Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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The Last Guardian
A.k.a., Pet Simulator: The Game

The Last Guardian is a tricky game to review.
It can either be considered way ahead of its time, or way behind the times. On one hand, it can be an example of video games as art, or on the other hand, it can be relegated as a source of immense irritation.

After playing it over the last few weeks and now finally completing it, I can confidently say that it has been one of the most frustrating game experiences in recent years and also one of the more satisfying. It sounds like I’m describing Bloodborne or Dark Souls, but the frustration and subsequent satisfaction elicited by TLG is of a different flavor entirely. The game is not difficult because of purposely challenging combat or the need for perfect timing or skill. It’s not frustrating because of complex skill trees, heavy amounts of confusing lore to memorize, or endless required fetch quests, collectathons, or grinding. It has no empty side quests with forgettable NPCs or empty dialog choices that go nowhere. No, it steers clear of all the gaming tropes that we gamers like to whine about.
In my opinion, the source of annoyance experienced in the game is two fold — poorly tuned game mechanics and the infamous Trico AI, with the latter being the real point of debate.

What makes this game special?

Out of curiosity and also as an attempt to avoid repetition in this review, I took time to go back and read Sammy’s original review of the game, posted back in 2016. It’s an excellent read, and mentions most of my thoughts in a much more well-written package than I could produce. Reading the comments section beneath the article, however, it is clear how divisive and passionate people are about this game.
And since I had come up with some of the same criticisms that had been voiced not only by Sammy (who loved the game and gave it a 9/10, by the way) but also other users in the comments section, it made me think a lot about it — Some people feel the Trico AI is endearing, artistic, groundbreaking, and innovative. Some think it is a sign of poor programming, a broken scheme, and haughty design. Detractors say the game just flat out isn’t “fun.” Supporters of the game would counter, do games have to be “fun” to be worthwhile? And the debate rages on and on...

I’ll table that debate for a while and just say, the game does a great job at eliciting emotional response and reflecting a beautiful and endearing relationship between the two main characters.
So it begs the question: Could I have grown to adore Trico and the Boy and love their relationship if the AI was more obedient, the mechanics more traditional, and the gameplay smoother?
Chew on that question for a while and we’ll come back to it after I discuss some of the game’s high and low points.

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The Highs

The game is beautiful. The sense of scale and feeling of mystery is trademark Fumito Ueda. Few games can convey the sense of wonder and awe that his games do, and it’s front and center in this game. Sure — the color palate is a little bland, and the aesthetic is mostly copy and paste from Ico, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Still screenshots of Trico don’t do it justice, with its coat of thousands of feathers independently moving in the wind. The way it cocks its head and flares its nostrils as it sniffs curiously around makes it feel more lifelike that the unnamed co-protagonist, The Boy.

The Boy is another of Ueda’s mysterious young heroes. Waking up somewhere, not knowing how he got there and where he’s from. Dialogue and sound in general is sparse. The language is a fabricated mishmash of an Asian sounding dialect with an American Indian tribal twist. It fits perfectly into that world. And I must say that one of the most adorable things I’ve ever heard from a video game is when the boy talks to Trico, especially during some of the poignant and emotional parts. It’s absolutely precious and at times, downright heartbreaking to hear him call out when they are separated for a time.

I loved how Trico would whine when confused or injured, growl when uncomfortable or threatened, or preen with pride after a well placed jump. Whether you agree or not on the other aspects of this game, you have to admit that Trico the cat-dog-bird creation is one of the most, is not the most “alive” feeling animal in all of video gaming.

>> As an interesting aside, I was fascinated that Ueda states that the surprisingly warm reaction of gamers to Agro, the horse, and his connection with his owner, Wander, in Shadow of the Colossus was the motivation for his making Trico and wanting to produce a game where the core concept revolves around the relationship of a human and a creature.

The setting is a breathtaking creation as well. The relatively linear set pieces and level design are wonderfully crafted and intricately planned. Each area is ingeniously manufactured to mesh with the puzzles and the journey through the large castle-like ruins.

The puzzles are pretty challenging, but great care was obviously put into creating them and making each area have unique twists on the gameplay that really stretched my mind at times. There were several times when I would be certain that I have looked in every nook and cranny trying to find a way to progress, only to have the “Aha!” moment when it clicked as to what needed to be done to progress.

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The Lows

First, I’ll start with the control and input. Platforming is finicky and imprecise at times. The boy handles pretty loosey-goosey and many a death was due to missing a jump. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but I can’t see why it would have been. I think it’s just broken game design. The Boy is hard to maneuver and it feels very ‘last gen’ in this department. I felt like I was playing a PS2 platformer at times, bumping into things, falling over, being unable to land a jump because of poor control, dying in combat because the camera was unwieldy, etc. In particular, combat is extremely frustrating and poorly responsive.

And mostly as a result of Trico being so huge, camera issues abound, especially in tight places, which happen a lot. Trico’s mass can block the view and take up the whole screen. Couple this with a combat scenario or a need for a precise jump or a good view to solve a puzzle and you can see how it might cause a controller to be tossed through a TV screen.

As a consequence of Ueda’s philosophy of “design by subtraction” where he systematically actually removes elements of his games that don’t contribute to the core theme, the gameplay comes across as confusing and the instructions are fairly minimalist. In the early hours, the game doesn’t signpost where you’re supposed to go like other games do, which leads to significant frustration. Other basic principles of the game world are either not explained, or are introduced so cryptically that you have to figure it out on your own. Like the fact that the stained glass eye panels are repellants to Trico, or that Trico will need to be petted to calm it down at times in order to progress. These “figure it out yourself” times are fine since they are clearly part of what the game intends for you to learn on your own, even if I found them a bit more frustrating than they needed to be. But something like the exact commands to control Trico, once you learn them, needed to be spelled out better. In contrast, the game gave me prompts about which button to use to jump (fully with a little picture of a controller in the corner of the screen with the button I needed to press highlighted), and reminded me of this button many times all the way into the late game, long after I knew how to do that simple task, but it never told me, for example, that I can make Trico heel and sit by pressing X with the R1 command button. I had to find that out through a walkthrough when I got stuck because making Trico sit is a necessary part of one of the puzzles.

In general, the game just doesn’t teach many of its mechanics very well, leaving you to suss out how to play and progress on your own. Later on I started to notice the more subtle hints and clues in the environment (blue butterflies, white glowing foot tiles, a hanging chain, etc) that pointed me, but I would have preferred these things to be more overt, especially in the early hours.
Even the respawn after death / button mashing mechanic is never explained and I thought my game was glitched when I waited like 5 minutes to respawn and it never happened. I rage quit as a result and had to find out through trial and error later on.

Walkthroughs were helpful. I didn’t have to use a walkthrough with either Ico or Shadow of the Colossus but for this game it saved me from quitting it, and as a result missing out on the beautiful end game experiences. I’ve used walkthroughs in plenty of other games, for example they got me through Bloodborne, which was one of my favorites this generation, so using a walkthrough didn’t ruin it for me, and actually enhanced my enjoyment. But it seems like the kind of game that is supposed to be enjoyed without having to search the internet for help.

A quick word on the trophy list, which I found to be fairly annoying. By the end I had 50% completion, which is about average for completing a game for me, but nearly all the trophies involved doing pretty trivial tasks and there were no ‘automatic’ trophies except one for completing the game. It’s a minor thing, but I thought I’d mention it.

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The Conclusion

Eventually, through the use of guides on the web in conjunction with my own repeating experiences, I got to recognize the positioning and behavior of Trico. I started to feel how it behaves before it jumps, how it tended to look toward areas of interest, and it became easier to predict where it was going. I eventually learned through experience that it was best to only give Trico one command at a time and wait for it to perform that before expecting it to do anything else. In the beginning I would give a command to “go over there” and “jump” when I need it to make a path for me, and it would just stare at me and whine and look around. Over time, I realized it couldn’t interpret multiple sequential input commands all at once. Then the game started to get easier.

By the end, I began to appreciate the advice I got about Trico being like a pet and the game is better when you just accept it doesn’t do what you want all the time. That being said, I stand by my criticism that this sometimes results in game breaking (or at least game halting) problems where you are unable to progress because of the random animal AI. Times when you’ve figured out a puzzle, but your animal companion won’t let you complete it and so you’re stuck for a while, banging your head against a wall. These parts became few and far between to non-existent toward the end, which tells me it was more that I was playing the game “wrong” in the early hours when I had to reload checkpoints many times to get Trico to do what I needed him to do so we could progress. Unfortunately, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression,” so I don’t think I’ll ever play the game again to see if I could enjoy the early hours better on a second run. It was just too tainted by my own irritation early on. Which is too bad, because by the last act, I was smitten by the delightful relationship of the boy and his creature, and amazed at the magical world the game gave me. It was a privilege to have seen it and ended up a pleasant experience.

It’s one of those times though when what makes for a good experience does not always make a good game. Mechanical flaws hold it back from being truly transcendent.

And this brings me back to the original question: If the gameplay, design, AI, and control had been different, would I have still enjoyed the core relationship at the end?
Ueda’s clear goal was to make a game where you appreciate the connection of Beast and Boy. He absolutely accomplished this, so who am I to judge his methods? I do feel like a few elements could have been better and still not detracted from the goal, but who knows? My hope is that his next game will give us a portion of the answer to that question and that he irons out some of the game design “flaws” yet still is able to accomplish his artistic vision.

Oh... for those who prefer a bite-sized numerical summary, I’m thinking about a 7.5 out of 10. 😃

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Death Stranding – A Flawed Masterpiece

Death Stranding is a hard game to process, it is one of the most unique art pieces in any form of media, and is bursting from the seams with ambition and beauty. However it has some large cracks which leak through nastier forms of problems into the mixture, and make this creation an ever harder task to understand and review than it was before.

So let’s start from the beginning, you play as Sam “Porter” Bridges, a grizzled recluse who has turned his back on humanity and his sole purpose is to deliver items and survive in the harsh version of America the game is based around.

You see, America has changed. After a series of explosions caused by multiple dimensions coming into collision with one another dubbed the “Death Stranding” America as it once was ceased to exist. The way people interacted was heavily different to the way you and I interact now, face to face communication was reduced, people went into hiding below ground, and the world relied more on porters than ever before. Porters like Sam were key to keeping societies alive and moving the country forward through scientific and technological discoveries.

America is a much more dangerous place to live in now as well, with beings from another dimension labelled ‘Beached Things’ roaming the land and claiming the lives of numerous people on a daily basis. An encounter at the start of the game is what brings Sam and BB together (Bridge Baby), BBs are seen as a must have if you want any chance of surviving outside, and use motion sensor technology to sense where BTs are and guide the individual to safety away from BT territory.

But even with all these dangers, America has not lost all hope. New discoveries are being spear headed by BRIDGES, the last defence for keeping civilisation from being fully wiped out and keeping hope for America to one day reconnect and evolve into something never before seen to fight the threats that the world of Death Stranding presents.

And that is where Sam is brought into our story, BRIDGES is run by Sam’s dying mother Bridget (who is also the President of America), and in her final moments she shares with Sam she pleads for him to join the cause to help reconnect America and bring forward a new golden age full of hope and promise for the country and maybe even the world.

So that brings us all up to speed with the main gist of the game’s narrative, you all know the headlines that have been attached to this game, and how it has polarised critics and fans alike. From being dubbed a walking simulator to a marvel in game design.

Now I cannot please everyone with this review and with a game that has received such diverse amounts of both criticism and praise, it is hard for anyone to have the definitive answer to what this game is, how good or bad it is, and whether it is worth experiencing, so I am going to explain my personal thoughts from my own near 90 hour playthrough of Death Stranding.

Packages, Packages, Packages.

By now you all know the gameplay loop of Death Stranding, you as Sam Bridges take on deliveries for multiple factions and individuals in different zones of America ranging from medical supplies, hot pizza and decomposing human bodies. This is all whilst navigating the harsh yet serene landscape of Death Stranding’s open world and doing your best to avoid (or take on) the threats that surround you, be it Separatists, Mules or Beached Things, there is always something to keep you on your toes.

And you will be on your toes a lot in this game, with a real lack of vehicles for the starting acts of the game, a lot of your early time with DS will be on foot using your trusty soles and equipment to get you from A to B. You will need to keep balance of your items, regularly change boots, stock up on tools and adjust the weight that Sam carries. This is done through multiple gameplay mechanics such as holding down on L2 and R2 to keep your balance whilst manoeuvring the environments of DS. Another mechanic is how unlike games where your inventory is a never ending bag of goodies with no penalties for carrying three master swords or 50 grenades, DS makes you feel the weight (mind the pun) of these decisions.

Every item has weight, from a non-lethal shotgun, to a flask of Monster Energy, and must be managed accordingly. Too little weight can mean you come underprepared for missions and have to make several trips to complete deliveries, however too much weight can mean you have to trudge through the land, making you more easily visible to enemies and at risk of being attacked.

This is the strategy of Death Stranding, and makes you carefully consider every move you make, “can I take that one extra climbing rope or do I decide to go off the path and venture into the potentially dangerous territory to save myself the added weight?” These are the questions I asked myself even 60+ hours into the game, and each delivery brought on new challenges to face and tips to embed into my brain.

You would think with a lot of this game being delivering that this game could grow a chore and make the player become tiresome of the loop, but for me personally that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was hooked from start to finish and it was one of the only experiences I have had in gaming where I can confidently say that game just kept getting better and more fun to play the more I went through with it.

The story is a large part of this enjoyment, with it being Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus of storytelling that is nowhere near as hard to understand as early trailers would make you think. Each character is meticulously crafted and the game steadily evolves your journey alongside them, making the whole package feel like a living entity rather than data on a Blu-Ray disc, I will not spoil anything or even discuss the story more than I already have, but is more than worth the price of admission to enter.

The other 4 sides of this square of enjoyment are made up of three things which I will discuss next: Exploration, Evolution and Tension.

Exploration

Exploration is a key theme in Death Stranding, with it being the way you communicate with the world around you and is integral to moving the story and game forward, and luckily Kojima Productions has made a world fully worth delving into and exploring at your own pace.

From the snow covered peaks, to flowing rivers and forests to cavernous ruins and abandoned shopping centres, Death Stranding has a multitude of environments for the player to navigate through. Each of these vistas is jam-packed with beauty and mystery and allows the player to take in everything at their own pace, it also allows a lot of freedom throughout the world, it really takes the Todd Howard “You can climb that mountain” phrase to a whole new level. You can shimmy Sam up cliff sides, ride floating carriers down rocky terrain and use ladders to get onto rooftops of almost any building which allows player freedom to go to another level that can only be rivalled by BOTW.

There are secrets to find, deliveries to make and paths to create and experiment with, and this exploration is boosted by the multiplayer support in the game. Death Stranding uses a strand online system that expands on the technology used by From Software in their games and takes it to a whole new level, players can unite with one another without ever coming into contact with one another to create safe houses, roads and so much more to enhance the experience and make the world a little easier to traverse. This not only keeps the player engaged in the world but allows them to make connections they otherwise would never had made and see places they may never had seen if it wasn’t for the helping hands provided by other players.

Exploration and Teamwork go hand in hand in this aspect and allow the game to evolve into a living, breathing community which is one of the most positive I have experienced in gaming, there is far less trolling that the Souls games and their notes and I have not experienced one player note or construction that didn’t benefit me in some way. I even went out of my way to build an entire network of zip lines connecting parts of the map in the more brutal snowy mountain regions to help players deliver items faster and without the hassle of BTs, and this was all for other players, I hardly had to use that network once I built it but I was happy knowing it would make someone’s experience a little more easier, and coming back to that creation now it has surpassed tens of thousands of likes making me feel justified in my generosity.

The world of Death Stranding truly immerses you and really makes you fall in love with what this game has to offer and boosts your own bond with this creation as you are always in awe of what the game presents to you through its mesmerising visuals and amazing soundscapes that make this world feel like the main character in the game, with Sam and Co just being there for the ride.

Evolution

Death Stranding is a game that truly evolves and shapeshifts as you delve further into it, it goes from immersive sim, to fully fledged horror and then back to a vast multiplayer survival sandbox, and it all feels natural and meaningful. It also evolves in more than just genre, you discover new ways to traverse the world and interact with it as you go on with the story which acts as the adrenaline to keep this beast of a game going on its journey and reinvigorates the player on their own personal journey.

The difference from hour 2 to hour 20 was massive as was the difference from hour 35 to hour 70. It just keeps showing off new areas, methods and tonal changes that make this game an amazing experience that is almost unrivalled in the industry. The games grows and evolves with the player and as you find an efficient way of doing something, DS opens up and throws new challenges and with that new equipment and methods to tackle those challenges all without taking away freedom from the player and making everything feel fresh.

The theme of Evolution runs deep in the game and has contact with all parts of the game, with the way the actual world can physically change around you, be it with player structures, craters being left behind, the time-fall that forever moves around the map freely or structures of your very own, it means the world never stays predictable and as a result the game never feels predictable in a sense, yes you are delivering packages for the duration of the game, but somehow it feels fresh even in the 80th hour.

Death Stranding’s story also evolves freely during its runtime, with story beats and characters being introduced at every turn and with the game hitting you hard with constant emotion making you care that much more for the task at hand, and it does an amazing job at explaining each new thing that it has to offer and makes the ending feel that more rewarding as a perfectly crafted self-contained story.
This game not only evolves itself but also will spark an evolution in game design and see more and more studios take on unique IPs and choosing artistic integrity over sales figures.

Tension

Tension is a huge part of any memorable experience, from the dread you felt having to navigating the demented world of Silent Hill, to the tension you felt in a scintillating boss battle in Bloodborne when you’re on your last healing item. Tension can add layer upon layer onto experiences and make our connection to those experience even stronger, and Death Stranding succeeds with flying colours in this aspect.

Whether it be carrying multiple delicate packages over a unreliable cliff, knowing the slightest loss of balance could send you and your cargo flying off into the depths below, or be it when you are navigating BT territory with a handful of grenades and a baby in a jar being the only two things keeping you alive. Death Stranding really nails these feelings and made me grieve the loss of PT even more as it really shown how skilled Kojima is at creating true terror for its players to experience.

This tension is built from the derelict environments you explore, the terrifying beings you come across and the gameplay mechanics put in place to allow these parts to excel as one. The way Sam has to hold his breath around the other worldly creatures that surround him mixed with the fact you have to stand completely still to be able to even see those creatures for a split second creates a never before seen game of cat and mouse that never loses its tension even when you have rocket launchers and grenades in your arsenal.

The sound design goes a long way to making the game feel even more tense and filled with terror with its bass filled booms and whispery moans of the BTs mixed with the sound of Sam’s muffled breaths alongside the unforgiving weather give off sinister vibes that send shivers up your spine.

Flawed Stranding.

My love for this game is immense and I have thoroughly explained that in the previous 2304 words before now. However I am not going to let my love ignore the reality that this game has some serious flaws that may put some off the game entirely.

This game is a magnum opus in world building, immersion and story for Kojima but is easily his worst in areas such as controls and some of the gameplay mechanics that made his games something special.
The controls to this game are hit and miss, when they are going your way they are amazing, but when they miss they miss HARD and FAR. Sam will randomly clip on areas of the world he shouldn’t be colliding with, he will slip on seemingly nothing in a constant animation loop of him skidding on the spot before slamming to the floor and leaving your frustration on the backburner as you have to tend with the constant crying of your BB, with yourself having to manually take the controller and slowly rock it till BB goes back to sleep, with neglecting BB leaving it vulnerable to being stuck in a state of autotoxemia rendering it helpless to you or itself against the dangers of the world.

The way vehicles act in this game is enough to put you off them, with a monster of a truck being seemingly unable to get over one lonely rock whilst you can manage to manually force your bike up any cliff just because the game says so.

Combat is an option in the game but with how poorly it works and how bad the guns feel to fire you are better off avoiding it as much as possible, gun variety is severely lacking in the number and idea department which make combat even more unenjoyable.

Stealth is also an option to the player but compared to the masterful mechanics in MGSV, DS is so paper-thin here that you can exploit it without trying or even meaning to, this means encounters against fellow human enemies lose all excitement and it becomes a slog to steal things from enemy camps as it doesn’t push the player or give them a sense of enjoyment.

Luckily the BT AI is much more advanced and will keep its tension and enjoyment when you face them but if they were always visible I have to ask myself a question of whether I would had loved the encounters so much?

And finally the biggest flaw of all, is the boss battles, Kojima has always had iconic boss battles in all his titles, from Sniper Wolf to Psycho Mantis, Hideo and his team pushed the bar of what to expect in boss battles and created memorable experiences solely based off those.

However I am sad to say that boss battles are heavily uninspired and lacking any challenge even on the hardest difficulty, the designs are generic for a lot of the enemies and can basically be classes as Tar Squid, Tar Whale etc. This kills enjoyment and makes boss battles a tedious task that you end up dreading instead of awaiting full of hype like you would had done in the past.

They also follow similar methods to being defeated which make them really repetitive, for example most bosses come down to shoot gold sections on the enemy body or the head/mouth and reload, then rinse and repeat, the encounters lose all difficulty as some bosses just tend to roam aimlessly around the arenas making you have to go out and find them, which takes away from the experience.

The bosses that look the coolest also hit the player in the face with disappointment as they appear to be nothing more than static shooting gallery’s built into a 3D model, making you just pop away at the static enemy till they die, they occasionally may fire a easy to avoid projectile but apart from that it never really moves from there sadly.

Conclusion

Death Stranding is a game that deserves to be experienced, it pushes the boundaries of game design and narrative formulas to never before seen highs and is at its core a team of talented creatives embracing their craft to create a near masterpiece, however along the way their ambitions clouded their general knowledge and as a result they missed the beat on some basic elements of the game that could have made it a once in a generation experience.

This game is not and will never be for everyone, it will always be as polarising as it was when I started this review and it will not change as a result of my review either, Kojima Productions has delivered a great and solid enough debut game from their team which is something I have never experienced in gaming and is an experience I will never forget nor do I think will ever be matched in parts, however there are parts of this game that have been done better in games that Hideo Kojima himself made years ago on older generations of platforms without the power that development teams have at their hands nowadays.

Death Stranding is a near flawless masterpiece of art, however deeper inspection of the painting that is the game reveals flakes of paint coming off, mistakes in the placement of the brush upon canvas and a general lack of polish in certain areas that take away from the overall experience.

8.5/10