Let's Talk... Shovel Knight

It would hardly be controversial to say that retro-inspired indie platformers, with their 8/16 bit style and punishing sensibilities designed to invoke feelings of nostalgia, have become something of an over-saturated template for independent games in recent years. The novelty of "hey, remember what games used to be like?" is hardly enough to carry a game these days. Thankfully, Shovel Knight's extremely tight controls and varied and meaningfully unique level design allow it to easily stand out as more than just another pixel platformer, and prevents it from feeling like yet more more shallow exploitation of your memories of old games.

The game's rather pretty 8 bit art style

Naturally, the most noticeable part of Shovel Knight is its gorgeous 8 bit art style, which the developers claim to be as close as possible to something you'd actually see running on an NES. (Obviously, that's something of an exaggeration since it is running at a much higher resolution with much higher sound fidelity and the likes) Nonetheless, Shovel Knight's visual and audio design is certainly well-done and is a large part of what gives the game a lot of its charm, and although this kind of style isn't particularly unique, or even especially interesting, anymore, the level of quality and dedication to the look and feel makes it a lot more respectable than most games that attempt this style. The aesthetic of Shovel Knight serves as a great reminder that, when done well, this style can still be extremely charming, no matter how over-used it may have become.

Now, you obviously can't have an 8 bit-styled platformer without including various elements of 8 bit game design, no matter how frustrating or out-dated they may feel in this day and age. Some of these design choices, such as being knocked back everytime you get hit, feel somewhat intrusive and a little bit forced (in that these games don't include such mechanics because they're fun or challenging, but simply because they were in old games and so we're going to use it just to keep it loyal to what you remember), whilst others, such as the inclusion of the classic NES Megaman thing of enemies only appearing once the next screen has fully transitioned, feel like a fun and charming thing to include into a game that obviously doesn't need to do that for the same technical reasons. For the most part, Shovel Knight does a good job of balancing mechanics and features that make you remember that, despite what your memories keep telling you, old games were actually kind of clunky and frustrating, with elements of smart design that remind you of the numerous minor design choices that gave a lot of old games their weird charms.

An example of one of the game's later, more complex stages

Despite the games many clear inspirations, the actual core gameplay is most reminiscent of the original Megaman games. You move through relatively long levels based around a certain theme (which include things like a water level, an air level, an underground level etc.) and make your way through various level-relevant enemies to eventually reach the boss at the end of each stage. Unlike Megaman, you don't earn special weapons defeating bosses, but you are, however, constantly accumulating treasure throughout levels which can be spent on health upgrades, mana upgrades, and unlocking more spells and abilities (which range from fireballs to temporary invincibility, all of which costs mana to use)..Along the way, you'll be able to purchase a number of more specific suit upgrades that offer more powerful abilities like being able to unleash a stronger charged-up attack, or your next attack causing more damage after performing two consecutive bounce attacks (much like the one in the Ducktales' games). These upgrades and extra abilities offer some nice incentive to keep going and generally offer enough variety to remain interesting through the game's 5-6 hour length.

Ultimately, Shovel Knight is an excellent execution of a game that is both respectful and smart with the way it manipulates nostalgia for games from the NES era, whilst also offering enough unique hooks and tight gameplay that looks great and plays well. Even if you've grown tired of games that go for the same old nostalgic hooks, Shovel Knight is still well worth checking out, and actually manages to be fun even without any of the requisite nostalgia and fond memories of the games of old.

Let's Talk... Sniper Elite 3

Sniper Elite 3 is something of a rather strange game. Whilst respectfully adhering to its classic roots as a rather hardcore sniping sim, the game also manages to be a very modern-feeling and well-designed stealth game with satisfying sniping action and a hilariously over-the-top and brutally gruesome anatomy-rupturing bullet cam layered on top. The clever design and major differences of the various difficulty options (higher difficulty settings include things like bullet drop and wind speed, as well as other complex sniping considerations, whilst lower settings completely disregard such things) allow Sniper Elite to quite effectively be two very different games without one really interfering with the other. 

The choice between these two styles of play becomes very apparent in the game's level design, with the game frequently offering you the choice between sneaking around all stealthy-like dropping Nazis with a silenced pistol, and just going completely snipers-blazing. The game offers numerous (sometimes rather arbitrary) ways to snipe without being detected, namely through frequent use of Enemy at the Gates-inspired "shoot during the loud noises" moments set-up by loud engines or planes flying overhead. This most certainly offers you the chance to clear entire missions using nothing but a sniper and still manage to completely avoid sticky situations, but only if you have the patience, precision and impeccable timing to not screw up (although the game has a quick save function, so you could conceivably just re-load everytime you screwed up). Realistically, though, at least for most people, the reality of trying to play the game as a straight up sniping-action game is a little unlikely, and you're far more likely to end up playing the majority of the game as a stealth game.

The game looks great, and the UI is effective at communicating some key stealth-related information

One of the most effective ways that Sniper Elite manages to maintain its freedom of play style is through its surprisingly open and free-wheeling level design that frequently offers multiple paths and numerous ways to complete certain objectives. A lot of the openness of the design is a little more subtle than simply offering multiple paths to, say, infiltrate a hostile area, however. Some objectives may give you vague commands to destroy a patrolling tank, for example, without explicitly telling you how to (or just pointing you towards the nearest panzerschreck) and thus forcing you to figure out a way to somehow lure the tank into a makeshift trap created with your mix of explosives, guns and other tools. Although their are always a set of strict objectives that must be completed, the free nature of how to approach such objectives, as well as the way in which exploration is rewarded by opening up opportunities for optional objectives is well-done and completing objectives in your own way can be extremely satisfying. 

Fortunately for the players too impatient or otherwise too unskilled to play the game as the hardcore sniping sim it very much could be, the game's stealth is both satisfying and effectively designed to avoid frustration. Taking a page out of Splinter Cell's more recent books, the game employs the extremely effect "last known location" trick to ensure that the stealth is as transparent, yet fun, as possible. This mechanic will show a ghostly image of your character in the exact position that the enemy last saw him before he dropped out of their line of sight and will cause them to eventually investigate that area, allowing the player to slip away undetected. Although perhaps making the stealth a little too easy for some of the more hardcore fans of classic stealth gameplay, its nonetheless a mechanic that effectively communicates to the player information that might not be so readily obvious, and it fits in nicely with the game's sniping motif since it allows you to set up in a new position with a good view of your last known location. Naturally, Sniper Elite falls into the trap that a lot of stealth games fall into, which is the tedium and frustration of the very inherent trial-and-error nature of stealth as a concept, something which both the quick save function and the last known location mechanic alleviate that problem quite well.

Perhaps one of the most identifiable features of the series' more recent games is its wonderfully grotesque and almost frighteningly detailed bullet-cam. Upon scoring a kill with a sniper rifle, the game world freezes as the camera zooms into a cinematic perspective of the bullet soaring towards its target and subsequently rupturing whatever bone, organ or limb it hits. The absurdity of the whole thing makes it both hilarious and shocking everytime, and the dynamic destructibility of the entire human anatomy gives it a much longer lasting appeal than you might think. Furthermore, the relatively short single-player campaign is just about short enough for the bullet cams to still be novel and entertaining right to the end, your thirst for ridiculous violence may dictate your tolerance on future playthroughs, however. The bullet cam is a lot of what gives Sniper Elite 3 its uniqueness and personality, and although the option to turn them off completely is available to you, the game would just be a solid stealth game with some much less satisfying sniping action without it.   

That guy's skull just f'ing exploded!

The game looks great and runs really well (on PC, at least; the console versions naturally don't look quite as nice but still run pretty well) and everything about it feels really well-made. The controls feel solid and the aiming is as precise as you'd want it be (playing with a mouse and keyboard is a lot more precise, if possible). I ran into a number of small bugs with the scripting, where AI that needed escorted took a while to start moving again, for example, and there were a couple of instances where the AI (which is usually pretty solid but not exactly amazing) had some minor line of sight detection issues, but I never stumbled upon anything completely game-breaking.

Ultimately, Sniper Elite 3 is a somewhat mixed bag that offers a number of radically different ways to play it, all of which feel like totally valid and effective approaches in their own right. Some satisfying sniping action is accompanied with a hilariously brutal bullet cam that could easily be an educational tool for learning about the human anatomy, and the ways in which it reacts to being penetrated by a bullet. Sniper Elite 3 does a great job of being exactly what the title suggests, and also offering a well-made experience for anyone who isn't an insane sniping fanatic.