Nier Automata Review

2017 was a huge year for games. With the release of the Switch and behemoths like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey taking up so much of my time, there were a lot of other great games that piqued my interest but ended up never making it into my queue. In fact, I even made a Missed 2017 Games list to help me keep track of all the games I wanted to circle back to in later years. Among these was Square Enix and Platinum Games' award-winning sci-fi action RPG Nier Automata. Finding myself with extra time to stay home and play games lately, this year turned out to be the perfect time to finally experience this open-world post-apocalyptic epic.

Background

Nier Automata set in the distant future thousands of years after a successful alien invasion has forced humankind into exile in space. The story follows two android soldiers, 2B and 9S, who are dispatched to Earth on a mission to reclaim the planet from machine lifeforms that have been maintaining control of the planet on behalf of the aliens. By playing through the campaign three times, players can experience this proxy war between the human and alien's respective robotic armies from the perspectives of 2B, 9S, and a third character that is encountered later.

Aesthetics

When you think about it, Nier Automata's setting is rather bleak, but I'm ok with that. There's something about exploring a crumbling post-human world, a world torn apart by a pointless war, that's deeply compelling: it's as beautiful as it is sad. It's an experience I wasn't entirely sure I would be comfortable with given current world events, but I'm glad I did it.

Nier Automata feels "directed" in a film-like sense during gameplay in a way that 3D open-world games rarely do. In many cases, this is accomplished by taking control of the camera away from the player to force a cinematic camera perspective.  The game's ability to adapt its mechanics for behind the back, side-scrolling, and overhead perspectives on the fly makes the whole thing feel remarkably smooth while still showing off major setpiece moments from the best possible perspective. Older pre-rendered 3D games like the Resident Evil attempted to have dramatic camera angles like this, but it would often have an awkward or jarring effect on the feel of the game.

The incredible musical score sets the tone perfectly: haunting, mysterious, sad, with just a little bit of wonder mixed in. The fact that the lyrics of the music are in a made-up language gives the world a mysterious alien quality even though it takes place on our planet. This dovetails nicely with the game's themes of returning to decimated occupied earth thousands of years after humans have left it behind. The strange multicultural mishmash language gives the sense that though this world was once the domain of humans like us, the humans of Nier's world were far removed from us by the passage of time.

Every movement the characters make has a distinct style. While I expected this to be the case during battles, it's kind of the norm for games with action combat, it was the personality injected into the more minor animations that really struck me; 2B and 9S have a way of turning simple actions like climbing a ladder or sliding down a sand dune into cool and flashy maneuvers. Each type of enemy also has a unique and vividly animated form of locomotion based on the configuration of their bodies; I particularly liked the bouncy and jerky movements of the stubby robots and the skittering of the insect-like machines.

Nier Automata's character and costume designs may feature very limited color pallets, but this ties them together in a cohesive yet very stylish way. The figures of 2B and 9S clad in black and with their eyes covered by blindfolds is bold and iconic. The one downside of this is that cut of 2B's outfit combined with the game's fabric physics and camera angles can lead to some "fan service" imagery in places where it feels inappropriate (anime fans will know what I'm talking about). Having a character's underwear being prominently featured in an otherwise serious scene detracted from the dramatic weight for me. I think this could have been avoided with a few minor tweaks that wouldn't have sacrificed much from the character's style.

Mechanics

Combat in Nier Automata takes the form of fast-paced real-time battles that play similar to a character action game with some RPG systems layered on top to make the action a little more forgiving. The mechanics work a little differently depending on which character you're playing. As a combat specialist, 2B wields two swords, gracefully flips through the air for aerial combos, and polishes enemies off with flashy finishing moves (imagine a simplified version of Devil May Cry and you get the picture). On the other hand, 9S, as a scout, only has access to a limited set of these combat capabilities but can make up for it by being able to hack into his foes to take them down from a distance. Hacking success is contingent on winning a shoot 'em up minigame similar to Geometry Wars. As someone who enjoys both character action games and shoot 'em ups, both of these mechanics worked for me and helped keep combat feeling fresh when playing through each character's routes.

Nier Automata uses 3D action combat, top-down hack-n-slash, side-scrolling, and shoot 'em gameplay in concert with each other to keep the action as fast-paced and stylish as possible. Amazingly, it juggles all of these and makes them feel natural. As someone who plays a fair amount of shmups, I thought some of these segments were a little too easy; I could often spot ways to cheese my way to victory. However, I'm thinking it was a deliberate design decision to lower the friction when switching back and forth between gameplay styles and to ensure no one mechanic creates a stumbling block for players. On the whole, it's very impressive the way this game manages to implement so many types of mechanics so effectively. 

To truly complete Nier Automata, you have to play through the campaign three times. Each time you experience a different character's route and gain new information and perspectives that make the whole story come together. While this is an interesting concept, I had mixed feelings about the execution. The first route, in which you play as 2B, is by far the freshest and most exciting from a gameplay standpoint because every enemy you encounter and area you gain access to is a new discovery; however, her story is somewhat unsatisfying. In the second route, you play as 2B's companion, 9S. Since these two characters spend the majority of the campaign together, 9S's route is largely a retread of 2B's route, but with a few new scenes interspersed throughout that provide more context to the story. The fact that 9S's mechanics differ from 2B's helps keep things from getting stale but I still couldn't help but feel like I was repeating a lot of scenarios I had already done in order to get a small amount of new content. The third route covers entirely new ground from the first two routes and provides the story with a conclusion that brings everything together, it's just a shame that it takes so long to get to it. I think it would have benefitted this game to abridge 9S's route so that more players would have made it the far more interesting third route. Based on Steam statistics, only about half the players that finish 2B's route end up playing through the third route. (My feelings about Nier Automata's three-route structure mirror my though's in my review of the similarly-structured Ys Origin.)

Nier Automata's save system is inconsistent. In the opening mission, which takes about 45 minutes to complete, you can't save your game at all. In other parts of the campaign, you must manually save your game at marked save points on the map. In other circumstances, getting killed doesn't result in a game over but revives you in a new body; you must then go find your previous body to collect any of the stat-buffing items you had equipped when you died. There's an in-universe justification for the save system's inconsistency that works from a narrative perspective, but it still led to some frustration on my part when I would wander into a high-level area by mistake and end up losing progress. I recommend that most players temporarily drop the difficulty to Easy in the game's opening mission to get the best experience.

Like any open-world game, Nier Automat provides plenty of opportunites to engage in sidequests. Most of these were pretty bland fetch quests, though the fact that they added to the lore, supplied considerable XP and crafting supplies, and provided an excuse to explore the world more made them worthwhile. It also helped that your side quest completion carries over each time you play through the campaign, meaning you can spread the sidequests out between routes to keep them from feeling too repetitive.

Conclusion

By combining a rich world, a strong sense of style, and a variety of gameplay styles that feel good individually and work even better in concert, Nier Automata's strengths far outweigh any of the game's minor negative attributes. The game is both aesthetically and mechanically an artistic achievement that deserves to be experienced by anyone that enjoys action RPGs and science fiction.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 48 hours (all three routes, medium difficulty, 82% sidequests completed)

Nature taking over urban areas is a common theme.

The creepy old amusement park was one of my favorite areas

Scrolling shmup gameplay

Geometry Wars-like hacking sequence

3D flying shmup battle

Just Cause 4 Review

After having such a good time with Just Cause 2 a few years ago (review), I was pretty excited to check back into the series for its fourth installment and cause a little open-world mayhem. Similar to the previous games, in Just Cause 4, secret agent Rico Rodriguez is tasked with overthrowing an oppressive regime by causing chaos and inciting the citizens to rise up against their dictator.  While  there was plenty of satisfying havoc to wreak in the new game’s expansive world, I found myself wanting something more as the credits rolled. Here are my takeaways from my time with Just Cause 4:

Pros

• Being a game heavily inspired by corny action movies, there is one thing it absolutely had to get right: explosions. And, oh boy, does it deliver in that department. JC4’s upgraded physics engine allows for all kind of opportunities to blow up enemy compounds with vehicles, weapons, and chain reactions. One of my favorite techniques was turning propane tanks into missiles by shooting a hole in one side of them, causing them to rocket off in the opposite direction.
• Just Cause 4 continues the series’ penchant for excellent character locomotion. Equipped with a  grappling hook, parachute, and wingsuit, that he can swap between instantaneously, moving Rico around the environments of JC4 is a joy. One I got the hang of it, grappling to a tree or building to build speed and then abruptly switching to the parachute for lift followed by the wingsuit to fly through the air made Rico feel even more like a superhero (and I previously described him as “Spiderman with a gun”).
• In JC4, Rico’s grappling hook comes equipped with new gadgets that are a lot of fun to experiment with: a tether, a balloon, and rockets. The tether can be used for lashing enemies to objects (or each other), the balloon is great for those times when you just want to turn a tank into a blimp, and the rockets can turn pretty much anything into a missile. Several hours of my playtime probably consisted of trying out different combinations of these gadgets on various objects just to see what would happen.

Cons

• Much of the campaign consists of seizing territory from the dictator’s control. While I like this concept, there are only about three or four different types of missions to take territory and Rico has to conquer dozens of regions to complete the game. This begins to feel repetitive after a while.
• The territory control missions and smaller story missions build to a handful of major story moments and action set pieces. Unfortunately, on several occasions, these set pieces took the form of cut scenes instead of interactive sequences. I found this to be a let down; I wanted to fly through the tornado myself and go head-to-head with the Big Bad, not just watch it play out in a pre-rendered scene.
• The game world is quite large and full activities to unlock new weapons, vehicles, and upgrades. Most of these tasks were what I like to call "open world busy work" such as performing deliveries, driving NPCs around, and flying aircraft through rings. For the most part, these didn't hold my interest for very long.

 At its core, there's a solid action game here with very strong mechanics, but the game design doesn't give you as many interesting things to do with those mechanics as I would have liked. With a little more development time or resources, I think Just Cause 4 could have been made into a fantastic action-packed experience, but what we ended up getting is mostly just a sandbox in which to experiment with physics. That's fine, but I can't help but feel like there's lost potential here.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 25 hours (normal difficulty, all territories conquered)

Mario Odyssey Review

 

Even though Mario Odyssey has only been out for a week, it’s already become a cliché to refer to it as “an absolute delight”. The truth is that there may be no better phrase in the English language to describe the experience of playing this game. Since the internet has already been flooded with lengthy essays gushing about Nintendo’s newest flagship platformer (you can also checkout my impressions from last week), I’ll keep my rundown simple:

• Each of the game’s 10+ kingdoms has a unique structure and appearance, but also a unique set of mechanics. Some of this is a function of geography, traversing a wide-open desert is very different from a tightly-packed city, but a big part of the difference between kingdoms is how the capture mechanic is implemented. Often, taking control of some of the more mundane creatures or objects can be surprisingly fun once you get the hang of their move sets. For example, one of my favorite character to capture was an onion with stretchy roots.

• I was initially thrown off by how many Power Moons there are to collect and how frequently they were found. My concern was that finding them so often would make them feel less special and significant than finding stars in other 3D Mario games. However, I came to realize that what the moons are really doing is bread-crumbing the player through each kingdom. This incentivizes the player to thoroughly explore each stage and gives meaning to reaching the most remote areas of the map. Since finding more moons unlocks more areas to explore, a compelling and addicting loop is created; I quickly found myself saying “just one more moon” at the end of the night, only to end up sucked in for another hour or so.

• In the past, 3D Mario games have suffered from repetitive and simplistic boss battles. While this is still true for the mid boss enemies, the Broodals, the proper stage bosses are usually much more creative. Many of them are fought while Mario is in the form of a captured character which helps keep the boss battles fresh and ensures that each is mechanically distinct.

• In addition to the ear-worm vocal theme, “Jump Up, Super Star”, that I had mentioned in my impressions post,  this game as all-around excellent score. The orchestral pieces further add to the sense of place in each kingdom, and on a few occasions in the campaign, vocal tracks kick in at just the right moment to give the scene some extra oomph.

• The only gripe I had with this otherwise stellar game, was with the controls. While many gamers took, issue with the motion controls (I didn’t have a problem with them), my issue is with Mario’s ever-increasing move set. Since Mario 64, the variety of jumps and flips has ballooned to a level that makes keeping them all straight a challenge. For example, I’ve never found Mario’s sideways flip to be a useful maneuver, but I accidentally executed it several times on narrow platforms, cartwheeling Mario to an unnecessary death. I think trimming some of Mario’s extraneous moves would prevent this and cut down some frustration. Also, since camera control is primarily manual in Mario Odyssey, managing the viewing angle while tackling difficult platforming segments can get tricky.

• My playtime in Mario Odyssey was split between docked mode with the Pro Controller and handheld mode. While I preferred the TV and Pro-con setup, I also enjoyed playing the game portably and don’t think handheld-only players will be at much of a disadvantage.

After playing for over 30 hours and collecting at least 440 moons, the campaign came to a satisfying conclusion, but there is still so much more to do. There is already a staggering amount of content in the game’s main worlds, and more moons and bonus stages become available after the credits roll. Normally, after such a robust campaign I would be satiated with a game and set aside the extra content for later, but in the case of Super Mario Odyssey I’m immediately eager to dive back in. The game is just that much fun to play. If you have a Switch and pulse, Mario Odyssey is a must-buy game.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: About 30 hours (Main campaign with 440 moons)

Mario Odyssey Impressions

After over six months of hype, Mario Odyssey is finally out, and I am once again absorbed into another massive world built by Nintendo’s crew of mad scientists. Over the course of the game’s release weekend, I have put about 15 hours into the game and have already collected 222 moons (out of 800). Here are my impressions of Mario Odyssey so far:

• The game’s structure is an interesting amalgam of Galaxy, 3D World, and Sunshine. While there’s no central hub world, each kingdom in Mario Odyssey is a large and fully open playground to roam around (similar to Sunshine or 64). Just wandering around the kingdoms, the player will happen upon dozens of opportunities to collect Power Moons (equivalent to Stars or Shines in other Mario games). Within each kingdom, there are doorways that lead to areas with linear platforming challenges that reward the player with even more moons. I’m not sure if these areas have proper names, so I've started referring to them as dungeons. From what I’ve seen so far, the regular kingdom moons and the story-essential moons have been relatively easy to get, while a few of the dungeon moons have been quite tough.
• Unlike previous Mario games, where there would be no more than 10 stars in a stage and finding each one involves a significant trek, the moons are extremely plentiful and vary widely in terms of difficulty to acquire. Some moons are obtained simply by breaking a glowing box or talking to a right NPC, while others are more involved and could require climbing a massive tower or beating a boss. So far, the kingdoms I’ve played through have had anywhere from 17 to 100 moons to collect.
• After collecting the story-essential moons and a handful of the more obvious moons in each kingdom, I find myself making pretty liberal use of the in-game hint systems. There are two ways to get hints in Mario Odyssey: In one case, talking to an NPC will provide you with the title of a moon (e.g. "Atop a Tall Tower"), but not provide a location. In the other case, an NPC will mark the map with a location of a moon, but not tell you what you need to do to actually make the moon appear. The second of these two options requires paying 50 gold coins, which is pretty easy to accumulate, or to scan an amiibo. 
• The capture mechanic, in which Mario can take control of an NPC or enemy allows for some interesting breaks in the typical 3D Mario action. Capturable characters range from giant dinosaurs, to classic Mario enemies, to benign objects like plants. For the most part, the time spent as a captured character is brief, but each character has a unique feel and adds more variety to the gameplay.
• While it didn’t initially grab me when I heard it during E3, Mario Odyssey’s theme song, “Jump Up, Super Star” has really grown on me. I couldn’t help but put it on in the car on my way to work this morning.

While Zelda: Breath of the Wild represented a drastic departure from the series' traditional formula, Mario Odyssey feels more like a new blend of mostly familiar elements. However, as one would expect from a Mario game, the execution is top-notch and every part of the game that I've seen so far is simply imbued with the spirit of fun.

Dropping GTA 5 for Witcher 3

 

Of the remaining games in my backlog, the two largest games (both in terms of acclaim and scope) were GTA 5 and Witcher 3. Since I’ve been playing a lot of fantasy RPGs lately, I decided I would tackle GTA 5 next. Having been a fan of GTA since GTA 2 on the PS1, I was pretty disappointed to find that the new(ish) and insanely popular entry just didn’t grab me, but I’m not sure if it’s the series that changed, or if it’s me. Some thoughts:

• From a technical standpoint, the size and level of detail of the game world are very impressive.
• The cars and aerial vehicles all handle far better than they did in previous GTA games. Even when using mouse and keyboard.
• While the story production values are clearly high, I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters. Of the 3 protagonists, only Franklin is even remotely likable and he quickly gets sidelined in favor of Michael and Trevor. Michael’s family drama, in the beginning, has the potential to be interesting, but the game doesn’t really do much with it after the first few missions. Trevor’s antics were amusing for a little while but got old very quickly.
• The game's FBI vs CIA vs corrupt businessmen plotline fails to be engaging since each side is equally despicable. Earlier GTA games and their progeny (especially 2012's Sleeping Dogs) did a better job of showing the motivations of each of their respective factions and managed to include a few interesting characters in each.
• The game’s snarky cynical tone just doesn’t jive with me; maybe this just isn’t a game world I feel like spending time with in 2017. The humor and attempts at social/political commentary don’t feel like they’ve evolved at all from 90s GTA.
• After playing a high-octane open-world action game like Just Cause 2 last year, it's become painfully apparent how much time is spent in GTA doing mundane tasks like chauffeuring characters around while they chitchat. I do enough boring commuting in real life, I don't need it faithfully simulated in my virtual life of crime.

Despite my issues with GTA 5, I was still having some fun with it for the first 10 - 15 hours. At about the 20 - 25 hour mark, however, it was feeling pretty stale, so I decided to look up how many main story missions were left since I figured I was pretty close to finishing the game. Turns out I was less than halfway! With that revelation, I promptly dropped the game and moved on to Witcher 3.

I'm only about 8 hours into Witcher 3 and am enjoying it a lot so far. Some early impressions:

• After playing the first two Witcher games last year, this one doesn't feel like the revolutionary leap forward that some people had lead me to believe it was. It's more like a quality iteration built on an already strong foundation.
• The combat has a slightly different feel to it than the previous two entries, but there's enough similarity for me to still be able to take out enemies several levels above me when playing on medium difficuly. 
• Like with the previous two games, I'm playing with keyboard and mouse controls and doing pretty well, though I may remap some of the harder-to-reach keys to my extra mouse buttons.
• There's a good mixture of familiar characters from the first two games and new faces.
• I was initially concerned the new open-world format would lead to a lot of back-tracking, but so far this hasn't been the case. Also, there's finally a convenient fast-travel system!
• I have no idea how to actually win a game of Gwent, but it seems far more interesting than the dice game in the earlier Witchers.

Witcher 3 is a very lengthy game, so it's too soon to say if it'll manage to stay engaging for its entire duration, but for now, I'm looking forward to exploring it further. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Wild - Closing Thoughts Part 2

When Ocarina of Time came out in 1998, it blew people away with its revolutionary design, but it also became the mold from which each of the successive 3D Zelda games would be cast. While Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece that I believe meets or exceeds the standard set by Ocarina of Time, I don't think it lends itself to being the new formula for future games; how many times can aimlessly wandering a massive sparsely populated fantasy world remain novel? Here are some of my thoughts new directions Zelda can take:

• Expand the cast. We've seen countless variations on the Link-Zelda-Ganon trinity, but I think Breath of the Wild, and even Skyward Sword and Hyrule Warriors, have shown that there could be other characters outside of the core 3 that could be deserving of the spotlight. I know in BotW, I was definitely hoping to see more of the Champions than the brief glimpses in flashbacks.
• Experiment with the setting. For the most part, every Zelda has been set in a medieval European fantasy world. Why not change this up? Miyamoto's original concept for The Legend of Zelda featured futuristic sci-fi elements in addition to fantasy. Some of these sci-fi elements are referenced in Breath of the Wild, but I'd love to see the series lean into them more heavily. I could also see Zelda gameplay fitting well in a feudal Japan or steampunk setting as well.
• Meaningful side quests or branching paths. While Breath of the Wild introduced structured side quests, most of these were fairly inconsequential fetch-quests. If Zelda is going to stick with a non-linear structure going forward, why not give these side quests a little more weight by offering unique items or a compelling NPC character arc? Another option would be to give the main quest some decision points, thus encouraging replay value to explore each of the branching paths.
• More voice acting. Nintendo dipped their toe in water with Breath of the Wild's limited voice acting, but the overwhelming majority of the game's dialog was still strictly text. After playing games like The Witcher, where even the most minor NPC has a voice, it would be nice to see Nintendo make Hyrule a little less silent.
• Breath of the Wild as a service. The game already has some DLC planned, but what if Nintendo decided to really capitalize on this massive world they've built? With such a large and sparsely populated Hyrule, why not have future DLC packs show the world rebuilding after the defeat of Ganon? Ruined towns could be rebuilt and each could introduce new characters and quest lines. Considering how successful BotW was, I think this could easily be feasible (and lucrative) for Nintendo.

These are just few of the ideas that swam through my head as I was gathering my thoughts to write my Breath of the Wild review. I'd love to hear what other people's ideas are regarding where the series could go next, so feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Closing Thoughts Part 1

After completing a game as massive as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there's naturally a lot to unpack. However, as this is already the game that launched a thousand think pieces, I'm going to try to avoid retreading too much of the same ground covered by major gaming outlets. Thus my closing thoughts on the game will come in two parts: a light-weight review of my personal experience, and my thoughts on where I'd like to see the Zelda series go next.

Review:

As expansive as it is addicting

The best word to describe the experience of playing Breath of the Wild is "flow". Or put another way, doing things in the game just feels good. Each of the game's mechanics naturally leads into the next: You climb a tower, mark points of interest on the map, and then fly, horseback ride, or run to each, perhaps with little combat interspersed along the way. While Breath of the Wild is by no means the first game to use this formula, it executes it exceptionally well. Every discovery in the Hyrule overworld reveals just enough of something more to nudge the player into thinking, "Well, let me see what's over that next hill before I stop playing for the night," ...and the next thing you know, it's 3 in the morning. The combat takes some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it, I found that it allowed for more variety in tactics than any other Zelda game. Coupling this with the plethora of weapon and armor options, there's a strong possibility that no two people with approach a given encounter the same way. Weapon durability and crafting also further feed into the BotW's addictive cycle by always pressing you on to find new ways to upgrade Link.

While the dungeons and shrines are somewhat aesthetically bland, I really enjoyed the Zelda-meets-Portal style of physics-based puzzles. For a seasoned Zelda player like me, these new types of puzzles were a welcome change from the predictable and blatantly signposted puzzles that had been the norm for the previous few games. I will say that of the four main dungeons, I felt that the camel and elephant dungeons were much more interesting than the salamander and bird, but this may be a function of the order that I tackled them. While the puzzle and platforming challenges of the shrines and dungeons are top-notch, one area where they fall flat is enemy variety. There are only two types of enemies indoors: Guardian Scouts and Ganon Blights, with minor variations on each. It would have been nice to enter a combat shrine or a dungeon boss room and be surprised, but that unfortunately never happened.

All of this excellently crafted, free-flowing, non-linear gameplay does come at a cost, however: storytelling. While the narrative has never been as central to Zelda as it has to other big name RPG series (like Final Fantasy), most of the modern entries provide an enjoyable journey with ups and downs along the way, colorful cast of characters, and come to a satisfying conclusion at the end. Breath of the Wild's amorphous structure makes having a cohesive narrative through-line much more complicated. The resulting Nolanesque collection of out-of-sequence flashbacks offers an interesting and nuanced glimpse into the relationship between Link and Zelda, unlike anything I've ever seen Nintendo attempt before with these classic characters. While the voice acting varied considerably in quality, it was generally effective at giving additional emotional weight to these scenes, I just wish there was more of it (most cut scenes are still text-only dialog). However, what makes a disjointed Nolan-style narrative work, is an ending that provides a twist or big reveal that ties all the other scenes together and gives them new meaning. Disappointingly, Breath of the Wild just doesn't have that. For me, this game that is otherwise fantastic kind of ended with a whimper.

Though the very ending of the game left me feeling a little cold, after some reflection, I still can't help but love a game that is otherwise so expertly crafted and provided me with over 100 hours of fun and adventure. Even after playing Breath of Wild consistently for 2 months, I still find myself tempted to return to mop up the last few shrines and I will almost certainly be picking up the DLC. Anyone who is a fan of action RPGs or open-world games owes it to themselves to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: About 115 hours (Main quest, plus 106 out of 120 shrines completed)

In a few days, I'll be posting some thoughts on the future of the Zelda series now that Breath of Wild has shaken up the formula.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Impressions

As I alluded to in my previous post, playing with the new Nintendo Switch has dominated my free time for the past week. Ninety-nine percent of that time, as you probably would expect, has been devoted to playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (The other one percent was the Snipper Clips demo; I haven’t even taken Bomberman out of the shrink wrap yet.) At this point, I’ve dumped about 20 hours into the game, and that’s barely scratching the surface of this epic adventure. If you've read any other coverage of this game, you already know that the mechanics, world design, etc are all incredible. I'm going to skip reiterating all those points and instead provide some of my personal spoiler-free observations of my experience thus far with Breath of the Wild.

• Something that’s clear right off the bat: This game is hard. If you get reckless, you will die, a lot. To put it in perspective, I’ve already died more in BotW than I have in every other post-SNES Zelda game combined. Having found the last several Zelda games to be too easy, this is a welcome change for me.
  
  

• The save system mitigates much of the frustration that could be caused by the higher difficulty level. Unlike previous Zelda games, this one offers both auto-saves as well as save states that can be used pretty much anywhere (similar to a PC game).

•  This game has easily the most complicated control scheme of any Zelda title. I found that swapping the B and X button inputs in the settings menu made a huge difference in my ability to make sense of the controls. I don't think I'm alone on this, so I'm surprised it wasn't the default button mapping.

• Climbing is a huge part of this game and I feel compelled to climb every tall mountain I see.  Often, little characters called Koroks (a collectible) can be found up there. I'm pretty sure the primary purpose of these little guys is to make me feel like I climbed the mountain for an actual reason.

• The game has a main quest to follow, but I find it almost impossible not to get side-tracked. I'll be on my way to the next objective only to find myself saying, "Oh! What's that over there!?". Next thing I know several hours have gone by and I'm still no closer to progressing the plot. (I'm totally fine with this, though)

• Breath of the Wild employs a lot of Western adventure/RPG mechanics, but aesthetically shows a lot more Japanese influence than any other game in the series. It makes for an interesting combination. 

• Weapons have very limited durability and Link initially has relatively few inventory slots. As a result, I always want to save my most powerful rare weapons for just the right occasion and end up using my last remaining inventory slot or two on the weaker more disposable weapons that I tend to use in most battles. I'm probably making the game harder than it needs to be with this hoarder mentality.

• At campfire sites, Link uses food items, foraged plants, and monster parts to cook meals for himself that have healing and stat-buffing qualities. This reminds me a lot of the meditation and alchemy systems from The Witcher series.

• Unlike previous Zelda games, Breath of the Wild features very minimal music and instead focuses mostly on the sounds of nature. While this is certainly very fitting for the game's setting and themes, I can't help but find myself occasionally missing the bombastic heroic overtures I've come to expect from The Legend of Zelda series.

As a whole, I've found playing Breath of the Wild to be incredibly thrilling and hopelessly addicting. Since this is likely to be a very long game, I'll probably be writing another impressions post for the later game content before finally getting to the review. Don't worry, though, I will be sprinkling in some posts about other subjects whenever I can to keep this from becoming a Zelda blog. For now, however, I'm heading back to Hyrule! 

Rationalizing my climbing addiction

 

East meets West

Just Cause 2 Review

Big, dumb, action movie fun

In my impressions post for Just Cause 2, I talked extensively about how the thrill of causing mayhem with Rico's impressive arsenal of moves appeared to be the main draw of the game while pretty much everything else took a back seat. After finishing the game I can  say that my initial impressions were spot-on, and that's totally fine; Just Cause 2 delivered a steady steam of fun even though my brain was able to nap much of the time.

The game's structure was interesting in that it deviated from its GTA inspiration by only having 7 story-essential missions. To unlock each of these story missions, Rico must earn the required amount of "Chaos" (essentially XP) by completing a handful of smaller faction missions and destroying enemy property. There's a total of 49 faction missions, but a significantly smaller number of them need to be completed to make it to the end of the game. As a result, these faction missions represent a large amount of the playtime of Just Cause 2, but vary wildly in scope from somewhat bland sub-3-minute errands (Kill X, Destroy Y), to rather involved set-piece focused adventures that rival the content of the story missions. Unfortunately, it's not clear how to tell which end of this spectrum a mission drawn from this grab-bag will be until your start it. In my case, I was having a good time and ended up completing all 49 faction missions anyway, so the unevenness of these missions didn't affect me too much, but I could see a player wanting to play the best-of-the-best on a shorter play-through getting frustrated. Ideally the faction missions should have had sub classifications so that the player could have the option of skipping some of the smaller filler ones and focusing on the more impressive ones.

From a technical standpoint, JC2 ran glitch-free, controlled tightly, and had some nice-looking vistas by 2010 standards. Most importantly, the explosion animations looked great and made destroying enemy structures and vehicles very satisfying. I did run into some issues with the game's AI that sometimes worked in my favor (a boss getting stuck in a vulnerable position) and other times did not (an ally being incapable of jumping over a 1-foot guardrail). These issues were annoying when they cropped up, but they were thankfully infrequent enough to not significantly tarnish the experience.

While the plot of Just Cause 2 was fairly minimal, I'm not quite sure what to make of presentation of the game's simple story. After seeing the Hollywood-quality cinematics of GTA 4 and Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause 2's cut scenes were very corny and unimpressively acted. I often found myself watching a scene and wondering if what I was seeing was meant to be humorous political satire or just pure camp. The fact that most of the characters were portrayed as wacky cultural stereotypes didn't help matters much on this front either, though to be fair, the game was definitely an equal-opportunity offender.

Despite a few flaws and some repetitive missions, I was still having fun throughout my 25 hours with the game and that's definitely saying something. While clearly not on the same plane as a masterpiece like GTA 4, Just Cause 2 is a classic example of how sound mechanics and a satisfying gameplay loop can trump other short-comings. If you love open-world action games or over-the-top summer blockbuster movies, Just Cause 2 is probably right up your alley.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time:  25 hours (All missions cleared on medium difficulty, 35% map completion)

Just Cause 2 Impressions

Like GTA, but with a grappling hook

The Square Enix Humble Bundle I purchased last year has really been a gift that keeps on giving. Just Cause 2 was one of the titles in the bundle that had piqued by my interest in the past, but I never got around to trying. I'm about eight hours in, and so far I'm really having a good time with it.

If you've never played Grand Theft Auto (GTA), bear with me, as it's hard to discuss the Just Cause without comparing it to the franchise from which is appears to have drawn a lot of inspiration. Much like GTA, Just Cause 2 is an open-world action game in which the player completes missions that involve stealing cars, flying aircraft, blowing up infrastructure, and assassinating enemy leaders. Where the game separates itself from its inspiration, is that unlike a clunky GTA protagonist, Just Cause's Rico has a wide variety of acrobatic moves such as leaping between moving vehicles, deploying a parachute at any time to suddenly become airborne, and swinging from a grappling hook like Spider-Man.

The GTA games and their various spiritual offspring (Driver, Sleeping Dogs, etc)  are some of my all-time favorite action games, so it makes sense that Just Cause 2 immediately clicked with me. What was surprising, however, was that unlike GTA, the driving and shooting mechanics aren't particularly engaging, but the pure thrill of mastering Rico's other locomotion techniques is the real star of the show. It hasn't taken long for me to get the hang of doing insane stunts such as leaping out of a moving car in order to grappling hook myself to a passing helicopter, throwing the the pilot out of the cockpit, lining up the helicopter to crash into an enemy base, and then parachuting safely out of the helicopter right before the moment of impact. It pretty much feels like being the middle of a Jason Statham movie, and it's awesome.

So far the music, cut scenes, voice acting, and overall plot have all been pretty mediocre, so whether or not this game stays exciting for the entire duration of its 30+ hour play time will entirely rest on how much variety there ends up being to the mission structure. Hopefully, Just Cause 2 will continue to keep things fresh, but there's a chance it could get repetitive before Rico's mission is complete.