What I'm Playing (Volume 84): Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lego Batman is one of my favorite modern games. The hook of the game is excellent, with my favorite superhero in the driver's seat, along with tons of cleverly designed levels, hidden secrets around every corner, an absolutely delightful soundtrack derived from the films, and an excellent opportunity for cooperative play across all ages. It was an absolute throwaway game I was given by my brother in law, and my son and I spent hours and hours exploring the levels in Gotham City.

Lego Batman 2 came along and upped the ante, although it doesn't have quite the same place in my heart. It did away with the unspeakably charming nonsensical voice acting, diluting the cleverness of the humor in the game significantly. It added layer upon layer of depth to the game, however, introducing a giant Gotham City to explore, vehicles to use, countless new characters, and, most importantly, the ability to split your screen during cooperative play-fixing the single biggest weakness with Lego Batman.

After completing the first two games in the series, my son and I purchased the third in the series to play, but got mired down. A big part of this is that my son became enamored with Minecraft, and rarely wants to play any other video game. The other part is that after the delightful experiences spent with Lego Batman, Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, Lego Harry Potter, and our personal favorite Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham just doesn't feel quite as special.

 

But we finally finished it while home taking care of the new baby (spend time with your older kids when you have a baby, it's really important!), and I'm here to review it for all of you.

The biggest problem with this game is that it just doesn't feel like a Batman game in the way the other two did. While the plot loosely revolves around Batman, it's actually a Justice League game in every sense. You're fighting the bad Lanterns/Braniac (find a solo Batman movie/comic arc where he does this), there's no Gotham City to explore, and the aesthetic is far brighter than a Batman story. The other two games had a marked Batman feel to them, and this one just doesn't. It plays much more similarly to the ensemble Lego Marvel Super Heroes, but lacks a lot of the charm and polish that that brilliant title had.

 

The controls are again kind of slippery and interacting with the environment can be really challenging. You'll find yourself falling off cliffs, getting stuck in weird locations, being unable to determine which things can be broken and which can't, and going to wrong direction while attempting to fight enemies.

 

The music is good, again, although if I never hear that Wonder Woman theme song (which plays when she flies) again, I'll be very grateful.

 

There are tons of collectibles to be had here, but it's greatly missing out on the big hub world to explore. Trolling New York City, Gotham City, and Hogwarts for secrets is one of the absolute best things about my preferred Lego games, and this Lego game has the least amount of that experience of all of them, which is really strange.

 

The biggest problem I have with the Lego games is how buggy they are, and this one is no exception. I had to restart several levels because I got stuck due to bugs, and this was incredibly annoying. Someone at Traveller's Tales really needs to fix the bugs in these games, and this is particularly onerous as they now have the ability to patch them!

In some ways, as the games have grown more and more complex, they've also gotten worse. The levels in particular are just so packed with pre-rendered environments that it kind of misses out on the charm of the original Lego games, and I wish they'd go back to a more simple presentation. It doesn't really fill like you're occupying a world built out of Legos, and that's kind of sad. The levels are also far more complex than before, which makes them much more challenging to play cooperatively with younger children. Now that there's 20 different powers spread across hundreds of characters (a conservative estimate), it's really difficult to consider who all you need to use to clear out different obstacles, particularly when Batman and Robin now have many power suits each, with full access to those suits.

 

The free play change was also irritating to me. In the Lego games, once you complete a level with the given characters, you're free to revisit the level with any characters you choose. In previous games, however, you had access to a selected slate of characters that you could quickly cycle through, in addition to being able to pull up the full character select screen and get the specific one you want. In this one, however, you no long have that limited slate, making switching characters a truly lengthy affair, every time.

To be clear, this isn't a bad game. I have high expectations for my Lego games, and this one just fell short pretty much across the board. I definitely can't recommend it, though, as there are literally over 5 better Lego games to choose from. If you clear out some of the older classics and need some more Lego action, this will scratch some of the itch for you. But I really do want a new, high quality, Lego game. Maybe Lego Avengers and Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, both sitting on my shelf at home, will do it? I guess we'll see at some point! I'll give this game a 7.5/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a another well anticipated experience for me, see teaser below:

 

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 83): New Super Mario Bros. U

In my head I keep games in roughly two categories, the trailblazers and the polishers. Trailblazers attempt to move genres forward by leaps and bounds, break existing norms of how games are made, and establish new norms and traditions moving forward. Good examples of this kind of game would be Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Final Fantasy IV, Wolfenstein 3D, and Grand Theft Auto 3.

I love a good trailblazer, and really appreciate them for what they are. But the games to which I generally keep returning are the polishers, or the games that come after the trailblazers, clean up the ashes in their wake, and fix the problems that are inherent in creating things from scratch. Donkey Kong is great, but I'd rather play Super Mario Bros. Pac-Man is great, but I'd rather play Ms. Pac-Man. Final Fantasy IV is great, but give me Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy VI any day of the week. Wolfenstein 3D is fantastic, but I'd much rather play Doom. Grand Theft Auto 3 is extremely fun, but I'll play Grand Theft Auto 5 instead, thanks.

New Super Mario Bros. U finds itself in this polisher/iterator framework, and does a very nice job of it. It explicitly adheres to the formula laid down in Super Mario Bros. 3, and doesn't try to fix anything or take any huge risks. It just says to itself, "let's make 85 great levels and let the kids have fun." And that's exactly what it does.

The graphics for the game are very nice. They're cutesy and colorful, everything you'd want to see in a Mario game. The music is really good, and follows the basic formula of the soundtrack of Super Mario World, which features basically the same song written in different keys/instrumentation to fit each world or stage variation.

The controls are absolutely perfect, which is the hallmark of every successful Mario game.

When the game does take a few little risks and introduces new features, they're truly awesome. The new flying squirrel suit is (gulp) my favorite flying mechanic in any Mario game, ever. There are little levels in which you have to chase a thief down in a level, requiring you to not slow down at all, but sprint through each level to try to catch them. These levels are very fun, and getting the item he's stolen is a nice reward layered on top of the endorphin rush that chasing him provides. The penguin suit in the game is probably my favorite Mario power up every, and the fact that it was only really used in one level disgusts me.

As mentioned before, the levels are the real draw of this game. There are a ton of really inventive and interesting levels, and using your imagination to explore each to find every little secret is a ton of fun. The level design is excellent, and that will keep you engaged to the very end.

The difficulty level of the game was a bit too low for me, although not so low that I didn't enjoy it. I finished with well over 90 lives, but there's also just a ton of opportunities to get lives, so I didn't feel like I skated through the game, but rather that the game was engineered to give you plenty of chances to spend time in each level.

The game represents an even smaller jump in design than other polishers in the Mario franchise, including my beloved Super Mario World, so it'd be difficult to give it full marks. But it sets a goal for itself, and accomplishes it in delightful fashion. I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone. I'll give it a 9.4/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is another game I recently finished up with my son. Check back (hopefully) tomorrow for another review!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 82): The Little Mermaid

I always like to clear out super old members of the backlog, and of all of the games I owned for the NES as a kid, the only ones left this year for me to finish were Punch-Out!! and The Little Mermaid. My collection of NES Games wasn't that big back then (Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Gyromite, Punch-Out!!, The Little Mermaid, The Legend of Zelda, Bases Loaded, Duck Hunt, Jordan vs. Bird, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Tecmo Super Bowl), so clearing out my NES backlog has been relatively simple compared to, say, completing my nightmarish PS1 backlog. I'll be working on that one for years.

So I found myself up late one night letting my wife sleep while I monitored our fussy new baby, and decided to take a spin through The Little Mermaid. I actually have quite fond memories of this game as a child involving playing through the game several times with a friend visiting from out of town. We managed to make it to the end boss battle against Ursula, but died and lost our will to carry on.

The Little Mermaid is actually set after the events of the movie. In the game, Ursula hatches another dastardly plot, necessitating Ariel to turn back into a mermaid to rescue her undersea friends from danger. Ariel is equipped with her trademark tail bubble blowing attack (seriously) and can even flop around on land if you can get up there. The genre of the game is a little weird, but it's kind of like Castlevania underwater (this is just the best I can do, I'm sure there's a better comparison), in that you can find upgrades for your attacks, and must make your way through a fairly linear stage to reach an end boss, complete it, and move on to the next stage. You can upgrade Ariel's bubbles to make them stronger and have longer range, and these upgrades are hidden in chests that require you to expose yourself to additional danger to attain them.

The graphics for the game are colorful and delightful, and it's honestly one of the better looking NES games out there. It definitely eschews the more muted and dull tones of a Castlevania in favor of a more colorful experience like that of Mega Man, which isn't surprising as the game was developed by Capcom. The boss sprites in particular are huge and very detailed, and are one of the high points of the game.

The music is really good, featuring some adaptations of music from the movie along with some original tunes that just work. Capcom basically always nailed the music of Disney games on the NES, and while it's not as good as any of the Mega Man games or DuckTales, it gets the job done and is quite nice.

The controls for the game are a bit slippery and don't quite feel right. It's difficult to get Ariel to turn on a dime, and throwing enemies and objects around to knock open chests can be an exercise in futility. Fortunately, the game's difficulty is so low that you have plenty of chances to work around the supbar controls, so it doesn't hurt as much as the clunky controls in a game like Castlevania.

The level designs are pretty dull. You basically follow a hallway to a boss, and there's very little interaction with the environment along the way. You can basically make it through the game while killing no enemies other than the bosses, which is a bit boring. The one shining part of the level design is the placement of chests, which contain upgrades to your bubble attacks. Some of the chests are fake, containing nothing, so experimenting with the use of your limited resources necessary to open the chests would give this game more replay value than your standard NES platformer/action game.

The boss battles, however, are quite fun and interactive, and it makes me wonder what could have been done had more focus been placed on combat throughout the game. The bosses are your basic pattern recognition style common in Capcom games like Mega Man and DuckTales, but are stripped down and far more simple, which is a fun change of pace for a game in a crushingly difficult era.

The difficulty of the game is delightfully perfect for a casual playthrough or for children, and this is definitely a nice entry game for kids wanting to get into retro gaming. It looks great, sounds nice, features an identifiable character, and will actually allow them to make some progress in the game. I'm definitely going to introduce this one to my daughters, and I suspect it'll be the first game one of them truly beats on her own, given her love of the movie and the ease of the game. It's nice for there to be a niche in this genre for a simple game for children, and it shouldn't be judged based on an expectation that it will be "Nintendo hard".

This game isn't perfect, and it's not an NES classic. But it is fun, and it serves a purpose that's kind of hard to find on the console. I'd definitely recommend this game as a fun, relaxing playthrough, or as a training ground for kids interested in learning more about playing retro games. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

I still haven't cleared out all of my teasers yet, so I'm going to save my next teaser until after the next review. I still have 3 games that I've completed and not reviewed yet, and I hope to have them all reviewed by the end of the week here on reTROview.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 81): Skylanders: Swap Force

Skylanders: Swap Force is a game in the popular Skylanders series which I played through with my son recently. Skylanders is a series of action games which has the unique hook that you need to have action figures of the characters in real life in order to use those characters in the game. Each game ships out with two Skylanders to encourage cooperative play and to start your collection, and the games are definitely beatable with only those two characters. However, along the way, you will find certain areas with secrets barred to you that necessitate having a wide range of Skylanders, encouraging you to buy more of the figures to be able to explore more of the worlds.

The use of the figures in the game is both clever and rather diabolical. Once one of your characters is dead, you can't use that character again for the remainder of the mission. While the game isn't hard, it's definitely oriented towards kids, and kids suck at video games. As such, having a big collection can be critical for a kid being able to clear some of the more difficult levels, and collecting the figures can be fun and addicting on its own! Each character has its own level and abilities, and the characters improve in the game by using them more, helping you to feel like you're making good progress by using your favorites. Each character has their own feel to them that makes it feel rewarding to collect new Skylanders, so you're not just buying extra lives by purchasing the figures.

I love that you can use older Skylanders in each newer game, as you don't need to buy all new Skylanders to have a chance to beat the games. However, each new generation gets new abilities that unlock fun new parts of the game, so it definitely becomes a money pit if you're interested in trying to complete the games entirely. For example, Skylanders: Swap Force introduces the idea that you can now separate each character into a top and bottom half, and mix and match those characters to create your own unique characters. So you can have the bomb throwing fire guy up top, enabling you to wreak havok with your bombs, while having the octopus leg guy on bottom, enabling you to squirt ink all over the place.

The gameplay is pretty fun and simple. Each character has a few basic attacks that are easy to execute, and breaking objects and killing enemies yields money you can use to upgrade your characters, experience, and various secrets that improve your Skylanders at large, give extra equipment for them, or unlock new special moves for each individual Skylander. You navigate across the level, jumping across platforms, solving simple puzzles, and crushing your foes, who have a simple pattern of battle that makes the game good for playing with kids.

The story is silly kids fare, but they have legitimate voice actors that bring some goofy humor that will be appealing to both kids and adults.

The music is fine, but the sound effects are actually very good, with plenty of explosions, chimes, and sounds to communicate clearly what's going on on screen.

The controls are generally good, with the Skylanders doing what you ask them to.

The most frustrating thing about the game, by far, is the fact that you're tethered together with your coop partner, which makes it extremely difficult to navigate some of the platforming elements. This is similar to my main complaint about the otherwise brilliant Lego Batman, which takes what should be an enjoyable coop experience and will frequently degrade it to a shouting match while you and your son/daughter/fellow human are running opposite directions, getting nowhere, and begging the other person to come your way.

The game is definitely also geared towards kids with addictive personalities, so be forewarned. Collecting all of the Skylanders, particularly while they're new, is a prohibitively expensive experience. I'd estimate that gearing out to complete a new Skylanders game to 100% would probably cost north of $250, and that may be conservative. We restrict my son to spending his money only on older titles, and I'll frequently grab him big lots of Skylanders on craigslist, and this is definitely the way to go. We've spent less than $100 on three Skylanders games and more than 50 figures using this route, so don't get into chasing the newest Skylanders unless you have deep pockets, and even if you do, just realize that all the old stuff will be discounted at least 60% once the newest one has released, and that teaching your children patience is its own reward! I, for the record, would have been 100% in on Skylanders as a kid, but I'm grateful that I have a little bit of seasoned wisdom and budgeting experience to help guide my son down a path that won't bankrupt his poor parents or spend all of his birthday/Christmas money!

Anyway, I enjoyed Skylanders: Swap Force quite a bit, and definitely recommend it for parents with kids in the 5-12 range. Be smart about your money and this can be a fun collecting/gaming experience for the whole family! I'll give it an 8.6/10.

I've already teased two games that I haven't reviewed yet, so I'll hold off another teaser here. Check back next week for another few reviews!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 80): God of War

 


I'm now back from an extremely long hiatus due to the birth of my son, and have several completed games in the can to crank out over the next few weeks. Follower of this blog, rejoice!

No, this isn't a late review of the newest entrant into the God of War series, published in 2018. This is an extremely late review of the first game in the series, which I began for the first time back in high school, and have finally completed as of last month.

I have zero remembrance of why I purchased God of War to begin with. It may have been due to the press coverage around the game, as I was a devoted reader of whatever gaming magazines my friend would bring to school with him. It may have been ads on TV or the internet. It may have been the TOTALLY ADULT look and feel to the box and all of the promised content under "rated M for mature". In any case, I somehow attained a copy without my parents knowing it, and loved the game. I was the only of my friends that had it, and I spent at least one happy week of a summer in high school driving to my friend's house every day to play through the campaign with him, but I got stuck at some point and never finished it, as I did with most games back in my youth. I've had a copy for years ever since acquiring a shiny new copy of the game for PS3 as part of God of War Saga, but hadn't played it at all. I was driven to play it again after release of the newest game, which I'll buy at some point, but it brought back good memories of playing it and I felt like clearing out some more of my extremely dated backlog.

I was nervous about diving in, admittedly. I now have 5 kids, so finding time to play this game with that many little eyes around was difficult. I was also worried that some of the luster would have gone out of the game with time, as the premier push towards the game for me at the time of its release was the mature content and the extremely polished graphics. Extremely bloody and adult themed stuff is no longer the forbidden fruit it used to be, so I was worried that the game may not have aged well in my eyes.

And it's certainly true that some of the shock value/technical polish has definitely gone out of the game over time. Some of that, however, is just due to my remembering the content itself, which made it less shocking. I'm certain that plenty of the stuff in this game would still be delightfully gory today had this game been released in 2018, but it didn't shock me the way I was shocked in 2005. It also felt like some of the sexual content was placed early in the game to get buy-in from teenage boys testing the game out in a rental or borrowing it from their friends, and sells a bill of goods that's largely exaggerated based on the rest of the game. The game still looks graphically fine, and actually looks like an excellent PS2 game. But that's what it is, so the graphical quality was excellent in my book

Some of the approach could have been improved, however, particularly with camera design. The camera is always fixed depending on your location, which is certainly one way to handle cameras, as long as your choices of angle are appropriate for the situation, and the player has enough time to adjust to changing camera angles. In God of War, the camera is a key player in the game, as it intentionally attempts to mimic a cinematic feel to the game that was really unheard of in 2005. The camera artfully zooms in and out on important features, soars to new heights when appropriate, and is generally very good and innovative, particularly for the time. There are plenty of instances, however, when the camera will jerk to a new angle so suddenly that you'll end up heading the wrong direction, back into the previously scripted angle, and this is a very disorienting experience which really takes you out of the cinematic feel of the game. It also killed me several times.

The story is pretty engaging. The game is set in Greek mythology, and follows the journey of Kratos, servant of the God of War Ares, as our hero attempts to enact justice on Ares at the direction of the other gods for a mysterious wrong that is uncovered throughout the story. The cutscenes are all well animated, the voice acting is very good, particularly for the time period, and the basic plot points are well explained and revealed logically throughout the course of the game.

Much of my memory of the game, however, lied to me. This game was actually far better, as a game, than I remember it being. The combat is just flat out excellent, with a fun and rewarding combo system requiring skillful twitchy button mashing that always feels good. Combat is also culminated with frequent quick time events that yield tremendously savage and gory finishers, with big accompanying rewards in terms of health and magic drops, as well as souls to upgrade your weapons and abilities. The bosses are huge and fun for the most part (except for the end boss), and I had an absolute blast taking them down, but wish there were more (there are only three real bosses in the game, I believe). There are also very cleverly designed puzzles in the game that are difficult, but solvable, and that yield good rewards upon completion.

I felt like the system by which Kratos levels up wasn't great. The upgrades take forever to save up for, and just don't feel that rewarding, to be honest. Each additional level improves you marginally, adds a few bells and whistles, but is mostly unremarkable. You finally feel the cumulative impact of your upgrades when you're walking back to face the final boss at the end, and are forced to chew through earlier enemies along the way, but other than that, you don't really feel like you're getting stronger along the way.

The platforming is also a bit clunky, suffering the same fate as many similar games from the era. Judging Kratos' location can be difficult mid jump, particularly in the dark and shadowy world he frequents. Fortunately, check points are frequent, so it never feels crushing when you die during a poorly aimed jump, but it's still frustrating.

The game was nearly the perfect length, and definitely doesn't overstay its welcome. I cleared it in slightly over 8 hours, which was excellent. Despite the short length, it manages to pack in several memorable areas to explore, including the Temple of Pandora, one of the most cleverly designed dungeons I have played through in any game, ever.

All in all, God of War was far better than my memories let on, as I was definitely looking at it through the lens of a worldly wise 30 year old rather than an 18 year old craving some more mature entertainment. If you let the savage veneer of the game blind you to the finely crafted experience that lies beneath, I truly believe that you're missing out on one of the great games on the PS2. I'd recommend it to adults capable of spending some time with the game and enjoying its substantial charms, despite a few flaws. I'll give it a 9.2/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I've been looking forward to playing for a long time, teaser below...

-TRO