@timleon Yeah, whatever my problems were, running the game in a borderless window fixed 'em. I hope you can get it sorted out, because I'd love to read your updated thoughts!
Apparently, the smart money's on Sonic's 30th Anniversary game being an Adventure remake.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger Seems to have worked! I've managed to get to Hidden Base without any hiccups at least.
And I'd absolutely love a ground-up remake of Sonic Adventure. As far as I can recall, a Sonic game has never been remade in such a way (correct me if I'm wrong!). However, one of my favourite games in the series - Generations - is essentially a remake of older levels so I do believe a reimagining of a familiar story can go a long way in this series.
And yeah, it's basically only been Generations (although, if we're being snarky, I'd argue that Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I is effectively a remake of Green Hill Zone, Casino Night Zone, Labyrinth Zone, Metropolis Zone and the Death Egg Zone... and a poor one, at that). I think SEGA are starting to get wise to the power of nostalgia and, following the success of Mania, it makes sense that they'd start to look at later releases. Alongside the all-but-confirmed remaster of Colours, I think a full Adventure remake would make for a very memorable birthday year!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
As I clicked to pre-order the imminent remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy (arguably the best Star Trek games ever made), the time seemed right to treat my inner Trekkie to a little reflective nostalgia. I decided to start at the beginning, going back as far as my collection would allow, and so settled down with a cup of tea to thoroughly enjoy a highlight of my childh...
...oh wait, it's not actually gonna be any good, is it?
***
STAR TREK: INVASION Platform: PSone Release Date: September 2000
Developed by Warthog Games and published by Activision, this curious curiosity arrived at the peak of Star Trek's popularity. Captain Picard and his cohorts were making movies, Deep Space Nine had recently ended to rave reviews, and Voyager was still lost in the Delta Quadrant. In the gaming sphere, the franchise was doing well, but mostly thanks to real-time strategy offerings which conveyed the calm and calculating tone of the shows. I don't think anybody expected a space combat simulator packed with fighter craft and furious dogfights, no more than they expected it to be exclusive to Sony's PlayStation (but then it wasn't the only genre gamble Activision made that year, either).
So, what's the deal? Well, Patrick Stewart's got you covered.
"Captain's Log, Stardate: 54111.79 A force of Borg warships are currently passing through Klingon space, on course for Sector 001 - Earth. The Federation is assembling a flotilla of warships, but we need to delay the Borg while we marshal our forces. Lieutenant Commander Worf will brief the elite of the Starfleet's pilots aboard the USS Typhon, a mobile outpost and carrier starship."
Except that that's an exceedingly misleading narration with which to set expectations. It's true, there are some Borg on the way, and you eventually end up facing them, but their first appearance is in an optional, entirely skippable mission. In total, they make up roughly 10% of the game's content, and have almost zero impact on the ongoing story, which can otherwise be quite interesting when it wants to be. When your second introductory training mission is suddenly interrupted by a bunch of belligerent Romulans, you discover that Starfleet's cutting-edge USS Sentinel has gone dangerously rogue. This sparks an interstellar manhunt for the Sentinel and its deranged captain, Marcus Brennan, who is threatening to bring an ancient, apocalyptic enemy back from the dead.
With all of this kicking off, the looming shadow of the Borg feels like a marketing prerequisite, as well as a pre-established excuse to quickly design some nifty little fighters (called Valkyries) for a franchise which had never needed them before. Particularly with regard that latter point, the relationship between gameplay and licence can become strained. Despite some well-meaning efforts to capture the essence of Star Trek, most of the game's thirty-one (!!) campaign missions do indeed boil down to "destroy that thing" objectives. There's no room for negotiation, not unless it's at the point of a phaser after you've sufficiently softened up the enemy. Many point to this being the result of Activision trying to chase the popularity of the Colony Wars trilogy, cloning its gameplay and sticking some LCARS over the main menu. I've never played Colony Wars for myself, so this is just an acknowledgement, not a comparison.
Nevertheless, reviews for Invasion were largely positive (I remember it scoring 9/10 in the Official PlayStation Magazine) and on the surface, it's easy to see why. It's a very playable game to begin with. The controls are slightly over-sensitive, but they're intuitive enough, making it easy to execute some suitably dramatic manoeuvres. The inclusion of an auto-lock system is a godsend, allowing pilots of any skill level to chase down the most skittish of targets, and you can switch between third-person and a full cockpit view at your leisure. Presentation is also top notch, with mission briefings delivered by Worf (Michael Dorn) alongside those occasional log entries from Picard (Patrick Stewart), all accompanied by an overwrought soundtrack of short-but-sweet loops. Contrary to my smartphone shots of a television screen, everything looks gorgeous in motion, as well. Each section of space is vibrant and memorable, whilst starships both familiar and new are packed with detail.
Engaging: You're given plenty of time to gawp at the game's most famous inclusions, which still manage to impress, even on the PSone's limited hardware.
As a result of all these positives, I was utterly besotted with Invasion during its first hour. So what if an intellectual property had been shoehorned into an ill-fitting gameplay mould? It wouldn't be the first time, and it certainly wasn't the last, but it's not the most egregious, either. The important fact was that, separate from any Trekkian raised eyebrows, I was having a lot of fun. I'd tangled with a Romulan Warbird, stopped a mad Cardassian from opening a wormhole, and started to make headway in the search for Brennan and the Sentinel. Worf was being nice to me an' everything.
During the game's seventh mission, a new enemy had appeared. I'd beaten them back, and was keen to learn more, but the debrief screen was having none of it. Apparently, we were the ones retreating in the face of overwhelming odds. It was over. I was berated for playing on the Cadet difficulty (the equivalent of easy) and told that, if I wanted to advance the story, I'd have to restart on either medium or hard... and I really do mean "restart" there, by the way. Everything I'd earned and unlocked during that first hour of gameplay, all the progress I'd made and bonus missions I'd uncovered, was rendered completely pointless. In order to continue, I'd have to start over, and hope my skills were good enough.
In spite of such an ignominious insult, I did just that, and set myself up for a nasty surprise. Granted, I'd had some practice and so, despite a noticeable uptick in enemy shield strength and overall aggression, replaying those first seven missions took me roughly the same amount of time. They were a struggle, but mostly a pleasant and rewarding one.
Beyond them, however, Invasion got brutal.
Brace for Impact: The above may look like fun and games but, believe me, it's the only time an enemy ship managed to miss my Valkyrie.
More capital ships would show up. They'd melt your hull in a single shot and, to make matters worse, some even arrived with time limits, giving you a mere sixty seconds to destroy them (this often happened at the tail end of long missions which had previously tempted you to waste all of your secondary weapons, leaving your standard phasers feeling like pop guns against their impenetrable shields). Even against fellow fighters, that auto-lock system I praised earlier became a frustration, as enemies would begin to cloak as frequently as a narcoleptic takes a nap. Most of the time, my Valkyrie ended up spinning uselessly in the crossfire, unable to find a target but with all the targets able to find me.
Some late-game level design also gets itself confused. At one point, I was tasked with embedding three powerful torpedoes in the surface of a heavily-defended asteroid. Worf told me that maintaining stealth would be crucial to my success, and recommended that I use a cloaking device, so I did. I flew over the asteroid, selected my torpedoes, and nothing happened. I couldn't launch them. I pressed every button possible. Nothing. Then my cloaking device ran out of power, and I was soon spotted. Alarms flared. Worf yelled at me. In the ensuing chaos, I destroyed several enemy fighters and noticed that they left energy particles floating amidst their debris. So I collected some, and it suddenly granted me the ability to launch my torpedoes. I could not get this energy anywhere else. In order to proceed, I had to openly engage the enemy, destroy them and harvest the wreckage... because stealth FTW, right?! Clearly some changes had been made during development, but Michael Dorn never re-recorded his briefing and, as a result, it kinda broke the game.
And as much as I like the idea of optional sub-missions scattered throughout the story, some are far too important to relegate to such a skippable status. Aside from the aforementioned introduction to the Borg, some other plot threads can appear to disappear into these inadvertent black holes, especially when you consider that they're unlocked by achieving specific, hidden objectives that you're just expected to know about, without any prompt or guide. The cherry atop this infuriatingly taxing cake is that, unless you complete everything in full, you won't see the best of the game's three endings. All you can hope for is a partial victory, in which you're celebrating back at Starfleet HQ in San Francisco when the alien resurrection you've been fighting to prevent happens anyway. That's literally the cutscene. Sucks to be you!
***
It's because of these quirks, either left in by accident or deliberately designed, that Invasion comes across a little smug. Cutting you short after seven missions is bad enough, and making you replay them on a higher difficulty is downright sadistic, but then revealing that you could've actually played nine, if only you'd shot down every enemy within twenty seconds whilst standing on your head and counting backwards from forty-seven in Ancient Greek... no, Invasion. No. Just stop.
Throwing in a handful of turret defence levels and a small selection of two-player splitscreen sojourns (both versus and co-op) sweetens the deal, but not enough for the game to overcome its crippling campaign imbalances. It's a shame that I used cheats in order to see its story through to completion, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I did so and yes, there is a difference.
Despite some surface-level greatness, Invasion shoots itself in the foot far too frequently whilst reaching for the stars. I'd therefore advise anybody trekking through this franchise's gaming history to boldly go right on past it. Star Trek can do, and has done, better.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger Those screenshots are taken from your cell phone? They look great! Every time I try to take a picture of a game on an older SDTV, it looks terrible.
Anyway, nice review, though I'm sorry to hear about the issues with the game design. The game's approach to difficulty kinda reminds me of Contra 4's passive-aggressive easy mode, where, right before the last stage, it literally stops the game and tells you: "If you want to see the ending to this game, play on a harder difficulty for a REAL Contra experience." A little annoying for some people, I imagine, although a Contra game making fun of you for playing on easy mode is rather on-brand for a series that prides itself on its Nintendo Hard reputation. At least that game wasn't artificially difficult, as this one seems to be. Getting the true ending to this sounds more annoying than anything.
@Ralizah Thanks for reading, as always. I was playing the game's disc on my PS3, so those are shots of it running on a large HD screen, taken in extreme close-up in an otherwise dark room. I then tweaked the contrast and saturation a little with the basic tools available in Windows' default photo-viewing program, just to enhance their clarity, and did a little cropping and rotating by eye. Probably far more effort than the game deserved, in retrospect. I'm grateful for the praise, all the same!
You're right, it's one thing to knowingly buy a game notorious for its difficulty, but quite another when a licenced property goes off the deep end. I realise I'm often allergic to unnecessary challenge, so had to be sure that I wasn't just "being me" when I hit the wall, but I can really play games when I focus and this was definitely an uptick worthy of such criticism. Ah well.
Oh, and getting the true ending is easy enough. You just slap in the "unlock everything" cheat and watch it from the options menu. Cheating FTW (in single-player games, and never anywhere else)!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Now finished Sonic Adventure 2! Here are some thoughts (keeping it as bullet points - I tried a fuller review but I realised I was having a lot of trouble just explaining the story!)
Keep in mind that I played this game to death as a teenager so this won't be a newcomer's perspective - actually, I might be overly critical in some instances because I've played the game a bit too much.
Story
This game is remembered among Sonic games for its story, and I think that is for good reason. Probably the darkest and most mature narrative in the series.
The game has three parts: a concurrent Hero and Dark Story, followed by a Last Story. The Hero and Dark Story is a great streamlining of the multiple story model from Sonic Adventure. Not only did it allow the writers to make the core story more compelling and memorable, but the characters being on two different sides of the game's central conflict gave more reason for the two stories to overlap (whereas things felt a little forced in Sonic Adventure - why did Big need to appear in anyone's story?)
The Dark Story was amazing at the time for showing things from the villains' perspective. This was especially exciting because we hadn't really seen much of Dr Eggman in the games outside of boss battles. Shadow and Rouge were great additions to this too. Even today, I can't think of many games where you can play as established heroes and villains in opposing sides of the same story. Definitely a selling point of the game.
The Last Story follows the heroes and villains teaming up to prevent their own death and the destruction of Earth. This is great - the stakes are high and it's thrilling to see Sonic work with the likes of Eggman. The final level, Cannon's Core, is incredibly memorable for having snippets of gameplay from almost every character. Also having every character playable in the Last Story helped make it, and its place within the greater structure of the story, feel a lot more meaningful. For comparison, it was quite anticlimactic for all of the characters but Sonic to have no role in Sonic Adventure's Last Story.
I mention that this game has darker themes, and while I wouldn't want that in every game, I think that they are this game's strength and a unique selling point for it. Off the top of my head, we have: the darkest depiction of Dr Eggman in the games (absolutely no comical moments typical of other entries), a revenge plot involving mass annihilation of the human race, Eggman launching Sonic into space, and the apparent death of a main (playable) character. It's a real shame that they didn't stick to that last one though...
Gameplay
This game has three core gameplay styles:
Sonic and Shadow have platforming levels, building on Sonic's levels from Sonic Adventure. These are generally solid, and slightly refined over Adventure's stages. Stage design is alright - very difficult to critique as I know the stages like the back of my hand at this point. Personally I only find a handful of them to be particularly strong (City Escape, Metal harbour, Green Forest, Radical Highway, White Jungle) - these are the earlier stages which are focused more on speed and more straightforward platforming. I find the later stages to be more forgettable design-wise and/or bogged down in level gimmicks which aren't too fun for me (e.g. gravity and rail mechanics). New to Sonic Adventure 2 is rail grinding...I feature that I've not a massive fan of in any game, but I find it's executed quite poorly here, as it's all too easy to fall of rails or fall down bottomless pits when jumping between rails.
Knuckles and Rouge have treasure-hunting levels, building on Knuckles' levels in Sonic Adventure. These levels are now purposefully built for treasure hunting, rather than in Sonic Adventure where they were just adaptions of Sonic's levels. Knuckles and Rouge feel great to control but, while I could get some enjoyment out of these levels when I was younger...I just don't enjoy these levels anymore. Hunting for emeralds one at a time feels tedious, and a massive distraction from what I came to play - Sonic. I might have been interesting if these stages focused more on platforming (Cannon's Core shows us what Knuckles/Rouge platforming could be like, to an extent) or traditional collectathon elements.
Tails and Eggman have shooting levels, building on Gamma's levels in Sonic Adventure. Mechanically these feel much better than Gamma's levels, using the lock-on system for score building to great effect. Again, these levels are designed uniquely for Tails and Eggman, as opposed to being based on Sonic stages. These are quite fun - I like the balance of light platforming elements with the risk/reward system of longing onto many enemies without getting hit for a higher score. But I still much prefer the Sonic/Shadow stages, and I find a few of these stages to be tedious or unmemorable.
While I appreciated that the multiple stories were streamlined into just Hero and Dark - the downside is that you are frequently alternating between gameplay styles. This is annoying if you favour one gameplay style over another - and I found myself groaning whenever a treasure hunting stage would come up. Only 11 of the game's 31 stages feature Sonic-style gameplay which is a shame.
All have a ranking system. This would become a series staple moving forward - and I can see why. Sonic levels are inherently short and fast, so it's good to have a motivation for replaying them as skillfully as possible. Unfortunately getting an A rank for the treasure hunts can be frustrating, especially in later levels, if you don't know the level inside-out, as emerald location is random.
All levels have 5 missions. I didn't try for completion on this occasion, so I completely ignored them. I have, however, in the past attempted this...and really not enjoyed it. While hard mode is a somewhat interesting take on the base levels, the other missions (coin collecting, finding a lost chao, speed run) are generally underwhelming and feel more like box-ticking than anything.
The Chao garden is fun but can't hold my attention these days. Maybe I've played it too much, or maybe I just don't have the time I used to? Would still love to see a dedicated game of this though.
Presentation
Graphically the game is leaps and bounds over Sonic Adventure, and I'd maybe argue that it looks better than pretty much any Sonic game before Unleashed. The character designs are pretty timeless, and the animations, while often stiff and awkward, are tolerable and lead to far fewer awkward moments than in Sonic Adventure. I played the game in 3440x1440 60fps on PC and it looked and felt great for the most part.
The music is great. In particular I really appreciate how each character has their own music genre - from rock in Sonic's levels, to rap in Knuckles' and jazz in Rouge's. The theme song is absolutely iconic, and one of my personal favourite tracks in Eggman's theme.
The rest of the audio though? Urgh. The sound mixing can be bad - really bad - in both cutscenes and gameplay. In the former, music will often drown out dialogue, or dialogue will overlap. In the latter, some stages (typically the shooting stages) will have an overabundance of sound effects, which can be quite jarring (especially if you want to enjoy the music!)
Conclusion: This was yet another ambitious game from Sonic Team, and I'd say, for the most part, they succeeded. The gameplay and storytelling have been refined over Sonic Adventure 1 in almost every way. Moreover, the game offers a unique experience in its darker storytelling and Hero vs. Dark stories that isn't really offered anywhere else. For these reasons, I don't find it surprising that it is a favourite of many. That said, I find a lot of the game to be a bit of a slog. I would only go back to this one if you have nostalgia for it, are curious on Shadow's origins, really want to experience the Sonic/Shadow levels, or are fairly tolerant of the treasure hunting and shooting. All-in-all, if I were to grade it, I'd give it a C-.
@timleon Great stuff, and a lot we agree on (right down to preferring the earlier Sonic and Shadow stages for their enjoyable simplicity). That said, we've gone in opposite directions on the treasure hunting levels; I didn't like them before, but I loved them when replaying recently. Otherwise, I think I was nodding along with every one of your bulletpoints up there. I'd maybe recommend it a little more firmly than you do in your conclusion (I'd argue that it can accurately be described as "great" without quickly adding "...for a Sonic game") but I can understand that your personal history with it makes you a little more cautious, and would've altered your return to play it once again. Context is everything, after all. Thanks for sharing!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@timleon I like the treasure hunting levels! Still my favourite Sonic game by a mile though, so much to do and varied gameplay. The soundtrack’s a bit of a meme but in a good way, I find myself singing along at times. Plus I spent sooo much time on the Chao Garden.
@timleon, nice Sonic Adventure reviews! I played the "Battle" variant of the second game at a friend's house back in the day (I think we took turns playing through levels) which was a good time, but that's really about all I can say about them, lol.
@crimsontadpoles, really interesting review of Fatal Frame 5! I haven't played it as I never bought a Wii U, but it's one of the exclusives that really caught my eye so I hope they find a way to port it to Switch.
@RogerRoger, an excellent review as always, and I too want to point out how excellent your screenshots are (if you hadn't of said otherwise I'd have never guessed that they weren't taken without some sort of native feature). Too bad the game never really clicked with you, and I know how frustrating it is to be cut off early & be chided for choosing an easier difficulty.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@RogerRoger Ah, OK, the HD screen probably helped. Even then, they're really nice screenshots. You did well when touching them up.
@timleon After I saw you mention the sound mixing, I looked it up online and, apparently, it's a well-known issue dating back at least to the GameCube version of the game. Lots of complaints about the Steam version, too, and some hilariously annoying videos showing off inexplicably loud background elements.
I know you think it's a better game than Sonic Adventure DX, but that one had the benefit of not assaulting your ears, right?
Good review, though. And, to address an earlier comment I somehow didn't see before, I was pretty out of the loop with Nintendo between the SNES - Wii eras, but I've always been extremely fond of Sega's consoles, so my experience with their 3D Sonic games ended with the Dreamcast. Still not sure why I didn't pick up SA2 on that system, though, considering my fondness for the first one at the time.
The mature storyline and weirdly high stakes seem interesting. Kinda reminds me of when I played Pokemon Y, and the big bad in that game goes full Narutaru and talks about his plan to use an ancient weapon to wipe out most life on Earth. That went from 0 to Global Genocide really quickly.
Ratchet & Clank (PS4) - The modern reimagining of one of PlayStation's longest running platformer franchises.
Gameplay:
A hybrid platformer/third person shooter, most levels have a linear progression, though of course there are hidden collectables right off the beaten path as well as the occasional optional objective that branches off from the main route. There are some attempts at non-linearity at times too, such as having a choice between which of the next two levels you want to tackle first, or one level that really opens up upon acquisition of a jetpack & is much more exploration based.
The platforming itself never asks much of the player (outside of some of the later rail grinding objectives), but the shooting really mixes things up & there are tons of weapons play around with from your standard laser blaster, grenades, flamethrower, rocket launcher, & sniper rifle, to more fanciful fare such as the Sheepinator (turns foes into sheep), Groovatron (makes enemies in it's area of effect dance), & Pixelizer (turns enemies retro). You're bound to find a few that really click with you, though things can get annoying if you're in the middle of a fire fight and have to switch to a weapon that you don't have mapped for quick access, especially in the later game where you have well over a dozen to sift between. Of course, Ratchet also has a melee attack he can perform with his ratchet if enemies get up too close
Occasionally there'll be some other sort of gameplay you'll be thrown into, such as ship dogfighting (pictured below), hoverboard racing, or some other mountable weapon, and while they do mix things up they usually don't come along too often. The most prevalent of these are laser based puzzles you'll need to solve to unlock doors/barriers (there is an auto-solve option for these if you don't want to get stuck on them, but I persevered on my own capabilities).
At times Clank (who usually just functions as Ratchet's double/extended jumps) will be seperated from Ratchet & you'll find yourself tasked with more methodical puzzle platforming. These segments usually revolve around utilizing a limited number of "gagebots" (which can function as trampolines, bridges, or electrical switches) in order to traverse the environment. Sometimes you'll have to survive while fleeing a stronger foe as well (pictured below).
In terms of collectables the most common type are Bolts, which you get for doing pretty much anything and are used to purchase new weapons (and refilling your health/ammo) at designated points. Otherwise you have Raritanium which can be found at single use harvest points & randomly dropped by enemies (use to upgrade weapons), & Golden Bolts (there are only 28 of them in the game, these coveted collectables unlock concept art, costumes, paint jobs, & even optional infinite ammo & invincibility toggles).
The most in depth collectables in the game are the Holocards. There are packs of these hidden away at various points in levels (and they're also randomly dropped by enemies), and they feature art & information about various characters/weapons throughout series history. They are arranged in sets of three, and if you complete a set you'll get a various buff, such as a 5% increase in the amount of Bolts or Raritanium you earn (you can swap 5 duplicates for a card you don't have, helping you to complete your collection). The most coveted of the Holocards are the RYNO cards, of which there are 9 and unlock the game's ultimate weapon if you find them (they can only be collected by accessing their hidden locations, and aren't randomly dropped by enemies).
Of course you often won't be able to access all of a level's big collectables on your first visit, so will need to return with new gear to access previously inaccessible areas. Also, in the second to last level there's an optional objective that will reward you with the ability to see the locations of all missing collectables on your map (which you can bring up by pressing the touch pad), if there are any that have eluded you.
There are some light RPG elements included as well (as with pretty much everything these days). Ratchet earns EXP for defeating enemies (though you only gain more overall health upon level up), and weapons level up individually as well (they each have their own skill tree that grows in size upon level up, and you spend the aforementioned Raritanium to activate the nodes, which do things such as increase maximum ammo, area of effect, range, etc). You won't be able to fully upgrade everything on a single playthrough, so just focus on your favorites.
Story:
A reboot that retells the story of the original game, it launched around the same time as a movie adaptation, & many of the game's cutscenes are straight up pulled from the film (you aren't allowed to take screenshots during such scenes, in contrast to events that happen in engine).
A comedic take on an epic space faring sci-fi adventure, it follows a young Lombax engineer named Ratchet who is excited to partake in tryouts for the Galactic Rangers, the galaxy's premier super hero team. While he may not have the base brawn traditionally needed for the job, thanks to his mechanical know how & the assistance of Clank (a "defective" warbot that escaped the villainous Drex Industries) he's able to perform above his level, and along with the info Clank gives him about Drex's nefarious schemes, he earns a spot on the team.
Visual/Audio:
It really is a lovely looking game, and each planet you visit (which are the game's levels) has a very distinctive vibe, whether it be a tropical paradise, metropolis, industrial, volcanic, etc. I just couldn't help myself and took many screenshots of the environments, many of which you can see below.
Performance is mostly rock solid on base PS4, though I noticed the occasional dropped frame here or there. Nothing I'd say impacts the experience though, and it's understandable as A LOT can be happening on screen at once.
I wouldn't say the soundtrack stands out, but it fits the sci-fi adventure vibe the game has going.
Conclusion:
This was my first experience with a Ratchet & Clank game, & while the core platforming isn't quite as tight as something Nintendo would put out (which was noticeable as I started this while still playing SM3DW on Switch), but it's still a high quality well crafted game, and the mixture with third person shooting with a variety of fun weapons really definitely makes it stand out in comparison to other platformers.
Don't be sheepish, give it a whirl.
I agree that context is important here, and some of my issues stem from overfamiliarity with the games. This is a revisit (I've not played the game much in the past few years), but in the past, as mentioned, I played this game to death - so perhaps I've just tired myself of the treasure hunting! That said, there are a few stages that I enjoy - I quite like Death Chamber and Egg Quarters - but can't stand Meteor Herd and Mad Space. Like Sonic's and Shadow's levels, I think the earlier levels tend to be stronger - but by nature of difficulty progression these tend to be over the quickest, such that most of my memories with the treasure hunting are the longer and more tedious levels.
@Razilah I've not looked into it, but it does seem the sound mixing issue depends on the version of the game to some extent? I've seen clips where it seems much worse than I remember, and I don't remember having such an issue with the sound effects in previous playthroughs on e.g. the Gamecube. Personally the sound mixing doesn't bother me too much, but it can take me out of the moment sometimes.
Haha. To be fair, complete world destruction isn't too uncommon in "family-friendly" stories, and a lot of it is to do with the overall tone of the storytelling. The original Sonic Adventure had some fairly dark elements which were overshadowed by it's relatively bright tone and frankly awkward presentation - whereas here they go all out IMO. The game is also literally quite dark in places - probably one of my complaints, actually. For a Sonic game there aren't many vibrant colours - I remember a UK Nintendo magazine printing a level guide at one point and you could barely differentiate the levels because of how dark the screenshots were! (Although I'd say the environments "pop" a little more in HD than they did in SD, from memory).
Concrete Genie Platform: PS4 Completion status: Received the platinum trophy, so I did damn near everything there is to do
Concrete Genie was created by developer Pixelopus, which was established in 2014 and primarily consisted of University students who had been scouted out by SIE as part of their initiative to find smaller developers in the wake of thatgamecompany's critically acclaimed Journey. Their first game, Entwined, was... interesting, but not particularly memorable. Concrete Genie is the developer's second game, released in 2019, and while it represents a massive evolution over their first project, it also has conceptual, structural, and design issues that kept me from enjoying it as much as I wanted to.
Concrete Genie takes place in Denska, a formerly bustling port town that is now a deserted wasteland and being consumed by a Darkness. This Darkness seems to be a physical manifestation of the despair felt by the few people who still live there, brought about by both a lack of hope for future prospects and by the ecological destruction wrought by an oil spill years back. In the midst of this misery, a young artist named Ash, who is stalked by a gang of bullies throughout the game, stumbles upon a lighthouse that mysteriously grants life to one of his creations, a monstrosity named Luna. Luna conjures a magic paintbrush for Ash to use to will other daemonic doodles (genies) to life, and Ash sets out to graffiti the town, because... the game presumably requires an interactive element.
It's clearly an attempt at whimsy and creativity, but the game falls on its face for me from the onset. As the player, you'll run around various sections of Denska finding creation spots to conjure new spirits, which you'll need in order to complete environmental puzzles, as they can only move across connected surfaces, and sections of the game require you to manipulate bits of the environment in order to bring the creatures along with you. The majority of the game involves using your Epic Mickey paintbrush to splash designs onto buildings in order to meet creativity quotas required to progress the story. Well, that's only half the story. You don't usually get a lot of choice about what designs you are to use in this game. Instead, the wall-bound ghouls you magick to life will make wordless demands about combinations of designs they want you to mix together on the same surface, and your progress in the game is often held ransom until you figure out what they want. Which is usually fine and quick enough, but oftentimes the pictorial representations of their demands (which appear as symbols in word bubbles next to them) will become confused with the designs you already placed on the walls. More often than not, it's clear that the combined elements were supposed to create a particular mood or aesthetic, but my paintings would often be a shadow of this because I had to remove previously created elements in order to figure out what else the genies wanted me to do.
The player collects designs from pages of his sketchbook that were scattered to the winds, and they'll need to collect most of these pages in order to have the requisite designs needed to complete the game. The player can also collect pages that feature customization features for the genies, which I found to be fairly pointless; no matter how many different appendages I was allowed to attach to my genies, they always came out looking like Lovecraftian monstrosities. At first, I leaned into this and made them as alien and frightening looking as possible, but the game wants you to design so many of these stupid things, and at some point I just stopped caring: new genie creation point? Sure, I'll slap an antler on it somewhere and call it a day. My favorite, which came out of a moment of pure frustration with the game, looked like a deformed ball of antlers and arms that were growing out of a central mass at random. Unfortunately, when animating the genies, the game always opts for the least interesting solution and makes them humanoid and bipedal, no matter how you design them. If my ball of appendages could have rolled around the walls like The Blob, without eyes or a face, I would have been much fonder of it. Unfortunately, this game is creative in the same way that Telltale Games were full of moral choices: you're given options, but, at the end of the day, the extent of your input is limited by factors beyond your control.
The first half of the game encompasses this "creative" gameplay alongside sequences where you run into your tormenters and your magic paintbrush will feed you a quick (if creatively rendered) cutscene explaining how a given child's home life is broken. Presumably, the function of these sob stories is to humanize your tormenters and explain why they've dedicated their life to making your character as miserable as humanly possible, which is important, because the second half of the game includes them much more prominently. At some point, they capture you and break your paintbrush, which makes the genies turn violent and wild, and proceed to capture the bullies.
At this point, it's like the designers have come to the realization that the game they were making was dreadfully dull, and opted to make something else entirely halfway through. The rest of the game abandons the painting conceit almost entirely, and becomes more of an action game where you're to track down down the genies and... engage them in battle... in order to bring them to their senses? It doesn't make any sense, really, and the worst part is that the game uses these sequences where you rescue your bullies from the daemons you created earlier in the game to try and forge a bond between your character and his tormenters. As it turns out, months or potentially even years of terror and abuse can be forgiven and forgotten because these budding criminals didn't have perfect lives. Now, don't get me wrong: I LOVE a good redemption/forgiveness story, but this just isn't it. This is a victim embracing his abusers the moment he proves useful to them and they decide there's more utility in working with him than making his life a living hell. That... I'm sorry, that doesn't strike me as the sort of timeless tale of childhood friendship the designers of this game clearly think it does, and I found the character dynamics here to be insulting as a result.
That's... A LOT of negativity, isn't it? Strangely enough, I didn't actually hate the game. There is actually some good here as well. For one thing, Concrete Genie handles extremely well: Ash is a joy to control, platforming around environments is fun, and, in the second half of the game, he gains the ability to essentially skate around Denska, and it makes traversal insanely fun. I actually really wish this ability to skate around environments had been around in some capacity throughout the game, as it feels wasted being limited to the second half of the experience. Another bright spot on the control front is that the painting, by default, encourages the use of gyro aiming, the the DS4 works really well for this purpose.
The combat and genie taming in the second half of the game is also quite enjoyable. FAR more fun than the painting gameplay in the first half of the game. It's a pity, as I feel like, again, this element would have been better integrated into the entire game. Running around and painting while engaging in combat with some sort of enemy would have added some much-needed variety to the gameplay. Maybe with an upgradeable meter that's used when skating around the environments. As it stands, Concrete Genie feels like two different game concepts that were awkwardly mashed together into one entirely inconsistent experience. It's a bit annoying, because it's easy to see how, with some tweaks, the game could have ended up being much better than it was.
Conceptually, the game could have been great. It's almost there. I like the magical realism and Ghibli-esque focus on the ways in which humans and nature impact one-another. But, narratively, the game is undercooked and ends up being ill-conceived as a result. The game WANTS to talk about ecology, and how other people shape who we end up being, and explore complex dynamics between groups of children, but it never realizes any of those ambitions.
I'm becoming sour again, but I do want to emphasize, before that mood takes over, that the presentation in this game is phenomenal. I LOVE the art-style in this game. The characters almost look stop-motion, and combined with the gorgeous particle effects and environmental design, it all comes together beautifully to create an experience that I always enjoyed looking at. Unfortunately, the frame rate on the base system can become a bit choppy at times, but the visual design is strong enough that, even when this happened during cutscenes, I wasn't really taken out of the experience. What took me out of the experience was the poor gameplay and narrative.
In my pursuit of the almighty platinum trophy, I found all of the collectibles in this game and engaged with the game modes outside of the core campaign. I think the experience actually comes together best in the post-game, as it combines your skating ability with the core gameplay of the first half, only now you're actually exploring your environment for secrets instead of constantly being held hostage by genie demands. Some of these collectibles are difficult to find, but looking for all of them helped me to appreciate the often excellent, multi-tiered level design. It's just too bad the game doesn't do much with these levels. It would have been fun to have platforming challenges in the main or post-game in order to actually utilize these spaces to their full potential.
The game has a "free painting" mode, outside of the core campaign, where the player can skate around splashing designs on walls in any way they see fit. This... seemed fairly pointless to me. There's no real gameplay or scoring system attached to this. I guess this mode would be nice for someone who gets their jollies creating murals in the game and screenshotting them, but... you can do that in the main game, too. There's literally no reason to do "free painting" instead of just playing the campaign's post-game. But you have to do something in each of the free painting levels in order to collect all the trophies, so I did.
Concrete Genie is a game I wanted to love, but couldn't. At the same time, it does certain things right enough that I can't properly hate it, either. It's not a terrible game, and I do find it impressive how much of an upgrade this is over the developer's first game. It LOOKS like a premium experience, and the game design is a few altered decisions away from actually being decent. Unfortunately, I have to take games as they come, and Concrete Genie gets a 4/10 from me.
@RR529 Nice Ratchet and Clank piece! This reboot was also my first experience the franchise, and I also came away mostly happy with it. Granted, it never blew me out of the water, but you seem to enjoy it in the same way I did: as a gorgeous action-platformer that's good, simple fun and has decent weapon variety.
Love the screenshots, too. It really is a pretty little game.
@Ralizah I first scrolled down to your conclusion (I always do this with articles!) and then frowned at the grade you gave the game, being ready to post a comment not agreeing with you being this harsh. But then I read your review, nodding along, realizing I was thinking back about this game with rose tinted glasses.
Actually, I think you're on point. And the negative score doesn't mean that this game is a far cry from being good, because I agree to that so many ingredients in this game were close to being great. But some stuff (the restrictions the game places on the player being a big thing, the game not being sure what it wants to be and maybe worst of all its narrative) just doesn't deserve any praise.
Great articulation too of how the game misses the mark on a narrative level:
This is a victim embracing his abusers the moment he proves useful to them and they decide there's more utility in working with him than making his life a living hell. That... I'm sorry, that doesn't strike me as the sort of timeless tale of childhood friendship the designers of this game clearly think it does, and I found the character dynamics here to be insulting as a result.
@Ralizah I totally agree with that review. On basically every point. I’m ashamed to say that I couldn’t even finish the game, my PS5 arrived and I just kinda thought ‘what’s the point?’ as I really hadn’t been enjoying it. 4/10 is the same as two stars, which people really wouldn’t be as annoyed about on this site if PS gave reviews in that vein.
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