings, or extruding brick work. Not only does this let the player explore and find their own route through Harran, but if you do mess up and plummet into a group of zombies, it’s just a matter of a quick look around to find a way above them again. The platforming is free-flowing and open for experimentation, which is rare in most AAA games with platforming elements. It’s not as laid out and linear as in the Titanfall 2 nor is it as obvious as in games like Horizon: Zero Dawn or Doom (2016) which use colors to indicate what ledges can and cannot be used to climb.

With AAA games being a hodgepodge of differing gameplay elements and genres, it’s usually hard to describe any big budget game with a single genre. Dying Light itself is an open-world, 1st person action/adventure game. But it is as much of a platformer as any of those other descriptions. The climbing and jumping is integral to the game as one of the main loops, not an extra feature for the back of the box. Going back to Doom (2016) again, while jumping and verticality is important in a fight, most real platforming challenges reward the players with collectibles and secrets. Stripping out the platforming would make the game feel much more linear, but the main gameplay loop of fast paced demon killing would be kept completely intact. Dying Light would be a completely different game without the parkour system and would, at best, be just another zombie game, but with really limb melee combat. 

With parkour being a main focus of the game, its platforming controls have to be very tight, something many 1st person games struggle with, and luckily they are in Dying Light. The jump button is mapped to the shoulder button and it takes some getting used to, but once you learn to continue holding the jump button to grab ledges you’re aiming for, the controls click. There is the perfect amount of stickiness to grabbing ledges. The frames to grab climbable objects are strict enough to feel satisfying, but still lenient enough not to be frustrating. It strikes the perfect balance between being loose enough to be forgiving but tricky enough to be interesting. The game also understands the limits of the 1st person perspective. There is hardly any jumping on small platforms, an annoyance of the early FPS, and when there is, crossing them is a matter of keeping up speed and fluid running more so than jumping from platform to platform. 

Dying Light has a great understanding of what it can and cannot do with its platforming and how to make it fun, which makes it a real shame in the later half of the game when you enter Old Town. Out of the two maps, I prefer Old Town to run across. It’s taller buildings and ziplines make it more entertaining to parkour across. But the missions in this part of the game rely less on finding ways across the map and more on linear indoor or sewer levels. There are still platforming to be done in these areas, but they feel much less open, with there only being one, “correct” way for you to climb. It’s still fun to find that way around these levels, but missing the freedom of movement of the open maps makes these moments feel very restrictive.

I originally had an idea for this post that I would compare the platforming in Titanfall 2 and Doom (2016) to see which one was handled better in the 1st person perspective. But then a friend recommended Dying Light, saying it had the best platforming in a 1st person game they’ve played. After playing it myself, I would have to agree. It emphasizes the platforming more so than the other games and that forced it to be as good as possible, with tight controls and freedom of movement. There is a stigma around 1st person platforming and a belief that it just can’t work, which is sad because it could limit future games from offering new, differing experiences. Dying Light shows how fun platforming can be in a 1st person game if it is paid the right amount of attention during design. I hope we see more games like it in the future. More than just Dying Light 2, that is.

Devil May Cry & Devil May Cry 3 – Critical Miss #16

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Dude Bro Bayonetta 3

When Devil May Cry launched early in the Playstation 2’s life in 2001, it spear-headed a new genre of game often referred to as character action or spectacle fighter games. This genre would be popular throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s with the God of War series, the reboot of Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta. Actually, both the original Devil May Cry and Bayonetta were directed by Hideki Kamiya, now with Platinum Games. Devil May Cry gained major critical acclaim when released, with journalists and fans alike praising it’s combat, sense of style and atmosphere, and the character of Dante. I skipped Devil May Cry 2 because is is widely considered by fans to be the worst game in the series. Luckily, Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening improves not only on 2, but the original Devil May Cry, and is my preferred game of the two.

A spectacle fighter lives or dies on it’s combat and the fighting mechanics in the Devil May Cry is really solid. Balancing melee and ranged attacks in a battle is fluid and invigorating. The stylish system, a combo rating  from D to S rank in the original and D to SSS rank in 3, rewards players with more red orbs to buy upgrades and items the better they play. But the combat in the original Devil May Cry gets repetitive quickly. One button is used for melee attacks and one for ranged, with combos changing depending on where you pause in a series of button presses. While it’s fun to cut through a group of enemies and keep the stylish gauge high by pelting baddies with bullets between combos, the simple controls of the original ends up relying too much on button mashing.

Devil May Cry 3 introduces different styles of combat that players can choose and swap at golden statues. There are styles like Swordmaster, which offers more moves to perform with melee weapons, Doppelganger, which lets players summon a mirror double of Dante, and my personal favorite, Trickster, which gives you a dash ability. The simple addition of the different styles makes combat feel so much more open for experimentation and personal. Players can find their own preferred playstyle and cater to it or even switch it up if they get bored. The combo meter is also much easier to read in Dante’s Awakening. All they added was a little line under the style gauge to show when it is filling up or draining, but it makes a world of difference. Now players can see what contributes to getting a good rank (constant damage to enemies, using a variety of attacks, etc.) and work with it to get better ranks.

But better combat isn’t the only reason I prefer Dante’s Awakening to the first Devil May Cry. The truth is I found the first game to be very tedious, with combat, with level design, and with enemies. The moment I realized I had enough of Devil May Cry was the third time I had to fight the armored goo boss. That was my experience with the bosses in the first game. There are about four bosses that you fight two to three times each. Dante’s Awakening has about three times the bosses and, besides Vergil and a short boss rush mission near the end of the game, there are no repeats. Nothing saps my excitement for a game quite like a lack of enemy variety. Neither of the games have the best variety in terms of basic mobs (the enemies you fight on the first level will be in the last level to mow down), but Dante’s Awakening gets the edge over the original by having slightly more variety and not repeating bosses.

Of course, one doesn’t stop playing a game because the bosses aren’t great. I don’t stop playing games for one glaring issue unless I haven’t been fully enjoying the rest of it and there are other reasons I found Devil May Cry tedious. The biggest reason is actually the level design. Throughout the first game, you explore a single castle, backtracking constantly through the same rooms and hallways, only interrupted with platforming sections made extremely frustrating with the fixed camera. The atmosphere on display in the game is rich and imposing, but it lacks variety or new, interesting set pieces to keep the player moving forward to see what’s next and ends up feeling as repetitive as the combat. Traveling through the same rooms is still common in Dante’s Awakening, but it’s improved by having a larger tower to explore, more variety in the rooms in regards to layouts and looks, and by changing the rooms up slightly halfway through the game when parts of the tower are destroyed. 

It’s not surprising that Devil May Cry spawned out of a failed prototype of Resident Evil 4 when you look at the Gothic art direction, fixed camera design, and the characters of Leon Kennedy and Dante. They are very similar, both cocksured and dripping with B-movie bravado, but Dante would only surpass Leon in utter cocky dudebro-ness in Devil May Cry 3. The story of the first game is rather plain, someone is trying to open a get to the demon world, go stop them. And, honestly, the story of the third game is no different, but it gains much more enjoyment by cranking the ridiculousness and self awareness to outrageous degrees. While the first games cut scenes are fairly campy, there aren’t any moments that stick out in my head. Dante’s Awakening is full of memorable story moments like Dante riding a motorcycle up the wall of the tower then using said motorcycle to fight off enemies midair and him saving Lady from falling only to be shot in the head. If Devil May Cry had as ridiculous and enjoyable cutscenes as the third games, I would have kept playing just to see what happens next.

That’s the real difference between the two games. While Dante’s Awakening is filled with interesting ideas and story moments, the original Devil May Cry feels like it only had enough ideas for a game half its length so the developers just doubled everything. Neither games are bad, but the third game is infinitely more fun, interesting, and better aged than its predecessor. If you are interested in the series, or action games in general, I highly suggest giving Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening a try. It’s on the right side of the PS2’s lifespan where games were starting to form designs more familiar with games today. Unfortunately, the original Devil May Cry is on the more archaic side of history.

Metal Gear Solid – Critical Miss #13

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Sneaky-Beaky Like

The stealth genre is not one I follow too closely. I’ll pick a stealth game when it looks interesting, I enjoyed Dishonored enough and I thought the stealth mechanics in Sekiro were implemented really well, but I always have a hard time with the inherent slower pace of most stealth games. This explains why I’ve never played a Metal Gear Solid game before. But I recently picked up a PS2 and Metal Gear Solid was the first game I picked up for the system, I wanted to see what it was that has kept people so enthralled with it since 1998, why people love its creator, Hideo Kojima, so much, and if this was the stealth game that would finally help me love the genre.

Booting it up, the game’s visuals aged better than I expected. Sure, everything is noticeably pixelated on a HD television, but the art style and environmental design is really great. Everything is blue and metallic, heightening the sense that it’s a real military base in Alaska. You can see Snake’s breath when he is outside in the cold and the character models themselves are some of the cleanest and best looking I’ve seen on the system. It’s oddly charming watching the characters just nod their heads up and down instead of moving their mouths in cutscenes. 

I wasn’t a big fan off watching minutes long codec conversations, though. A lot of the discussions Snake has with his team members via the codec are just there to dump exposition, and having to watch it all with just two character portraits that hardly animate isn’t very engaging. However, the voice acting is extremely strong. It was one of the most impressive aspects of the game for me. PS1 games weren’t known for great voice acting (just see Resident Evil or Mega Man 8 for that), so to see Metal Gear Solid take it seriously was great. They had to have the best voice acting possible, though, because Hideo Kojima didn’t just want to make a video game, he wanted to tell a story. 

The story of Metal Gear Solid is basically a political/military thriller, but widened to explore themes of a soldier’s place in the world, trust in one’s government, nuclear weapons, and love. Honestly, the whole thing is very silly and over the top with larger than life characters and constant plot twists. It was the main thing that kept me playing in the second half of the game, but I wouldn’t say the writing itself is good. Character dialogue is almost always verbose, repetitive, and bloated. Characters explain unimportant details, like how the key cards open doors you just walk by, and they are always telling Snake how great he is and that he’s such a legendary soldier. I know, by this point, Snake has starred in two games already, but I would rather have his prowess as a soldier be expressed in gameplay, rather than characters saying it constantly.

I was similarly mixed on the gameplay. The controls have that classic PS1 stiffness, pressing against walls while trying to turn a corner is a constant issue I ran into, but once you get used to them, the stealth gameplay is enjoyable. The player is given many tools to sneak around guards: crawling under tables, looking around corners by pressing against a wall, knocking on walls to draw guards to the sound. The best tool they have to use is the Soliton Radar. This is a mini map in the top right of your screen that will show enemy locations and their sight lines. Using the radar well is key to infiltrating the base successfully. There are certain areas where the radar will be jammed and you will start to notice that a lot in the last half of the game. There are hardly any places on disc 2 that use the Soliton Radar. Not only is it disappointing to build up this skill to have it then taken away for most the end of the game, but it also leads to a lot of instances of being shot by something you couldn’t see off screen. 

There are also a couple bad moments of backtracking in the later half of the game, the worst being changing the shape of the PAL card. . You have to climb to the top of Metal Gear Rex to enter the control room, then you have to climb back down to go to the frozen warehouse, then climb back up to control room, then back down and take two long elevator rides to furnace before finally climbing back up Rex. This section is too long for its own good. It is just so boring and tedious. With most the rooms you travel through being devoid of enemies, there’s not much to keep the player engaged. It feels like padding at its most basic definition.

For me, the worst aspect of Metal Gear Solid are the bosses. The stiff controls make Ocelot and Gray Fox’s fight way too clunky, and the slow first person aiming makes the fights with Sniper Wolf and Rex terribly sluggish. Every boss has such a small window of opportunity to hit them that the fights involve a lot of waiting around. They never felt like they were testing my patience as a player, though, they just felt tedious. The worst fight for me was the Hind D which combines not only the slow aiming controls and small windows to do damage, but also has long periods where the helicopter dips below the building, meaning you just have to wait for it to come back to shoot it. The fight with Psycho Mantis is memorable because of all the meta nonsense happening, but my favorite boss in the game was Vulcan Raven in the warehouse. This is mostly because it’s the only boss fight that utilizes the Soliton Radar in a meaningful way as you watch his movements on the screen and place mines or C4 in front of his path.

Metal Gear Solid has the Resident Evil problem to me. While Resident Evil starts off as a scary survival horror game, it slowly becomes more action oriented as the game progresses until you are fighting giant bio weapons with rocket launchers. Metal Gear Solid follows the same pattern but with stealth gameplay instead of survival horror. The beginning is strong as you are just sneaking past guards from room to room, but towards the middle of the game the stealth gameplay gives way to action set pieces and boss fight after boss fight. I started to notice this after the first Sniper Wolf fight as I was lead down a string of frustrating action moments I didn’t feel the game prepared me for. After the fight with Sniper Wolf, you have the torture sequence where you mash the O button to survive. This leads to the communication tower section where you either run from the guards or shoot them down, stealth is not an option. Then the Hind D fight which I already discussed. The only room that requires any stealth skills past this point is the furnace and I found myself missing the sneaking around of the early game.

I can see why the game blew people away in the 90’s. With its great presentation, incredible voice acting, and emphasis on a real story, it stood out on the PS1. It really is the best cinematic experience you can have on that console. I only wish that the gameplay had stayed consistent throughout the entire game. I haven’t given up on the series, however. I still really want to play Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater because I’ve heard it’s really incredible. But first I have to get through Metal Gear Solid 2 and its bonkers story.

Resident Evil 2 (2019) & Mr. X

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It’s now on record that the Resident Evil 2 remake was one of my favorite games of 2019. Lately, I’ve become enamored with the classic Resident Evil formula and the Resident Evil 2 was a perfect update to it, adding more RE 4 shooting mechanics to the level design of the PS1 style games. But there’s one mechanic in the game that fascinates me more than any other and that’s the character that fans affectionately refer to as “Mr. X” and which I will be referring to as such because it’s shorter to type than the tyrant. 

Mr. X appears in the station at some point during a playthrough and stalks the player in select sections of the game. If he gets line of sight on the player, he will chase after you until you outrun him, which isn’t easy to do since he walks about as fast as the characters run. If he doesn’t know where the player is, he will search throughout the station for them. You can hear his heavy boot steps thumping on the floors and the crash when he throws open doors. Even though you can hear him stomping around, it’s never completely clear when he is, and it’s very startling to open a door only to find him on the other side, ready to deck Leon or Claire in the face. Knowing where you are safe from him is invaluable knowledge. You can take a quick side path around him when he’s spotted down a hall or dip into the S.T.A.R.S. office or a safe room, where he can’t follow you, when being chased down.

He pushes the player to rush. No longer can you slowly inch down a possible dangerous hallway and you have less time to decide whether to shoot a zombie down or wait for the right moment to juke pass them. If he’s not coming up on you at the moment, he could be always be entering the room at any second. The worst areas are the halls with Lickers in them, who are aggroed by the sound of the character running. If Mr. X is running you down through one of those, yous can choose between going slow and being pummelled by Mr X or running and being clawed by a Licker.

Puzzles and inventory management must also be done quickly. Sure, you are safe in the pause menu to arrange your items all you want, but if Mr. X was standing right in front of you with fist raised when you paused, he’ll still be waiting and ready when you unpause. Luckily, he doesn’t show up in a lot of the inventory management puzzles, like the chess piece puzzle, but during the puzzles where he is bearing down on you, he will make you feel every second lost as you stand in place, pausing and unpausing.

Hearing Mr. X thundering through the rooms helps accomplish two things. The first is letting the player know where he is in the station. While it is difficult to pin down where exactly Mr. X is at any point, the sounds he makes gives the player a relative idea of his location. This helps them know when they are in relative safety. If you hear him across the station, you’ll probably safe to go slow for a while, but if the footsteps are nearby, it’s best to be on guard. Being able to always hear Mr X. also works as a constant reminder that he is out there, he is hunting for you. This keeps the tension high while playing in areas of the police station where the players know they’re safe.

This constant tension builds until Mr. X suddenly appears. Whether he bursts through a door you were heading to or you spot him at the other end of a hallway, it is a very distressing occurrence. He usually appears standing between the player and where they were trying to go when they run into him, forcing them to figure out on the fly another path through the station to their destination.

It can’t be understated what an imposing presence Mr. X has in the game, as he hulks toward you, eyes angry and shoulders squared. But I think what makes him the scariest is that he in not a fully known entity. After multiple playthroughs of the Resident Evil 2 remake, I still don’t know what determines Mr. X’s behavior. I never figured out for sure if he actually has to look and find the player when he is off screen, or if he’s always making a beeline to their location. I believe it is the former because there was a time I was standing above the ladder in the library and I watched Mr. X enter through the main hall, stopped and looked around, and exit out through a side door. This moment, character standing in a room with this monster and me holding my breath in real life, stands out to me because it was totally unscripted to my knowledge and actually scared me as I waited to see what Mr. X would do. 

There was another moment, while playing through Claire’s A scenario on hardcore mode, that stands out to me. After progressing to the point where Mr. X is introduced, I did not see him at all until leaving the station for the orphanage. I didn’t even hear him that entire time. I started to wonder if the range you can hear Mr. X in hardcore mode is reduced or if my game was bugged somehow. Was I just getting lucky not to see him? I was filled with uncertainty during that entire section of the playthrough because I wasn’t sure if the game was taking advantage of my incomplete knowledge. This playthrough became more stressful than any other because, as it turns out, not hearing Mr. X and not knowing where he’s located is scarier. 

While Mr. X stalking the player throughout the police station is designed to create fear in the player, it also helps reinforce the knowledge of the game they’ve learned and give the players a sense of growth. When he pops into a hall unexpectedly, Mr. X works as a roadblock. The player then must figure out a way around him, a side path to get them where they were heading, clear as possible of additional threats. After hours of playing the game and exploring the halls of the station, they can easily do this in a single moment. When players first enter the police station, it is confined and narrowed by locked doors and puzzles. The player will slowly open up the station as they progress through the game into a complex web of halls and rooms. The developers were smart to introduce Mr. X into a playthrough when the station is mostly open. By that time, the players will be well familiar with its layout and all the quickest, safest paths throughout. If Mr. X appeared earlier in the game, before the players had a chance to get a mental layout of the station, it would feel unfair.

The real strength of putting Mr. X in the game is that he gives the players moments of satisfaction as they backpedal away from him and use their knowledge gained throughout a playthrough to map out a new route through the police station. The true genius is his dual purpose design that creates a constant sense of fear but also a sense of knowledge in the player and how easy his design accomplishes both these purposes. 

Top 5 Best Games of 2019

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2019 was a weird year for video games for me. Most games I played this year felt strangely similar to other games I’ve played in the past. Remakes, sequels, spiritual successors were abundant. However, I did play a lot of great games in 2019. So much so that I didn’t have room for all of them. 

So honorable mentions go to Slay the Spire, Streets of Rogue, and The Outer Worlds, all games I sank too much time in to. There is also one game I want to mention for my biggest miss of the year and that’s Disco Elysium. I feel Disco Elysium would have a good chance to be my game of the year, but I don’t have the means to play it until its PS4 release slated for 2020. 

With all that out of the way, here are my top five games of 2019.

#5) Pokemon Sword

My number five spot was tricky to decide on. This is a very biased pick because of my love for the Pokemon series, but Pokemon Sword is one of the few games I’ve beaten this year that I still want to play. It’s a standard Pokemon game, but the new Pokemon introduced are some of the strongest in while, Raid Battle are surprisingly addictive, and I’ve lost too many hours to count in the wild area while trying to complete my Dex. I love this game so much, I already want to start another playthrough with a whole different team.

#4) Astral Chain

This year, I played two games that involve themselves with the astral plane: Control and Astral Chain. Out of those two, Astral Chain is a clear favorite for me. Developed by Platinum Games, it has all their hallmarks I love: varied and satisfying combat, perfect dodge mechanics, a variety of enemies, and an over-the-top, ridiculous story. The best part of the game are the Legions, though, and the many ways they can be utilized in and outside of fighting. 

#3) Resident Evil 2 (Remake)

I never played the original Resident Evil 2, so I had no nostalgia for the game when the remake was announced. But I picked it up based on my love for RE 4 and after playing through the RE 1 remake, and this new remake plays like the best aspects of those two games combined. The shooting is satisfying while the over-the-shoulder camera provide a claustrophobic feeling in the tight halls of the police station. The station, where most of the game takes place, is expertly crafted and the survival horror balance is pitch perfect, ensuring the player is always low on supplies but can still scrape by if they play smart.

#2) Untitled Goose Game

2019 was a landmark year for me because Untitled Goose Game released. It was my most hyped game since I saw it a few years back and it was everything I wanted. It’s a funny game with an interesting take on stealth gameplay and a dedicated honk button. The levels are solidly designed and they even open up upon completion, connecting them all for more open playthroughs after the first. The game is effortlessly charming with a pleasant art style.The only drawback to the game is the short length. It helps the humor not overstay its welcome, but it does feel sadly lacking. But then again, it has a dedicated honk button.

#1) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Like my review of Majora’s Mask, what impresses me most about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is how it feels similar to the Dark Souls series, yet completely different at the same time. The additional of the hookshot is great, adding a huge amount of verticality to levels and enables more stealth options and quick escapes. The exploration is still present even with the more linear level design and the rewards for searching can be truly gratifying. The game strips out all the different weapons, armor, and classes of From’s earlier Souls games, but it still manages to be as challenging as those other games. With a more narrow move set provided to the player, the bosses and enemies were created with laser focus. Honestly,there were times while fighting some bosses where I thought I might not be good enough to beat them. Genochiro, the Guardian Ape, Demon of Hatred, the Corrupted Monk, all beat me now to the point of despair. But no game gave me a better feeling than taking out each and every one of Sekiro’s bosses.

Top 5 Critical Miss Games of 2019

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I played a lot of older games this year, games that are considered classics, to see how well they held up for someone with no nostalgia for them. Honestly, this has been my favorite part of writing Atomic Bob-Omb. I wanted to celebrate nearly a year of Critical Miss by ranking my top 5 favorite games I played for the series in 2019

#5) Spryo 2: Ripto’s Rage

I was glad to play Spyro 1 and 2 this year. They were games I always wanted to play as a kid, and I did play a lot of a demo of the first game, but never owned them. While I found the first game to be clunky and frustrating with too precise of jumps with a very stiff arch, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage as a good time. With its wide range of characters and setting, differing mission for orbs, and more relaxed but still challenging at times platfoming, it was my preferred of the first two Spyro games. I’m amazed how much adding a small flutter to Spyro’s jump added to the feel of the platforming. It was a very relaxing game to play, but stayed fun throughout the full adventure.

#4) Majora’s Mask

Majora’s Mask may have become my favorite 3D Zelda game this year. It’s so fascinating how the developers created a game that feels similar but also completely different than other games in the franchise. They cut down on dungeons but made those dungeons trickier and more interesting to explore. They shifted focus of the story from Link’s journey to Termina and its citizens. What truly sets this game apart are the transformation masks that change Link’s moveset and basically give you 4 characters to play as throughout the game. It’s easy to see why Zelda fans hold this game in such high regard nearly 20 years after its release.

#3) Doom

The original Doom is a hell of a fun time. While the sprites and early 3D art style has aged, it has a huge amount of charm today. The game excels at fast-paced, frantic combat and exploration. The core gameplay loop is running at breakneck speeds through the level, killing the hordes of hell, searching for the exit and possible secrets for extra weapons and power ups. For me, the best part of the games is its variety. There are many guns with differing uses and lots of enemies, with different behaviors to learn and optimal ways to kill. Add that with excellent level design and you have a landmark title that still holds up today. 

#2) Resident Evil (Remake)

I learned this year that I love the gameplay loop of the early Resident Evil games of being dropped in a puzzle box building and slowly unraveling your way out. It helps that the Spencer mansion is expertly crafted and the player will have the layout nearly memorized after their first playthrough. The prerendered backgrounds look beautiful and the gameplay is extremely solid. The gun play is lacking, but it’s overshadowed by the game’s other mechanics: learning when to fight enemies or run, mapping out what paths are safe to run through or where you might need to burn bodies, managing your inventory to ensure safety and progress through the next puzzle. While the game isn’t very scary, it keeps the tension high enough to keep players on edge throughout the entire playthrough. It truly amazes me how well the Resident Evil Remake has aged (with the modern controls, of course).

#1) Papers, Please

Papers, Please was the most enthralling game I played for Critical Miss this year. The main mechanic of inspecting papers is unlike any I’ve experienced and the story was very emotional while being very minimalist. The best part of the game is how it uses the player’s beliefs for moral choices. Most games have moral choices baked into the code, as in doing certain things are considered good or bad by the game and can change how events play out. Papers, Please relies on the player to decide what is right or wrong. As long as you make enough money, the game will continue whether you help everyone in need or ignore their pleas. The emotional impact of the game is so ingrained with the player trying to do what they think is the right thing, that it would never work as any other form of media. Papers, Please is my favorite game of the year for this series for being utterly unique, impact full emotional, and truly fascinating from beginning to end.