Why Super Mario Bros is one of my favourite games

Transcript

Hey hey, and welcome to another installment of Dave’s Favourite Games. This time around, Super Mario Bros. This video will be an explanation of my history with the game and the reasons I love it to this day. Hopefully it will inspire those who have not played it to try it, and for those who have to find new appreciation of it. Let’s continue.

I like to start these videos off with a story, so let’s do that. My parents tricked me. The NES had been out for a little while. My friend Ryan down the road had one with all the best games. I’d been playing consoles at his place for a couple of years. He got an Atari 2600 before the NES and we spent far too much time over at his place playing both consoles. One day my parents said they were renting me a NES for the weekend from the local videostore. I told them I’d love if they grabbed Super Mario Bros 2 with it, because that game looked amazing. The ability to select from four characters, how colourful it was, the ability to pull vegetables out of the ground and throw them at enemies, that you could ride other enemies and throw them at other enemies? Such things are important to a kid. So they brought home a NES with Super Mario Bros 2. It also came with the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt split cartridge, two controllers, and a zapper. My parents informed me that they hadn’t rented the console, they had bought it for me. Needless to say I was ecstatic.

A strange thing happened. I took turns on that weekend with Ryan and my Dad who was interested in the NES as well. I wanted to play Super Mario Bros 2. They both wanted to play Super Mario Bros. I couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t as colourful, it was a lot harder, and you could only play as Mario and Luigi (and they both looked and played the same). I reluctantly let them play, and even had a few goes myself, but my imagination and heart was set on the US sequel.

It wasn’t until years later that I reconnected with Super Mario Bros. I think it was in my early 20s actually. I had played the game a handful of times on my NES, but it was through emulation that I rekindled my love of the game. Years ago, Ryan and I had discovered the secrets of the game either by ourselves or on the school ground. We knew how to use the warp pipes to get to world 8 as fast as possible, and my newly found love of the game was partly due to that reason. Years later in a university paper I wrote on Super Mario Bros, I would describe the concept as “forward flow”. The idea that there is a joy in certain games to keep moving forward no matter what. To leap into the unknown with wild abandon. Of course what really helps this along is knowledge of the level, so you know when to jump, what you can get away with, and when to adapt. The best example I have of this is jumping over the Piranha Plants in 4-1. It looks like you’re going to take the hit, but if you time the jump right, you can scrape over their snapping by a pixel or two. No matter how many times I do it, it’s still exhilarating, like I’ve gotten away with something I’m not supposed to.

I’ve always used Super Mario Bros when discussing game feel. There’s something about how Mario controls and his jump that feels great to this day. The friction of sliding along with the screeching sound effect, or how when navigating a landing on a small platform midway through your jump Mario will end up turning backwards, giving a greater sense of joy that you’ve pulled off a tricky maneuver. There’s a fire flower in 1-2 that I never need to get but I always do, because the way to reach it is to use the game’s rudimentary physics to bounce off a wall in mid jump, essentially wall jumping to the fire flower. I wonder if little moments like this inspired Mario’s greater library of jumps, especially in the 3D games. The plumber has seemed to have gotten more acrobatic throughout his games, but that even as tenuous as the connection might be, to trace some of his later abilities back to what is possible in Super Mario Bros puts a smile on my face.

Secret shame time: I cannot actually remember completing Super Mario Bros. I swear I must have since I know all the secrets like the back of my hand, and 8-2 and 8-3 have many familiar elements as I play through them. Maybe it’s the time that has passed between serious plays. I visited as many levels as possible for this playthrough, and it’s easy to forget how difficult Super Mario Bros can be. Anything with bullet bills, and hammer brothers especially, not to mention how crazy some of the platforming gets. I had a talk with a friend whether or not he thinks 8-2 or 8-3 is the more difficult level. I argue for 8-2 because of the Lakitu, the Bullet bills, the Paratroopas and the perilous pits littered throughout the stage. I can see where he’s coming from with 8-3 as the stage is basically a full on Hammer Brothers gauntlet. Let me know which stage you think is the most difficult down in the comments. Maybe it’s something from world 6 or 7. There are definitely some nail biters along the way if you choose not to use the warp pipes.

So I did complete the game this time around. 8-4 is actually a bit of a let down after the madness of making it through 8-2 and 8-3. It uses the mazes that previous castles have used, but this one is pretty easy, even with an underwater segment. I think a lot of difficulty in Super Mario Bros comes from the low amount of lives. How if you get a game over, you have to start over. Sure it’s easy to get back to any point with the warp pipes, but you might have a bout of bad luck and find yourself without the leeway to make mistakes. A lot of people overcome this obstacle by using the infinite 1-up trick in world 3 (and I think it can be done in world 5 as well). I might have been able to do it at one point in time, but not this time through. I relied on save and load states instead.

And I think that’s all I have to say. While the controls weren’t as tight as I remember them being, the game still controls incredibly well and is a joy to play. There are so many nail biting moments as you’re running through these obstacle courses, so many close calls, and because of the random elements of some of the enemies, and your own skill, it never seems like you’ve played the same way twice. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this favourite game of mine, whether they be positive or not so positive experiences with it. I would prefer positive however. Until next time,

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - The Witness: Does your first playthrough really matter?

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of The Witness. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

So let’s start with what I think are the easier questions to answer before I get to what I want to talk about, although it all sort of intertwines. Why is the game called The Witness? There’s a concept in eastern philosophy that I discovered through personal readings of Buddhism and meditation. It’s the idea of witnessing your own thoughts. A simple way to put it would be if someone says something that makes you angry, instead of being consumed by the emotion of anger, you are able to detach yourself from that emotion and think “I am feeling angry”. You’re not rejecting the anger, but you’re choosing to distance yourself from it. By doing so, the anger will pass more easily, and you can then choose to react to the situation in a calmer state of mind. That’s my level of understanding at least. Like a lot of philosophy, the rabbit hole goes deep. For instance, another aspect of witnessing is the following. Start a line of thought in your head. Maybe you’re thinking about what I’m saying and your reactions to it, or maybe your mind has wandered and you’re thinking about what happened at work today or what you’re going to eat a little later. Now, with that thought, who is voicing that thought in your head, and who is listening to it? They’re both your mind, but there is more than one aspect to your consciousness, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to engage in internal dialogue, or even be able to observe your thoughts as you have them. The trick again as I understand it, is to be the witness as much as possible. This is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s as difficult as clearing your mind of thoughts during meditation. After years of meditating, such a state is still a very rare occurrence for me, but the idea is to try and reach that state… but then again you shouldn’t be trying to reach that state. It’s all a bit complicated.

So why is the game called The Witness? If you uncovered what’s known as the developer ending, you will have entered what looks to be a resort hotel that suggests the whole island and its puzzles are a virtual reality retreat. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the island might be a getaway to encourage and facilitate the witnessing state of mind in those that visit. This is somewhat reinforced by the video at the end where either a tourist, or more likely one of the developers or testers (or possibly even creator Jonathan Blow himself) exit back into the real world and have trouble distinguishing reality from the perspectives they’ve learned to experience on the island. While typing this the idea came to me that perhaps also this video is a metaphor for Blow waking up to the real world after working on this game for so many years, and not being able to adjust back. I think anyone who’s undertaken a large project can relate to that feeling. This sort of segue ways into the more traditional ending; when you enter Willy Wonka’s glass elevator and the whole island resets. You see, the point is not in completing the game at all (resetting the game so you can access the developer ending aside), and that’s why the island resets. It’s all about the moment to moment. That satisfaction you feel when activating the elevator slowly fades away as you realise that the island is resetting. Nothing is permanent, and you should not expect it to be. You should enjoy that feeling when it happens, and not worry that your progress is being undone, because the progress was not important in the first place.

My reliance on a walkthrough for much of this game was quite different than other games. It has to do with how the puzzles work. Each puzzle really has two parts to it. First is the code, or what could be called the rules. Do you understand what the puzzle is asking of you? If the answer is “yes”, then the next step is in solving it. Because the island is open to you from the start, the game encourages exploration. If you haven’t seen these symbols on a panel before, you can certainly see if you can work out their tricks, but the smarter option would be to search the island until you find the series of panels tutorialising those symbols you came across.

These puzzles are as varied as the island itself. Many other critics have talked about their enjoyment of those puzzle types that incorporated the environment or a shift in perspective in some way. I am of the same opinion. My favourite areas are the desert temple, the autumn garden, and the treehouses. Each uses the environment in very specific ways, whether that be the glint of the sun, shadow, or using the alternative exits on a puzzle panel to branch new paths. The castle and the buddhist temple have similar tricks to them, but are much shorter areas (or at least they felt shorter). My least favourite area and puzzle type is the marsh and its Tetris blocks. Initially I loved the concept of incorporating the Tetris blocks into line drawing. What soured me was when multiple shapes were introduced. I just couldn’t work out how to draw both. Then returning later I understood that if two shapes are in the same area, they can move around into any number of combinations. To put it simply, I think this rule is bullshit. I think I have such a visceral dislike of this concept because I like to work out puzzles intuitively by playing with them until a solution emerges (sort of giving my non-conscious mind time to parse out the solution as I fiddle around). The more advanced Tetris grids have multiple shapes, and then on top of that, they have blocks that remove sections of the shapes. Now it’s not impossible for a solution to present itself by playing around on a panel with these rules, but it seems that the best way to work out the solution is to start to grid out the possibilities on a separate piece of paper. It’s strange that I’m giving this criticism, because I loved the desert, and some of the more advanced puzzles in that area require you to write down sections of pathway, so you can piece the whole thing together.

Perhaps it has to do with puzzle preference. I know there’s a lot of critics out there that absolutely despised the sound forest. It may be that not everyone has an ear for pitch or the rules were not as apparent, but I loved that area just because it was so different. To compare The Witness to Myst for a second, many who have played that game complain about the underground maze. That puzzle blew my mind because of its reliance on sound, as so few adventure or puzzle games base their puzzles around hearing. I had the same positive reaction to the bamboo forest. Yes, I think some of the later puzzles got a bit silly, but nothing in the sound forest angered me like the Tetris puzzles. Not even the quarry with its negation rules. I actually thought those were pretty clever. I think everyone is going to have the puzzle types they love and the puzzle types they hate, and while there likely will be crossover between players, those likes and dislikes are going to be different for every person. I know a lot of people loved the craziness of the puzzle types inside of the mountain, but by that point in the game I just wanted it to be over. By the mountain, I had come to rely on a walkthrough almost exclusively.

I’ve talked before about walkthrough use, how it’s like a reverse case of diminishing returns. The more you use a walkthrough to help you get through a section of a game you are having trouble with, the easier it is to return to the walkthrough the next time you get stuck. Initially I only used the walkthrough when I knew how the puzzle needed to be solved, but couldn’t figure out the solution for myself, or if I just didn’t like the puzzle type. For the majority of the game the walkthrough was used mainly for the Tetris puzzles. As stated before, I absolutely despised them. They angered me, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Every other use of the walkthrough was a lack of patience with the more advanced puzzles in areas whose rules I understood. By the time I reached the town and the mountain, I just wanted the game to be over, and was using the walkthrough to reach the end. Especially on those pillar puzzles right before the elevator. A wonderful concept, but not being able to view the whole puzzle threw me for a loop (and the slippery mouse controls when drawing lines didn’t help matters too much either).

Now if this was a different puzzle game, I might feel more guilt for having had to resort to a walkthrough. There’s always an element of shame involved with admitting that I did not have the intelligence or more to the point, the patience to figure out a solution out on my own. I know it’s doable too. Remember how I talked about the design of the island invoking the idea of witnessing in the player? I think it plays a similar role in allowing the player to work out the solutions to puzzles. The island is completely open, and you can tackle the areas in any order you wish. I think the idea is that if a section is giving you a difficult time, go somewhere else and work on that for a while. Maybe just wander the island, listen to some audiologs, watch one of the videos, or try and find some of the islands’ hidden puzzles. Eventually you’ll find yourself back at that panel that was causing you grief and you’ll solve it. Heck, you’ll solve it without even trying that hard. Your mind worked out the solution for you while you were busying yourself with something else. By giving yourself the time and a change of pace (or a change in perspective, which is an underlying theme of the game), you’ve come to the solution without thinking about it. It’s almost intuitive. That moment is yours to cherish, and it will likely happen many times.

Early on I played the game this way. I wandered, completing small portions of each section, and coming back to previous sections and understanding what was alluding me before. When I finally came back to the autumn forest or the castle, I was impressed how far into the area I had actually gotten the first time through, and was able to finish up and move onto something else. Maybe that’s why I found the town and mountain annoying and relied on a walkthrough for them. The town is a culmination of everything the game teaches you, but it also has a couple of sections where you think you know what the rules are, and yet you have it all wrong. It tricks you, and only later with some exploration or frustration (or looking up the solution like I did), you’ll see what was going on, and perhaps you’ll appreciate the ingenuity of it.

The mountain is the final area you’ll tackle, so if you do get stuck, by this point, there won’t be much you can do on the island while you’re trying to work out a solution. Yes there are plenty of environmental puzzles, and most won’t have activated all the lasers to open the mountain (as you don’t need to), but there’s a sense that “this is the only way forward” so you will find yourself focused on the one puzzle that’s standing in your way. It diverts from how I think the game is designed, encouraging wandering so your non-conscious mind can work out the problems, enjoying the scenery and all the little secrets that the island has to offer. Again, you can still walk out of the mountain and do this, but it seems counter-intuitive.

Coming back to the autumn forest, the seaside island or the castle later, and seeing how far I’d come on my own gives me greater peace about my own cognitive ability, about playing the game the “right way”, and about future playthroughs. See, I may have absolutely loathed the Tetris puzzles, but who’s to say in the future when I replay the game that I won’t then find these puzzles an entertaining challenge. I know that part of my desire to use a walkthrough was to consistently progress so I could make this video. In the future when I return to the island, there will be no video to make. As I have already completed the game, knowing that the completion of the island is ultimately pointless, I can take my time. I can load up the island, wander around, and enjoy it without worrying about how many puzzle panels I complete or lasers I activate. I can search for the environmental puzzles in my own time when I need a break, or actually try and find most of the audiologs. They’re so small that if a friend hadn’t told me about a couple of them at the entrance to the bamboo forest, I might have never found any of them. I only uncovered two videos as well. There are another 4 to find and watch.

This unfinished business is certainly an aspect of why I want to return, but it is not the whole reason. I want to prove to myself that I can complete the island on my own. And yet, I don’t seem to care if I do or don’t. I just want to experience that feeling again of wandering around, coming back to a panel and suddenly the solution just appears like there was never a puzzle that needed solving. Perhaps the desire to chase that feeling is the wrong way to go about it, but I feel that as long as I am witnessing this desire, I can at least be at peace about it. Similar to how I used a walkthrough to get to the end of a game where the ending does not matter.

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Firewatch: The player and Henry

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Firewatch. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

I’d like to start this off with a single moment in the game. Similar to my Toren critique, I think this moment is a good springboard for what I’ve chosen to discuss. We’re deep into the story now. Henry is sure he and Delilah are being monitored, and so as a solution, Delilah suggests radio silence. The next day she contacts Henry with a coded message, to travel to a remote location and find a new walkie talkie that she has left for him. During the trek there, I swear there’s rustling in the bushes, like I’m being followed. I even look around once or twice, even though intellectually I know that nothing will be there. When you get to the location and pick up the new radio, Delilah starts to speak frankly, freaking out about what to do. There are 3 responses I can pick. I as the player am in a heightened state because I’m invested in the narrative, so in my haste to respond, I misread the options. The second choice is accusing Delilah of being in on whatever this is. I thought it was a question, Henry asking Delilah if she has anything to do with this. It didn’t take long to realise my mistake as Henry starts accusing the closest thing he has to a friend out in the Wyoming wilderness. Similar to a real conversation, I can’t take back what I said, and the rest of our discussion is coloured by the turn the conversation has taken. There’s then a significant amount of silence as the player, Henry, and Delilah get to mull over what just happened. This is also just before the revelation of Delilah filing a police report about the two missing teenagers in which she lied, and then what you find at the research station over in Wapiti meadow.

The developers behind Firewatch also worked on Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1. The reason I bring this up right after telling that story is that I think both games work in a similar fashion. Keep this in mind, I’ll be revisiting its significance and the reason for the story a little later. A lot has been written on Firewatch since its release. There’s always a trepidation on approaching a game that has been written on so extensively, mostly by people a lot smarter and with greater insight. One reason I enjoyed looking into everything that was written is it tells me the areas of investigation and interpretation that do and don’t interest me. For instance a lot has been written on Delilah, not only as an NPC with agency, but the possibilities of Henry’s interactions with her, and mostly about her deceit. A lot of people think Delilah was either part of Ned Goodwin’s plan and she was messing with Henry while feigning ignorance, or she’s just a compulsive liar and it’s a good thing that Henry never ends up with her at the end, because why would you want to be with someone you can’t trust. This reading has so much traction because it explains away what many see as story plotholes. Now personally if I have a problem with Delilah it’s that the conversation with her undercuts the purpose of Henry fleeing to the woods to live in solitude for a while, but that’s mostly the fault of Henry / the player who feels the need to talk to Delilah about everything they come across.

There’s discussion on the concept of loneliness and that the only human contact Henry has in the whole game is grabbing the fireman’s hand at the end (something that the player can decline incidentally by walking back towards the watchtower). This ties into the metaphor of the fire and how it plays with the emotions of Henry and Delilah as the mystery they find themselves in starts to unravel. This leads towards a conclusion that many seemed to be unsatisfied with. Not only Henry deciding to go be with his wife, but not having the ability to be with Delilah. Oh, and people didn’t seem to like the revelation of what happened to Brain and Ned Goodwin. To be honest, I was among those people who thought that the ending was a big letdown when up to that point I was really enjoying my time walking through nature and furthering this mystery along.

Of course after looking into it, it’s pretty obvious that the mystery, the “plot” as it were is not that important to what Firewatch is. This is a tale of regret and running away from your problems. There is no paragon playthrough in Firewatch. Henry is a broken man, and the choice the player has is to determine just how broken, and if he can indeed work to start himself on the path of recovery. Delilah is the same. In effect, she’s a mirror to Henry. In this way I personally don’t think it matters whether or not she was working with Ned, lying to Henry, or oblivious to it all. The player is controlling Henry. Delilah is her own person, and while you can create a connection with her, her choices are not the player’s choices, and this is exemplified in them never meeting, and them parting ways at the end, possibly never to speak again.

Returning to my earlier mention of The Walking Dead, the reason I think this game is quite similar is that both play with the illusion of choice. The player is able to make a lot of decisions in both games, although the decisions in The Walking Dead seem more impactful and the stakes seem higher. Ultimately though, despite the choices, the overall story of both games is pretty much the same save for a few minor details. What’s important is the characters that the players are controlling. Who are Lee and Henry? Both have a less than ideal past, and both are obviously trying to atone for what they have done. Here’s the main difference though (aside from Firewatch’s lack of zombies), Lee sees an opportunity for redemption in looking after Clementine. Henry starts the game running away from his problems, and embroils himself in the game’s mystery to avoid having to confront and deal with that aspect of himself. The approach that these games have towards narrative decisions (an overall structure with the player filling in some details) is exactly the same to how they present the player character.

Henry is defined by our actions as players. Do you pick up the beer cans left by the teens? Do you steal their whiskey? Do you take their radio? Do you put on your wedding ring at the end of the game when you’re leaving? Incidentally I didn’t even notice the ring on my playthrough. Perhaps I wasn’t observant enough, or something I did earlier in the game made it so I couldn’t pick it up. Maybe I threw it off the lookout balcony. I can’t remember. How did you treat Delilah? Did you talk to her about everything, or did you ignore her as much as the game would allow you to do so? Did you indulge Henry’s obsessions about the mystery, or did you act like it didn’t matter? These choices do seem kind of insignificant in a big picture way. They certainly seem a lot more trivial than choosing who lives and who dies in The Walking Dead.

Ultimately they speak to our overall experience in the game. Henry took a job in a national park to escape his problems for a few months. We enter the shoes of Henry for a few hours to escape from whatever we play videogames to escape from. Just like that conversation with Delilah I talked about at the start, the wrong thing can be said and that will always stick with us. If interacting with a videogame is a conversation, the ending seemed to have said the wrong thing to a lot of people. This metaphor kind of breaks down now because unlike a conversation you can replay a videogame, and like any piece of art, more might get revealed to you on a second or third exposure. At least with the whole of the experience as a known quantity, upon a second playthrough, we can sideline the plot and just enjoy traipsing around the Wyoming countryside. Looking back, that was my favourite part of the game, and I think overall it did Henry some good. How was it for you?

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Rise of the Tomb Raider: Power fantasy

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

It might sound a little ridiculous but the 2013 release of Tomb Raider restored a lot of my faith in AAA gaming. I had spent a couple of years at the time mainly playing indie titles due to the level of experimentation found within paired with their affordability. It was late 2013 and I became curious about a few of the year’s big titles that people were talking about. My roommate had a copy of Tomb Raider so I popped in the disc in his PS3 and gave it a try. I was blown away. The game has this beautiful balance of spectacle, streamlined pacing, and immersion that I was not expecting. The challenge tombs were a lot of fun, everything moved forward steadily, upgrades included, and some of the set pieces such as climbing the tower or coming upon the ship graveyard have stayed with me over the years.

A similar amount of time give or take a few months had gone by between the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider and when I was able to finally get a copy and play it. What I have is the definitive edition that released to celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary. It includes all the DLC, but aside from the Baba Yaga storyline, I don’t think I interacted with any of it. I played through the game on normal, following the main story with a little bit of sidetracking for most of the challenge tombs and some of the ally missions. It took me around 14 hours start to finish. If you’ve played the game, then you’ll know where I’m coming from when I say that aside from some of the platforming set pieces, most of the main game isn’t exactly a Tomb Raider game. It’s a third person shooter that revolves around upgrades and crafting. Combat seems to be the focus of this game, with the majority of your time spent mowing down dozens upon dozens of highly trained mercenaries through either straight gunplay, the benefits of the upgrade system, or crafting explosives and specialised arrows to inflict as much damage as humanly possible.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be criticizing a AAA game for indulging in a power fantasy. That’s one of the things that big budget videogames are quite good at. Take a character, throw as much violence at them as possible, and watch them persevere. It’s the medium’s own psychopathic hero’s journey. It works because videogames are about doing, shooting can be lots of fun, especially when it’s designed to feel satisfying, and the game and the player never really pays much mind to the virtual humans they’re killing by the bucketload because neither really wants to bring it up. Heck, this idea of overcoming adversity is one of the central ideas of the 2013 game. I do think that game had a better balance between combat, platforming, and exploration / collecting, but I do admit I might be misremembering it. By the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara has essentially wiped out an entire army of highly trained mercenaries. Not only that, but there’s a supernatural army called the Deathless. A lot of the lead up to revealing combat against the Deathless has them butchering the same mercenaries you’re killing by the handful. Then the tables turn once Lara gets involved.

One of the final sections of the game has you fighting in the ruins of a lost city. For some reason, I got a Lordran vibe off the place and jokingly referred to it as such. Maybe it’s because this is a nexus point of city ruins, ancient undead foes, and an upgrade system at a bonfire. At this point, you’ve already had some fights with the Deathless in small waves, but in the city and especially on your way to access the trebuchets, you’ll be fighting a lot of these warriors up close. So let’s put aside Lara slaughtering a highly trained mercenary army. Let’s put aside Lara being able to kill waves of a supernatural foe that is also able to slaughter a highly trained mercenary army. By this point in the game I’d filled out most of the upgrade tree. I had dodge counters and quick time event kills for each weapon and was more deadly in close quarters combat than I was behind cover with a bow or any firearm. So what was the most efficient and easy way to take down the hulking undead monstrosities with scary melee weapons? Spam the attack button on my controller so that Lara would wail on them with her pickaxe until either the prompt to deliver a finishing blow appeared, they crumbled from too many hits, or they fell off a ledge. In the post credits cutscene, Trinity, the shadowy organization behind the mercenaries kill Anna as she’s seemingly too much a threat to them, She knows too much. However, they leave Lara alive. It’s probably for the best, at this point, she’s likely the most deadly person on planet Earth, and a sniper bullet to the head might have just pissed her off.

Let me say that this criticism about the ridiculous level of power fantasy is not because I wasn’t enjoying the combat. It’s competent third person shooting. The stealth kills are great, and my favourite encounter was early on when you have the opportunity to take out an entire camp without raising an alarm. You have this opportunity on more than one occasion, but I was never able to pull it off with this level of success ever again. I think some of my frustration is that I chose to play with a controller, and if after all these years of playing console games I can’t get used to aiming with an analogue stick, it’s likely never going to happen. If I ever revisit the game, i’m going to use the mouse and keyboard. At least then I can take advantage of the headshot experience bonuses. My issue is mainly that the combat is such a heavy focus of a game that doesn’t need it.

The story has Lara hunting for a mystical artifact in order to salvage her father’s legacy. The early game introduces survival against local wildlife, and the wonders of searching the landscape and discovering artifacts and secrets. This leads to your first challenge tomb. If you want to get technical, the expedition to Syria was sort of its own challenge tomb, but the first official challenge tomb side content is when you discover the ship frozen in ice. Now not all the challenge tombs are on the spectacle of this one. Most of them are quite short, focused around one simple puzzle. Sometimes accessing the tomb itself can be engaging, especially in cases were the tomb itself is a bit of a let down. The cave formation on the way to this short little tomb puzzle involving boats and rapids is a good example. What’s more, the tome found at the end of each tomb grants Lara a new ability. The reward of course should be the tomb itself, but it’s nice to get something a little extra out of taking the time to solve these. I just wish they weren’t side content and the main story had a lot more tomb raiding and a lot less wanton murder from Super Lara.

Thanks for watching.

Dave's Critiques - King's Quest (2016): Legacy

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing King’s Quest for those who have played it. If you are worried about spoilers, please pause the video, and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

The King’s Quest games have an enduring legacy. I personally discovered Sierra through the Police Quest and Space Quest games (Police Quest was my first adventure game), but I met Graham and the kingdom of Daventry through King’s Quest 5, and then fell in love with the series through Alexander’s adventures through the Green Isles in King’s Quest 6. It doesn’t take too much searching online to find people who spent their childhoods with these games, a lot of them playing through them with family members. Help was needed. Death came easily, and many of the games had states where you could not continue if you missed doing something earlier, and would have to start over. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the legacy of King’s Quest is mostly positive, and that’s why I think everyone was weary when Activision announced the new game series.

It’s also an episodic series. Episodic gaming is a strange beast. A long time ago I made a decision to only approach such games when all the episodes have been released. It’s because these games largely feel like a full game broken into parts at key story moments, and having to wait months for the next installment just makes the player forget about the characters and what was happening in the game world. King’s Quest is a little different. The framing device is that King Graham is now an enfeebled old man telling stories of his youth to his granddaughter. Each episode is a separate story from his past, often being placed between the original games. The beginning of chapter one has you stealing the magic mirror from the dragon that players might remember doing in KQ1, but then flashes back to explain how Graham become a Daventry knight in the first place. Chapter 3 has you searching for your future wife, and chapter 4 covers both the birth of Alexander and Rosella, and a family vacation they take to bond together after Alexander finally returns after all those lost years. The way it weaves Manannan and Mordack into all 5 episodes is really clever too, showing that the malice these wizards have against Graham and his family is deep rooted and not just evil characters being evil for an evil reason.

The earlier chapters actually have a bit of replay value due to the qualities of a successful king being the paths you can take in many of the game’s decisions. You can take action, show compassion, or use your intellect. These paths are externalised in the town folk, and throughout the game the path you choose to go down will endear you more towards either the Hobblepots, Wente and Bramble, or Amaya. I started off thinking intellect was the way to go. It is an adventure game after all. Then as I continued, the compassion path held greater sway over me, and I never missed a chance to visit Wente and Bramble in the later chapters. I think Wente’s love of puns and hugs won me over more than anything. The notion of choice plays a greater role in chapter 2 when it’s possible to let multiple characters die. I was slow on the uptake on how to save everyone so let Triumph and the Hobblepots die in the goblin dungeons. I felt terrible. Then at the end of the chapter Graham admits that since this happened a long time ago, his memory might be a bit foggy on how things went down, so to not take the story too seriously. One the one hand, I was relieved that I would see these characters again. On the other, I did feel a bit betrayed that the sad feelings I had regarding my lack of action were uncalled for, as this aspect of chapter 2 did not matter for the rest of the game.

But the important question regarding this King’s Quest is how it stays true to the legacy of the original series, and if it does, how does it continue that legacy? I think the answer to this question is threefold: family, puns, and puzzles. I will now talk about all three in turn. One of the joys of the original series was that there were games where the player was not controlling Graham. Throughout the 8 games you got to control Valanice, Rosella, and Alexander. It’s the same reason I loved the Xanth books so much as a teenager. Time passes from book to book, so you got to follow the children of characters you spent time with go on their own adventures, and then have children of their own. That series also revels in its love of puns. In this game, you control King Graham in all 5 chapters (at different points of his life), but in a passing of the torch, there are times when you play as Gwendolyn (the epilogue being her first adventure). Even though you only play as Graham, his family is always nearby, not only when the game cuts back to the present, but chapters 3 and 4 are focused on falling in love and raising a family. There’s a sequence in the early moments of chapter 4 that I imagine was pulled straight from the experiences of any members of the development team who have children of their own. A lot of the game feels like personal experiences were woven into the story. There are sections of chapter 5 where Graham’s dementia is interfering with his story. I watched my own father succumb and finally pass over years due to motor neuron disease, and those moments of the last chapter hit rather hard because of it.

And while the ending of chapter 5 is quite sad in terms of family and legacy (of Graham as a family member, and a beloved videogame icon), let’s lighten the mood a little with the next item on the list, puns. Puns have always been a part of King’s Quest. I still remember when you get killed by the witch who lives in the gingerbread house in KQ1, the death screen says she turned you into a Graham cracker. King’s Quest continues the tradition of the death screens being an opportunity for a groaner or two, but I was not expecting the long strains of punnery that were written into the dialogue. I found myself cracking up everytime one of these occurred, my favourite ending with a well deserved slow clap. Here, I’ll play it for you now. See? Marvelous. While the puns are a constant source of joy, I also found a lot of humour in the line reading and character interactions. There was one line reading in chapter 1 that had me barking out laughter. Again, I’ll play it for you. I think it also helps that the way they’ve written young Graham is like a more excitable Guybrush Threepwood. He doesn’t necessarily lose his exuberance as he gets older, but obviously he’s not as energetic in his excitement as he once was.

Finally there are the puzzles. When I first started playing, I worried it would be a linear affair with minimal adventure game puzzles like the recent Telltale games, or Life is Strange. It turns out King’s Quest is designed like an actual adventure game. There are chapters and sections of the game which are linear, but there are also sections where you have a large area of interconnecting screens with more than one puzzle to solve at a time. Often these puzzles have multiple solutions or are linked together in some way. In chapter one for instance, the order you tackle the trials is somewhat influenced by whose shop you first spend your coin at. While I was happy that we’re dealing with traditional adventure game design, there are some pitfalls of the genre here.

There’s not enough signposting to nudge the player toward a solution, and while it hasn’t caught on, I think every adventure game should have a hint button that the player can use when stuck. I’ve wanted this feature in every adventure game since the remake of The Secret of Monkey Island included it. Having the player character muse out loud to themselves the right direction towards a solution is internally consistent and takes the load off the frustration the player might be feeling. I guess this is a symptom of not having proper signposting. I think perhaps good adventure game puzzle design is a lot like modern level design. The trick is to nudge the player in the right direction through your design without them necessarily knowing you’re doing so. It’s definitely a tricky balance. If the puzzle is too easy, there’s no satisfaction from solving it, and if it’s too difficult a player might check a walkthrough. In both cases, the player is robbed of that good feeling “ah-ha” moment. There is the idea that such a feeling is more relegated to puzzle games where the puzzles are the most important aspect, while in adventure games, the puzzles can be an impediment to the story… but I think the best adventure games thread the elements of puzzle and story rather seamlessly. I’d say the best example of this in King’s Quest is chapter 3. It helps that each puzzle is contained in either one, or only a couple of screens, but there’s a pace and enjoyment to the story and the puzzle solving that is symbiotic in chapter 3 where I feel that the rest of the game favours one side over the other.

In the end, the legacy that Graham wants to leave behind is the legacy that the King’s Quest games want to leave behind. The whole game is about the passing of the torch from the older generation to a younger generation, just as the game itself has been inspired by these classic Sierra adventures to make something that while faithful to them, is modern, and leaves its own mark. I’m of the mind that it definitely succeeds in this ambition. I really enjoyed my time with this new Daventry, I loved all the nods to the original series, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in either wanting a sequel starring Gwendolyn, or for this treatment to be given to other classic Sierra games. A retelling of Space Quest or Gabriel Knight perhaps?

Thanks for watching.