Opinions on… Resident Evil 4

Hmm. This is a bit of a complicated one. It’s not a complication that stems from trying to explain what Resident Evil 4 is, because that’s fairly easy to do – it’s a survival horror and action hybrid, seeing you taking on hordes of violent villagers and sinister cultists in a mission to rescue the president’s daughter from a dark and terrible plot. Nor does the problem come from gauging the general public opinion surrounding it, which essentially sees it lauded as being absolutely brilliant and arguably one of the best games ever made. The fact of the matter is that the complication lies in the simple fact that despite this nigh-on critical acclaim, and against my best efforts, I… Uh… Don’t really like it very much.

It took me a little while to work out why. At first I thought it was the story; after all, the voice acting is laughably awful, and there are not so much plot holes here as much as there are plot ravines. Yet after the initial wave of cheesy lines were spoken in a manner that made me facepalm so hard my hand nearly came bursting out the back of my head, the sheer audaciousness of how bad the plot is becomes somewhat charming. This is a schlocky, over the top B-movie experience and the game knows it, with so many quotable lines being flung your way that any initial scepticism soon fades away into unbridled joy for the whole camp spectacle.  Nor was my problem the sound design, which is non-ironically excellent – with chanting, foreboding music and much more working together to create quite a menacing atmosphere throughout the whole journey.

My problem, it turns out to be, purely stems from the gameplay and level design choices that are on display here. There are just so many little issues and bugbears consistently appearing throughout, that they mar the core enjoyment that comes from merely shooting the bad guys in the face. To provide examples; some areas require you to stand and fight while others require you to flee, and often it takes far too long to differentiate between the two. In cases of fleeing, there’s no point even trying to put up any sort of combat effort, because enemies will just continue to infinitely spawn without warning. And, despite the escort sections being reasonably thought out, there were still too many moments which felt like I failed purely due to the AI behaviour being a little too unpredictable.

On the issue list grows, with even core concepts of the game floundering – I don’t mind the idea of not being able to move when firing, but the reality is it doesn’t actually translate into gameplay that’s particularly riveting. It’s more of a case of fire at the enemies, run away a bit when they get close, then repeat the cycle. This comes to a head with the boss fights, whereupon in most situations you can dodge these eldritch abominations and their devastating attacks by simply slowly jogging past them.

There’s also so many rooms and areas that feel as if they only exist to burn away your time in some fashion – most of the roadblocks to your journey simply require you to get the funny shaped key for the funny shaped door, and that never proves to be a simple point A to point B endeavour. At one point I even came across a hedge maze and was struck with an overwhelming desire to simply turn the game off, such was my certainty in knowing I’d have to wander around for far too long shooting enemies that were practically destined to appear.  Anyone familiar with this game should also know exactly what I mean when I say “water room”, and I’m not having you argue that as the pinnacle of excellent level design.

I’ll concur none of gameplay faults listed above are truly horrific, and perhaps some of you out there would even find them endearing – defining traits of the series as a whole. Yet to me they just lower Resident Evil 4 down to a level that for the most part I would describe as “distinctly average” – a far cry from the flawless masterpiece that I was perhaps expecting to encounter.

There’s a reason why I think this doesn’t feel like a stellar experience nowadays, however. Oddly enough, I think it stems from the fact that back at the time of its initial release, it was the definitive stellar experience. This was the game that invented the idea of the over-the-shoulder perspective in third person games. This was the game that also created the precision aiming system that went hand-in-hand with such a perspective. Heck, it could even be argued that it was this game which made quick time events into something that you can’t escape from in most action titles even to this day. If Resident Evil 4 didn’t exist, you most likely wouldn’t have titles such as Gears of War. Or Uncharted. You certainly wouldn’t have had a series such as Dead Space, and I could keep going with this list if you had several hours to spare.

Put simply, it was the title that set the benchmarks. Yet by doing so, it also devised the means by which it inadvertently shot itself in the foot. You see, so many games have since taken those benchmarks, and refined and honed them via a great deal of time and effort into something that approaches perfection. To therefore go from playing the polished titles of today to the system that’s in place here… Well, it can’t help but feel like a step backwards, a regression into something that can no longer hope to provide the same sense of satisfaction. In many ways, I feel like Resident Evil 4 should be considered a museum piece; something that should be respected, remembered, and admired. It’s just perhaps not something that should be taken out of its case all that often.

In summary, if you were to turn to me and ask me to recommend a good action title or survival horror, I’m not going to turn back round to you and say that you should be giving Resident Evil 4 a whirl. I simply ended up confused and frustrated too often for me to say I had fun with it, despite what it manages to do right. That, however, doesn’t mean I don’t respect the game for what it is and what it managed to do to the industry. If you’re looking for a piece of history or a trip down memory lane, you’ve come to the right place. Otherwise, I’d think twice before taking the plunge.

(Initial) Opinions on… The Nintendo Switch

So! It’s been a long time coming, but the Nintendo Switch has finally emerged from the shadows, finally revealing its secret after months of speculation. That secret, of course, is that it’s a weird hybrid of a home console and a portable device, with a joypad that you can split in two, and then take those pieces and slot them on to other things… And it’s only when it comes to writing it down now that I realise how weird that all sounds. Anyway, the initial reveal has left many a thought pinging around my head, some positive and some negative. It’s a long journey ahead, that’s for sure, but join me as I break down my thoughts, and try and work out whether this is something that can ‘switch’ Nintendo’s recent fortunes…

The one game I’ll never play… And why

You know, I’m an open minded kind of guy when it comes to video game. There’s pretty much nothing out there I won’t at least try, even if it belongs to a genre or franchise I’m completely apathetic too. I’ll ponder away at a puzzle title, command an army in an RTS until they all inevitably die in gruesome ways five minutes later, and (despite being the least athletic person on the planet) I’ll even play a game of FIFA or two given the opportunity. Yet there is one game out there that I refuse to approach; one experience that I dare not sample, for fear of what the dark and twisted results may be. That game is…

The “Time Played” puzzle – How relevant is it?

I’ve written about the Steam review system recently, and how improvements could be made to encourage its brightest and best content to come to the forefront. Yet in my opinions I never really focused on the fact playtime is shown alongside a player’s review with fairly due prominence, and the simple reason for that is as follows… It’s way more complicated on a matter than I first anticipated. Allow me to explain.

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My initial thoughts on the matter where that is simply shouldn’t be there – after all, it only seems fair that everyone’s opinions have equal value. Yet the more I considered it, the more I realised this doesn’t work in practice – after all, someone with a massive amount of time logged into a title is logically going to understand more about that game than someone who has just picked it up. Naturally, there’s no way of telling if someone has just left a game running on idle to clock up a bunch of empty hours, but a reasonable assumption can still be made that the player in question  knows the game’s strengths and weaknesses, and has uncovered all the secrets and subtleties that it may have to offer. Of course, this doesn’t mean any review they post immediately becomes gospel – perhaps it even adds an increased pressure for them to clearly mark out what makes the game in question so compelling – but it can add some extra reassurance to a well voiced opinion, therefore justifying the existence of playtime being there in the first place.

The question can therefore be asked as to whether reviews with a much lesser playtime (Perhaps bordering on the minute) actually lose their relevance. This isn’t the case all the time, but it’s difficult to say when it is true and when it isn’t. For one, the matter of playtime becomes entirely subjective based on the game in question; A quick arcade style game isn’t going to require many hours to truly understand, for instance, which a massive RPG style game set in a large open world might take a bit more exploring before someone can form an effective opinion.

Enough time? Or not at all?

The above is pretty much a given, but it gets even more subjective when you start taking into consideration the nature of the player themselves. For instance, someone well versed in playing first person shooters is likely to race through such a title much quicker than someone coming across them for the first time… But it’s the inexperienced player who would be shown to have the longer play time, even though it’s the more skilled player who might be the best at explaining whether the game in question is a good or bad example of the genre. Likewise, fans of a franchise will more rapidly understand new features and spot improvements, and therefore be quicker to come to a (still reasonable) judgement than someone new to the series. Even subtle things like a person’s reading speed when it comes to a visual novel can notably alter their play time – even if, in the end, their overall experience remains remarkably similar to someone else’s.

To go even further down the rabbit hole, though, take a moment to consider basic human psychology… And yes, I am serious. You’ve probably heard of the idea that it only takes someone around seven seconds to draw up their judgement about a person. The same holds true in a sense when it comes to games – after all, it really doesn’t take long most of the time before your general feelings about a game really begin to take shape. Naturally, some titles might take more time to get going, and you should always be open to changing your mind, but as a general rule of thumb I feel the idea does hold true.

Take, for instance, my time and resultant opinions about Mad Max; it was only about one or two hours maximum before issues with its design and structure began to chew away at me, and further play only re-enforced those opinions. In short, there may be something worth taking away from someone’s gut instinct. That’s not to say that every review with 10 minutes play time should immediately be welcomed with open arms. It’s wise to approach these reviews with some wariness, and in most cases it doesn’t take long for the content of such a review to reveal a person’s lack of expertise. Yet on the other side of the coin, reviews with such a limited amount of play time should not be dismissed immediately, especially if they express their views clearly and concisely.

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In conclusion, playtime’s a tricky beast to pin down.  Overall, I don’t feel like it’s something worth removing completely – as discussed, it’s a reasonably ok way to judge experience and how cautious you should be when looking at a certain review. It’s just a matter of making sure that when it comes to looking at the figure, it’s something that you should be looking at with a mind that’s aware of all the facts.

Opinions on… Gunpoint

Gunpoint’s a clever game. It’s clever in all the ways you’d expect a good game to be, of course; It’s got a distinctive art style and soundtrack that effectively create the feeling of a noir-inspired, near future world. It’s also got a nicely refined difficulty and progression curve, holding your hand and building your strength without insulting you. There’s a bunch of other core gameplay elements Gunpoint does well – yet it is not really these that which make it so clever.

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The first thing that really does this, and which catapults the game into being something more special, come in the form of its core gameplay feature – the Crosslink. In short, it’s a device that lets you rewire one device to another, changing the way they operate. This can be simple as wiring up a switch to open up a door instead of turning on a light… Or it can be as complicated as using a lift to trigger a sound sensor, which in turn turns off a light, causing a curious guard to wander over to the lightswitch, which electrocutes a socket elsewhere when flipped, which in turn knocks out another guard. It sounds confusing, but it’s surprisingly intuitive and easy to get used to; it’s not long before you’ll start to feel like a real Crosslink expert.

This is clever in itself, but the real brilliance comes from the fact that’s there’s no real negative result to messing around with this power that brings your fun coming to a screeching standstill. Either your elaborate Crosslink scheme succeeds, making you feel like a diabolical mastermind, or it ends up falling apart, at which point you’re just eager to refine your strategy and work out what went wrong instead of being infuriated. There’s always the third result that your plan was so stupid that it ends up with a door swinging open and knocking you flying, you won’t care regardless, because that’s just hilarious.

Another way the game’s quite ingenious is that you’re free to play it however you want. Want to buy a gun and just shoot every problem you face? You can do that. Want to use your super jump to arc gracefully through the air and silently smash through a window like a twisted, trench coat wearing Spiderman? Go ahead! It’s possible for every player to have a different experience on a level just because of all the different ways you can approach each situation. I myself went for a no-upgrade run on my second playthrough, which presents its own challenges and its own little moments. The game itself even subtly reacts to your play style – there’s a nice easter egg for if you get too punch happy on a guard, and the story and future missions can even subtly change based on how you’ve played previously. Smart! Again.

This ability to choose you own play style even leaks into the story – while your choices here don’t affect things that much, you can still choose to respond to your client’s calls deadly seriously, or just make endless deadpan comments and jokes about the absurdity of the situation. The writing’s witty and genuinely funny at points, and while the story itself got a little overly complicated for my tiny brain to comprehend as it neared its end, in general it’s compelling and has a nice few twists and turns that keep things moving well. It’s all… Well, I think you can guess what I’m going to say.

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Overall, it’s hard to fault Gunpoint. There’s possibly an argument to be made that it’s a little short, but as noted above, there’s tons of replay value that comes in changing your technique, and the fact you can build your own levels is just more reason to keep playing. Overall, this is a smart and entertaining title that’s certainly worthy of your time.

Opinions on… Mad Max (The Video Game)

Let’s cut to the chase; Mad Max is bland and generic. Which, for a series with themes of anarchy and madness, and with multiple films containing fairly fresh and original ideas, is a really odd thing to have to say. There’s very little here that hasn’t been done before and done better, and the more you whittle away at the game, the more readily this becomes clearly apparent. The end result is a game which rapidly loses its appeal for each hour that passes, and one that has no real reason to stick around in your memory for the long term.

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To pick apart why this is the case, you only need to look at the core structure of the game. It’s a case of going to one location to scout out points of interest in the area, and then going to those points of interest and clearing them out. Do that over and over again, and finally the area will be free of any ‘threat’ and you can move on to the next area and do it all again. If this seems familiar, it’s because you probably recognise it as that classic ‘Ubisoft formula’ game style that’s been used in countless titles in the past few years; Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, you could go on. It’s not the only idea to be mundanely recycled, either. The whole hand to hand combat system, for instance, is incredibly close to that of the Batman franchise, right down to the counters and combo meter. It’s so confusingly similar, that given a few hours you’d be forgiven for wondering why Mad Max himself isn’t wearing the cape and cowl.

There’s nothing technically wrong with the re-use of such elements, especially considering they work; but it’s just so tiring to see them so lazily recycled here, especially in conjunction with a franchise such as this. It’s a potentially forgivable grievance, but dig a little deeper into more specific gameplay elements, and you’ll see just how flat this whole experience is. For instance, collecting scrap for upgrades is vital to making progress, but you soon learn if there’s a slight annex or route off the (completely linear) path through enemy bases, there’s going to be scrap there.  It’s not even open to questioning – it’s simple fact. Such cliché gameplay elements roll on– if there’s a door that needs explosives to open, there’s guaranteed to be some sort of combustible extremely close nearby. If you need fuel for a generator, there’s going to be cans of it within ten feet of your location. This last one is particularly laughable – the game goes on about the scarcity of fuel, but you can pick up a fuel can that’s required for some purpose, and IMMEDIATELY see another one spawn in its place. It’s possible to stack about 5 or 6 cans up just by picking up the new spawn and immediately dropping it. It’s absurd.

The whole issue with this cookie cutter generic gameplay and the desire for the game to hold your hand only goes to fly in the face of the game’s (and the franchise as a whole) ideas of survival as a whole. Early on, you’re told to keep fuel for your car close at hand lest you get stranded, and keep your canteen full of water as it’s your only means of refilling health. It’s a neat concept in theory  – desperately trying to cling on to your last supplies as they slowly dwindle away – but you soon realise both these supplies are practically everywhere. In all my time playing, I don’t think I’ve refuelled my car once. It’s not even come close to starting to run out. Water also becomes meaningless when you realise death only drops you a few minutes back with a miraculously full life bar. It’s all just so painfully bland, so much so that the end result just makes you want to smash your head into the keyboard.

Is there any positives? Well, yeah, actually. Car combat is a little weird and doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s damn fun all the same, which is what you’d sort of expect from anything relating to Mad Max. The car harpoon is the obvious highlight – using it to rip off parts of your opponent’s vehicles until they are a mere shell, and then boosting into them for a glorious finale of explosive pyrotechnics. You could, of course, just cut out the middle man and harpoon your foe straight out the driver seat, dragging them merrily along behind you before whipping them into the nearest brick wall for a gristly finale. It’s delightfully vindictive fun that only gets more fun the more you upgrade your car into the perfect killing machine.

The game itself is also visually stunning. The wasteland is an eerie place just to drive around, dust and sand whipping away at your feet, elegant arcs being carved through the sand as you get into your car and roar away. When you encounter your first storm, the screen filling with debris and your speakers roaring with the sound of the wind, it’s a genuinely terrifying and immersive experience. HUD clutter ruins the effect somewhat, but you can go into photo mode (it in itself good fun to play around with) and eradicate that nuisance, as long as you don’t mind not knowing where anything else for a while. It’s a visual spectacle that does capture the spirit of a destroyed and ravaged world in a weird and wonderful way.

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Overall, though, it’s really, REALLY hard to recommend Mad Max. Fans will get something out of it – that goes without saying – and if you know exactly what you’re going into and don’t expect much from the whole affair, there is fun to be had. Overall, though, the rest of us will find a game that’s ticks all the right boxes mechanically, but lacks any soul whatsoever. And all things considered, that’s… Well, mad.

Opinions on… Monster Hunter Generations

Monster Hunter: Generations is like the “Greatest Hits” compilation of your favourite band. This may strike you as an odd analogy, but the same emotions are there. You’ve got all the well known bits everyone enjoys always ready at your fingertips, but as time passes, you begin to miss those little things – the obscure little bits you always enjoyed, or the little bonuses and sparks of personality which makes all the other releases so great. Monster Hunter Generations is perhaps the greatest celebration going – but there’s a ton of those little things which can easily get you down.

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The first, and probably the most glaring, is the lack of G-Rank. By no means does Generations lack in content – there’s new deviant and hyper variations of monsters that can keep even the most battle scarred of hunters busy – but the omission of G-rank can make it feel like there is. In all honesty, I never reached it in MH4U; but its presence was something I aspired to, a lofty goal to one day achieve. Now, once you hit high rank and grab a few sets of armour, you’re pretty good to go for the rest of your time with the game, no matter how long that will be. Therefore, you’re left with this odd situation where there feels like there’s a void when in reality there’s as plentiful harvest to feast upon. Perhaps it’s something that will only really bug the most dedicated players, but it remains a disappointment not to see it make the cut.

Other features have taken flight or shifted in weird ways; for one, Generations drops things down to 30fps instead of the 60fps of the previous instalment, and textures and surroundings have also been slightly dulled and muddied in return for a few new particle effects. It’s not a huge game breaker by any stretch of the imagination, but with my time with the game there have been moments where things just haven’t seemed as crisp or smooth to look at and play, and that becomes more noticeable when you put footage of MH4U next to it for comparison.

The pacing of gameplay also feels different, especially so in the first few hours of the game, which are incredibly slow and come dangerously close to being crushingly boring. Monster Hunter’s habit of not explaining anything well glares through strongly here, and there are far too many tedious gathering quests to be done before you even hunt your first big prey. Even then, you have to sink MORE time in before things really hit high gear. Having to build yourself up to the big threats is nothing new to the series, sure, but the way the game’s designed makes it feel more laboured and a chore than it really should be. For those coming into Monster Hunter for the first time here, beware – you really do have to put the time in to start getting things out.

The biggest omission in my personal opinion, however, is one that you might not expect, that being the lack of a decent story. It’s fair to say that Monster Hunter games do not and should not have a deep and compelling story as their main focus, and that’s all true and fair, but MH4U did an excellent job of having one that really enhanced the game as a whole. There, you were made to feel like part of something bigger, gathering new friends and experiences and rallying together to tackle adversity. When it came near to the end of MH4U’s story, with an elder dragon ready to attack at any moment and an army of Seregios swarming the world, it felt like a big deal – the threat was constant and real, and the subsequent monster fights felt epic as a result, as if you were carving out your own legend.

Monster Hunter Generations has none of that. You’re literally thrown into the game with a quick “oh, you’re a research assistant” explanation, and things never really develop from there. As a result, no monsters of challenges really have the chance to build up the threat or gravitas they deserve. This is especially true with the ‘fated four’, which are four new exciting and challenging monsters introduced in Generations that prove one of the game’s highlights… Yet the game introduces them with very little fanfare, and indifference bordering on apathy from the NPCs around you, which nullifies their impact somewhat. Even the Glavenus – the hardest hitting and most intimidating of the four – gets introduced in a sort of “Oh, there’s a Glavenus, you’d better kill it I guess” sort of way. It’s a real dampener to the game as whole in my opinion, and hopefully we see a return to a sense of adventure in the next title.

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With all those grievances taken into account, however, the undeniable fact remains that Generations is one hell of a compelling game. There’s still that overwhelming sense of satisfaction that comes from slaying a creature as big as a house, and the added pleasure that comes from carving up its corpse and subsequently wearing it as a hat. Online hunts remain challenging and exciting, and those old feel good moments such as where a monster stumbles and allow your team to unleash hell continue to never get boring. The game retains its sense of charm and good humour (Even poking fun at some of the more annoying parts of the community in some of the dialogue) and there’s also a great deal of small and welcome quality of life changes to be found… Not least of all the ability to hold the button to gather instead of mashing it. Hallelujah.

For all of the talk of omissions at the start of this review, it’s important not to forget the additions that have been made. Hunter Arts (special attacks and abilities you can build up and then unleash when suitable) feel slightly gimmicky, as the best strategy seems to boil down to “pick the strong attack and use it when the monster falls over”. However, Hunting Styles are much more interesting, a lot of the time fundamentally changing the way each weapon works and therefore dramatically shifting your strategy as a result. For instance, you can choose an aerial style for dual blades, granting you the ability to jump around like a spinning ball of concentrated death – but can you live without demon mode, which grants you enhanced dodging and better combos? Overall, they’re a great addition, one that makes mastering even one weapon a much grander endeavour, and therefore adding even more gameplay as a result. And let’s now forget prowler mode, which lets you play as your Palico. Not only is it another interesting change in pace that forces you to rethink your strategy, but the sheer sight of seeing a small cat trying to bash an elder dragon’s head in provides a remarkable amount of comedy value.

Monster Hunter Generations, then, is a damn fine game, one that I have sunk a many an hour into, and one that I have no intention of putting down any time soon. It’s just unfortunate there’s a bunch of little faults and exclusions that really stop it from reaching the lofty heights that MH4U felt like it achieved –here’s hoping the next title can take the improvements made here, and craft them into something that really blows our minds.

Opinions on… Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Uncharted 4 is a masterpiece. There’s no point in me hiding that fact, or trying to debate it; it’s so simply and categorically true that I might as well just stick it at the start of this article and potentially be done with it. That would certainly mean that in most cases you’d be free to go off and do your own thing, but I want to really explain why it’s so good. Well, that, and I get lonely without you here. In short, Naughty Dog has just excelled at every component that shapes the end of Nathan Drake’s journey – it’s a combination of so many finely tuned and elements, it becomes almost ridiculous to behold.

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To begin with, let’s take the purely external appearance of A Thief’s End; that is, what you immediately see when the game is in action. Graphically, Uncharted 4 is simply breathtaking to behold – this is something I say this about lots of games, true, but this game takes it to another level. Everything just feels so vibrant and alive, every new vista causing you to stop and just drink it in with awed wonder time and time again. Everything is so intricately detailed, something that boils down to even the finest of details – flowers dance and sway in the breeze, rocks tumble and fall down mountainsides so realistically it’s frightening, and so many more examples besides. Photo mode here doesn’t just feel like an optional bonus, it feels like an intrinsic part of the game, something you’ll want to mess around with time and time again. After all, you only need to glance around the web to see the hundreds upon hundreds of amazing screenshots other players have taken. You’d be forgiven for thinking trickery is at play, but you’d be mistaken – that’s just what the game looks like all the time.

This isn’t just all gloss and no substance, however. After three games following Drake and friends, becoming invested in their adventures and their hardships, Uncharted 4 delivers a gripping story that’s less about treasure hunting and more about looking at each character and who they really are. I should point out it’s a story that’s slow to get going, to the extent I was starting to get a little restless at the slower pacing that makes up the first few chapters, but when it truly gets going it never stops. There are so many moments where I felt the highs and lows the characters themselves were feeling on screen, making me rapidly come to realisation of how much I actually care about each and every of them. That’s something that’s not easy to achieve by a long shot, and the fact the game manages to pull it off so easily (And end the whole Uncharted saga with a satisfying conclusion to boot) only adds to its impressive nature.

Completing the package, of course, is the gameplay itself. Anyone who has even touched an Uncharted title before will know to expect the hearty mix of platforming, puzzles and action that the games have delivered in the past. Here, though, everything’s polished to an ever finer shine. There’s very few moments this time around that are in any way dull to play – everything just flows and feels so brilliantly and naturally it reaches the point where it’s almost unnoticeable. I’ll avoid spoilers, but chapter 11shows this off perfectly, and is perhaps the pinnacle of Uncharted gameplay in compacted form. It starts off with some excellent platforming in the kind of locations you’ve come to expect to see, then throws one of the cleverest puzzles the series has ever had at you, and ends with perhaps the best action sequence of all the games to date. That chapter in microcosm alone is sure to be held in high regard for years to come, but the crazy thing is it’s not the exception, it’s the rule. The whole game is just pure fun to play from start to end, with nothing there to sour the experience.

This extends to certain gameplay elements I was wary of going into the game, but which fit so perfectly I honestly question why I ever thought otherwise. Take, for instance, the jeep and boat sections – after the clumsy Jet Ski sections of the first game, I was worried the same fiddly controls and issues would rear their ugly head again here. It’s actually the opposite that holds true; both vehicles provide some unique gameplay and exciting moments that simply wouldn’t have existed otherwise. It also allows the world to open up to a bigger extent that it has ever done before, which is a very good thing. The same holds true of the grappling hook – it feels like a weird addition to begin with, an unwanted intruder into the familiar, but by the end of the game you’ll be wondering how the series ever functioned without it. Even design choices, such as a noticeable reduction in the amount of set pieces and gun fights that disappointed me initially, end up making perfect sense. This time around, there’s no reliance on certain scripted moments to get the blood pumping; the action is more widely spread out to keep you focused, and when a set piece does arrive, it’s all the more grander for it.

If there’s one final thing to mention, it’s the multiplayer, and if I were to be honest it’s here that I can fire off the only major issue I have with the game. There’s nothing actually wrong with it – it’s accessible and exciting to play, and in my short time with it so far I cannot deny I’ve had some exciting matches and memorable moments. It just feels like there’s not much to keep you coming back to it. The whole experience is geared around unlocking new costumes and animations, but after completing the one daily challenge you get a day, progress towards doing so becomes incredibly slow. There’s nothing truly exciting to work towards, and which the thrill of victory is nice enough, it just feels like there needs to be something more. The fact micro transactions loom over the whole affair can’t help but makes you feel like that this was an intended design choice as well – and with the rest of the game being so welcoming and exciting to the player, that’s not a nice feeling at all.

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Seriously, though, that’s the only fault of any substance I can level at the game. Any other issues – such as the unexpected gameplay shift in the final boss fight, for instance, or the fact combat as a whole can still feel a tiny bit loose of times – quite simply does not detract from the final product in any noticeable way. From the very start of this article I’ve been gushing about how good Uncharted 4 is, I’m well aware, but that’s simply because I simply cannot get across how honestly and truly amazing a game this is. You need to play this. Seriously.

Opinions on… Ratchet and Clank

It’s weird to think that the first Ratchet and Clank game came out almost fifteen years ago now. Yet even with this in mind, I still have vague memories of young me marvelling at the game’s wondrous worlds, and all the shiny weapons I could use. I can even recall my desire to get the infamous “R.Y.N.O”, and grinning to myself when I used it to shred the final boss into pieces in a matter of seconds. The point is this; I’ve not played another game in the series since then, but those memories have still stuck with me, in the same way similar memories of the series must have stuck with thousands of others. So it was with curiosity that I wondered this new reboot could recapture the good old days, or whether it was the worst attempt at cashing in on a film ever.

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Happily enough, the former holds true; while the game itself is not perfect, there’s certainly enough here to make everyone happy. For one, the required array of weird and wonderful weapons that define a Ratchet and Clank game are all present and correct – sure, you’ve got your fairly run of the mill blasters and sniper rifles, but then you have such oddities as a shotgun that turns things into pixels, or a laser that transforms things into goats. Each of these devices of death are satisfying and fun to use, and although one or two of them do feel a little inferior when compared to other weapons, you’ll have to keep using them all to even stand a chance to survive. This is partly due to limited ammo resources and the situation in hand, but one of the biggest incentives simply comes from the fact that each weapon can be levelled up and upgraded to become even more kick ass. Everything is cleverly designed so you’ll want to keep using weapons just to get the satisfaction of seeing them all get stronger and stronger. The ability to combining the effects of two beefed up weapons drives your motivation even further – soon enough, you’ll be causing a metric tonne of damage at an incredible pace, and loving every second.

Speaking of pace, it’s safe to say this game runs at one that can be described as “blistering”. It screams along incredibly quickly; you can land on one planet, clear it out, and be on the next within 20 minutes. Wave upon wave of bad guys stream out from practically every corner, the screen lights up in a beautiful (and slightly confusing at times) Technicolor spectacle almost instantly, and before you have time to obtain victory and draw your breath you’re on to the next encounter. It gets even more ridiculous when you unlock challenge mode after completing the game; with all your weapons available from the start and the ability to upgrade them at a much more rapid pace, things just get even faster. Some puzzle sections with Clank provide necessary breathers that ensure things don’t get too repetitive, which are fun in themselves – although I have to say they do get a little dull upon repeat playthroughs. It’s the light speed action that’s the true highlight of the show here, and something that is well worth the price of admission.

Credit must also go to the developers Insomniac Games for making it so not only does the game never chug or stutter when true mayhem is going on, but actually remains looking smooth and stunning overall. Each new world is a joy to behold; they’re vivid, crisp and clear, and full of attention to detail. Hovercars zip across the skyline on some, steam and lava spurt and bubble from the ground on others. Some will moan at the lack of 60fps in play here – but really, shouldn’t matter when the overall picture is this damn good.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the general path you take through these meticulously crafted and beautiful worlds remains so strictly linear. I suppose this is an odd thing to critique considering the nostalgic nature of the game – I doubt the classic Ratchet and Clank or any title in the series has let you wander freely, after all – but it does feel a bit of a shame that everything is on a strict path all the same. On the rare occasion you’re actually let off the leash to wander to your heart’s content, it’s really fun; you’re given the chance to soar around with a jetpack on one planet, for instance, or to plunge the ocean’s depths on another. It does, however, raise another problem – there’s very little of worth to actually find.  Sub-quests essentially boil down to a dull “collect them all” type of affair, there’s a few gold bolts where one gadget will happily just point them out to you on a map without you making any effort… And that’s pretty much it. Perhaps I ask too much, but a little bit more freedom (And the incentive to take advantage of that freedom) would not have gone amiss.

Something that is much more of a major issue, however, and one that is incredible to see considering this game is meant to coincide with a movie, is that the story is incredibly weak. It gets in a few good jokes, but apart from that it’s predictable and at points just seems downright weirdly written. For example, there’s very little notable interaction between Ratchet and Clank themselves, even though the game itself is named after them. They seem to end up paired together without any thought, there’s basically one scene where they have any sort of meaningful conversation, and that’s your lot. The side characters would also be completely forgettable if it wasn’t for the fact they never shut up over comms, often with pointless updates and advice. It’s reached the point on my third playthrough where I want to reach into the screen and strangle some of them, which I seriously doubt is the effect the game was going for. As an incentive to make me want to go and see the film itself, this fails miserably.

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Overall then, Ratchet and Clank isn’t perfect – however, it’s still incredibly fun to play, and brings back the same sense of enjoyment and excitement I felt playing the original so many years ago. Overall, it’s worth checking out – because for all the time you’ll spend creating chaos and explosions within the game, you’ll certainly also be having a blast outside of it.

The essence of the collectible – what makes them fun?

It has come to my attention that there’s a universal constant running through practically all the games that I’ve been playing recently… It’s not something like the fact they all have deep and immersive worlds, however, or that they all have excellent gameplay. No, it’s more the simple and mundane fact that I have spent a lot of time in all of them mindlessly running around collecting things. No matter the scenario, everything always seems to boil down to me wandering around picking yet another object off the floor, and all things considered it’s not always been the most fun of experiences. However, in yet another haze of boredom, this simple fact got me to thinking; what exactly does it take to make collecting things fun?

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Well, predictably, I don’t think there’s really a clear cut answer; if there was, this would be a pretty short article, after all. Despite this, there’s a few things that I really do think help make the collectible experience a fun one, the first being that each collectible needs to come with an immediate reward for actually collecting it. Audio logs are the classic example here, but it’s by no means a bad one; these can provide you with anything from a nice insight into the story of a game right down to a simple laugh, after all. The Division provides a prime example of this in action; since the actual story is only sparsely told throughout the missions, it comes down to audio logs to successfully flesh out the world around you. It’s one of the few ways the game actually makes you want to explore; they actually contain interesting information about how the outbreak happened and the consequences of it, and therefore builds that desire you want to see when it comes to seeking out the next one.

The Uncharted series, for all the things it does well, actually provides the other side of the coin when it comes to immediate reward. For each artefact you find, you get rewarded with a sound effect and a little picture of the artefact in question… And that’s it. There’s nothing of any real interest to take from getting each one, and when you’re scouring the world trying to get 100 of them, it means things get old pretty fast. It’s just not very fun at all.

Thankfully, Uncharted does get it right when it comes to my next point; collectibles should come with a long-term reward for getting them all. I mean, this one’s pretty much a given in every game that contains collectibles, I agree, but it’s an important enough point to highlight anyway… Uncharted, for instance, gives you the ability to give yourself a rocket launcher at any time as a reward for finding everything – and it feels like a suitable and satisfying reward for the work you’ve put in up until that point. What constitutes a final reward can vary from title to title; sometimes even just an achievement or trophy that provides you with bragging rights can be enough. There just needs to be… Something, that little spark of motivation that makes you actually want to go for the gold and grab everything in sight in the first place.

Rewards are one thing, however; the actual act of collecting is another. Here, I think it’s important that collectibles shouldn’t be too so obscurely hidden they’re frustrating to find. Funnily enough, Uncharted again provides a good example of what not to do here. Many treasures are way off the beaten path or in places you wouldn’t think you could reach, but a special prize goes to one particular treasure in the third game; here, you are required to shine a light at a flock of bats, which then flee in terror and knock the treasure down to your level in the process. It’s a process and train of thought that had not been seen in the series up until this point, and is never seen after, so much so I wonder how people worked it out in the first place. Put simply; if I have to look up a guide online every five minutes just to find things, I’m probably not having much fun.

However, things get a bit problematic here, because I think the opposite also rings true – collectibles shouldn’t be ridiculously easy to collect, either. Pretty much every Ubisoft game ever is guilty of doing this; you always reach a certain point where everything is suddenly clearly marked out for you, removing any sense of exploration and making everything into a dull point to point affair remarkably quickly. There’s got to be a good degree of balance between the two contrasts, one that can only be achieved via clever game design and implementation; it’s not a simple case of just dumping a bunch of items into your map and calling it a day.

There’s also one last think I consider to be important, and that’s the fact that there can’t be so many collectibles that it’s off-putting to ever start getting them. Ubisoft games are another prime example here; open your map in any one of these games and zoom out a little, and it’s not uncommon for the map itself to disappear under a sea of tiny dots that mark each collectible. Again, to be fair, the opposite can hold true here – Crackdown had 500 agility orbs, for example, but the fact they each one made your character stronger (And also came with such a satisfying ‘ping’ noise upon their collection I can still recall it to this day) made it so that it didn’t seem a pointless endeavour to start hunting them down.  Again, it all comes down to good game design – something I only realised was so important when it came to giving the matter some thought. It really can’t be under-estimated.

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Overall, combine these things together and in my eyes it’s nigh-on the perfect formula for collectible heaven; something that you’re actually enthusiastic to do, instead of something that only manages to raise a dejected sigh out of you. It’s interesting to consider that I can’t actually think of any game that does it perfectly; Uncharted has good rewards but a depressing and difficult slog to get there, for instance, whilst The Division makes each collectible interesting but makes them simple to find and way too many in number. Perhaps one day a game will strike the perfect equilibrium, and create that collectible feast that’s impossible to ignore; until then, it’s probably left for us to fill in the gaps with our stubborn desire to be a perfectionist in everything we play. Or is that bit just me…?