Continued from Part One…

BIOSHOCK

I’ve been thinking about making a video for Bioshock: Infinite ever since my first completion in 2013. When the trilogy collection released on Switch I figured it’d be a good opportunity to replay the whole series, catching myself up on the franchise and determining whether I ought to tackle each game in a separate video. Unfortunately, this plan swiftly fell through once I discovered how poorly the combat of Bioshock had aged.

Some of its flaws have already been addressed in the sequels, such as tying plasmid powers and weaponry to separate triggers on the controller rather than restricting the player to using just one or the other. Others, however, persist even in the sequels. The constant spawning and wandering of Rapture’s citizens comes to mind, interrupting efforts to explore every nook of the city or to take in the most minute of details within the scenery. The first two titles of the franchise possess this problem, emphasized in the second as a randomly generated Splicer would walk into a room filled with my carefully laid traps just before I began an ADAM harvest.

In the context of the first game, these interruptions and other scripted encounters kept pulling the game’s focus from exploration. The level design was more open, lending itself to a slightly more linear Metroidvania or survival horror approach. Exploration rewarded the player with weaponry and Plasmid powers, some of which were optional. Voice recordings provided additional clues as to Rapture’s downfall, each from a different perspective, lifestyle, and philosophy. These are the areas where Bioshock excels, and yet at every corner it feels as if the game sought to interrupt these activities with its far weaker combat.

It is likely a result of the era in which it was released, which goes to show how far my own gaming tastes have changed approximately fifteen years later. I had played through Bioshock multiple times and even completed it on the hardest, patched in difficulty. Now, however, I cannot help but wonder if the game ought to be remade with its narrative intact, but a greater focus on exploration than on the combat. Or, perhaps, it is my preference for the Metroidvania genre leaking out.

STORY OF SEASONS: FRIENDS OF MINERAL TOWN

One of the few games on this list I have no problem with. I merely have little to say about it. Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is precisely what it says on the tin… or would be, if it retained the original namesake. This is a remake of the GameBoy Advance game Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, which may be confusing if you’re not aware of the legal complications surrounding the franchise identity. To summarize, Harvest Moon was the American name of the series and legally belongs to publisher Natsume Inc. The developer of that series has continued to produce the franchise, but it is now published under the title of Story of Seasons in North America by XSeeD Games.

In other words, it’s the same franchise in Japan, with publishers and names changing hands in North America.

I’ve had a bit of an on-again off-again relationship with the franchise ever since Back to Nature on the original PlayStation. While I enjoyed A Wonderful Life, I never managed to finish it and see the credits roll. It felt too dragged out compared to the “fast-paced” nature of its predecessors. Attempts to get back into the game, including the original GameBoy Advance release of Friends of Mineral Town, have always met in failure. Be it the evolution of its aesthetic or the mechanics seeming to deviate from what I loved on the SNES and PlayStation, I’ve not been able to successfully return to the series.

I was worried that being a remake of the GameBoy Advance entry would cause Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town to feel like a lesser game. Thankfully there have been enough quality-of-life changes implemented throughout, as well as inclusions from Back to Nature, that it feels like a close enough approximation to what I want out of a modern Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons. The only detriment are the mini-games of the Harvest Sprites, many of which are both tedious and time consuming. These little pixie-style helpers are a necessity, yet my time through the winter season has progressed slowly as I rely on these mini-games to establish or maintain a relationship with them. This relationship is vital if I wish to continue expanding my farm come Spring time.

The tedium of the Harvest Sprite mini-games is really the only complaint I have. If they were made far faster and less tedious, it’s possible I’d still be playing on a regular basis. Fortunately, no matter how many months have passed between play sessions, it’s an easy game to dive back into.

FINAL FANTASY: CRYSTAL CHRONICLES REMASTERED

I still remember watching members of my college’s gaming club playing this. I possessed a GameCube of my own, as well as a GameBoy Advance, and plenty of our members had the required connection cable to ensure four players could cooperate together. Yet I still somehow missed out on it. Perhaps I was still seething with immature and irrational hatred towards Square Enix?

A remaster of the game and freedom from youthful grudges seemed like the opportune time to catch up on this intriguing little game I had missed. Unfortunately, despite not being bad, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered is somewhat disappointing. Many have already complained about how opaque the process is to group up with your friends online – likely due to the requirement of friend codes in order to play across platforms – as well as narrative progress carrying over exclusively for the host. I may be used to repeating content due to the likes of Left 4 Dead and Destiny, but neither game requires players to replay maps multiple times in a row to ensure everyone is able to progress forward together.

Of course, while repeating missions and maps is bound to try one’s patience and develop a sense of mundanity and tedium, it could be made somewhat more tolerable with adequate enough combat mechanics. Just as Bioshock is likely a product of its time, emphasizing combat to the point of interfering with exploration so as not to “bore” the player, Crystal Chronicles also comes from a time where action-RPGs had far more simple A.I. and combat commands. Physical attack combos rely on an odd rhythm that’s difficult to time properly, nor does it really serve a purpose when matched with enemy attack patterns. Combat is more about knowing when to move and when to strike once or twice before sprinting away again. The more “complex” systems, such as combining spells together, require enough coordination by the players that the time spent casting a single spell would be outmatched in damage output by every team member acting independently.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered is a laid-back enough game that it works well as an excuse for everyone to just assemble together and chill. It’s comfortable and a great excuse to spend time with your friends, which is all anyone could ask for during the time of Covid. It just makes it difficult to return to when more mechanically solid titles beg for the player’s attention.

MANEATER

There are two critical problems with Maneater. The first is the lack of a proper lock-on feature.When you press the right thumbstick, the camera will temporarily focus on a nearby target. That focus is gone once the player or opponent makes a move. Both the A.I. and player are incredibly mobile, which means there is a lot of clicking the thumb stick and desperately trying to reorient the camera. Every fight with another predator is simultaneously a fight with disorientation, and may God help you should another foe join into the fray.

While a hard lock-on could still disorient the player by constantly swiveling about the environment, centered on the opposing aquatic aggressor, it would at least keep the player’s eyes on the current threat. A player can focus on where they are after the foe has been dispatched. Immediate survival demands knowing when to implement offensive and defensive maneuvers, something they are incapable of while wrestling with a camera.  It would seem that the developer has chosen this half-baked “lock-on” option intentionally, theoretically to prevent the game from “being too easy”.

I might more readily accept such an excuse were the enemies not incredible damage sponges. From the get-go the player is instructed to tackle alligators and other large predators whose bite is vicious and whose hides are thick. My first instinct was to instead pursue the main story rather than side quests in order to level up, but my opponents swiftly became all the more stronger, sending my pup of a shark swimming for safety.

Instead of creating a properly challenging game, the developers at Tripwire Interactive decided to hamstring the player while providing unreasonable buffs to your opponents. The player isn’t combatting alligators, they are fencing with the camera which prolongs an already tediously lengthy battle. Much like Bioshock pulls the player from its enjoyable exploration only to throw them into subpar combat, the comedic movement of the shark on land and pleasure of navigating aquatic dungeons is constantly interrupted by extremely territorial predators of the depths. My time is better spent with games whose design flaws are at least unintentional rather than conscious decisions.

THE SILVER CASE

I realized this year, after having played Danganronpa and 428 Shibuya Scramble, that I’m a fan of visual novel games. I also discovered that Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes’ most enjoyable content was found in its incredibly linear “visual novel” segment, Travis Strikes Back. I therefore expected Suda 51’s The Silver Case – the visual novel he had directed prior to Killer 7 and No More Heroes – to be right up my alley.

The experience has instead caused me to reflect on what key ingredients are essential to a visual novel’s appeal, with the most obvious being the writing. If nothing else, The Silver Case has made me realize that Suda 51 has a very particular style of character dialogue. It seems as if each participant in a conversation is speaking past one another, ignoring or misinterpreting everything spoken to them. Their usage of vulgarity feels artificial in a manner atypical of the usual juvenile imitation of foul speech. It’s more like someone who comes from a polite neighborhood, where the most violent phrase spoken is “dag nabbit”, and has decided to try and replicate the sort of toxic tongues they’ve heard in Kevin Smith films.

Such mannerisms are fitting for No More Heroes, where the core protagonist is imitating the media he has come to idolize. He’s too desperate to appear cool, and therefore odd and unnatural dialogue fits his character. The Silver Case leads me to believe this is more incidental than intentional, however. Travis Touchdown is certainly unique in personality and motivation, but it turns out all of Suda 51’s characters have this strange, convoluted way of speaking with one another.

While the story is not dry, it makes it rather awkward to try and read through. Almost as if the player must frequently try to parse and translate meaning from every exchange to understand character motivations and decisions.

The game mechanics – if you can call them that – prove to be an obstacle to engagement as well. One can argue that the Ace Attorney or Dangonronpa franchises are largely linear affairs, but the player must still rely on their own wit to figure out the solution to each mystery. The number of pieces to each puzzle increases exponentially, and the player must discover on their own how they all fit together.

The Silver Case seems to lack any “wrong” answer. There’s just aimless wandering and clicking on things until you figure out where to go or what to do. It is perhaps far too early for me to discover the game’s failure states, but it seems as if the game instead waits for the player to arrive at the necessary destination before proceeding onward. Should failure states arise, it may only increase the tedious feeling of playing the game. Animations are slow and the controls for moving, observing, and interaction are unintuitive.

As a result, while I find The Silver Case interesting, I’d far more watch it as an anime or read it as a manga. There’s plenty of intrigue to be found in its narrative and premise, but the mechanics disengage the player from the narrative. For a visual novel, that is poison.

That ought to catch you guys up to the past several months of games I’ve tried and failed to get into.