Bayonetta: Remastered

Happy Price: 19.99

Rating: 9

Gameplay

Bayonetta is an action packed shooter/slasher/platformer. It emphasizes different combos and aerial combinations to create unique attacks and strategies for different opponents. The main character is equipped with guns on her feet, which creates fun weapon combinations like a sword in the hands but shotguns on the feet. The creative and stylish combos are also innovative because of the ability to shoot from one's heel. 

Combat

The number of combos offered will leave you trying to master all of them throughout your gameplay run. There aren't too many weapons to choose from, that being said it isn't really necessary because variety is not lacking. When a new weapon is discovered, you'll have to learn how to use it. As the game progresses, certain situations will require you to use certain weapons. By that time, you'd better have a good idea on how to use them and mastered some of the combos. Experimenting with different weapon combinations that best suit your gameplay style is fun but can also be painful at times. You're judged each stage by the effectiveness of your combos and how much damage you've taken. So the learning phase will affect your score, and ultimately how much can be contributed to upgrades.

The most repetitive and impactful game mechanic is activating witch time. Witch time slows down the surrounding enemies for a short duration, but you get to attack at the same speed. This means you can dish out monster combos and gain the upper hand when outnumbered. Activating which time is done with a perfectly executed dodge. The more enemies attacking, the easier it is to activate witch time because there will be many projectiles and melee weapons attacking at once. Even though you may not hit your perfect dodge on your intended target, there are collateral dodges that happen and out of nowhere witch time is activated. You'll spend a lot of time dodging, jumping, shooting, and unleashing hell on enemies.

Story

I spent most of the time confused by the story. The game starts and all you know is you've been awoken from a slumber, you're a witch, and forces from the light are after you. You're then introduced to a love interest that is a journalist, but he's convinced you've murdered his father yet his this strange compassion for you. Then a little girl that calls you Mommy appears and you're trying to protect the little girl and the love interest from angels. That being said, the execution and presentation of the story was fantastic. The cinematics, animations, and voice acting were top notch. Bayonetta comes across just as she looks: charismatic, powerful, and ethereal. The actual story was not good or engaging for most of the game, until the ending where things come together and make sense. The game is driven by the fun of combat, not necessarily the narrative. If you wanted to, you can skip every cinematic and watch the last scene and know exactly what happened. If the design and animations of the characters was not excellent, the writing would have been exposed as being a huge flaw.

Animations

 A number of combos, cinematics, and unique enemies stresses the importance of unique and clean animations for each character. Many times games will be filled with unique characters but they have re-used or only a few animations. This is not the case in Bayonetta. Almost every enemy feels unique and they have to be handled differently. There are even enemies that have the same character models with slightly different skins, however, they will have different attacks and powers. For example two dogs, one blue and one orange. The blue one moves and attacks entirely different than the orange one. They also have different powers which influence their attack styles and movements. The blue being electric, while the orange is a molten rock creature. The electric dog moves around all the time and is aggressive, while the molten rock dog is defensive. Bayonetta moves extremely fluidly transitioning from running as a panther to doing cartwheels and shooting upside while airborne. Nothing feels choppy and the smoothness enhances the gameplay.

Environment

You've never been to this place before. Unsure if you're on Earth, in hell, or some heavenly realm, everything about this world is unique. Angels are characterized as having gold and white tones to their attire, but hideous looking faces. Some of them are complete atrocities with huge blood boils on their bodies. Some of their worlds are angelic like you picture in heaven, while others are just normal looking cities that have a nice stickly gold architecture to them.  The level designs are not repetitive and will keep you on your toes. Bosses might destroy the ground right beneath you, forcing you to jump to another platform. You may have to transform into a super fast panther to escape a rolling boulder down a hallway, or navigate along the sides of buildings during a flood. Not paying attention can result in a death, which reduces the rewards at the end of the level.

Summary

Bayonetta is a high octane adventure that mixes great action, platforming, and cinematics into an expertly paced experience. The characters are so developed and consistent you'll be able to predict their behaviors or responses to dialogue. The boss battles seem to be never ending and are always interesting. If you're looking for a game that doesn't try to do too much "realism" and lets the imagination fly, you'll want to pick this one up. 

Design: 10
Art: 9
Story: 7
Tech: 9
Sound: 9
Animation: 10
Total: 9

Horizon Zero Dawn

Rating: 9.8

Happy Price: 59.99

Gameplay

At it's core HZD is a third person open world shooter, but it's also much more than that. The world is inhabited with hostile humans and powerful robot dinosaurs. As you play the robot dinosaurs, which are just referred to as machines, gradually increase in both strength and variety as you progress. The tension stays high all the way until the final game boss. It seems no matter high of a level you are, you can't take anything for granted. Precision and calculated risks your best friend, and sometimes avoiding combat is your best option. 

Combat

It's very odd to take down high tech robots that are outfitted with high grade metal and powerful guns wielding a bow and arrow, but it's a game, and the ends of the arrow are lined with metal as well. This is why the game stresses precision. Just shooting a robot, even the least powerful ones, will do about 3-4 points worth of damage. However, hitting the same robot in the canister which holds it's flamethrower fuel can do 200 points worth of damage. Enough hits to the canister, and it will blow up, dealing 400-500 points of damage. It's difficult to be precise against one enemy, but when dealing with 3-4 it's nearly impossible. That's why the game stresses stealth as well. When the moment comes to take down something powerful, you must be ready, and you need to gain the upper hand right off the get go. That can mean headshot or bust, because missing the headshot can mean multiple enemies are now aware of your location, and you've just pissed off the one you hit in the chest and not head.

There are multiple ways to prepare for battle. You will develop your own system, but mine went something like this. Use stealth attacks (1 hit kills against weak enemies) to take down the "watchers" which are low level scout enemies which alert the more powerful ones to your presence. They also can shoot pulse bombs and jump on you similar to a velociraptor. Once those are taken care of and I have something big to take down, I'll set up traps, a lot of traps to ensure I'm covered once I start running around. They can be lured into these traps. Once the traps are setup, I'm ready to fire my first shot. If the enemy has a mounted cannon, I go for that first so I can shoot it off and pick up due to the high and rapid damage it inflicts. Here is some early game footage to see what It's like to take down a Sawtooth.

Story

The game starts and you're a banished child because you are born "without a mother" but the tribe pairs you with another outcast that trains you as a child to survive in the wilds. This is very confusing in the beginning, and it puts you into the same state of mind as the protagonist, Aloy. Since we are not aware of the customs of the tribe, we don't know of the mother passed during child birth or abandoned you when you were born. It is a constant tension for Aloy, and you, not knowing who your mother was but feeling like everyone else. does. The way it all unfolds near the end of the game is unexpected and extremely fulfilling. The story line regarding Aloy's origin was so imaginative and well executed, it's one of the best stories you'll find in any video game. 

The flaw with the story is your motivation to do everything in between when the game starts and when the game ends. The main (human) villain really only makes one appearance towards the end of the game, so his presence is lost while you're out doing things in the open world. It feels like at times you're doing things to assist in surviving the wilds, instead of gaining ground to your original reason of undertaking the daunting task of finding the guy you're looking for in the first place. There were times when I was helping people and I thought, "why am I doing this", how will this help me in the end?

Cinematics

I'm not sure if Guerilla Games got their hands on some new technology, but the facial animations in this game were superb, some of the best I've ever seen. I think the only competition it has is GTAV and The Witcher. This subconsciously enhanced the story because you're not distracted by funny eye twitches or mouth movements. This is coupled with fantastic voice acting and distinct character differences across the board creating a great clash of vibrant and strong personalities. Not only is this reflective in the main story, but all the side quests. The amount of effort to ensure the quality was consistent in every corner of the game must be appreciated, and it also motivated me to do side quests to see who I was going to meet and what their personality was. I think they covered almost every personality archetype, and also made sure to feature some new ones (like a female blacksmith).  

Art

The environmental art was spectacular and was simply a joy to just walk and run through. Never have I played a game where I questioned if I wanted to fast travel or walk. Most of the time running through a forest lined with flowers and fauna was fun in its own right. The fluidity of Aloy's running animations and the way the environment responds to her presence is just amazing. I felt like I was in a Jurassic time period with futuristic weapons which was a great contrasting of styles to create a unique immersive environment. The variety of terrains ranging from a barren desert to the snowy caps of a mountain were all executed cleanly and each had their distinct style. There was an underlying consistency that was supported by the uniqueness of each area that really makes you want to explore every corner of the game just to see what you might find. I'm not even referring to items, but just the artistic quality of a mountain or plant is worth the trip and time. 

The animations of the dinosaurs was so good, I can't even compare it to anything. Each enemy had their own animations and were unique. They resembled animals we see today, and dinosaurs of the ancient past. For example there are alligators, vultures, and Tyrannosaurs Rex. They each respond differently to your arrows or spear hits, and have unique animations for when you hit weak points that cause explosions or massive damage. Nothing was re-used (or so it seemed) and it rarely felt like there were enemies that were reskinned with the same animations. The Bellowbacks had multiple types of fire and ice which had the same animations but shot different types of weapons. In no way did this feel like things were being re-used for the sake of it, but it actually enhanced battles so I had no problem with that at all. Here are screenshots below to demonstrate the quality of the artwork.

Progression

HZD does not have a linear progression system other than the skill tree which is upgraded via EXP points earned. Weapons, Armor, Traps, and additional items need to be upgraded via purchase from merchants or crafting. Upgrading weapons and armor is far more impact than EXP points, yet it can be frustrating to upgrade because rare parts are required to do so, for example "Sawtooth Heart" or a "racoon skin". The game does not make it clear how to obtain these items, other than having to kill whatever robot or animal you need to in order to harvest its part. It gets frustrating when you kill ten racoons, which are rare already, and keep on getting the raccoon bone or fatty meat, when you need the skin. Nothing can be done to influence what item you get from a dead animal or robot, so this turns into a time consuming process.

That being said, the skill tree feels balanced when upgrading. They are divided into distinct sections which will define your play style especially early game. You can go stealth, run and gun, or depend on resources as a harvester. Around mid to late game, I wouldn't really notice that I was hoarding my skill points because the next upgrade never really felt "needed" where I was craving to level up. The sense of needing things came much more with upgrading my bow or armor, and that depended on getting unique parts and acquiring "shards" which are in game currency.

Why a 9.8?

There was a part of this game that really bothered me, and that was climbing. There are certain areas that require climbing, and the terrain or holds on the mountainsides are blended very well and look realistic. The problem lies with the rest of the environment where the game does not think you're going to climb. In these areas, you just jump up against the wall and don't hold onto anything. They should have gone the direction of designating climbing parts of the world a distinct color, because it feels like the game is confused when I see something I should be able to climb in an open world, but then I can't do it. This even applied to ladders that were in old ruins, not being able to climb these is unacceptable. 

Summary

Horzion Zero Dawn is an absolute masterpiece. It's one of the best games I've played in about a year. It did so many things well in terms of technical achievement, graphics, and game design. It will be remembered as one of the best games to come out on the PS4, and if you own PS4 this is a must play. 
    

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Rating: 7.5

Happy Price: 19.99

Gameplay

The Franchise has deemed and perfected one of the most appealing gameplay styles the game industry has to offer. A combination of Stealth, RPG, Tactical, Action, and Story branching gives Deus Ex its own flavor that nobody has attempted to replicate. In many phases of the game there are options to achieve any mission. Level design incorporates multiple routes to your objective, and dialogue situations offer a multitude of ways to convince someone to see things from your perspective. Abilities and traits also cater to all these options, for example someone that likes to find secret passages will need X-Ray vision and a high jump ability to access unique locations. 

Level Design

My favorite part about playing this game was the ability to choose how I wanted to do things. Taking the time to scout my environment paid dividends over and over again as I was able to find smarter ways to accomplish certain objectives. One of the most notable moments was when I was in an alley and saw two dumpsters and a refrigerator. In order to move the fridge, I needed an augmentation that allowed me to have super strength. I placed the two dumpsters next to each other, then laid the fridge on top of the dumpsters creating a staircase. I then had to use my augmented legs to jump from the fridge to a rooftop, where I was then able to easily break into an apartment window. I'm unsure if the level was designed that way, or if I did that with my brain on my own. Were the designers really aware of that edge case? Someone has these two abilities, at this point in the game, and then they can do certain actions? These moments are the reason I always come back to this franchise and have a love for it. 

One thing that was overused is the navigation of ventilation systems. The placement of some vents was unrealistic, and the scale of them as well. It just doesn't make sense to have a human sized vent behind someone's computer monitor. Think about that, a vent so big a full grown man could crawl through it on full blast during a summer day. I don't think anyone could work in those conditions. Yet these vents are everywhere, and quickly become your highway to sneak around facilities. Another thing is after a while, people would catch wind of a guy that is traveling through the vents and killing everyone. I think they'd start bolting these things shut or monitoring them closer. For the game's purpose, they are great tools to use to quickly hide and avoid being out in the open. But from an immersion perspective, it can be humorous.

 Me Getting stuck trying to hop on some boxes

Progression

The progression tree is deep and your choices of what you upgrade matter very early on in game. The game seems to blossom much earlier than your upgrade tree, hence making you feel limited in many situations. Something new that was added is Overclock abilities. Jensen somehow has these abilities buried deep in his operating system, and they are awakened after a traumatic experience. The downside to these abilities, is they force you to turn other abilities off in order to reroute power efficiently. This limitation makes me feel like I'm shifting things around the longer I play, instead of building myself into something better. You won't have enough ability points to max out everything, so you have to make a choice in what type of player you're going to be. Some things go better together, for example the stealthy hacker allows players to be strategic and smart. If discovered however, the situation can be overwhelming. Or, you can build yourself out to be confrontational.

One of the issues I saw with his however, is hacking and stealth tended to yield better rewards than being a brute. You can't smash a safe, it must be hacked. The game is full of situations where you have to break into safes or apartments. Even though break ins can be done through vents, it's a very time consuming task to find vents and finding out where they lead. The overclocking abilities which are mainly cool attacks, drain all of your battery making them a non economical solution since there will still be remaining enemies once one of them is used. For that reason, I built my Jensen out going deep into the basic abilities which made me feel like a whole part of the game went unexplored. I would have to replay the game building out something different, but the first play through was not fun enough to do that to myself.

Narrative

The whole premise is there a division between two types of people, the augmented and the naturals. What does not make sense is an augmentation is something added to a human being that suffered from an injury or sickness. For example, someone got maimed and they have a new arm. It never resonated with me there could be social issues surrounding this to the magnitude it does in the game. This cyber punk era is free of racism, but filled with augment discrimination. If you've never played the previous versions of Deus Ex, Jensen suffers an incredible injury and has several augments added to him. He's basically Darth Vader with military grade augments that, and add-ons can be downloaded to make him even stronger. He's basically the strongest augmented human alive. Yet when it comes to taking sides, he stays with the status quo that discriminates against him even though there are several opportunities to join an extremist revolutionary group that demands equal rights. Typical story structure follows a rising action, climax, then falling action. This story keeps you at one monotone level the entire time, with a small climax at the end in which nothing is resolved. It is one of the worst endings I've ever seen. 

via GIPHY

The presentation of the story is amazing however. The cinematics are top notch and I would argue are Hollywood worthy. The voice acting and animations are stellar, which keeps you engaged and motivated to keep advancing the less than stellar story itself. Characters are developed very well and maintain there quirks and behaviors consistently over time to develop emotional attachments towards them. For example the villain in this story is only a villain because he defies the status quo and has less than noble methods of maintaining control, but he's also oppressed and doesn't have many options. This is clearly presented, but this also hurts the story because the protagonist seems more like someone taking orders instead of leading with their true views. 

Environment And Artwork

There is incredible detail in almost every facet of the environment and the objects that populate it. This is top notch AAA grade 3d models, animations, and particle effects. The aesthetic of the golden yellow hue that envelops the entire region is consistent and creates some cool shadows and effects. The meticulous details of refrigerator buttons all the way to gunfire animations is stunning and immersing. You will find yourself amazed at the level of craftmanship that went into almost every single thing that was created for this game. I played this on the PS4, and unfortunately some of these items were low resolution and were likely not optimized very well. However on a 4k enabled GPU these things are rendered great. 

Summary

A very polarizing experience made this a tough game to get through. One one end the graphics and level design were amazing. The progression system and story were broken however. At times I dreaded what I was doing, and other times I couldn't stop playing. I would say with certainty this game is not as good as its predecessor. To buy this game at full price like I did based on reviews (IGN) would be a disservice to yourself. Wait for it to go on sale for about 20 dollars. 

     

Mad Max

Rating: 8.2
Happy Price: 29.99

Gameplay

Mad Max is a tale of two games, driving combat mechanics and foot combat mechanics. Both are refined and feel great which was quite the surprise. However being published by WB games, it was obvious the foot combat mechanics were taken directly from the Batman series, and driving was likely developed on its own.

Combat Mechanics

Despite being a driving game, you'll spend most of your time on foot trying to take down bases using hand to hand combat, or your shotgun in emergency cases. The environment is filled with places your car will not have access to, forcing you out of your car and to take on enemies that range from 3-15 at one time. The combat system is exactly the same as Batman, with the addition of being able to pick up weapons, and also allowing for the killing of enemies which is nice. The simple system consists of mashing the strike button (square on Ps4) and then when timed, pressing the counter button. It's filled with different camera angles and cool animations that reward the player for timing hits and counters correctly. Because there are death animations, Avalanche Studios built on what already existed and created more scenarios like throat slitting, neck breaking, and shotgun blasts to the gut which induce fear in nearby enemies.

There were some issues I found during combat however. One thing that bothered me early game was the difficulty of picking up weapons. Since you can't store weapons, they can only be picked up from downed enemies. This means if you try to take out the guy with the weapons first, it doesn't really matter, because picking up the weapon takes too long in the chaos of battle. You will more than likely get hit while attempting to do this. Late game, you can develop parries that can steal the weapon from an enemy, but this doesn't occur until 15+ hours into the game. Another thing that bothered me was some of the kill animations would not allow you to counter. So in the case of slamming someone, another enemy will strike you, and you can't counter it. This will end your hit streak, and each time you get a 25 hit streak, you gain an ability point. See the video below:



Driving Mechanics

In the world of the wasteland, you car is an extension of yourself. The motor of the vehicle is one with your heart. Man and machine are synced up, and your machine is your pride. That being said, I felt somewhat limited as to how I could take down other vehicles. For the most part, I had to ram them from behind or on the side, so there was no benefit of creating a fast car. It takes forever to get any projectiles on your vehicle other than your shotgun. Much later in the game do you get thunderpoons which really opens the game up. Ideally, I would like to create an evasive and fast vehicle that could attack while they are chasing me. For the most part however, I was limited to staying on the sides of my enemies, or circling them so I can ram them from the side to inflict as much damage as possible. This forced me to create a moderately fast vehicle with tons of armor, ramming ability, and grinding damage. Each battle with enemy vehicles is different, but at the same time, feels repetitive. There are cool moments that occur, as demonstrated by the video below:



Story

The motivation behind getting to Gastown, where your car is held, is somewhat weak and uninspiring. War Boys steal your car and take it back there. To get back on your feet, you meet an ally, and together you build a better vehicle called the Magnum Opus. The reason for building this new amazing car, is to get your old car back which doesn't seem like it's worth the trouble of doing endless errands and taking down countless foes. There is the element of taking down the tyranny of Immortal Joe, but that doesn't seem to be on Max's agenda, he just wants his car back. As you're wondering around the barren wasteland, with no radio stations heading from one War boy camp to another, you begin to ask yourself, why the hell am I doing this? I'm kind of bored right now, and what am I really working towards? I'm going through all this trouble, to upgrade my current car, so I can my old car back? There was a lot more potential to begin the story as one where you want you're car back, but have that lead to a more complex and appealing plot. As coveted as the soundtrack was in the movies, the video game does not capture the same feel. Late game, the cinematics are superbly polished and had great animations.

Level Design

One thing that surprised me was the variety of layouts inside different bases. Bases are locations where War boys are stationed and they operate some sort of oil transporting operation that leads back into Gastown. Most of these locations had adventure and puzzle elements to them, requiring you to search every corner of these bases to complete the objective. The environments of these are so well integrated with the overall environments, at times it was difficult to figure out where to go. I was very happy that anything that was intractable would be painted in a rusted yellow. These locations where guiding lights in some complex labyrinths. These bases would first start off with defenses that would need to be taken down, if they were not taken down in a given amount of time, they would get buffed and it would be twice as hard. This pushed you to plan your attack, and move in swiftly with precision to avoid potential disaster. Planning and executing made you feel one with the wasteland, and Mad Max as a badass individual who was one with his car in the barren world.

One of the areas in the wasteland is an abandoned airport. This airport is absolutely massive and dense with objects. It is one of the most complex areas I've seen in a game, filled to the brim with art. It was a huge contrast to the vast nothingness that exists in the world. When the main storyline brought me here, I was amazed at how much there was going on here, and also at how little I was directed there. It seemed to me, you could have cut off 75% of the airport, and diverted those efforts into other locations in the game. At times there are huge gaps in main story missions, and to have more scripted events would have tied the game together better.

Soundtrack

In respect to staying true to the game, there is nothing to listen to while driving. At times you're driving long distances with nothing to listen to but the roar of your engine. Even though I'm in a post apocalyptic wasteland, having some sort of radio station would have made the experience much better. I don't think it would have hurt the aesthetic of the game, as shown by the Fallout series. Electricity does exist in this world via gas powered generators, so creating your own world in the game is not a taboo. The game tries to stick to the soundtrack of the movie, but you barely notice it. The movie had much better audio design that went with each scene, while the video game did not have the luxury of switching from scene to scene to allow for that. The game is broken up into story missions, then long treks of open world, which don't carry any soundtrack tuning.

Summary

Combat mechanics are great, and they should be as you'll be utilizing these for most of the time spent in the game. The cinematics are as well, but I just wished there was more of them to keep me going. At times, the long hauls of open world gameplay without any story progression was unmotivating and repetitive. At times I'd spend 3-4 hours playing, and it would feel like I got nothing done. This is a decent game and one of the best licensed games to date. If you're in the mood for long drives and tons of combat, this game is for you.  

Hyper Light Drifter

Rating: 7.5

Happy Price: 9.99

Gameplay

Hyper Light Drifter 16 bit top down hack and slash that emphasizes on your ability to teleport around as your main offense and defense. It's rare for teleportation to be a core mechanic of a melee combat based game, and it's refreshing since its one of the most fun things to do in any medium. Yes, you can teleport around at will, and backstab enemies without any drain to stamina or mana, it's just apart of your character and it's awesome.

Combat

You will be taken back to the 90's where games did not forgive, did not adjust, and relied on player reactions to succeed. It's a very simple formula, the user can attack with a sword or shoot projectiles. There is a three hit melee combo along with upgrades that allow for new attacks. New guns can be acquired or purchased with a strange currency that takes forever to accrue for upgrades. There are tons of variety among enemies which forces you to learn and adjust to them as the game goes on. While playing, you will notice yourself getting better with reactions and timing which is one of the coolest things a game can do. You don't gain EXP in this game and upgrades are few and far between, so you have to rely on yourself to be better. Teleporting around and having full control of my success is incredibly rewarding and fun, the combat design is the best part of the game.

Level Design

Levels are hand crafted, and they are done very well. Lots of natural barriers for the player to use when in tricky situations, and even choke points that can be created. It's extremely fun to create choke points when flooded by enemies to even the odds. Health and currency are cleverly hidden in areas that force the player to look around and explore the world. It's almost necessary to do so, not being able to upgrade would be quite the death sentence as the game progresses. When in combat it was great, one issue I had was navigating the levels along with the provided map. It was extremely confusing and things weren't laid out very clearly. In a game that punishes for mistakes, things need to be labeled well. There were several times I would have to backtrack in areas because I knew that I had to have missed something along the way. While doing this, the horde of enemies would re appear and I'd have to recreate the magic I did the first time in order to "maybe" do something correctly. I found this incredibly frustrating because the game felt like a complicated labyrinth while having hard combat. Had this been done better, I think I'd rate this game much higher since it had tons going for it. I struggled getting through this game, especially knowing I had other games on deck like Overwatch.

Art

I can't say enough about the artwork. The color palette is consistent and the quality never lets up throughout the whole experience. Bosses, enemies, and the environment look great. Cut scenes are fantastic, and since there isn't any dialogue the story is communicated solely through pictures. This is incredibly ambitions, and at times I don't think I had a full grasp of what was going on. But for the most part I think I had a general idea. It kind of felt like when someone is speaking another language to you, but have really good body language and you can confidently assume what they are talking about. I would argue that the pixel art can be framed and put up in a gallery it's that good.

Summary

Using the GameMaker Studio engine, this is by far the best game I've ever seen created with that tool. The combat is phenomenal with a great balance of difficulty since you as a character are overpowered with the ability to have an unlimited use of teleportation. However the labyrinth of a map is confusing, and since there isn't any real reward of redoing tasks like killing enemies that spawn in an area, it makes things frustrating since in some cases you have to do repetitive difficult tasks. If there was some way to mitigate that, it would be a much better experience.

Ratchet and Clank

Rating: 9.4

Happy Price: 39.99

Gameplay

Ratchet and Clank is a third person platformer that focuses on unique weapons, character development, and puzzles. The protagonist has a strong and defined personality which creates for a great narrative. Supporting characters and villains are equally funny and smart, creating a great game that blends story and gameplay very well.

Combat

Jumping and dodging over a barrage of missiles while firing a pixelating shotgun never gets old, and this game is full of moments like that. Nothing feels cooler in a video game when you're outnumbered by a bunch of enemies and their bullets or whizzing past you while making an effort to dodge and shoot. It doesn't feel scripted, it's something you as the player are doing, and there is an element of skill associated to it. That is the beauty of the 3d platformer, but namely Ratchet and Clank has always been the best at achieving this, hence its remaining existence. There are tons of weapons to choose from, and the cool thing is the more a weapon is used the more it levels up. This way your favorite weapon quickly becomes the "go to" when in tight situations. All the weapons are fun to use, and it's important to level up all weapons in the long term.

The need to upgrade all the weapons forces the player to use all of them, and gameplay style changes with every weapon. The sniper rifle will obviously be played differently than the rocket launcher. But with limited and max ammo for each weapon, you know that the final boss will require your entire arsenal to defeat. This is taught to the player by tough sub-bosses that require an effort that will require every single weapon to be used at least once. That is achieved through both great game design and level design. 

Upgrading

I touched on it a bit, but there are tons of things to upgrade which create a very addicting experience. You have to collect bolts to purchase new weapons, which increase in price as the game goes on as the new weapons are more powerful than the last. Ratchet himself will earn XP that will increase his health. Using weapons repeatedly will level up the weapon which give it passive upgrades. Then there is another rare currency that can be found that adds unique attributes to each weapon. For example increasing the max ammo or fire rate. However upgrading things in a certain cluster will unlock "bonus" augments that do things like lifesteal. Yet you won't know what these bonus augments do, creating a fun surprise when you unlock them. There are cards to collect that do things like "5% more bolts upon killing an enemy" that make the player go out of their way and explore this beautiful environment. Once a weapon has maxed out, you can unlock the "Omega" version which can only be bought when the game is replayed on hard mode. All these things together create an upgrade fest where your virtual character is getting better, but you as a player are also getting better. This is one of the first games in a while I found challenging and equally rewarding. I died a few times, which doesn't happen a lot in modern games. 

Pacing and Narrative

One of the things I'm not fond of when playing games is inspecting every crevice and corner just to say I've checked every spot. However for some reason I wanted to do this when playing this game. It created a great balance of intense action and times of peace where I was just exploring the gorgeous landscape foraging for bolts, cards, or "Raritanium" to upgrade my stuff. It helps that levels aren't overwhelmingly huge which makes it an achievable option to explore the entirety of an area without wasting tons of time doing so. It seemed like every time I did something off the beaten path I was rewarded for it, so I kept doing it. 

In terms of leveling up, it just so happened that a few moments before reaching the final boss, I had finally fully upgraded Ratchet and all my weapons to their max. The augments were not fully completed, since raritanium is rare and requires a second playthrough obtain it all. This means that the game was designed that way which takes incredible math, testing, and design to pull off. It was one of the things I was most impressed with since many games today are open world and don't really emphasize on these design elements in focused way.

The story is relatively cliche, a main villain with a bunch of powerful henchman you have to defeat, then finally reaching the final boss. However the execution of it was again, one of the best experiences I've had on a current console. I have not seen the movie, however the cut scenes that drove the story were animated and rendered so well the rivaled a feature film production. The voice acting was on point for each character, blending elements of humor and intelligence in something you'd expect from Pixar. It invested me as a player into a predictable story, but I was invested in impressing the Rangers and defeating Dr. Nefarious.

Art

 The franchise builds off of the art style it's had for years. It's cartoony and focuses on roundness instead of hard edges like many "realistic" games do today. The fantastic lighting, dense population of objects in levels, textures, and animation create a colorful yet professional style. The way light bounces off the colorful environment is a huge upgrade over the flat colors we've seen in the past versions of Ratchet and Clank on previous consoles. The way shadows appear under foliage but also large objects creates a dynamic environment you have experienced in GTA V but combines the colorful and cartoony art style to accommodate it. I can't help but think this is the proper evolution of video games, the art is suppose to reflect fun over simulation.  

The character models and animations are not something to gawk over, but they are creative, consistent, and have no flaws which take away from gameplay. The character animations themselves enhance gameplay since they are so cleanly done and have a high degree of quality. Anything of relevance was done with a very high quality. I believe the spaceships used probably took more time to model than Ratchet, but spaceships may only be played with for an hour of game time while Ratchet is on screen for at least 15 of those hours. The level of attention paid to even the most insignificant things the player might focus on really drives home the level of excellence and quality this game provides the player. Many shortcuts could have been taken for a game that is a reboot and sold for 39.99, but that didn't happen. 

Summary

When choosing between XboxOne and PS4 I chose the PS4 for the Ratchet and Clank series and Uncharted since I did not have a PS3 (I now have both). I had very high expectations and it was delivered. A must buy for any PS4 owner and a game I will probably replay though which I never do. I need to upgrade my Omega weapons and replay on hard mode. The game was so much fun on a regular difficulty, but on hard mode with better weapons and more bolts, it's going to be even more exciting.