What I'm Playing (Volume 151): Batman: Arkham Origins

TRO is back at it again with yet another Batman game! I still don't know what took me so long to try these out...

Batman: Arkham Origins is the third game in the Arkham series, although Origins, true to its name, comes first in the timeline. Origins has all of the hallmarks of a game that is destined to fail. It's a third game in a series that came very quickly after the first and second (2009 to 2013), it's the biggest game of all of them in terms of geography, development was handled by a studio different than the previous two, the writing staff changed, the voice actors changed, they added a multiplayer feature, etc. ad nauseam. There are a lot of areas for this one to disappoint, and so I was looking forward to this one least of all.

So how did it actually stack up, once I experienced it? The gameplay is still remarkably similar to the gameplay in City, with an open world for you to explore (Gotham City this time, rather than Arkham City), enemies everywhere to defeat, missions to complete, more minor crimes to investigate, and a sinister plot that threatens the future for all of Gotham City's innocent citizens. The plot basically begins with the idea that Black Mask (Roman Sionis) has placed a huge bounty on Batman's head, and hired the best assassins in the world to carry out the hit. For various reasons, this plot point didn't remain the central idea, but I don't want to spoil it. It was actually ok, but it wasn't the most convincing plot twist I've seen.

The world you explore just doesn't seem quite as delightful as the one in City. You now have a fast travel feature, which is nice, but the actual city is poorly designed and uninteresting. Some of the textures look PS2-esque, and the snow in particular is just a flat white carpet that coats everything. I kind of wonder if they set the story at Christmas just so they didn't have to use more detailed textures. There are also a lot of technical problems with the game in comparison to the smoothness of the other two. There are times when you'll get "stuck" upon going  to a new area, and it will take a while to load. There's also a lot of slowdown and lag at certain parts of the game than there was in the previous two. It's pretty clear that this was a different team programming the game, and they weren't able to optimize it quite as well as the original studio. The levels are also not quite as fun to return to, with only a handful of secrets riddled throughout once you obtain all of Batman's technology.

Combat is still an absolute blast, and is the main reason that I was ready to dive back into a third Batman game. The animations are basically identical to City, but it was so good then that it's hard to complain. The boss fights, however, were much superior to those in either of the two earlier games.

Batman's progression system is a delight in this game, and is more detailed and fun than in the previous games. His progression seems more impactful here, and you can unlock additional upgrades by progressing through different achievement lists in the game. This encourages you to play around more with all of Batman's abilities, and creates a more convincing narrative reason why Batman should be advancing in skills throughout the game.

The writing, which I was nervous about, is actually excellent. The game definitely leans in to the age old Batman tension of "is this psychopath actually making things better"? Of course, as usual, the answer is yes. But interactions with Joker, Anarky, and James Gordon in particular will really make you question the effectiveness of Batman's interventions into the world of Gotham City. This narrative trend also works due to the brutality of Batman's fighting, feature arm and leg snapping, frequent taunts about whether or not a criminal will ever walk again or need to be fed through a tube, etc. The voice acting is also quite good, despite featuring an all-new cast.

The secrets in this game aren't quite as clever as City, but I didn't mind that. There's something fun about collecting all of the trophies, and if it's too hard, it's not fun anymore. There were also way too many in City, so I actually got all of them this time. There's also a more serious narrative journey attached to these trophies, as they're now encrypted datapacks containing extortion files for Gotham's residents. This was a really nice change.

The music in the game was just fine. It's your typical Batman music, and I enjoyed it.

While I was expecting to be disappointed by this game, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not a great game in the same vein of the earlier two, but it actually improves on a handful of things despite wacky technical issues. For a game that could have failed so mightily, it was impressive that they were able to turn in such a high-quality product. I'll give it an 8.5/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a quick little jaunt through a game that was far quicker to beat than I expected. Tune in next time!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 150): Star Wars Episode 1: Racer

If I had been carefully preparing for my 150th edition of What I'm Playing, I would have prepared a special review for this moment for my faithful reader. But alas, I simply followed the stirrings of passion and selected a game in a genre I have been feeling lately, and the result is that the 150th review here is Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, a game about which video game historians largely shrug. 

150 games is a big milestone for me. The reason I love this blog isn't because of the traffic that it gets (not much), but because of the memorializing of my dedication, 4 years back, to tackle my backlog and track my opinions of a wide range of video game history. There have been many effects from this. My League of Legends career has taken a nosedive. My skills at a wide range of video game genres, but particularly 2D platformers, have increased tremendously. I know a whole lot more about a ton of games and series that I had never had the time nor inclination to complete before. And I know more accurately how far I still have to go to experience many of the big tentpoles in video game history that I have not yet touched. And while my backlog hasn't actually shrunk (I don't think) due to my ever expanding collection of physical and digital games, I have actually completed a metric ton worth of video games, most of them of good to great quality. According to the tool I use to track this kind of thing, I have now completed 367 video games in my life, so about half of those have been finished in the last 4 years, and that's an under-counting. I took a long break from blogging during a crazy time in my life, even though I was still completing games in that time. I completed and reviewed a bunch of games under different names, like my Pi Reviews. Through it all, I absolutely enjoy video games more than I did when I started, and that's saying something! So I am grateful to this blog for entirely selfish reasons, and hope that someday more readers may find joy in the games that I've highlighted here, or enjoy my writing at least. Anyway, enough reTROspective!

Star Wars Episode 1: Racer is a game that I had when I was a teenager, and I always enjoyed it. But I would always get stonewalled halfway through the second cup, when my podracer simply wasn't good enough to win anymore, and I could no longer win any credits from earlier races. This was still early internet time, for me at least, and I don't think I ever thought to look it strategies for completion. I just took it as a game that was too hard for me, and retired it.

Revisiting it as an adult, however, with the resources of the internet and my increased wisdom, I was finally able to complete the game. The key to understanding the mechanics of the game actually come from the basic theme of the podracer section in the movie on which it is based, and if you just treat the game like it's Gran Turismo, you are bound to fail.

Racer has a lot of good qualities, but the best quality it has is how excellently they translated the film's tone and character into a video game. The film tells a story of a young boy involved in a high stakes and lethal sport, completely out of his league due to his biology but given an edge by a mystical force beyond his control. This sport is one in which the vehicles driven are constructed flimsily out of desperation and cast-off parts. It's a battle in which there is no affluence, and so your guts and mechanical jury rigging ability matter far more than skill or finesse.

Racer creates a unique upgrading environment in that there are a lot of parts available, but only a limited amount of money you can earn. Each race will pay off once, and one time only. You can't just grind the same races over and over again to get more money. What's more, the parts you purchase will become damaged over time, so if you upgrade too many parts too quickly, you'll wind up with a rotting podracer around you, depreciating in quality over time without any money with which to upgrade. The key to playing the game is, thus, to understand that it takes place in a universe of scarcity, and to act appropriately.

The basic way this is done is by buying used, damaged parts, and sticking entirely to parts within a few classifications. You can buy droids that will repair your ship, but you can only have four of them. As such, the wisest thing to do would be to select four categories to upgrade on your ship, have the droids constantly maintain those, and realize that your racer will just suck at everything else. It's better than having it suck at everything, after all, and that's the reality you'll face if you try to build a pod that's fully upgraded in every area.

The downside to all of this is that without the internet, I don't think I ever would have figured this out. Maybe it's in the manual. I don't know.  But the game gives you very little inclination of what anything does in the game, and it's impossible to assign your pit droids to particular parts or to even have any idea what pit droids do. Discovering this magical strategy took research on my part, and that's never fun.

Even with this strategy, it's still brutally difficult to control these stinking podracers. I know that's part of the messaging of the film, but it feels too difficult. I had maxed out steering with the character with the highest steering, and I was still smash into walls on the most tame of turns, necessitating my coming to a complete stop to navigate turns. In the end, I compromised by just slowing down by laying of the gas, and rubbing my way along the outside of the turns until my craft was finally too damaged to continue, at which point I'd smash the thing and get a fresh one. They created a mechanism by which you can repair damaged parts during a race, but it slows you down like crazy, and my experience was that it was better to maintain high speed until you smash rather than slowing down constantly to fix all of the damage. Your ability to get your top speed WAY higher than any other racer also encourages this strategy, as it's really easy to catch up on a straightaway, even if you crashed too many times and have fallen behind a few places.

The selection of tracks is pretty disappointing. There are a lot of retreads with sections that are different from their previous incarnation, much like a game like F-Zero. But I think they could have done a lot better than they did.

The music is generally good, with excerpts from the film. You can't complain about John Williams, even if it is a little emotionally manipulative and repetitive at times.

Graphically, the game looks nice, even today. They did a great job of translating the high speed action of podracing to the N64, and there's no slowdown to speak of. You'll get to explore plenty of other planets as well, and each has its own unique look and feel to it. There are some textures that look cheap and super polygonal, particularly the plants, but compared to its peers this is a fine graphical effort.  

With a little better communication of core mechanics in game, this game had a chance to be really excellent. But the ludicrous incentives of the game cause it to be less fun than a racer that rewards skill and punishes high speed insanity, and this one definitely encourages the latter. It's good, solid fun with some really creative ideas behind it. But a few flaws keep it from becoming an excellent game, and instead, it's just another N64 racing game. I'll give it a 7.8/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is yet another Batman game. I have a problem.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 149): Pikmin

Pikmin is a real time strategy game developed by Nintendo and released for the GameCube in 2001. My first exposure to this game was when I borrowed my friend's Cube and the game for one day in the summer. He promptly, as was my experience with borrowing things, asked for it back, so I wasn't able to get too far in it then. I also tried playing it through with my son when he first moved in with us, but wasn't able to get too far before I was a little frustrated and he was very frustrated, so we made our amiable peace with not finishing it and went back to playing Lego Batman (or something of that ilk). However, with a substantial chunk of my backlog cleared and a free CRT ready to go after yet another play through of Link to the Past, I was ready to dive back into my old foe and give it a go.

You control Captain Olimar, some sort of space explorer. His rocket is struck by a meteor and crashes on an alien planet with a toxic atmosphere and all kinds of hazardous life forms. He is able to befriend one of the species of life on the planet, however, the plant like and innocent Pikmin. These chaps are the lowest item on the food chain and are desperately looking for a leader to help them access their untapped potential and be able to do more against the more physically imposing fauna on the planet. They are also good at destroying obstacles that stand between you and your ship's parts that are inconveniently strewn around the island, and also at carrying those parts back to your ship to get it in a state of repair that will allow you to escape the planet and reunite with your wife and children.

The game is split into thirty days (they're about a half hour long in real time). There are 30 missing parts necessary to restore the ship to full function, and the more you get, the better your ending is. So, you need to shoot for about 1/day in order to get the ship back fully in order. You can order your Pikmin around and have them attack enemies, throw them across gaps, and leave them to complete tasks while you take a separate team of Pikmin to another area of the level. There are three types of Pikmin, each with their own special sets of abilities that will allow you to solve all of the different puzzles and hazards on the island. You can grow more Pikmin by bringing food back to their bases, and managing how many of each kind you have available to you will be critical to being able to restore your ship to full function.

The gameplay is very fun and engaging, with clever puzzles that will make you think (but not too hard). The controls can be a bit wonky at times, and the Pikmin can be extremely stupid, both of which are frustrations. You can control 100 Pikmin at once, but being able to select that one kind you want for solving a given puzzle is the biggest frustration in the game, particularly during the boss fights. You'll end up losing hundreds of Pikmin, if you're anything like me, just fighting controls and having them get squashed, eaten, drowned, or lit on fire by some monstrous beast. There is absolutely a degree of difficulty modifier that Nintendo gets here, though. RTS games are intended for PC, or at least for consoles with mouse support. There is absolutely no qualifier for that statement. When you consider that fact, Pikmin looks reasonably good compared to competitors in the same genre on console. The C-stick is used to good effect to control them en masse, and the game is generous in the amount of food you're given to grow more, so prepare for a Pikmin holocaust (over 800 died during my 30 days on the planet). You can also just take out whatever kind you need for a given puzzle so that none of them are out of place, but that seems like an inefficient solution, particularly when some challenges require the use of multiple kinds of Pikmin. All in all, the controls are clunky and you'll fight them, but they did enough to put an acceptable RTS interface onto a console, and that is definitely an achievement.

The game is remarkably effective at storytelling, using only brief journal entries between levels and the unspoken narrative of existence on the planet as storytelling tools. You will genuinely begin to care about your Pikmin apart from the value that they provide to you. They sprint to you excitedly and squeak happily when you call them down out of the base. They easily become distracted and you must gather them all together again to keep them on track. You feel awful when they are harmed or killed during your adventures, and feel a real moral quandary about sacrificing their happiness for a greater mission. And at the end, you can see that all of the heartache, toil, sacrifice and loss were worth it in the growth of your little ones from defenseless victims to seasoned adults capable of defending themselves against the dangers of a vicious planet. It's a twisted kind of metaphor about parenting, and the kind of story that can be told more effectively by experience, rather than by dialogue, lending itself well to the video game format.

The music is charming and delightful. It's more of an ambient background amidst the relentless action of the game, but it does its job effectively.

Technically speaking, the game is excellent. Despite controlling 100 Pikmin at once, there is absolutely 0 slowdown. The game still looks nice, using its cartoony art direction to give it a timelessness that other games of the era lack. The maps are very large, and you have several of them to explore.

All in all, this is an excellent concept that really belonged on PC. The controls will absolutely frustrate you, and there is no way around that. But if you come with an open mind and an appreciation for what console RTS ports looked like before this, I think that you will find a charming, fun, and original game that tells a rich and vibrant story. I'll give it an 8.8/10.

I have finished SO many games in the last week it's crazy. Here's a teaser for the game that's coming up next...

-TRO 

What I'm Playing (Volume 148): Mega Man 11

Mega Man 11 is the latest in the Mega Man series, which the long time reader of this blog will know is one of my personal favorites. It's quite different in form from Mega Man 9 and 10, which both went back to an NES-style presentation. This one looks more similar to Mega Man 8 in it's 2.5d style.

The look itself is actually really nice. They gave some great detail to all of the characters, and despite the facelift, it still looks noticeably like a Mega Man game. They used the opportunities afforded to them with greater technology to improve some of the visuals significantly. My favorite of these changes is the new and distinct looks that Mega Man will get when he swaps Robot Master powers. These are no longer simple palette swaps that change his colors and nothing else. The Blue Bomber can now have crazy head gear and alterations to his cannon with each form, and some of these are really great. Fuse Man's power is my personal favorite...

Anyway, the game controls and plays really nicely. It feels like a Mega Man game in its controls, and that's all anyone was asking for. They've included a new system in the game called the Double Gear, controlled with the shoulder buttons. Mega Man now has a meter that gradually recharges over time and which allows him to either slow down time (I used this one way more frequently than the other one) or power up his attacks considerably. This power was very easy to forget about, save for in really tough situations in which it became apparent it was needed. It felt like it was available a bit too often to be balanced, so a player could easily be spamming the power throughout the level if they weren't used to a more traditional Mega Man experience like myself. The best parts of the Double Gear system were the level design choices that clearly expected you to utilize this power, but those are largely few and far between. This is mostly window dressing on an existing formula, rather than a drastic sea change.

The level design here is very good, and feels like an authentic Mega Man experience. It never quite gets to the point of the true classics (2, 3, X), but it's really good. The levels, though, feel pretty thin, especially in comparison to some of the newer Mega Man games. There are literally 0 secrets within the levels, which is one of the best new innovations to come to the series. So, without secrets, how does Mega Man develop (aside from gaining new Robot Master powers)?

There's an in-game shop present that allows you to buy E-tanks, extra lives, weapon energy tanks, and upgrades for Mega Man. Unfortunately, the economy for these upgrades is all kinds of screwed up. You can get hundreds of the currency every level, and each upgrade is super cheap. The upgrades are very impactful, too, which makes your progression feel cheaper than it ought to. What's more, there are certain days in which items go "on sale", making them even cheaper than normal. It feels like this happens every other day, too, although I can't confirm that for sure. As a result, the difficulty of the game is abnormally reduced by the presence of all of the lives and E-tanks you could ever want, and the game never really feels difficult as a result.

I didn't really notice the music at all, to be honest. Mega Man's sounds, and the sounds of his enemies, are much higher in the mix than any of the music, so most of it drones on in the background. This is really disappointing, as the music in the Mega Man games is really what separates them from some of their competitors.

The pace of the game is really good, and I'm very grateful that they didn't try to pack in a bunch of extra content for the sake of content. It's about the length you'd expect from a Mega Man game, so a skilled player can easily complete it in under an hour and a half without rushing.  My first run probably took me 3 hours or so. They do include a lot of fun content in the extras, with some speedrunning and boss rush challenges that are very fun.

On the whole, this is a quality Mega Man experience, continuing a line of quality that has been unbroken in the classic Mega Man line (I have never reviewed a classic Mega Man game lower than an 8.0/10). It's very fun, despite a disappointing soundtrack and a broken economy. I'd definitely recommend it to any fans of the Blue Bomber, and hope Capcom can continue to give us solid Mega Man titles for years to come. I'll give it an 8.1/10.

Up next is a title that has been in the queue for years, so I'll be very glad to add it to the "completed" column in my spreadsheet. Check back in a week or so for a reTROview!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 147): Paper Mario

Paper Mario is a turn-based RPG for the Nintendo 64, and one of the few RPGs, period, that released for that console. It was developed by Intelligent Systems, longtime Nintendo collaborators best known for their work on the Fire Emblem series. The game follows Mario's attempts to rescue Princess Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom itself from the tyrannical reign of, you guessed it, Bowser! Can't these people ever come up with another plot?

The combat is similar to that in Super Mario RPG, albeit with a different view perspective. While Mario RPG uses an isometric faux-3D style, Paper Mario's view is from the side and mimics the look of a 2D platformer, more similar to the style seen in Mario & Luigi. You have the chance to time buttons and inputs correctly to increase your damage on your attacks, or reduce it on the enemy's attacks. You also have flower points that can be used to attempt more powerful special attacks, and a new resource that allows you to tap into the various star powers you'll learn along the way. The combat is slightly more fun than in Super Mario RPG, in that you have more ways of increasing damage than just pressing A at the right time, but not quite as fun as the highly interactive and engaging system in Mario & Luigi, particularly defensively. There's a really nice system of attacking types that you'll need to use strategically to defeat the various enemies that will keep you thinking and needing to swap in and out your various allies. So, for an enemy with spikes on it, you won't want to use your jumping attacks, but for your shelled enemies, you will.

The game's plot and story are extremely simple and predictable, but pleasing nonetheless. You'll get the beats you expect, and you'll enjoy them just like I did. The highlight of the game, from a writing standpoint, is the great cast of supporting characters you'll attain throughout your journey. These are, in keeping with the tradition of having Bowser in your team in Mario RPG, all representatives of the typical bad guy races in the Mario universe. You'll get a Goomba, a Boo, a Koopa, a Parakoopa, and more. All of them are super cute and have their own uses in battle, so you'll end up using all of them at least a handful of times throughout the game. You can have one ally active at once, which keeps combat simple. Each character also has their own uses outside of battle that you can use to solve the various puzzles separating Mario from his beloved princess. Someday he'll get off the hook and she'll make him an honest man!

The puzzles are simple and fun, and are definitely designed for a player who is new to the RPG genre, which is exactly how this entire game is designed. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems absolutely wanted to make a game to introduce RPG mechanics to RPG neophytes, and you can tell. Everything is as simple as possible, and it's a nice entry point for those unfamiliar with the genre, but who already know a bit about Mario.

The character building and progression system is pretty weak, and is one of my biggest complaints with the game. You can equip badges on Mario, but can't really adjust anything about your allies, aside from two big chunk "level ups" that you find throughout the game for each of them. These badges are pretty pedestrian. Most are special attacks that underwhelm, or little perks that underwhelm, or bigger perks that are way too expensive. There's very little you can do to make Mario feel different between playthroughs, which drastically reduces the replay value of this game compared to other RPGs. There's also a lot less role playing, which intrinsically reduces the fun of the game for me, for whom character development means a ton. All of this can be forgiven due to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems branding of this game as a starter RPG, but what I find more difficult to forgive is the throttling of leveling up.

Like some other games the experience you get from each enemy is affected not only by the strength of that enemy, but also by your overall level. You need 100 experience to level up, and each enemy will contribute a small chunk when you defeat them. A simple koopa, defeated while you are level 1, will grant (just a hypothetical) 2 experience, but if you level up to level 2, you only get 1 experience from that. Worst of all, if you are level 3, you'll get 0 experience (you should never, ever, get 0 experience for defeating an enemy). All of this serves to give you a functional, if not technical, level cap for each part of the game until you can venture to new worlds and find stronger enemies that will actually give you experience to continue your development.

Part of the fun of RPGs to me is the ability you have to grind to feel extremely powerful. Games with heavy grind systems with huge payoffs and lots of customization in character development (Bravely Default, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy V, etc.) are far more rewarding to me than a simpler RPG, particularly when you have level caps like this. Level caps in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics actually don't bother me overly much because they serve a purpose in game (encouraging you to try to level up your weaker characters rather than only relying on stronger ones) and because there are actually ways in which you can be building and developing your characters even when they're at their level cap (i.e. jobs systems). But Paper Mario totally lacks the ability to develop your characters at all aside from the simple level up system and the gear you'll obtain along the way just by completing the story, and so the level cap here just serves as a means to control the difficulty curve, which to me subverts the very nature of the RPG itself as an art form. At least in simpler games like Dragon Quest you can grind away at a wall you've hit, but here the only answer is to better craft your strategy.

The visuals in this game are excellent, and are some of the most delightful on the N64. Intelligent Systems did a great job of creating an iconic look that aged really well, and there are plenty of little delightful paper-themed winks to the player, such as when Mario slides easily under the covers when he's resting. Paper Mario also takes a significant number of design cues from Super Mario Bros. 3, including the sprite work, curtains on the main title screen, star rods, etc. These cues are really nice and make Paper Mario feel like it has a connection to the broader Mario universe.

The music here is good. There's nothing that will particularly get stuck in your head, but there are plenty of solid tracks.

The length of the game isn't too long, and is a real breath of fresh air to those tired of massive RPGs (me). There's very little fluff here, and the game will easily be over in 25 hours, even if you take your time.

All in all, Paper Mario is a quality game, and the best RPG on the N64 by a mile. I can't help wondering, though, how much better this game would have been with a few different choices. There's absolutely nothing about this game that's better than Mario & Luigi, and it does enough worse than Super Mario RPG (which came out four years earlier) that I really just feel let down by the game, particularly by the character progression system. This game is worth owning and playing, and would be solid for a child getting into RPGs for the first time or a true Mario fan, but not better than some other entry-level RPGs like Pokemon. I'll give it an 8.0/10.

Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I'll tease below. See you soon!

-TRO