God of War (PS2) – Critical Miss #36

February 28, 2022 / atomicbobomb / Leave a comment

_{^{Photo by Greyhem. Found at godofwar.fandom.com}}

Growing up, the video game consoles were always in my older brother’s room, from the Genesis to the Playstation to the Playstation 2. That is, until I got a Playstation 2 for my room. It was a slim model and I remembered playing the hell out of the Pandemic Star Wars Battlefront games, a Godzilla fighting game that was either Save the Earth or Unleashed, and a random Hulk game. I wasn’t into video games enough to know what to look for besides licenses I was already interested in. At some point though, I picked up a Greatest Hits copy of God of War. I remember wanting it because it was $20 and rated mature–a big deal to someone in their mid teens. Released in 2005, it gave Sony a new mascot to flaunt in Kratos, but I personally don’t remember anything from playing the game itself from that time. All I remember is that I never finished which makes it more than qualified for a Critical Miss.

The start of the story finds Kratos in the typical Greek myth position: fucked over by the Gods. Specifically Ares, whom Kratos sold his life to in order to win a battle and save him from death by the hands of barbarians. After Ares decimates Kratos’s enemies, Kratos is enslaved to him in some way–it’s never clearly defined, mostly being shown through flashback montages, but Kratos seems forced to work as a warrior for Ares. One night, however, Ares tricks Kratos into slaying his wife and children, a cackling oracle curses Kratos by fusing the ashes of his dead loved ones forever upon his skin, and now the only thing on his mind is killing Ares for revenge.

It is a very standard plot, but it suits this type of action game as it provides just enough reason for Kratos to journey from the Aegean Sea to Athens to Pandora’s Temple and it provides solid context for who Kratos is and what drives him. As a character, Kratos isn’t very likable, an anti-hero at best, since he is angry, shouty, and all too ready to kill innocent people to progress on his quest or even to just get a little bit of health. The player can still have some sympathy for him, however, since genuinely mourns the loss of his family in his own violent way and he is a mere plaything of the Gods above him.

The visuals help Kratos feel insignificant to the Gods too. The game looks great, but there is an amazing sense of grandiose with some of the areas you visit. While running through Athens, you will often see Ares looming in the bay outside the city. The titan that carries Pandora’s Temple on their back is also enormous and there’s an incredible moment while Kratos is scaling the cliffs outside the temple that you can see the titan crawling below. The music is bombastic too, but is rather forgettable to me, feeling like the standard heroic orchestra brass and boom that accompanies this type of warrior’s journey.

As a warrior, Kratos is extremely capable. The Blades of Chaos chained to his arms are fast with great range and coverage while the Blade of Artemis is big fuck-off sword that is slow and hits like a minotaur. Throughout the game the Gods also bestow Kratos with magical spells. These range from throwing Zeus’s lightning to summoning an army of spirits from the depths of Hades. All weapons and spells can be upgraded with the use of red orbs that spew from defeated beasts and broken jars so Kratos will get consistently stronger as you play. This is a good thing because the God of War strives to continually challenge the player in combat.

It’s uncommon that you will be fighting just one enemy at a time in God of War–unless the game is introducing a new monster and wants you to learn their patterns before complicating things. Enemies always come in hordes so learning attacks with wide coverage and which beasts need to be targeted first is key to survival. The agents of Ares include undead foot soldiers, minotaurs, gorgons, harpies, and more. There is a decent variety in enemies–even if the game falls back on tougher, recolored ones by the end–and they all fill a niche in combat to harass the player. An interesting mechanic in combat is how killing certain enemies using the quick time prompts will reward you with different orbs mid-fight. For example, gorgons will drop blue orbs to replenish magic and minotaurs will always drop green orbs for health.

Simply put, the combat in God of War is great. It’s easy to see why games like Dante’s Inferno copy/pasted it wholesale into their games. But the influence of God of War is a double edged Chaos Blade because it–along with Resident Evil 4 from earlier the same year–can be blamed for the infestation of quick time events in mainstream gaming that followed for years after. I’ve always been rather neutral toward QTEs. They work in some games, but don’t work in others, and I think they mostly work in God of War. Early in the game, the timing to hit the QTEs is generous enough that it never feels frustrating and the colored orbs you get from killing enemies with them in battle are a good enough reward to use them. By the end of the game though the timing becomes so strict that I found it just easier to not use them in fights.

_{^{Photo by GabrielPacia. Found at godofwar.fandom.com}}

Besides fighting, Kratos will also have to solve some light puzzles during his journey. Since Kratos isn’t characterized much besides being strong, these puzzles almost always involve pushing a block or statue somewhere. Sometimes you have to push a statue to block a crack in the wall where harpies continuously spawn, sometimes you have to push a block on a button to hold it down, and even once you have to push a caged soldier into a fire to progress. They are the lightest puzzles imaginable, hardly ever testing your smarts, choosing instead to test how well you can push a block while fighting off enemies at the same time. The game often forces Kratos through sections where he has to balance across beams. These sections are slow, tedious, and very annoying since they just bog down the pace.

Along with the light puzzles, there is also light exploration to be done in God of War. Secrets are hidden behind cracked walls, portraits, and down hidden paths. They will usually be a chest full of red orbs for upgrading, Gorgon Eyes used to increase Kratos’s health, and Phoenix Feathers that increase his magic bar. These are easy to find if you have a knack for checking things off the obvious path forward. The upgrades are worth finding, but the game doesn’t spread them out enough. All but a few Gorgon Eyes are found before Pandora’s Temple leaving only the Phoenix Feathers to find. I had to look up to make sure I had found them all because the health and magic bars still looked shorter than intended when fully upgraded.

Lackluster puzzles and pretty standard story aside, I had a blast playing through God of War with its fluid, but tough combat, larger than life visuals, and it’s rewards for thorough exploration. I was a little disappointed by the small number of bosses in the game–three in all–but they were so large and momentous that I didn’t find it necessary to complain. And that’s kinda the feel of God of War on the PS2 anyways: it’s not the longest game with the most ideas in it, but it’s so large and in charge with the stuff it does get right. It’s a truly fun game that I can easily recommend to anyone, mortal or God alike.

_{^{Photo by BlackPill. Found at godofwar.fandom.com}}

Psychonauts – Critical Miss #30

August 31, 2021 / atomicbobomb / 1 Comment

Ra-Ra-Razputin

I never went to summer camp as a kid. Closet thing I had growing up was a thing called P.I.T.S., Parks in the Summertime, where kids from the town would go to the park on Thursdays and a group of volunteers would have games and activities for them to do. Even this I didn’t attend very often, always being a more indoor, bookish kid. So I’m glad I got to experience summer camp vicariously through Psychonauts. Released upon the world in 2005 from the brain of Tim Schafer, the game received critical acclaim, but disappointing sales led it to be one of the most famous cult classics in video games.

Whispering Rock in the game is no ordinary summer camp. It’s actually a camp for psychic children—a place that trains and nurtures the psychic abilities in the campers and a place the main character, Razputin, dreams about attending. He is so determined that he runs away from his acrobatic, circus-performing family to sneak into the camp. The counselors at Whispering Rock inform Raz he only has one day at the camp until his father comes to pick him up. So Raz decides to get as much psychic training as he can in that single day. Along the way he will meet new friends, make new bullies, and unravel an evil plot to steal children’s brains in the works.

Psychonauts’ art direction is a great balance of ugly yet charming. It takes inspiration from movies like A Nightmare Before Christmas with its darker color palette and grotesque character models—all unnaturally, sickly skin tones, uneven teeth, and lopsided, bulging eyes. Usually I’m not a fan of this type of character design, but there’s something about Psychonauts that makes it work. Possibly due to how charming and well-written the characters themselves are and possibly just due to how well the humor is done in the game. I laughed a lot while playing Psychonauts. The strong character designs also lead to strong level themes since the levels in the game take place inside different characters’ minds.

Much like the characters in the game, levels vary wildly in Psychonauts in terms of art style, mechanics, skills used, and puzzles to solve. The game is constantly changing things up with each and every level and the art style chosen for each one perfectly represents the personality whose mind you are exploring. Levels range from more combat focus in Sasha’s Shooting Gallery, which has a sort of 50’s retro style, to pure platforming challenges like the 60’s inspired dance party of Milla’s mind. A lot of levels are more based on solving puzzles than platforming or combat. Gloria’s Theater has the player finding the right play scene and mood to put on in order to gain access to the cat walks and Waterloo World has Raz shrink down in order to act as a piece in a board game. These more puzzle focused levels were my favorite in the game because when the game demanded quick or precise platforming, it started to show cracks.

Razputin comes from a family of acrobats and inherently has a moveset for fun platforming. He can walk and bounce on tight ropes, swing around and leap off poles and trapeze swings, and can grind down railings. For the most part, the controls work fine, but there is a clunkiness to them that’s a little hard to explain. There is a sort of lag that needs to be accounted for when trying to string moves together. This makes simple things like jumping off poles or railings touchy since it’s a crapshoot whether or not the double jump will work. As Raz does more psychic training, he learns how to enhance his physical abilities with his psychic powers. He can use his mind to double jump, levitate and move faster, and let himself float slowly to the ground when falling. These abilities help with some of the trickier platforming and the camera in the game, which also feels like it’s fighting the player, but the weird lag is still present when trying to combo these moves together. It’s only a real problem in certain parts of the game where platforming challenges get tricky. Levels like Black Velvetopia and The Meat Circus are terrible for these moments, but pretty much every level seemed to have a section that took me much longer than it should due to the controls. It was frustrating, but not so much that I ever wanted to quit the game. However, the controls were the major reason why I decided early on in the game not to 100% complete it.

Every level has many collectibles to grab. Figments are the stand-ins for the common collectible like Mario’s coins or Sonic’s rings, there is emotional baggage that need a corresponding tag to open, and repressed memories to be discovered that are represented by locked safes. Collecting these items help Raz level up in camp rank, rewarding the player with new skills and upgrades to existing skills, concept art, and back story on the character whose mind you are playing around in. But figments are just too faint and hard to see since they are paper thin and transparent to spot easily in the busy levels of the game. A lot of baggage and safes are hiding in plain sight along the main path, but some are tucked away in sections that require precise platforming to find. While it’s a nice thought that you are helping someone clear out their emotional baggage, it would have been great to see that reflected in the character themselves once you leave the level. There is a theme of helping people through their trauma or mental blocks in the game’s story, so I feel having characters improve the more baggage you clear out in their mind would be a great tie between story and gameplay.

The story in Psychonauts is very enjoyable, even if it suffers from some weird pacing issues. The game feels very episodic with how characters, themes, and mechanics are picked up for a single level and then nearly forgotten for the rest of the game. By the halfway point of the game, all the children at camp have had their brains stolen and turned into drooling mindless zombies that only moan out to watch TV. Even Milla and Sasha, the two teachers who have been helping Raz train, disappear at this point, only to return for the conclusion of the game. I use this term to describe a colorful art style a lot, but Psychonauts’ story feels very much like a Saturday morning cartoon: episodic, character’s coming and going in each episode and hardly having a bearing on the overall plot, and setting changing up as needed with every adventure. This isn’t a bad thing though, it works extremely well for the story being told, but it did make me wish we could spend more time with the characters I liked like Dogen, Milla, and Lili.

While the clunky controls made playing Psychonauts more frustrating than it had to be in the moment as I was playing, I still ended the game extremely positive on it. There is so much creativity and clever design in the game not to like it. From the juxtaposition of the mundane setting of the summer camp and the fantastic world of psychics and people’s individual mindscapes to the varied mechanics and puzzles in the level, Psychonauts is too unique not to try out. It’s not the best 3D platformer I’ve ever played, but it has some of the most interesting levels and charming, fleshed out characters of any. The game can be picked up for pretty cheap now on most modern consoles, so check it out.

Silent Hill 2 – Critical Miss #20

October 31, 2020 / atomicbobomb / 3 Comments

_{Photo by AlexShepherd. Found at http://silenthill.fandom.com}

Town of Blood and Fog

It’s October which means it’s spooky season. While I love horror movies, I haven’t actually played many horror games. I could make excuses like how they don’t tend to interest me or I find them mechanically light typically, but the truth is horror games freak me the fuck out. It comes down to interactivity. I can sit back, idly watching a movie and judge the characters for making poor decisions, but in a game, I am the one who has to make the poor choices if I want to progress. When it came time to choose a classic scary game for the Halloween Critical Miss this year, there was one game that immediately came to mind.

Silent Hill 2 released in 2001 to immediate commercial and critical success. Even today, it is widely considered to be the high point of the series and one of the scariest games ever made. It’s praised for its atmosphere, psychological horror direction, and symbolism in design. The game centers around James Sunderland coming to the fog shrouded resort town in search of his wife, Mary, who has sent him a letter despite being dead for three years. Walking toward the town, you meet a woman named Angela who warns James not to continue onward because there is something wrong with the town. And she is absolutely right.

The titular town is enveloped in a dense fog making it impossible to see more than ten feet in front of you and is infested with monsters, terrible humanoid shapes with their arms pinned to their torsos like their burnt skin is a straight jacket. When you first make it to Silent Hill, you will spend a good chunk of time wandering aimlessly around, dodging the shapes materializing out of the fog, until you find any indication of where to go. Silent Hill 2 is not afraid to make the player lost. Once you find the thread to follow to destinations, the game is sign-posted well enough, but until then, you are on your own. This is extremely effective in creating fear since you are trapped in this unfamiliar town you can barely see and there are monsters around every corner and hiding under parked cars ready to jump out and maul you.

All monster encounters are extremely tense since the controls are very stiff and weighty. Combat, when you are forced into it, is especially stiff, sticky, and enemies take a lot of damage before dying. It is always advisable to run away from enemies rather than fight them due to resources needed to kill them, both ammo if you have any or healing items needed to keep James alive. I was very grateful to discover you could turn off tank controls earlier on, but the free movement is still based on a very uncooperative camera. Camera angles change suddenly, leading to running back down the hall you just exited and it swings slowly ,almost drunkenly, around when positioning it behind James. The camera is disorientating and makes the player never feel settled in a place.

James must find his way through Silent Hill to find Mary and to do that he must navigate its streets and buildings while plunging deeper and deeper (literally at times, as in the prison) into the darkest depths of the horror and misery of his past. You’ll visit four main areas throughout the game that sort of act as dungeons from a Zelda game or a RPG. There are the apartment buildings, the hospital, Silent Hill Historical Building and the prison inexplicably below it, and the hotel. You will have to search rooms for items to either solve puzzles or unlock new rooms to search. The puzzles are typically clever logic puzzles, like the coin puzzle, or have hints somewhere nearby to clue you in to the solution, like the clock puzzle or combination lock. As the game progresses though, I feel the puzzle start becoming more obtuse. The main culprit of this is the block of faces just after the prison. I’m not sure if I missed the hint saying what to do, but I could not for the life of me figure out what was expected of me until I looked up the solution. The puzzles are either clever but solvable, or encourage exploration, both which I enjoy, and they are only really let down by the clunky inventory menu. Overall, the gameplay of Silent Hill 2 is fine, it’s passable, but that’s not the star of the game. The real reason to play this game is the town itself, James, and the complete horror one finds when confronted with their darkest secrets.

As James gets pulled into Silent Hill, so does the player through the game’s atmosphere. Everything is dank and empty with metal doors rusted, windows broken, and the walls covered in grime. The game takes familiar settings like a hotel or hospital and makes them hellish and alienating by plunging them into darkness and coating everything in rust and filth. The visuals still hold up extremely well today, but the sound design is on a whole other level and is some of the best I’ve ever heard. Sounds range for the loud radio static when monsters are nearby to the quiet barely heard whispers of unknown voices, the constantly pounding of James feet to sudden crying of a baby heard in only one room. Everything sounds chucky and uncanny, real enough to be recognized but odd enough to unnerve anyone hearing them.

Uncanny is how I would describe the characters too. Not in an “uncanny valley” sense where their models invoke an unease in the players (although there is some of that since this is the PS2), but more in their actions and conversations. James is pretty unflappable. Sure, he reacts to the horrific things happening in front of him, but he never seems to react to an appropriate level. His first encounter with Maria is a perfect example: he first mistakes her for his wife because she is Mary’s exact double, but is a sexier outfit. She immediately takes a liking to James and comes on to him very hard, despite the fact that they are trapped in a town full of monsters. James acknowledges Maria’s likeness to Mary, but that’s it. He just accepts it and moves on, no real questions after this interaction. I think James’s cold acceptance to the things he sees mostly has to do with the voice acting, which is not great with flat and stilted delivery, but it honestly works better than expected. It helps add to the other-worldly feeling of the town, as if the characters are too numb, terrified, or simply indifferent to care much about what is going on.

Whether the poor voice acting was intentional or not, it adds so much subtle unease to a game that’s filled to overflowing with subtleties. There are quiet sound effects, like footsteps following you in the beginning of the game and heavy breathing in certain rooms, that only happen in particular areas and are easy to miss. All the enemies represent the larger themes of the game. There are all feminine in nature, like the mannequin enemies that are just too sets of women legs and the nurses, except for Pyramid Head, face of Silent Hill since his introduction in this game. Pyramid Head is a tall, powerful male figure often seen attacking and assaulting the feminine enemies. The enemies represent every thing of James’s guilt of past actions to his frustrated libido since Mary’s passing. It’s so unnerving when you realize this because it adds so much more to the town of Silent Hill itself. It makes the town feel the main antagonist of the game, an alive, thinking entity with its own agenda for James.

All this builds to a tense and terrifying game. It breeds that special type of anxiety in you, that tightness in your chest, the sense of never feeling completely safe. The dread builds and builds until the very end where the game closes like a quiet door. It doesn’t offer a big, cathartic climax where the secrets of the town are discovered with a big, horrific set piece like many other horror games offer. Instead, the game’s climax is an emotional one, where the player watches James admit to and accept responsibility for his past sins. It’s a quiet, bleak, and heart wrenching moment because it’s not easy to not get invested in James and his suicidal quest in Silent Hill.

When I played, I got the ending that suggests that James commits suicide to be with his wife. You never see it, but it’s very much implied. After watching the other endings, this one feels the most fitting for me and my understanding of the town of Silent Hill. The town doesn’t not exist to redeem or offer any sort of relief to those it chooses, it exists only to punish and to torment.

I wouldn’t call the game itself very punishing. It checks a player’s overconfidence through stiff combat and having James be quick to die, but mostly the gameplay is just a little stiff and the puzzles oblique. But it works for this type of game and paired with the thick atmosphere and fantastic story. James and his journey through hell will always have a place in the back of my brain, poking at my thoughts like a thorn. I’ve been turning Silent Hill 2 over in my head again and again since completing it, and that’s always the best sign to me that I really loved a game.

Resident Evil 4 & 3rd Person Controls

October 16, 2020 / atomicbobomb / Leave a comment

The first Resident Evil game I ever played was Resident Evil 4. I first played it to completion little over two years ago and I fell instantly in love with it. The gameplay was intense and powerful, the story was campy and dumb in the best way, and even the briefcase menu screen made inventory management fun. I knew the game’s place in history and how it changed up the formula from previous Resident Evil games at the time, but it wasn’t until I played those earlier games that I understood how different, but oddly similar, the fourth game in the series was to its kin. And all it took was a simple change in the camera.

Resident Evil 4 was the first mainline game in the series to abandon the fixed camera angles in favor of an over-the-shoulder 3rd person camera. And, while every game in the series previous was a mix of action and horror, Resident Evil 4 focused much more on the action side of the gameplay, being mainly a 3rd person shooter and leaving much of the survival horror aspects of the series behind. There are still effective moments of horror in the game like the Regenerator enemies the sewer section with the invisible bug creatures, but the game focuses much more on action and tension created by the relentlessness of the enemies. I think the shift in the camera is the culprit for this gameplay and tonal shift.

In the early Resident Evil games, each room, hallway, and staircase had a fixed camera, or multiple, to show the area. They could not be moved in any way and were mostly implemented due to hardware limitations. But the designers discovered an interesting side effect from the restrictive camera system: claustrophobia. With the limited view and narrow level design, the early games instill a sense of tightness in the player, a sense of being trapped and not knowing what to expect in upcoming areas. The camera in Resident Evil 4 is used to create a similar feeling, but by different means.

The camera in Resident Evil 4 hangs just behind Leon’s shoulder, following behind him as he explores the decrepit Spanish village. Even though the camera can be moved around, its movement is smartly locked in a certain degree of movement where Leon is facing. This still limits the view on the player, especially with Leon’s model taking up quite a bit of the screen. With this restriction, the game still has a sense of tightness and claustrophobia to it, even with its much more open level design. You never know when a village is shuffling up behind you or even just outside your peripheral vision. Many modern 3rd person shooters like Control offer a free camera, able to look any direction regardless of where the character is facing, but this just wouldn’t have worked for Resident Evil 4.

At its core, Resident Evil 4 is still a horror game, even though it focuses more on action. Without the dank, cramped environments of the previous games to provide scares, Resident Evil 4 uses complete relentlessness. When in combat, there are many enemies coming from all sides. The limited camera makes it impossible to keep track of all enemies at once and this allows them to sneak up out of view and grab Leon unexpectedly. The developers know this too and use it to apply stress to the player, having enemies come at you from all angles. Often you will be backing away from an approaching village right into the hands of another. Every combat encounter turns into a balance act of killing the enemies in front of you while also keeping mental tallies on any you know who are coming near and keep your distance from them all.

Besides hounding Leon from all directions, the enemies have been designed around the new camera in other ways. The villagers are typically slow moving to accommodate the narrow camera and stiff tank controls, but they can jog in quick bursts to gain distance on Leon. They can close distance surprisingly fast if not tended to, but the game gives the player ways to deal with that. Enemies become stunned when they take enough damage, stopping to clutch their legs or head or wherever they’ve been shot. Shoot them in the legs enough and they become staggered, allowing Leon to roundhouse kick them. This is an important technique to learn because it not only does damage and can hit multiple enemies, but it gives you invincibility frames and sends the enemies flying back. An up close blast from a shotgun also knocks enemies a good distance, granting you a little bit of breathing room and precious seconds to assess the situation and make a plan.

The majority of enemies are melee, with a few having ranged weaponry or tossing their axes or sickles at you from afar. You would think that in a 3rd person shooter, most enemies would also be armed with guns. This is indeed the case for most games in the genre, but those types of enemies would not have worked in Resident Evil 4. While the combat can be hectic, with snap decisions needed in the heat of a fight, the camera and controls give the shooting a more slow-paced and methodical feel. With the enemies being slow and having to reach Leon first to damage him, the player has plenty of time to focus the camera where it needs to be, to run to spot where they are safe enough to stop and shoot, to even dash past enemies if they are overwhelmed, low on ammo, or just don’t to waste the bullets to fight.

Resident Evil 4’s combat is some of the best out there, especially for an over-the shoulder camera system. It not only shaped action games at the time, but its influence can still be felt today. Take the 2018 God of War. The camera is as close to Kratos in that game as it is to Leon in Resident Evil 4, but the latter is a methodical shooter while God of War is a fast paced hack and slash. The camera’s closeness to Kratos never felt like it worked as well as it should. The game constantly had to have immersion-breaking indicators and arrows pointing to enemies off screen or throwing range attacks. The game mitigates this a bit by limiting the enemies to face in individual encounters compared to other games in the series, but it doesn’t handle the shift in the camera perspective as well as Resident Evil 4 had over a decade earlier.

It must be frightening to design a new game in a series so radically different than its predecessors. It has to retain what fans loved about the earlier games and the new stuff has to be as good enough for players to enjoy immediately. This must be why Miyamoto spent the few months of Super Mario 64’s development perfecting Mario’s controls. Likewise, I think the Resident Evil 4 developers knew how important the new over-the-shoulder camera was to the game. They clearly designed everything around it and made sure everything worked well within the new camera system.

It honestly blows my mind when people say they can’t play the game due to the camera or controls. Sure, the controls and camera can feel weird when you first start, but the game is so expertly crafted around them that you quickly get used to them. From the camera subtly creating a tight feeling to how the enemies are designed, the game perfectly utilizes the 3rd person perspective to heighten every minute of Resident Evil 4’s gameplay.

The other major complaint against the game: Ashley—that’s a whole other post there. Stay tuned.