Spider-Man (2018)

November 29, 2018November 29, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

I have to acknowledge that I am not a big fan of superhero flicks and I barely follow the Marvel cinematic universe. With that being said, Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4 managed to reel me in regardless of my distaste for Marvel movies. In essence, Spider-Man is the direct translation of a superhero film into a game. All the elements are present: big-budget action, quips and banter, and a story that tugs on your heartstrings.

While I find superhero movies boring and repetitive, the interactivity of games makes playing as a hero far more engaging than simply watching one. Swinging about New York City, climbing walls, zipping from point to point, and fighting common thugs just feels natural. Its easy to get into the swing of things as the controls are extremely simple. The accompanying cinematics and animations of Spidey’s swinging, fist-fighting, and web-slinging imbues the sense of heroics. Most of the spectacle is fairly automatic, and you can look stylish just by holding down a button.

I was shocked by just how similar Spider-Man was to a genuine Marvel movie. Granted, I don’t watch a ton of Marvel films but the striking similarities are hard to ignore. Where this was most evident was in the story and writing. It’s about more than just beating up bad-guys, Peter Parker’s personal life takes precedence. His relationships with Aunt May, Miles Morales, Mary Jane, and a few mentor figures is what drives the story. The theme of mentorship is present through the entire game, as Peter is mentored by Dr. Octavius and in turn mentors Miles. The writing itself parallels modern Marvel movies in all facets. The cheesy one-liners and quippy banter permeate less serious scenarios, but there is no shortage of tear-jerking scenes. If you are a fan of Marvel and their cinematic universe, then Spider-Man will be right up your alley.

The gameplay of Spider-Man mostly consists of effortlessly swinging across Manhattan and busting up baddies along the way. Peter is a scientist and develops a horde of gadgets and suits with different powers to assist in combat. Gadgets consist of items such as web-shooters, web-grenades, trip-mines, and drones. You are heavily encouraged to switch gadgets mid-combat and play with different combinations for some effective takedowns. Like webbing enemies with a grenade and then sticking them to the wall using a sonic-blast. Peter also gets access to a variety of suits which are both fashionable and functional. Each suit has an ability such as creating a large explosion around you, summoning a helpful drone, or webbing up all nearby enemies. These abilities are incredibly powerful and as such have a few minute recharge period.

To unlock all of these gadgets and suit powers, the player has to traverse the city and gather a variety of collectibles and complete challenges. From collecting backpacks, to finding lost pigeons, to fighting crime, to completing time-trials, Spider-Man has a ridiculous amount of content to do out in the open world. Doing these tasks provides the player with tokens that will allow them to upgrade their gear. Normally, such a ludicrous number of collectables might be off-putting, but Spider-Man is unique in a way. Just swinging from building to building, fighting crimes and collecting goodies along the way is so enthralling. It is easy to just take a break from the main story and just be a crime fighting hero. The collectables are far from intrusive and they encourage the player to explore and experiment.

The combat of Spider-Man mostly succeeds because of the gadgets and the options they offer. Other than that, the combat just feels automatic. The most effective way of dealing with enemies is to just mash the punch button and press the dodge button whenever the game indicates that something is going to hit you. Sure, it looks cool, but without gadgets Spider-Man lacks depth. Sure, you could use other tactics like throwing objects, using the environment around you, or even use stealth, but in reality, it is just far faster and easier to just beat up the enemies by mashing the square button. The issue lies in the fact that for the vast majority of the game you are fighting the same enemies, just reskinned. The basic grunts of all the different factions the player encounters just get boring and monotonous after the hundredth encounter. I had a blast with the boss fights, but those are mostly concentrated at the beginning and end of the game.

The most pertinent issue with Spider-Man is its reluctance to let you be Spider-Man. A good chunk of the main campaign is filled by missions playing as Mary Jane or Miles Morales. These missions are generally stealth missions where the player is forced to slowly make their way through areas without being seen at all. I like stealth games, but these sections were the most basic and boring stealth that they could have shoehorned in. Playing as Peter was also fairly uneventful and mostly served as expository. As Peter, the player has to solve some incredibly banal puzzles that really had no business existing. Maybe these sections were meant to pad out play time, or perhaps flush out character development. Either way, much of what was accomplished in these missions would have been better served in a short cutscene or a phone call to listen to as you swing through the city.

At its core, Spider-Man has a multitude of different genres and styles that it attempts to appeal to. It is a story-driven, action, stealth, puzzle, collectathon game. Appealing to a broad audience is fine, and as a result I am positive that most people could find some aspect of this game that they like. But in the reverse, that means that most people can find some aspects that they don’t like. Perhaps the game would have been better as more refined experience. I really enjoyed Spider-Man regardless of this, and even though I am not a Marvel fan, I had a blast. It is for these reasons I give Spider-Man an 8/10. Playing as everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was immensely satisfying, I just wish the developers realized this and cut-down on the superfluous other aspects.

The Witness (2016)

November 26, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

The gorgeous environment and serene island of The Witness is a mask for a complex and challenging labyrinth. This puzzle game plays with the player’s mind and perception of everything around them. In essence, The Witness is a game all about perspective and how you view the environment around you. It may be confusing and frustrating at times, but it is an essential experience, especially if you are a puzzle lover.

The majority of the puzzles in The Witness are these screen mazes. They start simple enough, the player navigates through labyrinths on these tablet-like screens. Quickly, new mechanics and rules are added to these mazes. Symbols represent different tasks and rules that must me adhered to, making it to the end is not enough to complete a puzzle. For example, separating different color blocks or having to collect little black dots along the way. Each area in the game seems to focus on a new mechanic and using it to its fullest potential. Many of these screen mazes will combine aspects and symbols from previous areas to add additional challenge. The complexity of these puzzles quickly ramps up and a simple 4×4 grid may take you 10 to 15 minutes to solve.

These mazes are the core of The Witness. The game boasts that there are over 500 of these puzzles scattered across the diverse island. You do not need to complete every one of these brain teasers to finish the game, I solved about 400 puzzles before I made it to the end. If you want more out of a game than small labyrinths, than you will probably not enjoy The Witness. There are more aspects than these puzzles, but progression is tied to the completion of these screens. This is not Portal or The Talos Principle, you rarely solve grandiose puzzles that make use of large spaces. To be fair, The Witness does make use of environmental aspects more than any games I have played. Shadows, light, sounds, perspective, and other exterior cues are key to solving many of the areas and mazes. The environment is also used in a mind-blowing manner, but I do not want to spoil this moment for future players, so I have discussed it below in a spoiler tag. View at your own discretion, because if you are planning to play The Witness, this is seriously one of the best aspects of the game that you should really experience yourself.

Highlight to see spoiler:

As you play more and more of The Witness, you may notice some strange aspects of the space around you. Hidden in the environment, there are shapes that mimic the mazes that the player has been solving on the screens. The “oh my god” moment comes when you realize that you can click on these hidden puzzles and solve them like all the mazes in the game. Immediately you begin to see shapes all around the island and try to click on everything to find these hidden shapes. Some you have to line up using different angles and perspective tricks. Others you need to figure out how to even get in a correct position. Ultimately, these are in no way tied to progression and serve no purpose within the game, but discovering this secret is one of the most important and memorable moments in the game. This is where you learn that the island has more to it than simple line puzzles, and that the game expects you to change your perspective on how you see the world around you. End of spoiler.

A component that needs to be mentioned is that The Witness undeniably respects the player’s intelligence. There are no tutorials, no guiding text, nothing that remotely resembles handholding. When you encounter a new symbol or type of puzzle, there are a few very easy puzzles that let the player deduce what the symbol means and how to deal with it. Furthermore, the island is an open world that lets you seemingly tackle any area in any order you want. The drawback of this is that many of these areas adopt symbols and rules from other zones. So, if you have not been to the required area, you get roadblocked. Sure, you can realize that you do not have the requisite knowledge to complete a puzzle, but I wish the game did a better job and placing areas in a more logical order. The most blatant example of this is that the town area takes concepts from every other area in the game, yet it is very likely to be one of the first areas you stumble upon to do its proximity to the starting location. This could easily lead to frustration as you try to figure out puzzles that you couldn’t possibly solve yet. This is not a case of me being flagrantly bad at the game, I finished it within a reasonable time (about 15 hours) and never really got roadblocked. All I’m saying is that it can be annoying when wandering around and you can’t seem to find a solvable puzzle.

The other major issue that I had with The Witness was that I could not help the feeling that the game was pretentious. Solving some secret puzzles unlocks real life speeches made by a variety of people in academia. These videos range from 5-60 minutes, and serve no purpose other than really wasting your time if you choose to view them. There are also audio logs of famous quotes scattered about the island to listen to, again I drew no meaning from these. Lastly, the ending sequence of the game seems like it was trying to portray some message, but the dialogue just seemed nonsensical. This was reminiscent of Jonathan Blow’s previous game, Braid. In both of these games the vague and pointless dialogue exudes a sense of pretentiousness. Like there is deeper meaning than what was actually conveyed, but in all actuality the story and meaning felt practically non-existent.

The island itself on first glance seems to contain some sort of mystery. Why am I here? What’s my goal? What are all these statues? What happened to all the people here? These questions are not really answered in any satisfying sort of way. There seems to be clues scattered about the island to make it seem like there was an overarching story, but just like the audio logs and videos there really was no satisfying conclusion. My final gripe is that everything in the game seems to move slower than it really should. The player, the doors, the platforms, they all take far longer to get to their destination than what is reasonable. When on transit in a boat I was able to get a glass of water and go to the bathroom, and when I came back I was only halfway through the ride. It feels like a joke that is meant to solely waste the player’s time.

For the most part, The Witness is all about its screen puzzles. Personally, I quite enjoyed all of the challenges, but I think a lot of people will be turned off by the lack of grandiose environmental puzzles. Like I mentioned previously, the environment is well integrated and a key component to these puzzles, but you rarely interact with your surroundings in a more meaningful way. The elegance of imbuing difficulty and challenge into what initially seems like a simple maze is what makes The Witness so gratifying. When you figure out a puzzle on the first try, you are emboldened and feel like a genius. When the pieces start to come together and you understand what was stumping you, a wave of satisfaction follows. It is for these reasons I give The Witness a 9/10. It’s a collection of fantastic puzzles, but it lacks of any other sort of substance.

Assassin’s Creed (2007)

November 18, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

As a lover of stealth games, I decided to finally play the immensely popular Assassin’s Creed series. What I learned was that stealth seemed secondary to action and that the first game in the series was ridiculously clunky. Despite this, I believe the game’s concept has tremendous potential and I understand why the series became a juggernaut in the industry. Still, the first game has a boatload of shortcomings that make it a frustrating experience.

What makes Assassin’s Creed have so much potential is its concept. The main character accesses his ancestor’s memories and uses these memories to locate ancient artifacts. The memories that are accesses are that of an elite assassin. What makes the idea so enthralling is that the series draws its settings and stories from major historical events. In the case of the first Assassin’s Creed, the game takes place in the Holy Land during the 3^rd Crusade. History is something that I personally find very interesting, so going to these critical points in civilization is a concept that really makes me want to play more of the series.

The plot of Assassin’s Creed is centered on the conflict between the Assassin’s Order and the Knights Templar. Both operate as underground societies with ambitions to shape the world. The protagonist, Altaïr, is tasked with eliminating 9 key members of the Knights Templar. These are all influential people in society who are scheming to overthrow their leaders and install a new order. They commit dastardly deeds to enforce their will on the people around them and the player must find and assassinate them. The plot is shrouded in mystery, as you piece by piece uncover the plans of the Knights Templar and what their scheme entails. While that’s happening, you have brief interludes outside of the memories in the modern-day world, which has plenty of intrigue of its own. The story is what made me want to keep playing the game, as I wanted to learn what was really happening in the memories and in the modern world. The story is mostly condensed towards the end, and I wish it had been paced more evenly throughout the game. The first half of the game is fairly slow moving but it does pick up at the end.

Assassin’s Creed for better or worse is known as an innovative and influential game. Much of today’s game market draws at least a little inspiration from Assassin’s Creed. One example of this is climbable towers that reveal portions of the map. Farcry, Horizon Zero Dawn, and even The Legend of Zelda are all example of major titles that adopted the dreaded “Ubisoft tower”. The concept is that towers are scattered across the map, and climbing these towers unveils portions of the map. Generally, this includes revealing collectables, sidequests, and other content. This all started in the original Assassin’s Creed. To be honest this is kind of an odd concept to adopt, it is not particularly fun, at best it’s a minor annoyance. Climbing viewpoints to get a scope of the area around you and to spot points of interest is something that could be engaging. But climbing towers to reveal the map just feels contrived.

To be fair to Assassin’s Creed, at the time the technology to climb towers was actually kind of impressive. Seamlessly running up walls, grabbing ledges, and scaling a building was a novelty. Maybe I am just grumpy and unimpressed because by the time I played the first Assassin’s Creed, this was something I had already seen dozens of times, but I at least understand the appeal. I wish that there had just been far less of these towers. In the game there are 3 major cities and the surrounding kingdom area. There are 3 districts in each of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. One district per assassination target. There should have been 1 tower per district to reveal the entire thing. Instead, there’s about 10 each. This is completely obnoxious and unnecessary as the mechanic grew tiresome after the 5^th tower scaled. Hours of game time are toiled away holding up on the joystick to watch Altaïr slowly make his way upwards.

At its heart, this is the key issue that I had with Assassin’s Creed, the game is needlessly repetitive. The towers are just a single example of that fact. Each of the assassination quests can be broken into 4 parts: Go to the new district, climb towers to reveal the map, do intel missions, and finally assassinate the target. The first 3 of those aspects are inane and mind-numbing. Intel missions consist of revealing knowledge about the target you want to assassinate. Things such as his location, where the guards are, how to break into his hideout, and other general tips. The player can do a few of these to unlock the assassination mission and extra intel quests will just give you bonus information. Intel quests on paper sound like an enjoyable experience, but in practice they are just as repetitive as climbing towers. Things like eavesdropping, pickpocketing, and interrogating are just slow and mindless filler. The only enjoyable intel missions were things such as clearing out guards or stealthily assassinating archers. Those types of missions were engaging and required some thought and execution, the rest of the quests not so much.

As far as the main assassination goes, these missions were fun for the most part. You have to infiltrate areas and avoid guards as to not alert everybody. This requires some planning and clever pathing to get to the target undetected. Once the target is eliminated, you have to make your way back to your hideout. By far and away these were the most enjoyable portions of the game. Actually assassinating, like the title of the game implies. Also, a lot of story and exposition were provided in these sections to make them even more desirable to play. My one issue is that some of the targets were actually impossible to take out stealthily. You had to take them on in a duel rather than sneaking up behind them.

The crux of this problem is that Assassin’s Creed seems to not actually contain a lot of stealth elements. Sure, running and hiding from guards could be considered stealth. But I wouldn’t consider Need for Speed: Most Wanted to be a stealth game even though you do just that. When the game actually lets you sneak about and take out guards and targets, I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there seems to be a larger emphasis on action and adventure rather than espionage and tactical assassination. Sword fighting enemies was just easier and more common than actually assassinating. To be fair, my own expectations lend to my bias as I thought more stealth would be present, but still I feel let down. This is more of an action-adventure with some stealth elements rather than a stealth game with some action elements. Also, the Assassin’s Order is based on the real life Hashishin. They were a group of assassins who would take out their political opposition in public to make statements. So, I suppose the emphasis on eliminating the targets in public is fine, but I would have still liked to see more stealth options implemented.

Outside of assassinations and intel missions, most of the game time will be spent running from place to place. This aspect I actually enjoyed, it felt good to run across rooftops and parkour my way across the city. If you do anything out of the ordinary, guards would be alerted and you would have to go into hiding. Exploring these historic cities was fairly fun, albeit the choice of location was a little bleak. All 3 cities were brown and sandy and a little more color may have been appreciated, but that’s a minor flaw. When I do try more games in the series, I look forward to exploring other cities. Other than that, the game does have a few control problems. I found the controls to be a little unwieldy and sometimes it was difficult to have the character do what I wanted him to do. I give a little leeway here because as a 2007 game parkouring across rooftops and scaling city walls was a new concept and it works fairly well. Also, the user interface is pretty confusing and requires to many button presses to do what you want. This is a concession made to fit the games theme of being in a simulation, but when I have to go through 5 different menus to quit the game I think they went a little too far.

Overall, I understand why Assassin’s Creed is such an influential game. An open world with completely traversable cities is a tempting prospect. I can’t help but feel a little let down however, as I feel the series has tremendous potential due to its concept. Traveling to different periods in history and impacting the course of civilization as an assassin just sounds so cool. I hope future titles live up to this idea, as I felt the first Assassin’s Creed felt more like a proof of concept than independent and functional game.

Devil May Cry 4 (2008)

November 17, 2018November 17, 2018 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

The core of the Devil May Cry series is its action and the main character, Dante. Devil May Cry 4 makes a dangerous design choice by introducing a different main character. It is unbelievably risky to switch protagonists in a series which the current one is undoubtedly loved by fans. Ultimately, I think that this decision paid off, but Devil May Cry 4 has other substantial issues. The combat is crisp and satisfying, but the game is unfinished and undeniably repetitive.

The departure from Dante as the singular main character is the aspect of Devil May Cry 4 that makes it stand out. Instead of playing as the cocky and laid-back Dante, the player controls the younger and more serious Nero. More importantly, Nero’s playstyle is vastly different than Dante’s. Nero has a focus on his unique “devil arm”, which boasts a few tricks and changes the playstyle of the game. Nero can grab and throw enemies, which is an ability that allows Nero to string combos together in creative fashions. While Nero does not have the variety of combat styles that Dante does, his ability to grab enemies makes him just as enjoyable to play as.

Other than the change of protagonist, Devil May Cry 4 plays very similarly to Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening. High-octane action with a stylish flair is the key to the series success. My favorite aspect of the series are the frequent challenging boss fights. I was somewhat underwhelmed by the bosses in Devil May Cry 4. Other than a single exception, none of the bosses were particularly memorable or exciting. They were not offensively bad, but they were solidly mediocre. These fights felt less like duels between capable fighters and more like the player and the boss taking turns wailing on each other.

The largest criticism of Devil May Cry 4 stems from the second half of the game. Halfway through the game, the protagonist switches from Nero to Dante. This in and of itself would have been fine, but all of Dante’s levels are simply backtracking through previous areas. A lack of time caused the developers to just reuse areas instead of creating new ones, and the entire game drags because of it. Furthermore, by the end of the campaign you will encounter many bosses up to 3 times each. While rematches with bosses are a staple of the series, they usually entail new attacks or a changed arena. That is not the case in Devil May Cry 4. While you do fight some of the bosses as Dante, that is not a significant enough change to warrant 3 battles with each boss.

Dante plays as expected and has all of his abilities from previous games. The big addition is that he can now change styles on the fly rather than in the pre-mission menu. I love this change as it encourages the player to really test out the different styles rather than feeling restricted to one. It also allows the player to make some adjustments during combat or even extend their combos with a quick change of style.

Story is not something that I find important to the Devil May Cry series, and this game follows suit. While I like Nero’s characterization, I wish his backstory was explained in more depth. Other than that, the story is not a far cry from the previous installments. Somebody is trying to open the gate to Hell and unleash demons upon the world. That about summarizes every Devil May Cry game.

Devil May Cry 4 is basically everything I have come to expect from the Devil May Cry series. Fast-paced demon slaying with some goofy humor and cheesy dialogue. Playing as Nero is a breath of fresh air, even if he lacks the plethora of weapons and combat styles that Dante has. Unfortunately, Devil May Cry 4 is an unfinished product and that is abundantly clear in its latter half. As a whole, I enjoyed Devil May Cry 4, but it did not impress me like the original Devil May Cry or like Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening did. Those games defined and revolutionized the action genre, while Devil May Cry 4 is just a solid entry. If you enjoyed the previous games in the series or adore action games in general, I am sure you will like Devil May Cry 4. Just don’t expect anything mind-blowing or revolutionary.