Let's Talk... Betrayer

The historical territory of colonial America is an area that remains largely unexplored setting in games. An interesting and fairly unique setting, it is full of untapped mystery and intrigue and the potentially fascinating mysticism surrounding Native Indian culture (which was loosely explored in Prey). The 16^th Century colonial America setting is hardly the only unique that sets Betrayer apart from other games, however. The monochromatic art style, idiosyncratic mechanics and interesting approach to side quests all add up to make this game a bundle of really interested mechanics. Much of the game’s problems unfortunately come from the fact that such potentially fascinating mechanics go largely underdeveloped and disappointingly unexplored.

The game starts with you crash landed on an unknown and unnamed island that is heavily implied to be around the period of colonial America but never explicitly named as such. You, a silent and unnamed character, set out to explore this mysterious island, which appears to have been ravaged by “the Spaniards” as well as some frequently mentioned malevolent spirits referred to as the “Naturals”. Much of the backstory of the island and its people, and the awful things they so clearly went through, is mostly told through notes and diary entries that fill in a lot of the implicit narrative. Furthermore, side quests often play out as mysteries that slowly unravel piece by piece as you find each relevant clue, in whatever order you find. These mysteries and personal stories often regale the lives, and usually the final moments, of the island's previous inhabitants, and are all interesting, well-told tales of sadness and regret.

The unique monochromatic art style is an immediate eye-catcher

The game takes place in two very different worlds: day and night. During the day, enemies armed with bows and primitive 16th Century weaponry (muskets, flintlock pistols etc.), but at night, ghouls and skeletons roam the land as well as the restless spirits of the recently deceased (who basically act as the game's quest givers). Once you've sussed out the differences between the two worlds, you start to get into a rhythm in which you are going into the dark world (night) to get quests and then switching back to the light world (day) to actually do them. Both worlds provide very ominous atmospheres for very different reason, when in the "light" world you have hold onto the unnerving feeling, and frequent confirmation, that something went horribly wrong on this all-too-quiet island. Whereas, the "dark" world has a real undead, otherworldly vibe that, although feels uneasy at first, feels underused. The night time is essentially just a carbon copy of the daytime world with less lighting and enemies that behave the same (but are skeletons, instead of soldiers, at night). For all its potential, the night “world” is just one of the many great ideas Betrayer has but fails to properly expand upon.

The gameplay is a fairly basic blend of exploration, stealth-focused combat with use of bows, muskets and flintlock pistols, and some light RPG elements. The exploration is completely free-wheeling, and although the game does give plenty direction towards key areas and objectives, there is rarely a strictly-set path the player must take. Exploring the vast and expansive world of colonial world can give way to a number of different items, scenarios and quest-related intrigues. Such exploration is key to unravelling the mysteries of the island (generally in the form of background-filling notes and side-quest objectives), as well as finding extra fast travel points, finding loot chests and finding some of the game’s slightly weirder set pieces.

The enemies of this world, mostly phantom-like soldier-looking guys and fast-moving goblin lookalikes (the enemy variety is a little lacking, but the combat is hardly the highlight of the game, so it isn’t a huge deal), are relentless and will spring on you at any time if you aren’t being particularly quiet in your movement. This is what makes stealthy behaviour and movement both encouraged and highly beneficial. Stealth, though never forced, plays a huge role in your survival, attacking without being detected provides damage bonuses and can give you the much-needed upper hand (especially on tougher, larger enemies). Also, since many of the enemies (though not all) are equipped with muskets or pistols, attracting their attention may lead to attracting the unwanted attention of other trigger-happy predators. Stealth gameplay is tense and exciting, but the game could definitely benefit from better indicating when exactly you can be seen and heard.

Changing the colour palette back to normal still makes the game look great, but it loses a lot of its originality

The wind and the subsequent swaying of trees serve as both a tool of the ominous atmosphere and a mechanic of the stealth system. On random intervals of around every 15-20 seconds the wind will blow, in an extremely hyperbolised manner, for roughly 5 seconds or so. In that time, you are harder to hear and therefore can sprint or fire off shots without needing to worry about being spotted, however the game is real vague about what that actually means, and an almost way to track how much noise you're making at any one time would be real useful (it can be a little hard to decipher, especially when you get ambiguous items that make you "4% harder to see and hear", without explaining what on earth that means). Although some of the game’s more complex mechanics are lacking in the department of solid explanations, the game is usually very good at communicating information about what you can interact with (with use bright colours) and where loot and quest related items are with very specific  and easily recognisable audio cues.

Although the game’s core mechanics and eerie atmosphere are fundamentally excellent, neither are explored fully enough to reach their full potential, and many mechanics of the game feel disappointingly thin and lacking in enough variation to keep them interesting. The atmosphere starts off promising, with the eerie swaying of the trees and empty silence of the island creating a chilling and tense atmosphere. However, the ominous tree swaying really loses its effectiveness once you realise that it’s merely a mechanic of the stealth system, and the potentially creepy night time “world” feels woefully underutilized. As for the core mechanics, the combat is extremely simplistic and thus can get a little tedious to repeat (especially during some of the later unpredictable and frustrating difficulty spikes), and with only three weapon types (and a Tomahawk throwing weapon) the variety is somewhat lacking.

Furthermore, although the game’s questing and investigative systems are conceptually sound, with the basic concept being that you hop into the dark world (by ringing an ominous bell) to gather lost spirits and bring back to the hub area of that specific area (typically a small village or settlement). Talking to them will begin the investigation of some kind of mystery or confusion that remained unresolved when they died. Such mysteries can range from finding out how somebody died, or why somebody was sentenced to death. Unravelling these mysteries requires you to hop back into the light world (essentially the “real” world) and discovering enough clues and pieces of evidence to then suss out what really happened. In the game’s case, this means going back into the dark world to talk with the restless spirit, inform them of what you found and let them explain what it is or what it means.

The game can be a little vague at times, even frustratingly so at times

Although the investigation aspect of the game is conceptually sound, it is disappointingly lacklustre from a mechanical standpoint and its execution squanders its potential. Exploring the island and finding the clues is fun and the clues themselves are generally interesting and well-varied, but the act of returning back to the dark world and regaling what you’ve found back to the spirits is way simpler and way more repetitive than it should be, and feels way too fetch-questy. The most frustrating thing about the dull execution of this system is that the actual mysteries are all so interesting, unique and well-written. Another great idea that falls short in its execution, but one that may still be worth going through if you’re interested in the excellent stories behind them.

The game’s unique monochrome art style is a real eye-catcher and really adds to the atmosphere, but the contrast can get a little obnoxious, so the option to turn off the monochrome filter is available if you so wish. The use of bright colours to contrast the monochromatic colour palette is a great way to highlight important items in the environment, and the blood red colouring of such highlights is great for extending the sense that something very wrong happened on this island. The game generally looks pretty good and the sound design makes some clever uses of audio cues and unobtrusive hints.

Ultimately, Betrayer is a bundle of really great ideas that almost all fall flat thanks to their simplistic execution and undeveloped variety. The backstory of the island and the individual stories of the people (or spirits, more accurately) you come across are all really interesting and really well-done, and if you come into Betrayer looking for that then you’ll probably be able to look past some of the disappointingly basic mechanics. The uniqueness of the mechanics, art style and setting make Betrayer well worth checking out, but it leaves a lot to be desired.  

Let's Talk... Ninja Gaiden Z: Yaiba

Yaiba takes the Ninja Gaiden series in a radically different direction, replacing the very traditional Ninja tropes and extreme difficulty with a cel shaded art style, frequent use of crude humour, and zombies…? The radical tonal and thematic shifts Yaiba makes to the long-running and esteemed Ninja Gaiden series will likely confuse long-time fans, and it’ll probably take a while to get used to the series’ apparent new direction. The crude sex jokes, the zombies, the shallow and extremely easy combat, the bland and rote environment design. Especially when you consider some of the high points the Ninja Gaiden series has had over the years, it’s hard not to be disappointed by what feels like such an uninspired and formulaic experience.

The game's cel shaded art style is probably one of the game's biggest strengths, and it does look pretty cool to be fair

The game’s story starts actually starts out pretty well, and makes a great impression… for about five minutes. The game opens with a short but sweet cutscene that shows off the game’s shining new cel-shaded art style (which looks pretty spectacular), as Yaiba (the protagonist) and Hayabusa (the game’s main antagonist, and protagonist of the previous games) fight to the death in an epic display of swordplay and extreme gore. It’s actually pretty exciting, and provides hopes that this zombie-filled nightmare might actually be a good game. Unfortunately, however, then the rest of the game kicks in, and it all goes downhill from there.

After Yaiba is brutally murdered by Hayabusa in the opening cutscene, he is reanimated by a large corporation and stereotypically evil CEO, who allegedly wish for him to hunt down and kill Hayabusa. Fortunately, the (excessively) foul-mouthed Yaiba’s goals align with said large corporation, and he pursues the trial of his attacker. Along the way to assassinate Hayabusa, Yaiba must also push his way through the apparent zombie outbreak that has invaded the generic urban environment in which the games takes place. The reason for this zombie virus is never explained, nobody even blinks at the infection and its origins are never even so much as hinted at. As for the characters, there are few and the few the ones that do populate the world are largely insignificant and extremely shallow. The protagonist is a loud-mouthed, excessively cursey badass who is sleazy to women, because that’s cool, right? Next, we have the painfully sexualised pair of breasts for to check the box for obligatory sex appeal. Finally, the evil CEO man… he’s an evil CEO with bad intentions etc etc. The characterisation is as shallow and cheap as the game’s almost irrelevant storyline and choice to include the inconceivably overdone cliché that is the zombie horde.

The game plays around with some elemental stuff, but it's pretty rudimental

The gameplay, or more accurately the combat, is almost as shallow and simplistic as the game’s story and setting. The combat uses a pretty standard 3-button combo system with knock-backs, knock-ups and the like. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, and a sweeping area-of-effect attack. Although you do gain a significant amount of basic and extended combos as you gain levels, they rarely get more complex than XXXXY or YYY. If you manage to pull off an “execution” on elite enemies you are rewarded with their own unique special weapon for a limited number of strikes. Such weapons include an explosive rocket launcher and a pair of speedy clown arms. They don’t last particularly long, but generally do a ton of damage. The combat is pretty shallow and highly repetitive, but it’s generally fairly satisfying, even if fighting hordes of zombies (who are the primary enemy in the game) quickly becomes a pretty dull ordeal.

As little depth as the combat has, the environment design truly wins the award for sheer lack of inspiration. The majority of the game takes place in the most painfully rote environment imaginable in a video game. Plain urban setting? Check. Sewers? Check. Desolate rooftops? Check. The environment design in the previous Ninja Gaiden games wasn't exactly the most original, but at least the traditional Japanese setting and appearance made it feel a bit fresher than most games. The environmental design in this game just feels so stale and unremarkable, and considering the game’s cool-looking art style it’s a shame it’s so plain.

This game is excessively bloody, and the blood does look pretty cool

Ultimately, Ninja Gaiden Z: Yaiba is a disappointingly average 3^rd person that takes a radical departure from what we’ve come to expect and love from the Ninja Gaiden series, trading it for crude humour and incredibly rote enemy, environment and story design. Yaiba isn’t an inherently bad game so to speak, it just feels completely forgettable. Also, if you want to get cynical, the choice to include zombies, urban environments and relentlessly crude sex jokes and excessive sexualisation feels like a game just trying to check boxes and appeal to a much wider audience.

Let's Talk... South Park: The Stick of Truth

It’s no secret that licensed properties and games have a dark history, especially South Park. Whilst most licensed games feel like soulless cash-ins riding off the success of a popular TV series or film, it’s a pleasant surprise to say that The Stick of Truth couldn’t stay any more true to what has makes South Park such a simultaneously infamous yet beloved series. All the over-the-top set pieces, the political jabs, the constant flow of jokes that makes you feel awful for laughing at. It all feels so distinctly South Park, and your feelings on what that actually means are detrimental to whether this game is for you or not.

The Stick of Truth opens with the game’s completely silent protagonist, aptly named “New Kid” (or just “Douchebag” to some), moving into his new house in the sleepy mountain town of South Park. All details of your previous life are withheld, except that your lack of voice has some mysterious dark history to it. New Kid joins forces with Grand Wizard Eric Cartman and his human faction the KKK (Kingdom of Kupa Keep) as they seek to return the apparently hugely important “Stick of Truth”- which has the alleged power to control the universe, according to the ever-changing rules of their little game- from Kyle and Stan and their Elven faction. As you’d probably imagine, the story is a load of totally insane, yet hilarious, crap that gives you ample excuse to roam the fairly small but densely populated world, which takes him from the depths of Mr Hankey’s sewers to the mystical lands of 16-bit Canada.

Hopefully that'll make up for all the awful deeds this game makes you do...

The show’s tradition of constantly 1-upping itself with somehow even more offensive, controversial and just plain outrageous jokes and biting satire. The Stick of Truth feels like the writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone to use their apparent love and appreciation for the classic video games of yesteryear and the tropes of high fantasy to craft an adventure that simultaneously pokes fun whilst also serving as a thoughtful homage. Weapons and items are all everyday objects that somehow hold magical properties, cardboard forts that can withstand intense pummelling, and a school that quickly turns into a complete warzone. The game does an excellent job of consistently turning the ordinary into fantastical and hilarious set pieces, and all shown through the twisted imagination of a couple of kids.

Although the continuing nonsense of foul-mouthed kids acting out insane fantasies is a regular theme in the story, it’s only a mere fraction of the sincere weirdness the game has to offer. Alien abductions, government conspiracies and a Nazi Zombie virus are just some of the unbelievable madness that the game spits out at a lightning fast pace. The lasting quality of the humour can be accredited to the game’s ability to know when to keep going with a joke and when to move on, as well as the fact that it never holds the player back to say “look how crazy that was” and simply rolls with every inch of its insane madness from start to finish. There are a couple of instances where a joke or scene lingers a little too long, but the game usually knows when to move on.

The combat features a nice variety of delightfully dumb of spells, abilities and summons

The RPG side of the game is nothing to write home about, with exploration usually leading to more quests, loot or just more jokes, and the turn-based combat just being fairly simple with its focus on hitting the right timing to achieve maximum effect. The combat is fun and there’s a certain satisfaction from mastering the rhythmic button prompts, but don’t come into the game expecting anything more than a frankly rudimentary (and very easy) combat system. Besides, most of the combat is just in service of making another joke anyway, whether that is through the ridiculous Final Fantasy summons or the ludicrous animations or button sequences required to pull off some moves. The RPG side of the game is fun and well-made, but you may be disappointed if you’re looking for a deep and lengthy RPG since South Park only lasts around 12 hours.

One of the game’s key mechanic is frankly is a bit of a clunker. Since it’s a South Park game, this mechanic is naturally a farting mechanic, which, if that’s what your into, may funny the first few times but quickly gets old. Farts are a form of magic in this world that can be used on parts of the environment and in combat as an offensive spell. Such farts come in the form of a handful of spells, the most powerful being crudely named “Nagasaki” of all things. To “perform” a fart, you have to hold down the right stick and used the left stick to find the right “frequency”. It’s a little awkward to pull off and can be somewhat unresponsive to properly execute, but fortunately there are only a dozen or so instances where you are required to use it and I almost never used it in combat.

The combat is simple but satisfying, and like the rest of the game its full of dumb jokes

Ultimately though, your feelings on South Park and its own brand of insane and offensive humour are essentially the only thing that should impact your interest in this game. As much as saying “fans of the genre/property will enjoy this more” gets a little tiresome, it cannot be overstated with The Stick of Truth since South Park’s humour can be hilarious to some and downright offensive to others. South Park is a fantastic example of a licensed game done just right and is possibly one of the best licensed games of all time, not that there’s much competition…

Let's Talk... Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was an excellent blend of exciting combat, well-crafted puzzles and grand boss fights that quickly became the single best-selling Castlevania of all time. Lords of Shadow 2 puts you back into the shoes of one Gabriel Belmont, who became (or already was?) Dracula, the Prince of Darkness, at the end of the first game. A more action-oriented game than its predecessor, Lords of Shadow 2 focuses more on its excellent breed of fast-paced combat but suffers from a convoluted and unfocused story and some occasionally over-ambitious gameplay ideas that simply fail to come to fruition.

Dracula is portrayed as a stone-cold badass... but also loving father..?

Lords of Shadow 2 takes place well after the events of both Lords of Shadow 1 and Lords of Shadow: Mirrors of Fate and is actually set in the modern day. After his castle is besieged by an angry mob known as the Brotherhood of Light, Dracula is forced into a deep sleep lasting a thousand years. He awakens in the present day (ish) and comes into contact with Zobek, one of the Lords of Shadow (and voiced by Patrick Stewart), who promises to remove his curse of immortality if he destroys Satan, who Zobek will return to Earth soon. Dracula must track down the three Satan-worshipping acolytes that can lead him to Satan. Along the way, however, Dracula is plagued with constant visions of his late wife (who he was tricked into killing in the first game) and his son, Trevor Belmont aka Alucard (yes that is Dracula backwards…). Oh, and he’s also being stalked by bloody reincarnations of his castle, who are desperate for him to stay in his castle and so possess people and objects to attack Dracula…

Needless to say, the plot gets a little weird. It gets off to a promising start, but each layer of convoluted nonsense that gets added spread its focus thinner and thinner. It’s hard to enough to keep up with the game’s intense back story and all of the crazy lore surrounding the Lords of Shadow series without all the extra nonsense layered on top. The game makes a number of rather hokey attempts to humanise Dracula by trying to show him as a loving father and devoted husband. These scenes are hard to take seriously and really highlight the confused pacing and tone of the story. These failed attempts to explore Dracula’s character are made worse when they are continually contradicted by scenes of Dracula being a ruthless, cold-blooded bad-ass (which is exactly what he should be). That’s not to say that the story is completely without merit, however, and there are a couple of cool moments spread throughout (with a genuinely good twist towards the end). But, frankly, Lords of Shadow 2 presents a fairly disappointing conclusion to the trilogy.

It's fair to say that things get weird before Dracula's dead wife shows up

Where the story fails, however, the gameplay truly excels. The combat is more complex than the previous games and takes more explicit influence from titles like DmC: Devil May Cry. These influences come from your three main weapons: your Blood Whip, Chaos Claws and Void Sword. Combat revolves around you switching between these three weapons to take advantage of their varying effects. The Void Sword does less damage but returns health on each strike, the Chaos Claws hit fast and hard and can break armor, whilst your Blood Whip is your default weapon. Both the Void Sword and Chaos Claws require separate types of magic to power and each successful strike will deplete a weapon’s respectful magic bar (magic is gathered through killing enemies and dealing damage without being hit). The DmC likeness comes from the way that each weapon is effectively toggled on and off. The Void Sword is toggled with one button (LB on the 360 pad) and Chaos Claws are toggled with another (RB). The game gives you good reason to switch between weapons, though the few they give become quickly predictable.

The game also encourages you to mix up your weapon habits by offering you three levels of “mastery” for each weapon. Full mastery of a combo is gained through prolific use of it, which is displayed by a percentage that will increase by a small amount after every successful use of that combo. Once a combo reaches 100% mastery, it can be transferred to the overall mastery level of the weapon that it belongs to (since each weapon has its own combo list). Each mastery level gained for a weapon will increase its damage output and thus its overall effectiveness in combat. It’s an interesting system that gives you plenty of incentive to vary your combos and encourages you all weapons in equal measure. It works excellently in giving you a legitimate reason to mix things up and resist the urge to just mash out the same combos every time. The combat generally flows better, looks better and feels way more satisfying than it ever did in the first game.

Gameplay is fast, fluid and vastly improved 

Further improvements in the gameplay come from the ability to turn off  quick-time events. First of all, arguably the most important change from the first game, the ability to completely get rid of all quick-time events from start to finish. A bizarre yet fascinating feature to include, one wonders when or why these QTEs became optional (negative reaction from fans? Play testing?). Either way, QTEs are now a toggle-able option in the options menu. This is made even stranger because of how QTE-rich this game is, boss fights are full of them, interacting with objects usually requires it, all finishing moves use them, the list goes on. Being able to turn off QTEs is an excellent and refreshing change that really makes you realise (even more so) how dumb and unnecessary they really are.

The game’s excellent combat, very basic puzzle-solving, and rewarding exploration are occasionally let down by some truly awful pseudo-stealth sequences that feel both poorly designed and completely out of place. Whilst the majority of the game is well-made, the over-ambition and lack of focus that encumber these stealth sequences unfortunately overshadow the obvious talent over at Mercury Steam Entertainment. Occasionally you’ll be faced with clumsy forced stealth sequences in which Dracula must evade a pair of huge brutes wielding inexplicably large weapons, who will instantly vaporise him on sight. Escaping these sticky situations either involves distracting them with a swarm of bats and then sneaking past or using Shadow Portals to turn into a pack of rats to then distract them or get behind them before possessing one of them, usually to then open a locked door. Needless to say, these sequences are horrible. Frustrating, poorly designed, out of place and thoroughly without merit. Such sequences feel like a physical manifestation of a developer with too many ideas and too much ambition.

Most of the boss fights are pretty awesome

The design of the world, however, is one of the few things in Lords of Shadow 2 that actually feels like it stems from too little ambition. Unlike the exotic locales of the original Lords of Shadow, this game takes place almost entirely in a stale and extremely ordinary modern day setting and many of the environments live off a colour palette diet of dull greys and browns. Whilst there is some novelty to the concept of demons in a modern day setting, they just don’t do enough with it to make it interesting. Aside from a panic-ridden news report towards the beginning of the game, there is zero mention of people and society in this completely empty world and the world is inhabited almost entirely by demons. That is, of course, except for a group of mech-soilder dudes with guns and jetpacks who are given absolutely no explanation, and become a prevalent enemy type later in the game. When you consider how great the game looks on PC, the environment design is disappointingly plain and feels far too uninspired (especially when DmC: Devil May Cry showed us how cool demons in the present day can be when done well).

On the PC, the game looks truly amazing. With some excellent lighting and some great-looking environments, the game’s many beautiful moonlit set pieces really show up the game’s 360 and PS3 counterparts. Fortunately, the game also manages to run extremely smoothly. Controls are tight and the game plays reasonably well on a mouse and keyboard set-up, though you’d probably be better off using a gamepad. The star-studded cast of the first game continues here with Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Zobek and Robert Carlyle reassuming the lead. Needless to say, the voice acting is truly excellent and, in some cases, manages to compensate for some shaky writing and the unstable plot.

On the PC, the game looks really fantastic

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a fairly divisive mixed bag. On the one hand, the game presents a thoroughly improved and truly satisfying combat system, incredible visuals, some great boss fights and a number of outstanding moments. But on the other hand, you have a convoluted story with confused pacing and tone that offers a pretty disappointing conclusion to the Lords of Shadow trilogy, a couple of over-ambitious mechanics and simply boring environment design. In the end, though, Lords of Shadow 2 maintains a high level of quality and enough moments of excellence to make up for the parts that just leave you thinking who thought this was a good idea?

Let's Talk... Strider

Let's Talk... Titanfall Beta

Let's Talk... Blackguards