Dave Critiques - Broken Age: Good characters can trump bad puzzle design

Transcript

Hey hey folks, this is a critique on Broken Age. As I will be discussing it in depth, there will be spoilers. If you are worried about that sort of thing, please stop the video, play the game, and then return later. For everyone else, let’s continue. This will be an interesting video as I wrote my critique alongside my first playthrough in 2015. Now returning to the game a year later to acquire footage for this video, I find my opinions quite different. Let’s see how much of the following writing becomes new material.

I get the feeling that a lot of people didn’t get what they were expecting with Broken Age. When Double Fine went to Kickstarter to fund an old-school point and click adventure game, that’s pretty much all the information that we had, alongside knowing that the head of Double Fine Tim Schafer is responsible for some of the classics of that genre. Like many other people, I gladly donated to the project, and before we all knew it, it was funded, and then some. We all waited to see what kind of adventure game classic would be created.

To be fair to Broken Age, Act 1 has the hallmarks of a classic point and click adventure game. Oh yes, to those unaware, the game was split into two acts as they went over-budget. Act 1 was released in early 2014, while Act 2 came out in early 2015. Now in mid-2016, I have played through both acts again.

Act 1 has got a lot going for it. Memorable characters in a very unique setting, straightforward puzzles with just the right amount of silliness, and a cliffhanger ending that really gets us thinking about the time we spent with both Vella and Shay. One wonders how a girl hunting down a Cthulhu-esque monster and a boy trapped on a spaceship controlled by an overbearing mother simulation that has him rescuing beings made of yarn collide at all. The great thing is they don't, not until the last moments of act 1 at least.

Their stories are completely separate. I initially played through Act 1 without a walkthrough (a rarity for me and adventure games these days). Even though I got stuck in Vella’s story, during that time I completed the entirety of Shay’s story seeing if there was something that could help me before returning to Vella to work out a solution. It turns out I had just missed picking up an important inventory item. Boy was my face red! I was going to make a joke about the fruit I had to pick up, but it was a peach, and not an apple, so that doesn’t work.

Playing through Act 2 a year later, I used a walkthrough, to not only power through Act 1 again, but to get through Act 2 as painlessly as possible. Who would have thought that even with a walkthrough that would not be possible? Although perhaps it was a fault of the walkthrough’s explanation. Returning to the game this time around, I only used a walkthrough when I got stuck (forgetting how a puzzle was supposed to be solved). I was dreading aspects of Act 2, such as the claw puzzle, the knot puzzle, and the final puzzle where you have to rewire the hexipals to complete various tasks. The first two were annoying, though not as bad as I remembered, and the final puzzle was actually quite easy if you take proper notes and set yourself up in the right way. Those that may have read my critique in 2015 will know that I spent many large paragraphs complaining about elements of the final puzzle alone, from having to write down notes to not being able to understand the hexipal wiring with the walkthrough I was using. I believe I almost gave up on the game. That’s how bad it was. Maybe I’ve just mellowed out a lot over the last year. I mean, I think writing notes down for any game is one of those really fun experiences that not enough people get to experience. It’s kind of taking elements of the game out into the real world in a tangible way.

I still think some of the puzzles needed better signposting, but here’s an observation I made during this playthrough. I often use walkthroughs for adventure games and find myself evaluating the puzzles after I go through the solution, seeing if I would have been able to solve the puzzle on my own. Well, without a bit of trial and error or thinking on the problem, you actually never get to see if the game has enough hints to lead you towards a solution on your own. This became apparent during Vella’s section of act 2 when after using a walkthrough to help get the hexipal to the control room, I continued using the walkthrough afterwards. One of the dangers of even looking at a walkthrough for any game is that it weakens your resolve to run back to it anytime you come across even the smallest pocket of resistance. There’s a puzzle about keeping the central orb of the ship cold, otherwise it will overheat and explode. The walkthrough has you filling up a space helmet with ice cream even before you enter the orb station. After putting the orb on ice, I felt dejected, because with a little exploration, I could have easily come across that solution myself, and I deprived myself of the accomplishment of doing so.

I still think changing the rules of the two stories being separate in act one creates a lot of unnecessary confusion and frustration. How is the player meant to know there is nothing more they can do in one story at this point in time? Yes, just like I swapped stories in act one when stuck, there are probably many who did the same in act two, but you can’t rely on that. Maybe I missed the cues because I was following a walkthrough, but the timing of when to switch from Vella’s story to Shay’s seems arbitrary.

Good characters are at the heart of good storytelling, and I enjoyed my time with all the personalities of Broken Age even more this second time round. Broken Age excels as an adventure game if you consider adventure games a prominent storytelling genre. This is because the best puzzles are based on the characters as well. One hallmark of the genre is always a puzzle where you act horribly to make someone’s life miserable, all to achieve a goal. The microwave and toilet puzzle on the airline in Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders comes to me when I think of this. With this in mind, my favourite puzzle in Broken Age is Vella acquiring yarn in the train mission room of the spaceship. So much so that I posted the sequence on my channel after I played through it. It’s delightfully cruel, and the punchline of the whole ordeal has me laughing out loud. Almost as much as trying to create a tree joke.

Act 2 contains some of the better character moments, and it’s all to do with the payoff. You meet these characters briefly in Act 1, and the year that passed between the release of both games, I really looked forward to meeting them again. Shay and Vella are vastly different people, so there is extra joy in how they react to these characters. I loved revisiting them this time, and I imagine I will enjoy visiting them in the future, obtuse act two puzzles aside.

Dave Critiques - Oxenfree: Making the right decisions

Transcript

Hey Hey folks, Dave here. This is a critique so I will be talking about Oxenfree in depth. Those that do not want any part of the game spoiled for them, please close the video, play the game, and return later. For everyone else, let’s continue!

Oxenfree is a horror game, except that it isn’t. And that doesn’t even have to do with the fact that the island and its ghosts aren’t especially scary either. It’s like one of those 80s movies with a bunch of kids that find themselves in the middle of something dangerous and unknown, and they have to deal with that situation while going through their own problems. Oxenfree is an adventure game about teenage drama. We control Alex, travelling to an abandoned island with her friend Ren, her new step-brother Jonas, meeting Nona and Clarissa on the beach. Clarissa and Alex don’t like each other because Alex’s brother Michael was dating Clarissa before he drowned, Ren has a crush on Nona, and Jonas is just trying to be friendly to everyone. There’s history and conflict between the characters. The ghosts and the strange time loops serve to push these conflicts to the surface.

So in a growing trend, I’m noticing in games that’s on full display here is actually roleplaying the character you control. Who do we think Alex is and does that differ from who we are as a player? We are given the opportunity to make different types of comments on almost everything that happens in the game (or stay silent if we wish to). This means that we have to make a choice early on about how easy going, or standoffish Alex is and whether that changes as the game goes on. Perhaps we may start out with a picture of her in our head, and then by the end, that picture has changed. This leaves us to guess what effect our response has on the story, or if it even has any at all. Words are just words, after all, it’s the actions we take that are of the greatest importance.

Whenever there is an opportunity to comment on something, a collection of speech bubbles will rise above Alex’s head before starting to slowly fade. Sometimes when we select a bubble, Alex will wait until the person who is speaking has stopped to interject, and other times she will interrupt to say what she has to say. It’s never clear when a response will be the former or the latter. As someone who has a problem with interrupting people (based on a fear that I won’t get to say what I have to say), it started to make me wonder if Alex should be a little quieter when other people are talking. That’s the thing about roleplaying, it seems highly difficult or downright impossible to remove ourselves from the equation. Perhaps the best we can do is meet who we think the character is halfway.

Because of the nature of the ghosts and the island, the characters find themselves caught in numerous time loops. Initially, this is quite intriguing as well as vaguely creepy, but as these keep playing out as we learn what’s happening, we become more accustomed to them alongside Alex’s frustration. That each loop ends with a mechanical winding of the tape machines does little to help matters. As these loops play it, it becomes apparent that completing the game with a happy ending for everyone is going to be difficult if not impossible. It leads the player to start wondering if they want to pursue a happy ending for everyone, or just Alex?

Yes, this means we’re going to discuss the ending now, or at least the ending I received. Like most adventure games based on choice, we get to see how our choices fared compared to everyone else who played the game (although Oxenfree doesn’t actually tell you what the other options were). Every decision I made was aligned with the majority of players. The ending I got I would describe as happy, yet unresolved. I did manage to get all five teenagers off the island. Ren and Nona even became a couple, and Alex and Clarissa, while not friends, at least became friendly. What about the time loops and Michael? There’s a strong suggestion through the game that you can stop him drowning (you know, all those trips to the past having something to do with it). This alongside the very end of the game, and the menu afterwards leads me to think I’m far off from the “right” ending. Why continue the timeline if things are how they’re supposed to be?

Perhaps it was in trying to save everyone that lead me away from the right ending. Even though Clarissa was standoffish, I understood where she was coming from, and I definitely didn’t want to sacrifice her to save everybody else, but perhaps not wanting to make such a terrible decision was the problem. Perhaps it has to do with the scavenger hunts. I didn’t take the time to search them all out, so I only have a superficial idea of what was actually going on with the ghosts and the time loops. Perhaps there is information there that allows us to make the right choice. Possibly in the future, I’ll play Oxenfree with a walkthrough and find out not only what this ultimate ending contains, but the steps I need to take to get there.

Dave Critiques - Mad Max: What exactly was accomplished?

Transcript 

Hey hey, folks, Dave here. Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be talking about Mad Max in depth. If you have not played the game and are worried about spoilers, it’s best to close the video now and to come back later. For everyone else, let’s continue.

Now I don’t play a lot of AAA games these days, mainly because of my budget, but also because after so many years playing games, I’m always on the lookout for something new and different. It seems that over the last generation or so, there has been a template for open world AAA game design. I call it the Ubisoft map. While playing a couple hours of Mad Max for an impressions video, however, something caught my interest. At the very least I thought that it had been a few years since I played a game full of achievable goals broadly laid out for the player, and it might be worthwhile. At the very least, it might be nice to experience a game where the map acts as a checklist, removing the thought of what I was going to do next each time I loaded it up.

Every node on the map of this open world is there for one overall purpose, and that is the magnum opus. The whole game revolves around Max building the ultimate car so he can cross the plains of silence. All the upgrades are paid for by scrap that you get from scavenging locations, and overtaking enemy bases. Lowering the threat of an area makes it easier to travel around in (to scavenge and upgrade), and building up the bases awards you with resources that make scavenging easier. Technically you only need to upgrade one base as there is a fast travel system in place, but once you get yourself into a rhythm of clearing bases, removing threat, and enhancing the magnum opus, you tend to keep that going for each new location… or at least I did.

Basically, the magnum opus gives you a reason to engage and complete all the “map stuff”. The elements that may be superfluous or busy-work in other games ties into the core motivation for the player. Yes, the car is more important than even the story missions. What really struck this home for me was while clearing the third territory of Pinkeye’s domain, I suddenly had no more upgrades to purchase for the magnum opus (everything else was locked behind missions or achievements). Almost instantaneously the map and all this side content lost its appeal, and from that point on I stuck to the main storyline and the wasteland missions. At that point, I was already quite a ways along in them anyway, so it only took a few more play sessions before I saw the end credits. The only other comparable situation in my time with the game was when travel was starting to get very annoying because of all the warboy patrols, so, I played a few story missions, and I received the thunderpoon which completely revitalised the game for me.

And speaking of Warboys and the thunderpoon, let’s discuss the combat. On its surface, Mad Max uses the Arkham Asylum battle mechanics. You’re surrounded by foes, you can wail on them, and parry incoming attacks, and then once you start to get into a rhythm, more abilities open up until either you or your opposition is dead. The two games play quite differently using that base. Mad Max’s attacks have a real sense of weight to them. Unlike Batman, Max is not a perfect fighter. The camera is pressed close to Max’s back, and every attack, parry, or dodge you make, you’re committed to as Max puts his all into the movement. Even at the end of the game with all my upgrades, I would still get attacked. Part of this is that the game keeps throwing larger groups of enemies at you. The inclusion of weapons and shields means isolating and quickly dispatching certain foes, lest you get overwhelmed and destroyed. I will also easily admit it could be that I just suck at the combat. The adrenaline Max feels as he builds over into fury mode, I felt with each punch, suplex, weapon grab or shiv attack. Earlier in the game, I found myself needing to meditate after I played the game, just to settle down from the violence I had spent time perpetuating. Then I kind of got used to it. The effect didn’t lessen per say, but I understood the fighting and was able to enter and leave the headspace I needed to be in to enjoy and be successful at it.

So, Chumbucket… For the entirety of the game, he is your stalwart companion, repairing your car and upgrading it into the magnificent beast it eventually becomes. He’s also a strange grease stained hunchback who speaks of you and your vehicle with zealous spiritual reverence. A friend of mine was playing the game at the same time I was and made a joke about Chumbucket being the Gollum of Mad Max. Obviously, the magnum opus is his precious. I then joked about the end of the game being that Chumbucket would plunge into the fires of Mount Doom with the car. Turns out I ended up being right. Chumbucket lays on the hood of the magnum opus as you drive towards Scrotus’ truck, to push it over the cliff and end his terrorising reign. It’s a poignant moment actually. With all the time you’ve spent with Chumbucket, and more importantly, how the game revolves around building this car, to sacrifice it at the end carries a lot of weight.

Then the game immediately undercuts that weight, twice. Firstly by having Scrotus survive your attack, leading to the final boss fight. After you dispatch Scrotus and get your old car back, the credits roll. After the credits, Chumbucket and the magnum opus are waiting right next to you. This is an open world game after all, and you can’t deny the player the opportunity to drive around the world and finish up everything awaiting them on the map. While initially repulsed by this, the end game unlocking of Mad Max’s leather jacket and double barrelled shotgun pulled at me to at least liberate one more base.

So finally let’s talk about Griffa and Max. The mystic who grants you upgrades when you visit him is trying to get at the heart of who Max is, and what he’s running from. Those familiar with the movies will know the answer to this question, and the plot-line of the game you’ve just played will remind you if it hasn’t become apparent (it has to do with a wife and child). What’s interesting is that Max seems just as haunted by his future as he does by his past. He’s afraid to let anyone close to him, and all he wants to do is to keep driving. I’ve often wondered about the timeline of Mad Max. It doesn’t seem that it took that long for society to completely disassemble, although it seems heavily hinted at that Max is less a person that has been driving the wastelands his whole life, and more an idea. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Max is violence and solitude, and the game ends exactly as it starts. Future games and movies will likely be the same.