Braid (2008)

September 23, 2018September 23, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Braid is an independent puzzle-platformer that has received critical acclaim and is lauded as one of the best indie games ever. It may have showed that indie games can be massively successful and inspired many games to follow it, but I was not incredibly impressed by Braid. As a puzzle-platformer, it utilized some great puzzle concepts. Unfortunately, it’s imprecise platforming and pretentiously presented story weighed down the rest of the game.

The entire existence of Braid is focused on the idea of time manipulation. Instead of retrying a level when you die, you can rewind time to the point when you messed up. Furthermore, there are 6 worlds in Braid, each changes the time manipulation in a significant way. These changes greatly alter the mechanics and allow for sets of creative puzzles. Each world focuses on the new idea that it introduced and builds its levels around that idea. As the player traverses the levels, they must solve conundrums using time manipulation to collect puzzle pieces. The player puts all these pieces together to unlock the final world of the game.

I quite liked that you could essentially skip a puzzle piece if it was causing frustration and come back to it later. A few times I had trouble grasping a mechanic so I skipped ahead and came back to a tricky puzzle after I better understood the mechanic. The one minor issue I had was that when introducing a new mechanic, the properties were not explained through gameplay before moving into tougher puzzles. A few times I got stuck on a puzzle because there was some feature I was missing. If there was an introductory level in each world to show the player how the new mechanic functioned this issue would be avoided.

Braid is a puzzle-platformer, and while the puzzle aspect is fantastic, the platforming aspect is lackluster. The controls feel fairly clunky and inconsistent at times. Jumps are kind of floaty, hitboxes don’t line up with models, and momentum just feels off. Luckily, there weren’t many times in game in which precise platforming was needed. The strangest part of Braid is its narrative and story. Most of the games story is told through cryptic text which feels meaningless. There is 1 moment at the end of the game that was brilliant, but that was it. Braid was definitely trying to get across some meaningful message, but using vague text with no obvious meaning just felt pretentious.

While I appreciate the importance of Braid as an indie game, I do think it is slightly overrated. It is a wonderful puzzle game, but unsatisfying platforming and a cryptic story do hurt the experience. The puzzles are phenomenal and immensely creative. Braid utilizes time manipulation to the fullest. Braid is a short, brain-churning puzzle game, and it is definitely worth a play through.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

September 16, 2018September 16, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

After playing through the entire The Witcher trilogy, I have been thoroughly impressed by the improvement of CD Projekt Red over the years. The step up from the first Witcher game to its sequel and then from the sequel to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is simply astounding. Not only was the game vastly improved on a technical level, but many of its predecessors’ issues were fixed. It is no surprise that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is being regarded as a modern masterpiece, and it certainly deserves that distinction.

What the series is known for is its fantasy story-telling and grim setting. Like the games that came before it, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is filled with difficult decisions. Most story related choices have consequences, and you have to think about what is the correct moral decision. Being the “nice guy” will backfire if you are too trusting. There is a plethora of “secondary” quests apart from the main storyline that are extremely high quality. Most importantly, the main questline of the game succinctly finishes the trilogy. Geralt, the monster hunting witcher searches the world for his apprentice, Ciri. War is being waged between the two main kingdoms of Redania and Nilfgaard, and the world is under threat by the spectral “wild hunt”. Ciri plays a key role in the war as she is the Nilfgaardian princess, and she also has special powers that the wild hunt is looking to harness.

What impressed me most about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is its massive and immersive open world. The world is split up in 4 distinct areas: White Orchard, Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige. Each of these areas is vast and awe-inspiring. Dozens of towns pepper the map to find quests and jobs to complete. Or you can just relax and play a few rounds of Gwent, a phenomenal card game designed just for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The landscapes and wilderness are genuinely entertaining to roam as the world is crammed full of secrets and rewards for those willing to explore. I really was stricken by just how many tiny villages and towns were included. These hamlets served really no purpose other than to immerse the player and make the world feel real, and I was thoroughly impressed by just how believable the world really was. Job boards, wandering characters, bandit camps, monster nests, hidden treasures, caves, and abandoned towns are scattered across the land. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a masterclass in open-world games and gives the player immense freedom to just have a genuine adventure.

Not only is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a strong standalone experience, but it also offers 2 high-value downloadable content (DLC) packages. The first is called “Hearts of Stone” which includes a gripping storyline and about a dozen hours of quality content. The second pack, “Blood and Wine”, is possibly one of the best DLC experiences offered in all of gaming. It introduces an entirely new and vibrant area that was based on Southern France and Tuscany. Not only is it gorgeous, but there are a ton of new side quests and a phenomenal main questline. As if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt didn’t have enough content, these 2 DLCs are definitely worth it and extend the length of the game even further.

While The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is obviously known for its open-world, engaging quests, and riveting storytelling, it is also technologically impressive. The character models and animations add authenticity to the storytelling. The already lovable characters become more genuine as crisp animations bring them to life. Not to mention that the stunning backdrops enhance the world building. The level of technological prowess makes the world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt even more immersive.

Even though I regard The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt incredibly highly, it does have some flaws. The most apparent issue is the games combat. Do not get me wrong, it is not nearly as bad as the first Witcher game, and it is a marked improvement over the previous games. The combat is fairly mediocre as a whole, but it is not so bad that it hampers the experience. Even on the higher difficulties you can make it through the game by rapidly swinging your sword at enemies. Sure, occasionally casting some magic and parrying or dodging enemy attacks is all well and good, but combat feels more like a spectacle rather than a genuine thrill. It did not really dampen the rest of the game, but I would not play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt solely for its combat. And that’s fine, because the rest of the game is just so damn well made.

Other than the combat, there are few nitpicky issues that I feel obligated to point out. These really are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but they were minor annoyances. For starters, not being able to pause during cutscenes or dialogue is fairly frustrating, especially in such a story heavy game. Another small thing is when calling your horse, sometimes he will spawn in a bizarre location making it a hassle to get in the saddle. Also, even though the world has a ton of quests and things to do, many of those things are repetitive filler. Most primary and secondary quests are enjoyable, but witcher contracts, treasure hunts, and places of interest quickly get monotonous. Even a few secondary quests are blatant filer. None of these things are required however, so if you do not want to do them there is no obligation to do so.

The last issue is the overuse of a core mechanic of the game: witcher senses. This ability allows the player to tune into Geralt’s acute senses to track things. Pretty much every quest in the game has you activate the witcher senses to track a monster or person from traces they left behind. What this equates to in gameplay terms is hitting a button and some clues will glow red and you interact with them. It is a fine idea that allows the player to harness their witcher abilities, but it does not need to be used in every single quest. It starts to grow a little tiresome when you get super involved in the story or a side-quest and all of a sudden you have to tediously track something for 10 minutes. The reliance on this mechanic is a little odd, its really not anything special so I am not sure why it is infused into every aspect of the game. Its not particularly bad, its just used way too much.

I think that the fact the all of the issues that I mentioned are prefaced with “it’s really not that bad, just a little annoying” is indicative that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a special kind of game. When I have to mention the little things and nitpicks, it is evident that there a very few, if any, major flaws to be found. As a whole, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a masterpiece that should be immortalized. It is a quintessential fantasy game and its magnificent world could easily stand alongside the greats such as: The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and The Elder Scrolls. I’d recommend playing The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings first to get some background information to fully enjoy the experience. The first The Witcher game is fairly dated and is not necessary to understanding the rest of the trilogy, so I would recommend skipping it unless you really want to. Either way, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an absolute achievement in many different ways such as storytelling, world building, and animation. It is for these reasons I give The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a 10/10. This is an absolute must play game, especially if you enjoy fantasy RPGs or story heavy games.

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus (2017)

September 11, 2018September 11, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

Like its predecessor, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a first-person shooter that enables a variety of different play styles. In this alternate history game, the Nazis have won World War II and have conquered the world. The player is William Blazkowicz, the Nazi killing super soldier who is part of a resistance to topple the new regime. This is a sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order and the story is a direct continuation so I would highly recommend playing that game first. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a game that I mostly enjoyed, but it has a lot of major issues that hamper the experience.

The best thing about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is also its biggest flaw: its variety. This game has a major identity crisis and seems to blend a lot of genres into one game. Stealth, cover-based shooting, and run and gun styles are all encouraged and the level design is centered around that fact. The player is guided to sneak through levels until they get spotted, and then you have to shoot your way out. My key issue is that none of these 3 styles are perfected and each have their own issues.

The player is heavily encouraged to begin each level by sneaking through enemy lines and silently taking down their commanders. If you get seen before you take down a commander, they will call for reinforcements. The issue is that once you are spotted, there is essentially no way to disappear and re-enter stealth. Once seen, every enemy in the area immediately knows where you are until you eliminate them all. Furthermore, getting detected by enemies feels relatively inconsistent and it felt like sometimes the enemies had the eyes of hawks and other times they were completely blind.

The standard cover shooting that is to be expected in FPS games is mostly discouraged. Enemies are adept at flanking and surrounding the player, so staying in one spot is a death sentence. This means that most action is run-and-gun akin to DOOM. The issue is that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is fundamentally different than DOOM. In DOOM, if you stay on the move most incoming damage will miss you. This is not the case in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus because you are not going to outrun bullets. You will always be taking damage if you are not behind cover. Furthermore, recovering health in this game is far different than DOOM. In this game, you have to pick up armor and health packs that are tucked away in corners around the map. So, if you are desperate for health, you have to scramble to find a health kit. In DOOM, you can use a special “glory kill” to guarantee a health pack to drop. This allows the action to keep flowing rather than stopping to scrounge for resources.

Moreover, there are a few more gameplay related issues. The first is that there is poor indication of when and where the player is getting damaged from. There were numerous occasions when I was getting shot from behind and I didn’t even know it. There had to be better audio and visual cues for damage. The most apparent issue is that the level design is just bland and boring. As opposed to a game like Dishonored or Prey, or even Wolfenstein: The New Order, this game’s levels are just too linear. You move from corridor to corridor eliminating Nazis. There are rarely any alternate paths or interesting tactics to employ. The way to play the game just seems set in stone. The player progresses from hallway to hallway stealthily killing the opposition until they get caught and subsequently go on a run-and-gun rampage.

Other than gameplay, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus had a slew of technical issues at launch. Luckily most of those issues seem to be fixed by now. The story of the game was also pretty off-putting. The new characters that were introduced were over the top and flat out unlikeable. Their monologues and preachy speeches were unnecessary. Moreover, there were many instances where cutscenes just did not fit the tone of what was going on and felt completely out of place. It felt like the developers tried very hard to get the player to connect with the characters but they were more annoying and preachy than anything else.

Despite all its issues, I still enjoyed Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The game does not have any area where it shines, but the variety carries the experience. There is just something so satisfying about sneaking around and assassinating Nazis and quickly shifting into high-octane action. It is for these reasons I give Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus a 5/10. None of the individual parts are outstanding, but the sum of those parts makes for a decently entertaining game.

Darkest Dungeon (2016)

September 9, 2018September 9, 2018 / stephensopinions / 2 Comments

I have never been more split on my stance with a game than I have been with Darkest Dungeon. I love and hate this game, it is addicting but many of its design decisions are baffling. So many factors of this game are absolutely phenomenal, but just a few bad decisions significantly hamper the overall experience. This game gets heaps of praise from reviewers and players, but most of them have not completed the game, and the last half of the game is where most of the issues are obvious. I have been playing this game on and off for a about a year, I would play it heavily for a week or two but then would stop because I had my fill. That’s the big issue with Darkest Dungeon, it’s just far too long.

Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike turn-based dungeon crawler in which the player inherits their ancestral home. Unfortunately, this home and the surrounding town have been infested by eldritch horrors and the player must recruit a team of heroes to cleanse the land. There are four main areas which you can take on, and at the peak of the town is the titular darkest dungeon which must be conquered to restore the village to its former glory. In each area you can assemble a party of 4 heroes from 15 different classes to complete quests to gain gold, trinkets, relics, and experience. The system of progression is one of the factors makes Darkest Dungeon so addicting, you collect relics which are used to upgrade the buildings in the town, like the blacksmith for example, to further power up your characters. The core loop of Darkest Dungeon is taking on these dungeons as your heroes gain experience, you upgrade the town, and you spend gold to upgrade your heroes’ weapons and skills. This is a satisfying cycle that kept me interested as I trained my heroes to be prepared to take on the final darkest dungeon.

Darkest Dungeon is a turn-based dungeon crawler with a unique twist. Instead of just taking just normal health damage, your heroes also take stress damage and will eventually go mad if you are not careful. This Lovecraftian-inspired game delves into the psychological effects of dungeon crawling and fighting hordes of monster without respite. Furthermore, stress-damage persists between dungeons while health-damage is restored after a quest is completed. This means that you have to give your heroes a break and let them recover at the town abbey or bar. This encourages the player to use many different characters and forces the player to experiment with party compositions and test out new class combinations. If a character’s stress level goes above 100, then they will likely become temporarily afflicted with a trait like masochism, selfishness, or paranoia. This causes the hero to not listen to player commands and perform detrimental actions. If the stress level reaches 200, then the hero will die. It is absolutely paramount to manage the stress of your characters, and it adds an extra layer of depth to the turn-based combat.

What I love most about Darkest Dungeon is not its gameplay, but the Lovecraftian style that it utilizes as well as the art and sounds of the game. The artwork in Darkest Dungeon is similar to a comic book and this style is perfect for a turn-based action game. The animations are crisp and satisfying, and the backgrounds and monsters are properly horrifying. The character designs of the heroes are also fantastic and Red Hook Studios did a phenomenal job at remaking the classic class tropes such as healer, warrior, marksman, and thief into much more intricate designs. This game has more Lovecraftian elements than just the cosmic horror it imbues. The narrator of the game, Wayne June, was the narrator for many of Lovecraft’s audio books and he masterfully encapsulates the novels. The voice lines are memorable, quotable, and are famous for their verbosity. A few of my favorites:

“Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit, unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue.”

“Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.”

“As life ebbs, terrible vistas of emptiness reveal themselves.”

This voice lines were written and delivered extraordinarily well and they ooze that Lovecraftian vibe that Red Hook Studios was trying to achieve.

By no stretch of the imagination can Darkest Dungeon be considered an easy game. One misstep can cause disaster, and even if you do not make any mistakes, some bad luck will brutalize your misfortunate heroes. One of the most contentious issues with Darkest Dungeon is its randomness. Sure, some random factors in turn-based games is welcome and necessary, but Darkest Dungeon takes these chances to new and frustrating heights. Things like hit-chance, critical hits, and status effects all are typically random in turn-based games, but this game goes far farther. The dungeon layouts are randomized, meaning you could fight 1 group of enemies and complete a dungeon, or you could fight 10. Even in town if you let your hero rest at the abbey to relieve stress there is a chance that they gain a negative perk or abandon your party for an unknown period of time. When beating a dungeon your heroes may gain a positive or negative quirk, again completely random. Worst of all, speed is fairly random as well, meaning that you cannot properly plan out turns because you have no idea which order the characters are going to perform an action in.

Furthermore, dungeon layouts, the number of enemies, and the types of enemies you face also varies heavily from mission to mission. I completely understand why randomness exists in the game, especially in combat, but some form of consistency would be appreciated. With pretty any action you take in Darkest Dungeon there is a good chance that something goes terribly wrong. To be fair, the motto that is constantly repeated for the game is that it is about “making the best out of a bad situation”, and that’s fine. But it is difficult to maneuver your way out of a sticky situation when a bad dice roll equates to disaster. The thing that exacerbates the randomness of the game is the overall length of the game, otherwise I would be completely fine with some bad luck.

Without a doubt, the biggest flaw of Darkest Dungeon is its obnoxious length. Even though I mostly loved the gameplay, it grew repetitive way before the end of the game was even in sight. For reference, it took me about 60 hours to complete the game, that is similar to the amount of time I put into massive open world games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and twice the length of any of the Dark Souls games and their respective DLCs. It is absurd that a turn-based dungeon crawler drags on for so long, especially since so much of its content is repeated. There are only 4 main dungeons that you constantly revisit. There are 3 “difficulties” to each of these dungeons. Apprentice for low level heroes, veteran for medium levels, and champion for the highest levels. These difficulties are functionally the same except for maybe 1 or 2 new enemies, just stronger enemies to match your stronger heroes. The worst part is that each dungeon has 2 bosses, and they are repeated on every difficulty level. Meaning that there are 8 bosses in the 4 main dungeons, but you fight each of them 3 times.

Apart from the overt repetitiveness, the length of the game also intensifies the randomness that the Darkest Dungeon exudes. It’s not such a big deal to lose a low-level hero, it stings but you can easily replace them. Losing a champion-level hero is a much different story however, they take a long time to train and cost a lot of money to upgrade fully. Losing one of your favorite heroes to a string of bad luck is near inevitable because the game is so long, you are bound to get unlucky. Moreover, the titular darkest dungeon, which is your goal to finish, is a slap in the face to the players.

There are 4 champion-level missions to be cleared in the final dungeon, each are significantly different than any dungeon in the game. Darkest Dungeon is a game that emphasizes proper preparation, bringing the right heroes, trinkets, items, and skills for any given dungeon. But the player has no idea what they are going to fight in these final missions, so you cannot properly prepare yourself. Furthermore, in every other dungeon, if things are looking too sketchy, you can abandon the quest with only minor penalties, in the darkest dungeon a character will die. So, you cannot properly prepare, you are hoping through blind luck that you will bring a good set of heroes because otherwise you will fail the mission or have to abandon and sacrifice a hero. To top it off, any hero that completes mission in darkest dungeon becomes psychologically scarred and cannot do any new missions there. The player is forced to have a diverse roster of at least 16 characters to beat the game. Luckily, I had about 20 high-level characters, but I can imagine that this would be a punch in the gut to anybody who was not prepared, as it would mean that you have to train up a bunch of new heroes. This just artificially lengthens a game that was already unbearably long.

Ultimately, it was the developer’s intention to go completely overboard with the length and randomness of Darkest Dungeon. The reasoning is that Darkest Dungeon is in some ways a meta statement. The player is meant to feel the stress that the heroes are feeling. It is meant to wear the player down just like how the heroes are driven insane. The same feeling could have been achieved if the game was 20 hours long rather than 60. I entirely understand the random nature of the game and how the player is meant to always be on the precipice of oblivion. I wish that it was toned back a tad and that some things had some consistency to them, but the randomness would not be an issue at all if the game was not so unfathomably long. I played for the first 20 hours and absolutely loved the game. Then I had my fill and took a break for a few months. Came back and played another 20 hours and had fun. Then I took another extended break and kind of slogged through the last bits of the game over the course of a few months.

Darkest Dungeon has absolutely no right being 60 hours. Any semblance of new content is sparingly sprinkled through the last 40 hours of gameplay. It is baffling because Darkest Dungeon was a game that was funded through Kickstarter and was available for early access. It was met with overwhelming success and praise and at the time was about 15-20 hours long. For some reason the developers just went completely overboard when the game was released. I was curious and looked up the achievement stats on Steam to see how many people actually completed Darkest Dungeon. About 2% of players who own the game have beaten it. That is abysmally low. For comparison, the famously “tough” Dark Souls games have about 15-25% completion rates. And The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, which is longer than Darkest Dungeon, has a 27% completion rate by its players. Darkest Dungeon just drags on for way too long for the amount of content it offers, and most of its players get bored or fed up far before the game reaches its conclusion.

Like I mentioned earlier, Darkest Dungeon is perhaps the most split I have ever been with my opinion of a game. By most rights, the game is utterly fantastic. It has brilliant combat, atmosphere, progression, mood, writing, character design, and visuals. But all this is thrown away because it just drags seemingly endlessly. If it was a third of the length, I’d sing praises for Darkest Dungeon, but instead I am just left confused. It is for these reasons I give Darkest Dungeon a 7/10. If you do pick the game up, I’d recommend not worrying about actually completing it. Instead just enjoy it like and endless dungeon crawler, because that is essentially what it is. I did have a lot of fun with the game, and I genuinely do love it, but it is plagued by grinding and repetition.