What is it?: A 3DS port of a Wii U Yoshi platformer
Level of completion: Everything, apart from not watching all of the shorts. I will eventually, but it's not really content I'd say is crucial to game completion. Completing everything involves collecting all patches, all bundles of wool, all flowers, and getting to the end of all of the levels with full health. It also involves encountering all enemies, finding all secret paths, and, finally, completing the Wonderful World of Wool under all those conditions, the final unlockable level that's extra long and has no checkpoints.
What I liked:
Adorable and colorful visual design. Everything in this world looks like it has been hand-crafted, and the effect goes a long way toward giving this huge amounts of charm.
Excellent level design. There are plenty of alternate paths, hidden objects, and whatnot to access throughout the game. There is a great balance of linearity and openness throughout. Some of the levels are also surprisingly puzzle-heavy, which is not something I'm used to encountering in a 2D platformer.
A cool approach to difficulty and accessibility. While there's the usual easy mode that I didn't touch, there are also badges that you can purchase with in-game jewels that will make levels easier for you in some way. One badge might make all of your yarn balls larger. Another might make it where you can see invisible items. These are a great way to replay levels in different ways (and, if you're going for 100%, you'll likely be replaying these levels a LOT) and a good method for children to make certain challenging levels easier for them without nuking the difficulty across the board.
Adorable extras. One of the new additions in this 3DS re-release is a collection of 31 stop-motion animated shorts featuring Yoshi and Poochy. After each one, you're given an easy quiz about what you just watched and are rewarded if you get the answer right with more jewels that you can spend on badges. The really ingenious thing is how they unlock every 24 hours (after viewing the previously unlocked one), as this gives the player a big incentive to stay engaged with the game for a longer period of time.
Portability. This might seem like a weird thing to like in an inherently portable version of a game, but it's worth mentioning because I think this game only really shines in portable form. You'll be playing a lot of the same levels over and over while hunting for collectibles, and this is a much more enjoyable task on a pick-up-and-play handheld than it is on a home console that I need to clear TV time for. I already owned this on Wii U, but I finally picked up this 3DS version, and I think it was a pretty good decision, all things considered. This version is worth repurchasing just for its increased accessibility.
Creativity and Yoshi Designs. Like in the Wii U version, you can unlock different designs for your Yoshi as you progress through the game. Unique to this version, though, is being able to create your own Yoshi design. Not really anything I care about (I just stuck with Green Yoshi through the majority of the game), but it seems like a great inclusion for children.
What I disliked: Not much, really. Bosses are a bit easy and not up to the high standards of boss encounters in the best DKC games, but they still beat the pants off the boss fights you'd find in any 2D Mario game because they require some level of observation and problem-solving to defeat. Being a 3DS game, the photo-realistic yarn textures are much fuzzier and less detailed now, although, given the hardware, it's hard to really count this against he game. I suppose the presence of badges makes it tempting to cheat and make the game easier than it would otherwise be, but this is balanced by the fact that no single badge is going to make the entire game a cakewalk if you want to collect everything. The worst thing I can say about it is that there's no point in the game that I feel like it becomes singularly brilliant. Instead, it's just consistently polished and excellent, and I don't see that as a bad thing at all.
Final thoughts: A gorgeous, smooth, and consistently excellent platformer that succeeds on almost all levels. While it doesn't do anything to set new standards for the genre, it rivals Yoshi's Island and makes for a fantastic portable time-waster.
What is it? A walking sim where you stumble through and climb around an old house and learn about the fates of various members of your family via conveniently placed journals.
Level of completion The whole thing, obviously. It's, like, three hours long. With that said, I didn't get all the optional trophies, and I probably won't bother going back and getting them.
What I liked
Some of the vignettes in this game are quite interesting and creative. Two, in particular, come to mind: the comic book-themed presentation of Barbara's story and Lewis' daydreaming at the cannery, which makes very cool use of the twin stick setup of modern controllers to drive home what it was trying to accomplish.
The music is pretty good throughout. At points, it even plays recognizable songs to good effect, as when Barbara is investigating mysterious noises to the backdrop of the Halloween music, or when baby Gregory's bathtub playtime is set to the Waltz of the Flowers.
I played with headphones on, and the environmental sound design was well done. Hearing the wind so realistically really helped with the sense of atmosphere and place as I played.
The game is, in spots, quite pretty. Primarily due to the way certain scenes are realistically lit. I'm a big fan of environmental photography in real life, and I often take pictures when the sun and the shadows form a compelling confluence on the world around them. That only happens a few times here, but the fact that I actually bothered to take a few screenshots (I hate the PS4's screenshot tool, because, unlike the one on the Switch, it's not immediate; you press a button and are taken to a menu) says a lot.
Using the words from Edith's narration to guide you around the house is interesting.
For a game filled with so much death, the magical realist presentation goes a long way toward making this not feel terribly dour. It's a balancing act, and sometimes I feel like the game doesn't establish enough of a sense of gravity to make particular deaths feel especially impactful, but I also appreciate that a game that involves horrifically sad stuff like a baby drowning doesn't lean too hard on the realism at times.
What I disliked
The game's performance on the base PS4 is pretty spotty, with a stuttery framerate throughout (which is bad enough that even I, a person who doesn't usually fixate on this sort of thing, took notice), a very short draw distance with really blatant pop-in (although this becomes much less of an issue when you actually get into the house, as you're mostly confined to small rooms), and some really bad texture quality in spots. I know the PS4 isn't the strongest piece of gaming tech out there, but it shouldn't be struggling to run an indie walking sim, which points to some poor optimization on the part of the developers.
The controls during certain sequences are REALLY bad. Most notably in Molly Finch's story, where you play as certain animals, and they're all hell to control (especially that stupid octopus).
Walking sims are often accused of being narratively lazy. Some, like Gone Home, get around this criticism with an innovative focus on indirect environmental storytelling. This game is never so subtle, though, and, more often than not, your participation rarely even feels like it's required. As a big fan of visual novels, I have no issue with games that don't lean very heavily on the gameplay element, but I can't get over the feeling that this would have been better as a film or a series of animated shorts. The game rarely does anything compelling with its interactivity.
For a game built almost entirely around vignettes about how people die, a disturbingly large portion of these are kind of underwhelming. Some of them are just sort of... random deaths that leave no real impression (Edith, Calvin, Gus, Dawn, and Sam). Some of them feel like they're building up to something, only to end in a totally unsatisfying manner (Molly and Walter).
That leads into the unexplained elements of the narrative. I get it: things happen to people, and they're not always understood or resolved. But when you have large narrative threads that are just left sort of hanging with no resolution (the strained relationship between Dawn and Edie near the end; Milton's disappearance; etc.), it contributes to a lack of satisfaction about the game's story more broadly.
And, let's talk about this. For a "story game," this one has a really non-cohesive narrative. There's some sort of broader story about how this family feels cursed, but that's never explored to satisfaction in a more general way. Documents you find around the house continually refers to how the Finches are the most "unlucky" family in America, but, as tragic as some of these vignettes are, they don't give me the impression of a family that's doomed. A handful of people die over the course of more than half a century. That's... normal. A lot of the family drama, as I mentioned, doesn't ever really feel like it's addressed to satisfaction. As far as I can tell, it's about a pregnant woman clambering around a house, recounting how some people died, and then revealing that she died herself. There's no sense of scope to this. While this is the story of a family that spans generations, it doesn't have the complexity, scope, or depth of something like Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Isabele Allende's The House of the Spirits. You might think it unfair to compare a little indie game to masterpieces of world literature, but I expect story games to tell a satisfying story. Soma, for example, while not a fantastic horror game, IS a really interesting science-fiction narrative that's filled with ideas and has a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. I can't say that about this game. This feels totally incomplete: an unrealized grander vision dotted with moments of ingenuity.
I'll just say this: I don't like that they reduced Edith's role in the story to that of a pregnant woman who dies giving birth. It feels like it cheapens the experiences and role of the character in the story. Also, can we get just ONE narrative about death that doesn't, at some point, dive into the miracle of childbirth? I get it: life/death, beginnings and endings, blah blah blah, but it's so overdone at this point. You know to expect it.
Conclusion What Remains of Edith Finch is an interesting but very unrealized and unsatisfying walking sim that left me feeling like I had experienced the shell of a much better game. I wouldn't warn people off of it, though: it's pretty short, and, more importantly, it has its inspired moments. They don't redeem the experience, but I'm not sorry I played it.
@Ralizah, on the point about PS4's screenshot mode, if you hold the button down instead of just pressing it, it'll skip the menu and just take the screenshot.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@Ralizah Thanks for the WRoEF impressions. Excellent mini-review, as always. I’m glad you felt some satisfaction out of he game, despite some of the shortcomings. You bring up some valid points, and some things I hadn’t thought about but do agree with. It’s been a year or more since I played it and yeah, it’s not the kind of game one usually returns to, although I did go back and mop up the trophy list. But like you know, I am a big fan of the game, and although I quite enjoy walking sims I think the game does other innovative things that brought me satisfaction regardless of my bias toward the genre. You eloquently alluded to most of those things so I won’t reiterate them. But a few things come to mind after reading your post —
I’m not a big screenshot taker either but I’m pretty sure the PS4 has a setting you can enable somewhere so that you can turn the share button quick double-press into an instant screenshot without having to go to the menu. I believe you have the option to make a double press either a screenshot or a function to start and stop videoing gameplay. I’m not sure which one is the default though. I was just pondering this yesterday while playing Injustice 2 where I wanted to capture some screenshots and pushing the share button to bring up the mini-menu is not practical while in the middle of a fight or quick action scene. I was too lazy to go to my settings and I’m not by my PS4 now, but you should be able to find it easily.
It’s strange because I don’t remember any performance issues. I also am not a tech expert or a frame rate and pixel count elitist, so things that bother other people don’t always jump out to me. I wonder if there was a new patch issue or something. It’s too bad that you had those problems because they certainly can break the immersion.
I do remember some of the control issues like you described with the animals. That gave me a chuckle to read your description.
As for the narrative issues, the lack of broad closure, and the incomplete feeling you had, I think those are all good points. The game does leave many things unsaid, and all your comments regarding the story (or lack thereof) are valid. I did experienced it differently, however, and didn’t mind the open-ended nature of the world as a sort of added mystery to the family curse. For example, is it really a curse, or as you say, is it just a perception by the family, who misinterpret relatively normal amounts of “bad luck” and death? ie. Sometimes we find what we are looking for, whether it’s there or not.
In the attempt to balance between concrete and detailed story and an open narrative sometimes games and story fall too far on one side or the other. And of course it’s all a matter of personal taste in the end. Such as with the game Virginia, the amount of holes to fill with my own interpretation was probably too much. With WRoEF I enjoyed a little of the mystery.
But I do see your point about the resultant lack of depth to the narrative, the feeling of poor impact because of the disjointed nature of the individual stories that don’t give a wider perspective.
I’m glad you enjoyed aspects of it though and at least didn’t find it a waste of time. 😃
Edit: @RR529 got to it sooner on the screenshot thing. I thought it was a “double press”, but maybe it’s a “press and hold” then.
@Th3solution I can definitely see why someone would like this game. As I've said elsewhere, I have an acknowledged bias against this style of game, so it's easy to see how I might have received it more favorably were my tastes different
RE: open-ended and minimalist narratives, you're always going to get people who receive them very differently, and both critical and favorable receptions of them can be perfectly valid. If you've ever played or seen Breath of the Wild, a LOT of gamers were critical of the minimalistic narrative and ending. And, you know, I get that. I think being underwhelmed by the way it approached the narrative is a perfectly valid feeling to have. It didn't take away from the game for me, though, and, when it comes down to it, how you receive something is mostly a mystery. It's an emotional relation that you can't explain, but when something works for you, it really works, right? I think this game's narrative approach really worked for you, and that's absolutely a beautiful thing. While I wasn't as taken with it, there were moments that I felt were quite inspired. Lewis' vignette (I believe that's his name: the young man who worked in the cannery and got carried away by his imagination) was, especially, a fantastic marriage of game mechanics and narrative that deftly used the monotony of processing fish while controlling the Prince in his daydream to forge a unique emotional connection with the character. It was very cool.
I don't think I mentioned this before, but I kept getting the feeling that this was an experience that would probably have hit closer to home in VR. It feels like a VR game to me, even though I don't think it has ever had a VR option. I'm surprised it's not, though, considering the way it continually situates you in new bodies with limited environmental interaction and immersive sound design, which seems like the perfect mix of elements for a manageable VR experience.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@Ralizah Well said.
Subject matter, setting, and tone also play a role in personal impression. Another reason the game resonated with me was the interesting setting. You mentioned Soma, which perhaps I need to try, but I just don’t particularly like horror and scary or gruesome settings. I really should give it a try, since it sounds like a story-heavy, walking sim type of game I guess, which is right up my alley. I’m just no fan of the macabre, which is why WRoEF was a nice fit for my tastes because of the almost casual treatment of death, fear, and tragedy. Occasionally I get in a mood for something frightening though.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Soma is definitely a creepy game. It's from the devs who created Amnesia: The Dark Descent, after all, which practically wrote the book on independently-developed horror games at a time when the genre seemed like it was dying. With that said, it is, at heart, an interesting existentialist sci-fi story, and if the scary monsters attacking you is what's putting you off, you should know they released a "safe mode" that keeps you safe from monster attacks throughout the game.
I believe this mode has subsequently been introduced to the PS4 version of the game as well.
I thought that the horror bits added to the atmosphere, but I'm also a horror fanatic who loves scary and gruesome subject matter. It's nice that this mode exists for people who just want the story without having to hide and run for their lives.
@Ralizah@ellsworth004@RR529
Oh, and just for completeness sake. I’m on my PS4 now and under “Settings” —> “Sharing and Broadcasts” —> “SHARE button Control Type” —>
You are given two options for “Standard” which is press of the button is display menu and press and hold is take a screenshot. Vs “Easy Screenshots” where press is screenshot and press and hold is display menu. In both options the press twice mechanic is to start and stop saving a video clip.
Just wanted to clarify that.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Oh, and @Th3solution don't worry about snipping up your man-card. Just throw the thing away. Life is much too brief to spend it trying to conform to outdated social norms.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@Th3solution I confirm the Ps4 version has the Safe Mode too. I think it's a good idea since it gives you the chance to find all the notes you may have missed while running away from enemies.
Wow, what a surprise this game was to me. I'd only ever heard good things about it and fancied something a bit different after The Division 2. This was totally it.
The artwork and music on this game are just fantastic. The story is intriguing but always left that little bit vague. The combat is sharp, and the platforming also solid.
I probably enjoyed this most in the first half of the game as I explored the huge map. It has a unique setup in that you can only unlock maps for each area by finding the mapmaker who will sell you an incomplete section of map which you fill in yourself. Each area is really distinctive from lush garden worlds to fungus covered caves and a giant beehive among areas. The enemies in each are really distinct and there's plenty of them (over 150 enemy types!)
The Metroidvania style does lead to some annoyances in that there can be a lot of backtracking to revisit areas you couldn't previously reach now you have a new ability. This was made worse by the fact that the fast travel stops are very spread out so you could spend quite a while getting back to places. You also have to remember where these places even are! (map markers help a lot!!)
The combat is good fun with the variety of charms you acquire giving quite a range of play styles. The bosses are well varied with some being a real challenge, particularly the optional DLC ones. The Colosseum of Fools is a good challenge with multiple waves of enemies; the Grimm Troupe DLC adds an especially tough boss in Nightmare King Grimm; and the Godseeker pantheons see you take on the games bosses back to back. The latter is what stopped me going for platinum as having to re-do entire runs has just lost any semblance of fun now.
The platforming is also neatly done and has devilish sections, particularly in the White Palace, and especially on the appropriately titled (but entirely optional) Path of Pain which has multiple checkpoints but rather harshly ends with a tough fight (which if you lose, sends you right back to the beginning).
All in all, this is a spectacular game and even more impressive that it was mostly made by just two people. I actually feel bad I only paid £5 for this but am delighted to hear a sequel is on the way.
Did you do the path of pain? That really was brutal and the fight at the end was a real naughty move.
I always seem to take my time with games but did milk this for all its worth. Nightmare King Grimm took me plenty of attempts, Trial of Fools similarly (damn the section with no floor!), and the pantheons I did do took a little time. Plus, I did stuff like delivering the delicate flower etc etc.
It is pretty amazing how much time I got out of it though!
@ThrillhoI killed him. I figured he had the right to go out in a blaze of glory instead of being forced to live on in that crapsack world. Although, from what I hear, he adjusts to not dying rather well, so my choice might not have been the best one.
I didn't. I did almost none of the DLC content. For some reason, I had a difficult time locating it. I'm definitely planning on replaying it some day and completing all of the DLC content, though.
I didn't quite complete the Colosseum of Fools. Once I completed the Trial of the Conqueror, I had what I wanted from it (the last piece of Pale Ore).
Even in this sort of incomplete state, though, I got over 30 hours out of it.
You're absolutely right that one of the best aspects of the game is the visual design. It's simply stunning looking. A good reminder that you can create something beautiful without pouring a ton of money into it, and that being a small indie dev is no excuse for your game looking bad.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
Gravity Rush Remastered. Beat it on Friday. Can't believe it took me so long to try it (or finish it. Bought it in December, started it in March, finished it in May.).
Story: A girl wakes up in a place known as Heksville without her memory. Because of that, she simply goes by Kat. Without any real time to ponder anything, she has to defend Heksville from a threat dubbed "the Nevi" using her ability tomanipulate Gravity around her. The story mostly deals with Kat saving Heksville from the Nevi while slowly getting pieces of a bigger picture.
The story is alright for a game like this. I found myself entertained by it, and it felt like there was a bit of setting up for more, which I'm hoping gets solved in Gravity Rush 2.
Kat herself was a fun enough main character, but I thought the rest of the cast was great, especially with how she reacted to them: Syd, the bumbling cop, Aki, the expensive fortune teller, and I would gladly buy more games with Raven in them.
Gameplay: Gravity Rush is a (Thankfully smaller) open world game with, as you might guess from the title, is all about mud. Gravity is how you traverse, fight, and carry stuff. You'd think a game that focuses on freely manipulating gravity would be a disasterpiece to control, but aside from some niggles in combat, it's done pretty well after some time playing.
Kat is capable of flying around and moving up walls and buildings thanks to her powers. You use R1 to activate it, and you basically shoot her body by aiming to your target and pressing R1 again. If she hits a surface, she sticks to it. She also has a slide move that enables faster ground movement, which can also be used on buildings. I didn't use this very often outside of challenges though. There's also a stasis field that Kat uses to pick up objects and people. This is also a combat technique, as you can shoot the objects at the Nevi.
This is a good time to talk about Kat's combat abilities. On the ground she has melee attacks, but most of the fighting will likely be airborne, where she can gravity kick enemies (imagine Bruce Lee getting shot like a cannonball) and has three special attacks to use as you progress in the story. Air combat felt a shade iffy in this game to me. I mostly relied on the Gravity Kick, which depending on how mobile the enemies are, is about 80% accurate. It auto locks on the enemy, but it can easily miss if they move a bit or have a small enough weak point. Personally, I gutted it out for most of the game, making my shots count, but near the end it was a bit frustrating to miss kicks and projectiles, since you fight a lot of Nevi by that point.
As for total content, there isn't a whole lot, but I wasn't bothered by it. Aside from the main missions, there's 3 side stories with two missions apiece (In the original Vita game these were DLC), each having an outfit to go with it. There's plenty of challenges to test your powers, and there's one side quest where you need to find someone 16 times.
Sparkles and noises: The graphics definitely look like a PS3 era game, but they're not bad. Heksville and it's districts are pretty colorful and rendered in a nice cel shaded look. The game's presentation as a whole resembles a comic book. One of my favorite things here is that far off buildings are simply rendered as lines and slowly pop in more as you approach. It takes a usually ugly reminder of system limitations and makes it look a bit more eye pleasing.
The soundtrack has a more grand feel to it than I would expect, like it feels it was meant for a bigger game than this, but I appreciate it anyway. It sounds calming when you explore, and epic when you fight.
If you're willing to adjust to the control, Gravity Rush is a fun adventure on PS4. It's lighter feel definitely makes a good time for a calm day.
"We don't get to choose how we start in this life. Real 'greatness' is what you do with the hand you're dealt." -Victor Sullivan "Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing." -Solid Snake
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