Cleaning up before OGAT 2019

I’ve got a huge piece in the pipe for Red Dead Redemption 2 but there’s a lot in there to unpack and I’m not ready to give it my full attention yet. Short version: It’s the game of this console generation, for better and worse, and a towering achievement.

THIS piece is not about that. After slipping out of my self-imposed One Game At A Time restriction in the fall, I’m going to try and get back in the habit of limiting myself to a single game. As I’ve mentioned before this is as much to diversify my off-time as it is to allow me to soak up a particular experience. First up is Resident Evil 2, which releases this Friday, January 25. In the lead up to that, I’ll run through some quick thoughts on what I’ve been playing.

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Dragon Age XI

I was always an arms-length fan of JRPGs. Nobody made JRPGs for the PC in the 90s. I watched my friend Matt play all of Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger but never actually played them myself. Even my first console, the Xbox, had very few JRPGs and my association with RPGs was limited anyway. I think the first CRPG I played was Fallout, which I still think is the best game in the series, and I remember reading about Daggerfall in PC Gamer and thinking it was probably too adult for me. The game that really cracked open RPGs for me was Daggerfall’s sequel Morrowind, which was sold to me by my friendly neighbourhood EB Games manager by comparing it to Thief. I didn’t play another RPG until Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox.

The first JRPG I played on my own was Eternal Sonata: a turn-based JRPG in the old style with gorgeous art and a bonkers story: you play as French composer Chopin as he retreats into his own subconscious while he lays dying in his sickbed. I have extremely fond memories of this game due to the state I was in when I came to it: after getting kicked out of theatre school, breaking up with my girlfriend, and, crucially, buying my own weed for the first time. I don’t remember the actual game so much as being in my bachelor apartment, nicely day-stoned, the sun streaming in through the window.

I’ve since played the major JRPGs for myself: FF6, 7, 9, & 15, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Fire Emblem, FF: Tactics. The usual. Dragon Age XI is probably going to be the first one of those I actually finish.

Credit must be given to Kotaku’s Tim Rogers, whose nearly-40-minute video review of XI completely sold me on it. Specifically, his insistence that the game is “Chill as heck.” Video games are an exercise in increasing tension. As the player becomes more accustomed to the controls and systems of a game, it will grow increasingly complex and loud. Dragon Quest XI doesn’t really do this. Sure, you start with basic physical and magic attacks, slowly gain party members, and some of those party members are support specialists rather than damage-dealers, but you also gain a spell well past the halfway point that does an insane amount of damage to every enemy on screen and never misses.

The thing that keeps sticking with me about Tim’s review is this: by his experience, most Japanese people (Dragon Quest is HUGE in Japan; XI sold over 3 million copies there) play Dragon Quest on weeknights between having a bath and going to bed. He calls Dragon Quest games “bedtime stories” and that is a fantastic way to play a video game.

There’s a lot to say about DQXI but I’ll leave it at this: It is a fantastic, maybe the best, “baby’s first JRPG” because it is proudly old school. There is no subversion of tropes or surprising mechanics. No one at Square Enix thought “How can we make a Dragon Quest game for a 2018 audience?” The game is as old school as it gets (The “battle victory” musical sting is in MIDI, for chrissakes!) and it’s all the better for it. This is the video game equivalent of the book on your nightstand: comforting, slow, long, and unsurprising.

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God Of War

The absolute FLOOD of Game of the Year awards bestowed on God of War motivated me to pick it up again. I tried to play the New Game+ mode but, eh, NG+ modes just don’t do anything for me. Starting God of War maxxed out strips away a lot of the narrative tension that is the game’s best element.

It’s still very good, the dynamic between Kratos and Atreus is the best since Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, and the combat is very fun and chunky. I still like exploring and finding chests and it is still ludicrously pretty.

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Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

AC: Odyssey is like the girl you convince yourself you don’t have a crush on until you realize, oh no, I do have a huge crush on her! I was so burned out by Origins that I convinced myself I could skip Odyssey. Then the game got so much press I literally couldn’t ignore it. The best thing I can say about Odyssey is how I sold my Dad on it: Did you like The Witcher 3? Does the idea of The Witcher 3 set in Ancient Greece intrigue you even a little bit? Get this game.

Odyssey has all the Ubisoft problems that it’s fashionable to harp on: it feels like a structure cobbled together by thousands of different people, like the houses in Ready Player One, because that’s exactly what it is. For all the things it borrows from other games, its best addition to the open-world RPG structure is baked into its setting: each island you sail to has its own storyline, characters, and explorable areas. The game calls the story “Your Odyssey” but that’s not an eye-rolling marketing gimmick: it does feel like you’re set off on this sprawling, epic story. Whoever is working on the inevitable new Mass Effect game should take note: This is what Andromeda should have been! A sci-fi RPG, trading this game’s island hopping for planet-hopping, sells itself.

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Golf Story

I don’t have much to say about this game except that it’s super cute and exactly what I wanted: an RPG where you play golf instead of fighting monsters. If that sounds at all appealing to you, you should get it. It’s on everything, but it is especially on the Switch.

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Celeste
Smarter people than me have written plenty about Celeste—the surprising/unsurprising indie darling Game of the Year winner that brings the peanut butter & chocolate marriage of Super Meat Boy’s pixel-perfect platforming with “Grown Up Video Game Storytelling.” GUVGS is what I call games that are praised for their more nuanced approach to characters, which usually means they’re about mental health, by telling stories that are big steps for the industry but are still a long way from, say, The Favourite.

Celeste is one of those great games whose story could only be told properly as a video game. Taken just as a story, it’s a sweet but shallow examination of depression and milliennial anxiety: You play as a young woman dead set on climbing a mountain despite what her (very real) dark side tells her about herself. Playing the game though, persevering with Madeline as she climbs this mountain while struggling with panic attacks, oppressive parental figures, gatekeeping, two different kinds of “nice guys”, and her own demons. It really is great and, like the Souls games, its difficulty should be seen as a feature and not a barrier to entry.

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Spider-man

Only in a year like 2018 would Spider-man not be a shoo-in for Game of the Year. Hamish Black of the Writing on Games YouTube channel said it “Brings joy back to videogames” and that is wonderfully accurate. I take back what I said about not liking New Game+ modes, because playing through Spider-man’s story with all abilities unlocked is a total blast. After seeing Into the Spider-Verse I downloaded the soundtrack and played this game for hours. I haven’t done something like that since I was a kid. That Spider-man also manages to tell a GUVGS (For a Spider-man game packed with supervillains, the tensest moment is Peter and MJ having a misunderstanding over text) in between moments of the absolute best traversal system ever implemented in a game is masterful. This thing drips fun.

One Game at a Time: God of War (2018) - Updated August 25

Putting Octopath Traveler on the shelf for a bit as the repetition is getting to me. I wanted to dive into God of War before the flood of fall releases. I'm hoping to blitz through it this week while my girlfriend is out of town, then turn my attention to my backlog (AC: Origins, Horizon, Evil Within 2) before Spider-Man hits on Sept. 7.

We'll see how that goes.

But, for now: God of War. This game doesn't need much of an introduction: videos of game director Cory Barlog weeping at the review scores (Which is actually a great metaphor for the game's main theme, but I'll get to that) popped up once it was clear this was going to be one of the PS4's biggest games of the year and one of the better games of 2018 in general. I've always had a passing appreciation of the franchise. Although I bought a PS3 late in the cycle, I never dove too far into the series other than playing it at friends' houses. The series main hook of "Major asshole kills everyone" shouldn't work as well as it does, but the consistently high-quality gameplay and incredible spectacle elevated its heavy metal album cover premise.

It got me thinking about the Sony/Microsoft argument. Sony's exclusives are of a vastly superior quality to Microsoft's, judging by review scores, though they tend to be 3rd person character action games, like Horizon, Uncharted, and now God of War. While both companies have tried to 'mature' their franchises recently: Halo 4 and 5 attempted to inject a pathos and emotional heart into Master Chief and I guess Gears of War is trying to be a family story? But both of these efforts fell flat. It's very similar to the Marvel/DC cinematic schism: Sony's putting a lot of money and care into giving creators a lot of freedom to take their time, make the games they want, and take risks in their storytelling. Microsoft seems to just be throwing buzzwords like "gritty" and "emotional" at stuff and seeing what sticks.

So God of War hits and it immediately reminds me of Horizon, in its ancient folklore feel, its wintery deciduous locale, and its strong lead character. I was really surprised that this isn't a reboot: you're playing the same Kratos, the Spartan warrior turned God of War, who impaled Zeus and killed all the Olympian gods. He's got the same ashen skin, the scar through his eye, the hideous pucked gash where Zeus impaled him at the beginning of the second game. I'm not up on my lore, so I don't know if GOW3 ended with Kratos going into exile, but in exile he is: your default armor is all "...of the exile" or "exile's ..." there is even an early wink at his forearms, which have been covered in bandages and whose info panel in the inventory reads "...hide a dark secret."

For the size of Kratos and how close in the camera is, similar to Resident Evil 4's claustrophobic OTS angle, I was surprised how fluid Krato's movement is. I expected him to handle a bit heavier but he's quite nimble. He's not as loose as Kiryu/Majima from Yakuza 0 but he's not as deliberate as Senua, from Hellblade. Hellblade is another game that I keep thinking of while playing God of War. There are similar themes of guilt and redemption, and the dark fantasy twisting of Norse mythology is close as well, though God of War is a lot more of a video game than Hellblade: you collect health gems and upgrade your armour and weapons and unlock new skills.

The combat is fantastic and gets steadily more complicated as you go, unlocking new abilities for you and your son, Atreus. All the options can be overwhelming in busy fights, but the game strikes a great balance between being an unstoppable killing machine and running into brick walls of stronger enemies.

Atreus is not just a useful tool in combat. He is maybe the best character representation of a game's theme I've ever seen. He takes the role of Elizabeth in Bioshock: Infinite and builds on it. He's a kid: at times annoying, inquisitive, charming, funny, and moody. He's also got to spend all his time with Kratos, probably the saltiest motherfucker in video games, and their dynamic is incredibly well written and performed. 

I have no idea how far in the story I am, but I've almost filled out the skill tree and I've hit an obviously major milestone in the story. However, there is still a ton to do and see, so I'm expecting another curveball to be thrown at me. The game has already introduced an entirely new combat mechanic during an incredibly effective emotional moment which proved I was maybe a bigger fan of this series than I thought I was.

Update: The End and New Game +

No surprise, but God of War stays as strong through its final few hours as it is in its first. This is one of the very few games that I have bothered to chase down all the collectibles and minor quests. (The only game I've ever 100%ed is South Park: The Stick of Truth.) While I didn't actually 100% God of War, because killing all of those ravens isn't worth my time and I'm not interested in grinding through the Rogue-like realm of Nifelheim, I came very close.

The story wraps up very nicely and the final twist is great mostly because it was staring you in the face the whole time. I won't spoil anything but I will lay it out for you as clearly as the game does from the get-go: the antagonist is Baldur, who is a God, and Kratos has a bit of habit of killing Gods, and if you know anything about Norse mythology you know what happens when someone kills Baldur. There is some play with time right at the end that is handled really nicely.

This new GoW does the same "all the Gods are assholes" dance as the previous ones, but the storytelling has matured so much. While the game stops short of introducing the two major players of Norse mythology, Odin and Thor, despite giving Mimir a ton of dialogue building them up as murderous, ambitious psychos, this is clearly the set-up for a new series. The ending-ending, triggered after you walk all the way back to your humble house and go to sleep, sets up the next installment perfectly.

So last week they introduced a New Game Plus mode, which is usually not my bag as I actually like being under-powered at the beginning and getting stronger as I go, and I got my fill of the fully powered combat system by closing all the Rifts, completing the Muspelheim trials, and beating all the Valkyries before the ending. New Game Plus does add some new items to find and craft for both Kratos and Atreus, but I played the prologue and was satisfied. Blitzing the game in a week was plenty and, though I expect I'll play it again someday, that won't be for a while.

I actually wish I had held off on the Valkyries until the story was over because the final boss of the main story is a cakewalk compared to the Valkyrie Queen, who is one of the toughest bosses I've ever fought in a game like this. I had serious flashbacks to fighting Alma in Ninja Gaiden, my very first "hard game."

Anyway, yeah, God of War is spectacular and well worth a purchase if you have a PS4. With Red Dead Redemption 2 looming on the horizon it's a bit early to call this a definite Game of the Year, but Rockstar is going to have to step up their storytelling big time if they hope to grab me the way this journey did and, based on their previous efforts, I'm not optimistic. Sitting here at the end of August and looking ahead, I can't see anything topping God of War's story before the end of the year, not just in terms of the quality of the writing and acting, but in how the storytelling synergizes with the gameplay, the world building, and the exploration. I've written a lot about 40+ hour video games having pacing problems and God of War comes closest to addressing or even negating them. That may be a side effect of me playing it exclusively for ten days, but even the fact that I was happy to do so speaks volumes.