Hello Everyone. The following is a follow up to my last piece on the PSP Need for Speed Titles. I've gone through Underground Rivals, Most Wanted 510, Carbon Own the City and Prostreet last time. I recommend reading it to catch up on my points.
https://mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/09/psp-need-for-speed-part-1-underground.html
That leaves just Shift and Undercover.
-Shift:
Initially, I was planning on playing Gran Turismo PSP so I could experience a proper simulation racing game to be able to judge Shift. Turns out, I didn't have to do it because the PSP is nothing like the console versions that focused on Simulation. Instead, the PSP version is just another arcade racer set in real-world locations on linear tracks. Unlike ProStreet PSP, the tracks are places in real cities like Chicago, San Francisco etc converted into tracks rather than actual race tracks. The Tracks do look really good. In fact, the game as a whole looks pretty good. I'd argue it's the best looking of the PSP NFS games. The opening title screen and menus are fantastic.
---Career
Somewhat similar to the console versions, the player completes events on a linear tree-like menu to earn points to unlock more events. Along the way are 10 Race Kings, elite drivers with their own strengths. They are in the regular races and if the player beats then enough times during those, they then challenge the player to their own events where if the player wins, they take the King's car and their spot. Events include races, drifting challenges and speed traps.
Speaking of progression, The Game handles it differently from its predesccors. Now, winning select races will unlock entire cars instead of needing to save money for it. Racing with a car increases a loyalty meter where the manufacturer will award you upgrades. Shift really wants the player racing in many different cars throughout the adventure.
Customization is pretty good with lots of options for Vinyls and ways to move them. It's far more than prior PSP NFS games.
So it all seems great right? Sadly, I didn't enjoy the actual racing and gameplay. The game focuses far more on drifting but the controls seem really slippery. I can't make a drift without oversteering and any corrections exacerbate the problem regardless of car. The tight and narrow tracks make collisions frequent which make it impossible for me to build up speed. I fully admit that perhaps I am playing the game wrong which makes it hard for me to enjoy but I feel the game could have more tutorials and ways to practise first before all in if that was the case. I am bad at Wipeout but at least the games had ways for me to practise.
If you can get into the gameplay, you'll have a decent time with the game.
-Undercover:
My first exposure to the Game in any format was in a magazine my school had. In that magazine, I remember 2 things. A section for Mk vs DC saying "Who would want to rip off Superman's head? Put your hand down Lex". The second was a section for Undercover saying "Because Most Wanted 2 wasn't catchy enough".
Most Wanted 2005 is pretty influential. It has a narrative sequel in Carbon. A mechanical Sequel in Undercover and a reboot in MW 2012. But the PSP version feels more like an expanded DLC to Carbon Own the City that takes cues from Most Wanted 510.
The Gameplay consists of a return to OTC's style of physics and even sound and menu effects. There are some changes like a different line up of cars, less anemic upgrades (finally) and now the integration of police into regular events with 510's Speedbreaker.
In My OTC review, I complained about how the police were almost absent from the game. Undercover tries to improve on that by having cops wandering around the world. If they see you during races, it will trigger a pursuit. There are also specific events for this like escape the police. This does add more variety to the usual events but there are problems. While the cops aren't overly aggressive like in 510 they are way too docile in Undercover. They aren't great at detecting racers tearing past them to even initiate a pursuit. Even during races they aren't very aggressive and their health bars mean it is easy to completely destroy them and then not worry about it. There are events where you have to hold onto the police for 3 minutes and I nearly botched it when I took out the cops with surprisingly little effort. There are also helicopters. In MW the main console game, these worked as you could go under structures like bridges to lose them, but in Undercover PSP, there isn't really anything like that so helicopters feel like ways to arbitrarily extend what are otherwise toothless pursuits you've already won until their fuel runs out.
Speaking of which, there is technically an open world that the player can explore parts off during select events. Some like pursuits are more open than others. Unlike OTC's map, this one isn't very interesting, it's just regular roads and areas. There are no shortcuts, hidden areas, offroad areas or any place really worth exploring. A side effect of the menu based design also means that police chases don't even persist after races. The map itself, though technically accurate to the design of Undercover, isn't all the interesting because the 3 individual cities are so small that you'll race so much through them and you'll exhaust and get bored of them long before it's time to move on. The second city uses the same curvy road way too much. I'd rather OTC's approach where the whole city is used for events.
Races are the same from the past few games but with a few tweaks and additions, regular races can now have 8 drivers, and a new event is present called "Cost to state" where you have to crash into civilian cars and street signs to cause damage to the city. Now, Console Most Wanted had a version of this as well but that was during pursuits where it was much more tense and dangerous but here it is very tedious. Another new mode has you delivering a select car to a destination with minimal damages that may involve opponents or the police. Aside from that, You have the usual sprints, circuits, lap knockouts, outruns and takedowns. Most races can be completed in under 2 minutes but the 3-6 minute ones really drag.
Sadly, I couldn't finish the game. There's a glitch in the 3rd city where the 3rd set of events has a delivery that won't finish. I was kinda relieved that I don't have to play more.
The story is kinda interesting and actually works with the set up of NFS protagonists being avatars. I like the idea of the player interacting with street racers and having to take them down and how the character feels is what the player feels. Does the player feel kinda bad for taking down people who trust them now? Or are they like their boss in it's all just a job. The way the story is set up does work nicely while letting the player project onto the story. It's not exactly the best written but it works. Honestly, I wouldn't mind other racing games that feel compelled to have a story to take notes from this.
I'm also not a fan of the music but you might like it more.
-Conclusion.
Undercover is a decent albeit pretty boring game. The story set up is decent and the gameplay is fine but the maps and races are dull. I'd only recommend this game if you're really interested.
So I've finally finished my NFS PSP retrospective. Now it's time to rank them.
-1- No Contest, It's Own the City. It's most complete NFS game with the best map, races and story. I recommend checking it out.
-2- Bit of gap but I'd give it to ProStreet. The racing is fun and you get a lot of decent cars.
-3- Bigger gap but I'd rank Most Wanted 510 and Undercover together. They're about the same
-4- Underground Rivals and Shift. I don't recommend playing these.
Now that that's done. I think I'll take a break from racing games for a while. I do at some point want to take a look at Test Drive Unlimed, Juiced 1 and 2, and Asphalt 9. I like to choose my topics on things I feel people don't talk about much. My next piece will either be on a Spongebob game, Prince of Persia, a Pokemon Rom hack depending on which one I finish first.
Thanks for reading and I wish you a good day.
Tuesday 12 November 2019
Wednesday 16 October 2019
Pokemon Emerald
Hello Everyone. I recently played through Pokemon Emerald for the first time. I heard many things about this game. That it had the best region. That it was the best Gen 3 game. That it was a "director's cut" to Ruby and Sapphire. Given all that, I had high expectations for this 15-year-old GBA title. My first Pokemon Game is Diamond back in 2008. Since then, I've played Pearl, A little of Soulsilver, White, Black 2 and Y. I've also gone and played the ROM hack Crystal Clear. I'm going to be comparing Emerald to these games. It may seem unfair but I feel it will provide a better look at the strengths and weaknesses of the games.
If you want the short version of my thoughts on the game, I enjoyed it but there were some major problems. The visuals, world, gyms, post-game content and general gameplay are great. But the overuse of a handful of Pokemon, the excessive overuse of boring water routes and pokemon, The overuse of HMs, the limited TMs and movesets overall for most Pokemon all bring down the experience by a significant margin.
Let's Get started:
-The Visuals
Despite being on a Gameboy Advance, The game looks great. Environments are varied. Places like Fortree, MossDeep, LavaRidge are all visually and thematically distinct. The Pokemon Look varied as well. Their poses and design show their personality and styles. The overworld may have this pixellated style but it looks pretty charming to me. I especially Like the Starters and how the evolve forms look.
-Gameplay
The game is very familiar to other Pokemon games but this gen introduced a few new features that have become standard in later games. Abilities are passive effects that trigger in Battle when certain conditions are met. For example, the Ability "Blaze" powers up fire type attacks when health is less than 50%.
Overall, it's still fun. What makes Pokemon's battles more than just fancy rock, paper, scissors is that you have context for why your opponent may pick rock and the ability to choose the target of your opponent's attack. This is what makes more competitive Pokemon interesting. If you predict your opponent's attack, You can switch to a ground type to nullify an electric attack and stuff like that is very satisfying to pull off. Sadly, the latter is really rare in mainline games. But as a whole, add in abilities and cool effects from moves and you have an RPG with a simple pick up and play nature with a lot of depth.
However, there are some problems. Firstly, type balancing isn't great. Grass and Bug, in particular, get the short stick with a lot of pokemon resisting them, and very few strong pokemon and moves compared to later gens. It's to the point where hidden power grass and bug are considered some of the best moves to have (It's somewhat similar for poison except at least it has toxic. Ice and Rock have too few resistances but is great offensively). In contrast, fighting and dragon get a lot of benefits.
This even extends to the starters. Torchic ends up being the easiest as there are lots of great fire and fighting moves, it's super effective against much of the elite 4 and gyms and can get a lot of great coverage moves. It's also one of the few good fire pokemon. Mudkip and Treeko aren't bad but less valuable as there are many more good water and grass pokemon around Hoeen than fire ones. Not to mention grass's earlier shortcomings. Gen 4 would take this discrepancy even farther.
Ideally, a Pokemon game should have its starters be roughly level with each other so their pros and cons end up being roughly even by the end. Gens 1 and 6 seem to be the only ones so far with this design. I've heard people defend this approach by saying "picking a tougher starter is like a hard mode" to which I respond:
firstly, a dedicated hard mode would be a better option and secondly, for a new player who picks what looks cool, they may inadvertently give themselves an easier or harder time without realizing it as the game's don't make it clear from the start which starter has what advantages.
Another issue is the lack of level-up moves for many Pokemon and the limited TMs. This makes making a well-rounded team and even backup Pokemon much harder and really forces you to commit to a team early on for the best results. It Also means you're dealing with weaker moves for way too long. As an example, Crawduant, my Water-Dark Type, doesn't learn a decent dark move like Crunch in the game (it does in FireRed and LeafGreen, and subsequent gens would also give it moves like Night Slash meaning Gamefreak recognized this is a problem). Even your starters are not off the hook. Blaziken for example, learns only 2 fire type attacking moves by level up, Ember and Blaze Kick (that's worse than Flamethrower) and no decent fighting moves after Double Kick until level 59 with Sky Uppercut. Compare this to Gen 4 onwards which at least added flamethrower and flame wheel among others to the mix for Infernape, alongside mach panch and Close Combat.
In addition, the physical/special split hasn't happened yet (a system that categorizes moves based on if they make contact and thus use physical or special stats to calculate damage) so many Pokemon aren't at their most effective. Blaziken's Blaze Kick would be cool but being Special, Flamethrower beats it in every way. Pokemon like Absol can't have STAB (same type attack bonus) with their high attack stat because Dark is special. Gyarados, an absolute monster with physical attack, is straddled with special water moves.
I also wish the Exp Share was like its Gen 6 Incarnation. It would make growing a team much less tedious while still being challenging.
Exploring the overworld is fun. It really makes you feel like you're going on an adventure. The towns and routes are all well done. But there are a few things holding it back.
Firstly, the HMs are a pain. Before I rip into them, Let's talk about the positives of HMs. They allow your pokemon to do something in the overworld and they can add a bit of intrigue to routes (like seeing an item past a tree). Now for the negatives:
Firstly, most of their battle applications are useless. Cut is less accurate than tackle, your actual starting move. Rock Smash does pitiful damage. Strength, Fly, Surf, Dive and Waterfall are at least fine but most of that list is water type moves, which limits coverage and are special and redundant in many cases. The 8 of them mean you basically need 2-3 HM Slaves and need to plan your party around HMs. Secondly, even using the HMs isn't all that fun. You see a rock, you go to it and smash it, the decision makes itself. There is no clever thinking aside from maybe Strength with its puzzles. Here's the thing, you could do what Dragon Quest does and make all HMs an item you can use as soon as you have the appropriate Gym Badge and that would solve all major issues with it instantly. You still have problems like the flavour text that keeps appearing (except for Strength) even when you keep using the HM. Why can't when I press A next to water, I start surfing instantly? I don't need to keep being told the water is blue. Why can't when I press A next to a rock, or a tree it gets removed instantly? That would save so much time, it's not even funny.
Secondly, The Water Routes are a pain. (I know, IGN's 7.8 Too much Water but they are absolutely right). Firstly, despite being half the routes in Hoenn, The water routes do not have half the content. They are boring, repetitive, have very little to do or to differentiate them and have the same bloody Wingulls and Tentacruels. I'm sick of them. They're not even at a high-level consistently (I've fought level 9s and 39 next to each other). Compare this to the land routes, they can be visually and even geographically distinct (you can have giant grasses, differing elevation and bridges, different terrain, different pokemon and weather effects. One land route can look and feel remarkably different from another).
I've seen people defend these routes for quite a few reasons. Here are a few:
>"It makes thematic sense. Water vs Land"
Here's a quote from a review of Pocket Morty's that responds to the same defence
Ghost in a Jar
3 years ago
+Human Jokic While thematically it makes sense that Mortys should mostly feel the same when using them, applying that to gameplay makes it very shallow and repetetive. And usually gameplay > theme. and I am sure no one would complain if the Morty's abilities and attributes were more wildly different. Nothing dumb about her insight on that at all, imo
>"It's based on a real place"
Firstly, The job of game designers isn't to be realistic. It's to make something fun. Assassin's Creed devs have frequently stated how they changed the real maps to be something more fun to navigate.
Secondly, Future Games avert this. Sinnoh is based on Hokkaido and is much farther north than prior regions and has a major mountain in the middle. Despite this, it's not all mountains and ice. Unova is based on New York, it's not all giant urban city and filled with lots of steel and poison types. Kalos isn't all fairy type. And the final nail in the coffin, Aloha is based on Hawaii and its islands, yet has a far better balance of types and environments
>"You can skip it/go faster with Sharpedo and later with the Flute in ORAS"
That doesn't change the fact that you're still playing a boring part until then. And even then, making something slightly less bad doesn't magically make it good. There's also the issue of HMs from earlier that it interferes with.
-The Story
It's a standard Pokemon story that set many of the staples of the series going forward (You're a kid in a small town, you get a starter from a tree named professor. You fight the Pokemon League and an evil team that wants to use a Legendary Pokemon you gotta stop). There are some twists along the way. Your protagonist has a parent in Norman the normal type leader which adds a bit more stakes to the journey. You have a sort of apprentice in Wally who grows more confident from Pokemon. You have 2 evil teams with nonsense motives (this is something ORAS improved on). There are some nice interactions and characters along the way.
I have some problems. May, your actual rival, kinda drops off after a certain point, making her feel superfluous. I'd rather she be more present throughout the adventure. Wally is cool because of his arc but he too is very absent from the events at hand. I'd love if he was someone you mentored throughout the adventure.
The Evil Teams and the Legendary Plot isn't very interesting. It feels tacked on for the sake of tradition. I prefer either Gen 1's approach where the Evil Team was grounded and connected with the main plot (Giovanni was the 8th Gym Leader) and the Legendary Pokemon were Legends you had to seek out. Or Gen 5's approach where it was even more integrated (the evil teams, legendary and league were all connected). Emrald's set up falls flat because the climax of the story happens before the Elite 4.
On the plus side, At least catching Rayquaza is a decent challenge for the reward of a level 70 monster before the Elite 4. It being optional also helps.
-Gyms and Elite Four
Compared to Gen 6, The game is challenging. The Gyms frequently had higher levels and some pretty interesting tactics I couldn't brute force through with a single stronger Pokemon like the normal trainers. Norman, for example, had a Slaking that would tear through my team despite being higher level than it. It's facade and counter were very powerful. My winning tactic involved sending out Gyarados and using leer while Slaking used 2 counters that failed before taking it out in a single Facade. I then sent out Combuskin who took it out with a single Double Kick. Or the Twins Tate and Eliza who required me to synergize my team so my surfs and revives were used effectively, culminating in a very tense 1 on 1 with Gardevoir with Shadow Ball versus a Lunatone that healed at least 4 times. It was fun (I do wish their gym was teamed more around double battles).
I do have some issues. While the puzzles were decent, some Gyms' ideas fell a little flat. Norman's gym used X Items but the trainers had only 1 Pokemon so the Gym may give players who aren't knowledgable of X Items the impression these items are useless. If these Trainers had more pokemon and maybe even moves like Trick Room and Baton Pass, it would be a much better learning experience.
I'm mixed on Wallace being the champion. On the one hand, he does mix up returning Ruby and Saphire players and makes it harder for Blaziken to sweep through like he did with Steven. But on the other hand, It's more dang water types, especially as the 8th gym was already water.
-Post Game
The Battle Frontier is really cool. The different facilities and their challenges are a fun test of the player and things can escalate very fast. I do wish the requirements for medals was made more clear. Overall, I'd love to see this become a staple of the series.
Now personally, I prefer Gen 5's approach to a post-game with new areas to explore with higher level challenges as well as a Battle Frontier Like area. I also wish there were easier ways to level up and Train Pokemon at this point because the best bet is to grind the Elite 4.
Catching some of the remaining Legendaries wasn't that fun. Groudon and Kyogre moved around so much so finding each of their caves was frustrating. The Reggie puzzle is cool but way too over the top. Latias/Latios as roaming Legendaries is as painful as always.
Breeding is cool. There is a lot of depth through the system with egg moves, chains and more. My problems are how long it takes (even with Slugma’s abilities) to hatch eggs and how mammals can lay eggs. I’d rather have a system where the daycare man tells you a Pokémon had appeared after fewer steps that a new Pokémon has appeared, you can examine its stats and choose to keep it or leave it permanently with the daycare. This would solve both issues.
-Conclusion
Despite Emerald being over 15 years old at this point, I enjoyed my time with it and glad I got to experience it. I am of the belief that good game design is timeless. This means that Emerald, no matter how many years pass, will always have its positives as positives. But if I had to rate it and recommend it, I'd give it a 6.5/10 at best with a "if you want a fun straightforward Pokemon adventure with lots to do, go for it". If the HMs were removed, water routes removed or made extremely less tedious, Movesets and TMs improved, and types be improved, I'd give it an instant 8-8.5
With that done, My next look will likely be Need for Speed Shift and Undercover for the PSP.
If you want the short version of my thoughts on the game, I enjoyed it but there were some major problems. The visuals, world, gyms, post-game content and general gameplay are great. But the overuse of a handful of Pokemon, the excessive overuse of boring water routes and pokemon, The overuse of HMs, the limited TMs and movesets overall for most Pokemon all bring down the experience by a significant margin.
Let's Get started:
-The Visuals
Despite being on a Gameboy Advance, The game looks great. Environments are varied. Places like Fortree, MossDeep, LavaRidge are all visually and thematically distinct. The Pokemon Look varied as well. Their poses and design show their personality and styles. The overworld may have this pixellated style but it looks pretty charming to me. I especially Like the Starters and how the evolve forms look.
-Gameplay
The game is very familiar to other Pokemon games but this gen introduced a few new features that have become standard in later games. Abilities are passive effects that trigger in Battle when certain conditions are met. For example, the Ability "Blaze" powers up fire type attacks when health is less than 50%.
Overall, it's still fun. What makes Pokemon's battles more than just fancy rock, paper, scissors is that you have context for why your opponent may pick rock and the ability to choose the target of your opponent's attack. This is what makes more competitive Pokemon interesting. If you predict your opponent's attack, You can switch to a ground type to nullify an electric attack and stuff like that is very satisfying to pull off. Sadly, the latter is really rare in mainline games. But as a whole, add in abilities and cool effects from moves and you have an RPG with a simple pick up and play nature with a lot of depth.
However, there are some problems. Firstly, type balancing isn't great. Grass and Bug, in particular, get the short stick with a lot of pokemon resisting them, and very few strong pokemon and moves compared to later gens. It's to the point where hidden power grass and bug are considered some of the best moves to have (It's somewhat similar for poison except at least it has toxic. Ice and Rock have too few resistances but is great offensively). In contrast, fighting and dragon get a lot of benefits.
This even extends to the starters. Torchic ends up being the easiest as there are lots of great fire and fighting moves, it's super effective against much of the elite 4 and gyms and can get a lot of great coverage moves. It's also one of the few good fire pokemon. Mudkip and Treeko aren't bad but less valuable as there are many more good water and grass pokemon around Hoeen than fire ones. Not to mention grass's earlier shortcomings. Gen 4 would take this discrepancy even farther.
Ideally, a Pokemon game should have its starters be roughly level with each other so their pros and cons end up being roughly even by the end. Gens 1 and 6 seem to be the only ones so far with this design. I've heard people defend this approach by saying "picking a tougher starter is like a hard mode" to which I respond:
firstly, a dedicated hard mode would be a better option and secondly, for a new player who picks what looks cool, they may inadvertently give themselves an easier or harder time without realizing it as the game's don't make it clear from the start which starter has what advantages.
Another issue is the lack of level-up moves for many Pokemon and the limited TMs. This makes making a well-rounded team and even backup Pokemon much harder and really forces you to commit to a team early on for the best results. It Also means you're dealing with weaker moves for way too long. As an example, Crawduant, my Water-Dark Type, doesn't learn a decent dark move like Crunch in the game (it does in FireRed and LeafGreen, and subsequent gens would also give it moves like Night Slash meaning Gamefreak recognized this is a problem). Even your starters are not off the hook. Blaziken for example, learns only 2 fire type attacking moves by level up, Ember and Blaze Kick (that's worse than Flamethrower) and no decent fighting moves after Double Kick until level 59 with Sky Uppercut. Compare this to Gen 4 onwards which at least added flamethrower and flame wheel among others to the mix for Infernape, alongside mach panch and Close Combat.
In addition, the physical/special split hasn't happened yet (a system that categorizes moves based on if they make contact and thus use physical or special stats to calculate damage) so many Pokemon aren't at their most effective. Blaziken's Blaze Kick would be cool but being Special, Flamethrower beats it in every way. Pokemon like Absol can't have STAB (same type attack bonus) with their high attack stat because Dark is special. Gyarados, an absolute monster with physical attack, is straddled with special water moves.
I also wish the Exp Share was like its Gen 6 Incarnation. It would make growing a team much less tedious while still being challenging.
Exploring the overworld is fun. It really makes you feel like you're going on an adventure. The towns and routes are all well done. But there are a few things holding it back.
Firstly, the HMs are a pain. Before I rip into them, Let's talk about the positives of HMs. They allow your pokemon to do something in the overworld and they can add a bit of intrigue to routes (like seeing an item past a tree). Now for the negatives:
Firstly, most of their battle applications are useless. Cut is less accurate than tackle, your actual starting move. Rock Smash does pitiful damage. Strength, Fly, Surf, Dive and Waterfall are at least fine but most of that list is water type moves, which limits coverage and are special and redundant in many cases. The 8 of them mean you basically need 2-3 HM Slaves and need to plan your party around HMs. Secondly, even using the HMs isn't all that fun. You see a rock, you go to it and smash it, the decision makes itself. There is no clever thinking aside from maybe Strength with its puzzles. Here's the thing, you could do what Dragon Quest does and make all HMs an item you can use as soon as you have the appropriate Gym Badge and that would solve all major issues with it instantly. You still have problems like the flavour text that keeps appearing (except for Strength) even when you keep using the HM. Why can't when I press A next to water, I start surfing instantly? I don't need to keep being told the water is blue. Why can't when I press A next to a rock, or a tree it gets removed instantly? That would save so much time, it's not even funny.
Secondly, The Water Routes are a pain. (I know, IGN's 7.8 Too much Water but they are absolutely right). Firstly, despite being half the routes in Hoenn, The water routes do not have half the content. They are boring, repetitive, have very little to do or to differentiate them and have the same bloody Wingulls and Tentacruels. I'm sick of them. They're not even at a high-level consistently (I've fought level 9s and 39 next to each other). Compare this to the land routes, they can be visually and even geographically distinct (you can have giant grasses, differing elevation and bridges, different terrain, different pokemon and weather effects. One land route can look and feel remarkably different from another).
I've seen people defend these routes for quite a few reasons. Here are a few:
>"It makes thematic sense. Water vs Land"
Here's a quote from a review of Pocket Morty's that responds to the same defence
Ghost in a Jar
3 years ago
+Human Jokic While thematically it makes sense that Mortys should mostly feel the same when using them, applying that to gameplay makes it very shallow and repetetive. And usually gameplay > theme. and I am sure no one would complain if the Morty's abilities and attributes were more wildly different. Nothing dumb about her insight on that at all, imo
>"It's based on a real place"
Firstly, The job of game designers isn't to be realistic. It's to make something fun. Assassin's Creed devs have frequently stated how they changed the real maps to be something more fun to navigate.
Secondly, Future Games avert this. Sinnoh is based on Hokkaido and is much farther north than prior regions and has a major mountain in the middle. Despite this, it's not all mountains and ice. Unova is based on New York, it's not all giant urban city and filled with lots of steel and poison types. Kalos isn't all fairy type. And the final nail in the coffin, Aloha is based on Hawaii and its islands, yet has a far better balance of types and environments
>"You can skip it/go faster with Sharpedo and later with the Flute in ORAS"
That doesn't change the fact that you're still playing a boring part until then. And even then, making something slightly less bad doesn't magically make it good. There's also the issue of HMs from earlier that it interferes with.
-The Story
It's a standard Pokemon story that set many of the staples of the series going forward (You're a kid in a small town, you get a starter from a tree named professor. You fight the Pokemon League and an evil team that wants to use a Legendary Pokemon you gotta stop). There are some twists along the way. Your protagonist has a parent in Norman the normal type leader which adds a bit more stakes to the journey. You have a sort of apprentice in Wally who grows more confident from Pokemon. You have 2 evil teams with nonsense motives (this is something ORAS improved on). There are some nice interactions and characters along the way.
I have some problems. May, your actual rival, kinda drops off after a certain point, making her feel superfluous. I'd rather she be more present throughout the adventure. Wally is cool because of his arc but he too is very absent from the events at hand. I'd love if he was someone you mentored throughout the adventure.
The Evil Teams and the Legendary Plot isn't very interesting. It feels tacked on for the sake of tradition. I prefer either Gen 1's approach where the Evil Team was grounded and connected with the main plot (Giovanni was the 8th Gym Leader) and the Legendary Pokemon were Legends you had to seek out. Or Gen 5's approach where it was even more integrated (the evil teams, legendary and league were all connected). Emrald's set up falls flat because the climax of the story happens before the Elite 4.
On the plus side, At least catching Rayquaza is a decent challenge for the reward of a level 70 monster before the Elite 4. It being optional also helps.
-Gyms and Elite Four
Compared to Gen 6, The game is challenging. The Gyms frequently had higher levels and some pretty interesting tactics I couldn't brute force through with a single stronger Pokemon like the normal trainers. Norman, for example, had a Slaking that would tear through my team despite being higher level than it. It's facade and counter were very powerful. My winning tactic involved sending out Gyarados and using leer while Slaking used 2 counters that failed before taking it out in a single Facade. I then sent out Combuskin who took it out with a single Double Kick. Or the Twins Tate and Eliza who required me to synergize my team so my surfs and revives were used effectively, culminating in a very tense 1 on 1 with Gardevoir with Shadow Ball versus a Lunatone that healed at least 4 times. It was fun (I do wish their gym was teamed more around double battles).
I do have some issues. While the puzzles were decent, some Gyms' ideas fell a little flat. Norman's gym used X Items but the trainers had only 1 Pokemon so the Gym may give players who aren't knowledgable of X Items the impression these items are useless. If these Trainers had more pokemon and maybe even moves like Trick Room and Baton Pass, it would be a much better learning experience.
I'm mixed on Wallace being the champion. On the one hand, he does mix up returning Ruby and Saphire players and makes it harder for Blaziken to sweep through like he did with Steven. But on the other hand, It's more dang water types, especially as the 8th gym was already water.
-Post Game
The Battle Frontier is really cool. The different facilities and their challenges are a fun test of the player and things can escalate very fast. I do wish the requirements for medals was made more clear. Overall, I'd love to see this become a staple of the series.
Now personally, I prefer Gen 5's approach to a post-game with new areas to explore with higher level challenges as well as a Battle Frontier Like area. I also wish there were easier ways to level up and Train Pokemon at this point because the best bet is to grind the Elite 4.
Catching some of the remaining Legendaries wasn't that fun. Groudon and Kyogre moved around so much so finding each of their caves was frustrating. The Reggie puzzle is cool but way too over the top. Latias/Latios as roaming Legendaries is as painful as always.
Breeding is cool. There is a lot of depth through the system with egg moves, chains and more. My problems are how long it takes (even with Slugma’s abilities) to hatch eggs and how mammals can lay eggs. I’d rather have a system where the daycare man tells you a Pokémon had appeared after fewer steps that a new Pokémon has appeared, you can examine its stats and choose to keep it or leave it permanently with the daycare. This would solve both issues.
-Conclusion
Despite Emerald being over 15 years old at this point, I enjoyed my time with it and glad I got to experience it. I am of the belief that good game design is timeless. This means that Emerald, no matter how many years pass, will always have its positives as positives. But if I had to rate it and recommend it, I'd give it a 6.5/10 at best with a "if you want a fun straightforward Pokemon adventure with lots to do, go for it". If the HMs were removed, water routes removed or made extremely less tedious, Movesets and TMs improved, and types be improved, I'd give it an instant 8-8.5
With that done, My next look will likely be Need for Speed Shift and Undercover for the PSP.
Video Game High School Thoughts
Video Game High School Thoughts
The following is not a comprehensive review or analysis of VGHS. It is simply my thoughts on the series.
VGHS is like a guy with the best cards in a game and ends up playing it safe most of the way. The show has a pretty interesting premise, a nice set of characters, a lot of material to work with. But seldom ends up no more than the average cliched high school drama.
The Something Awful Review sums it up pretty well:
"So this is it. Finally. The glorious people's revolution, the righteous wave of trendy internet democratization that will finally bring down the soulless Hollywood studio machine once and for all, delivering us from the cruel, pitiless dark ages of bloated hyper-commercial filmmaking into the heavenly light of user-driven content and crowdsourced creative liberty! The future! The ultimate egalitarian wet dream! Time to reap the benefits of totally independent, fan/crowd-funded movie making, such as:
The following is not a comprehensive review or analysis of VGHS. It is simply my thoughts on the series.
VGHS is like a guy with the best cards in a game and ends up playing it safe most of the way. The show has a pretty interesting premise, a nice set of characters, a lot of material to work with. But seldom ends up no more than the average cliched high school drama.
The Something Awful Review sums it up pretty well:
"So this is it. Finally. The glorious people's revolution, the righteous wave of trendy internet democratization that will finally bring down the soulless Hollywood studio machine once and for all, delivering us from the cruel, pitiless dark ages of bloated hyper-commercial filmmaking into the heavenly light of user-driven content and crowdsourced creative liberty! The future! The ultimate egalitarian wet dream! Time to reap the benefits of totally independent, fan/crowd-funded movie making, such as:
- No more mindless formula recycling (e.g. nerdy outsider getting the hot popular girl after defeating her jerkbag boyfriend who also happens to be his arch nemesis in some kind of stupid boring contest thus proving his manhood)
- No more pandering to the lowest common denominator with stupid references and horribly stilted throwaway lines (like, say "ARE YOU CO-CO-KIDDING ME?! I AM CUCKOO FOR COCONUT CAKE!")"
For all the great special effects and interesting world they present, VGHS fails to make anything more than that, consistenly dropping interesting plot ideas
Let's look at a few specific examples. At the start of the show, one of Brian's consistent struggles is how if he's ranked too low on the leaderboard, he will be expelled. Yet, after a certain point in the story, the whole aspect is dropped. Brian or nobody ever has to worry about that. Or when Brian has to become a janitor and is having trouble balancing his life while his coach wants him to eat healthy, that whole aspect is dropped immediately. Initially, Brian shows off his skills by playing around the game in practice with the Tomahawk but that aspect is dropped. Or The Law, who originally is one of the best players ever, is reduced to "3 Stooges" comedy character when he and his later doppelganger decide to team up in the final battle. None of the other aspects of the school or its logistics are ever given more than a glimpse at best.
Sure, the series cycles through a lot of interesting ideas and scenarios, and is a comedy. But with very little consistency or dedication to any of its plots and set ups, the series fails to be anything more than a really elaborate set of Youtube Videos rather than a truly interesting movie.
Wednesday 18 September 2019
PSP Need for Speed Part 1: Underground Rivals to Prostreet
The following is my look through all the Need for Speed Titles released on the PSP and to give my thoughts on them. Specifically, Underground Rivals, Most Wanted 510, Carbon Own the City, ProStreet, Shift and Undercover. Initially, I planned to cover all 6 games in one post but as my word count went past 4000, I feel splitting them into 2 parts is probably better. I'll do UR-Prostreet in Part 1 and Shift and Undercover in Part 2. If Part 2 is too small for some reason, I'll probably do a DS or GBA NFS game as a bonus
Before I begin. I feel I should give my history with the franchise as a whole. I would not consider myself an expert on racing as a whole. I've played Underground 1, Most Wanted on PS2, PSP and NDS. Carbon Own the City on PSP. A bit of Hot Pursuit and Undercover on PS3. Played all of Most Wanted (2012 and that game was good, fight me) and Rivals and Payback.
First up is Underground Rivals as a launch title for the PSP. I'll be honest, this game didn't really click for me. While the graphics and presentation are really great for the time, the visual customization cool and the interesting open-ended progression for events (you're given a bunch of events like races, drag, drift, Nitrous runs etc). I didn't really enjoy this game. Car performance is weak, the handling and physics are too loose for the tracks. Enemy AI is much to difficult. The tracks are repeated a lot. There is no story. This last one is subjective but I'm not a fan of hip hop, rap and the songs that are associated with underground racing. I did put on a playlist of songs from 2000 - 2009 to get In the mood.
But I can't really recommend this game. I expect there are many who would enjoy this game and I can see its appeal. I'll give it a "somewhat recommended".
Let's talk a little about Physics in racing games. As the Youtuber Whitelight puts it, your physics need to match the environment. If you take a Not Ferrari from GTA V and put it into Hot Pursuit, you'd get bored as you'd be able to take every corner and weave through traffic with ease. If you took a Lambo from Hot Pursuit and put in GTA V, you'd be frustrated as it would be much more difficult to weave through traffic and take hard turns. Underground Rivals has physics closer to Hot Pursuit's style so ideally turns would not be at right angles or even acute angles yet there are often many of them. This is a problem throughout the series on PSP.
- Most Wanted 510.
Next up is my first NFS game and the one I spent the most time on as a wee lad. 510 (police sign for a street race) was released a year after Underground Rivals. I remember a YouTube video praising UR over this due to the greater variety of events and presentation. And while I don't dispute that, I did massively enjoy 510 more.
510 doesn't have an open world, it has no voice calls or cutscenes, no Mia aside from 1 loading screen. It only has races (circuit, sprint and Lap Knockouts), and time trials and heat trials. Upgrades are handed out at an anemic rate. So it's like a really stripped down version of the main console game. That still works. The driving is fun and using the slow-mo power of speedbreaker is a nice addition though it does feel too necessary. The cars are cool. Customization is cool and varied with lots of options. (The physics of crashes at high speeds must be seen) I do like the flavour text written for races and blacklist drivers. It makes it feel there is a man on the inside helping you out. It's a bit of personality in an otherwise straightforward game. There is one new exclusive event for the PSP Version, Tuner Takedown, where you play as a cop car and ram racers until their health reaches 0. It's fun for a bit.
I have criticisms of the races. Many of the tracks are used so much they start to feel repetitive despite the high number of tracks and their backwards variation (when I beat the game. I looked over my lap records. I found there were many backwards versions of tracks I never raced. Yet the game reuses the same 4 tracks in its final 2/3s). In addition, I feel races go on for too long. The game loves its 3 lap races that can take you over 7 minutes. I feel needing to focus on one event for that long, especially when 1 mistake often means a restart, is too much for a handheld racer (tournaments, where you must race 3 of these races back to back and need to place first pretty much in all 3 with no restarts, feel the worst). I feel the next game, Carbon Own the City, manages this better with the normal races taking 3-5 minutes while boss races take 7+.
I'm not opposed to long races, but I feel that for a handheld game, needing to have to focus so intensely for so long and so frequently goes the design of games like this and the nature of the platform.
NPC AI is inconsistent. Enemy racers alternate from being competent to experts. Traffic and police roadblocks may appear in unpredictable places that may cost you the race. It's very hard to recover from mistakes in the latter half.
Speaking of Police, they will always target the racer in first place. So they can spin you out and be able to arrest you right there but immediately abandon you when someone overtakes you. In first place, they'll attack you to get you spin out in unpredictable patterns and gang up. The setup isn't as favourable for escapes and tight maneuvering. In fact, these cops would be better suited for a GTA game than a racer. I've noticed that when I get spun out and then get overtaken, the cops suddenly become less aggressive towards AI Drivers and even get left far behind them. AI drivers can get arrested but only due to crashing into a roadblock. It is possible for all your opponents to arrested so all you have to deal with are the aggressive cops.
Regarding the music, it's really subjective here but aside from Do Ya Thang and Static X, I disliked the soundtrack. I guess this kind of music really isn't for me. To get into the mood though, I put on multiple playlists of popular early 2000s Music. I've learned I have a thing for cheesy love songs though.
Now back to the tracks, one of my biggest problems, especially with later tracks is how windy and how much curves they have. Many of the tracks are also filled with turns that are at right angles, u shaped and even V-shaped. The game's physics are really heavy so even with max handling and low speed, I was still crashing all over the place. Seriously, If I had to judge the game in its last 7 members, it would easily be a 3/10. It's really really bad.
The upgrade system is simple but anemic. As you win races, especially Blacklist Races, you'll get a notification telling you performance upgrades are available. You go into a menu for the car and find the available upgrades and you can purchase them. The problem is often how rare new upgrades are available. Newer cars you unlock won't have anything beyond stock for a while, so you'll stick with your older car for longer than you should because it's a better option than technically better cars. This becomes a problem later on because you need to guess which car to unlock which will have enough upgrades available to be useful but not so old as to be useless even with upgrades. As an example, I had to use the Cobalt S, the starter car, until Blacklist 8 because by then, The Eclipse from 11 is finally viable. I bought the Corvette after number 6 because I needed a faster car than the Eclipse but still had to use the Eclipse on certain tracks because the Corvette, though faster, lacked nitrous and had worse handling so those curvy tracks were impossible with it. The Eclipse was still a better option than the Audi Quattro and Ford Mustangs that all the AI drivers were using because my Quattro and Mustang would be lacking the upgrades that made them superior to the Eclipse for me. The Corvette and later the Lamborghini Gallardo, weren't fully upgraded until you beat many Blacklist drivers later. Yet, the AI are naturally faster than you with the same cars. I dislike this style of upgrades and prefer ProStreet PSP's approach of just letting you buy whatever upgrades you want for any car you have unlocked. This system is good because it rewards players for investing more into the game without artificially locking them out for a padded challenge.
This is a weird point but Razor's BMW GTR2 has a racing car livery. I don't mind this but it is weird.
So despite my greater enjoyment, I'd rank this game a 5/10 with a "somewhat recommended". If you have the console version, no reason to get this. Compared to other PSP racers of the time, it's a decent choice. It appears the short development time limited the potential of this game.
So we're 2 games in and already the games aren't inspiring much confidence. It's a shame. Burnout, Ridge Racer, Wipeout are all running laps around a series whose console versions are killing it. Are short development times doomed to keep NFS only above mediocre on the PSP?
Enter Carbon Own the City- THE Need for Speed game the PSP deserved. The game franchise needs to stand on its own against the competition.
OTC is unique thus far in that it's open-world (Based on Rockport from MW) and has dynamic cop chases. However, with regards to exploring the world, it's not as fine. It's not intuitive to set waypoints to events (you can only set viewpoints to events for the current area in the story. And the GPS doesn't tell you if you did the event before. All in all, you'll find yourself using the Event Select in the pause menu to warp to events and play the game like 510 rather than as an open world game). You can find collectibles scattered about and they give small amount of money or concept art. Cop chases are rare but they function as you'd expect (but without MWs pursuit Breakers). During my first playthrough 10+ years back, I easily warped between races and never got in a pursuit. There is only 1 event type that makes full use of the open world, Takedowns, as you can go anywhere and enemy cars will spawn (The mode isn't that fun to play due to RNG). Other events that are listed as open-world like escape and deliveries still require you to follow an arrow but there aren't barriers. However, to the game's credit, the open-world still adds some benefits. Just driving around is fun. And events and tracks can be more varied now as they have more of a world to incorporate. The city itself looks kinda detailed and distinct. The city and its environments generally compliment the physics well (except for those really narrow and curved areas) and races tend to be 3-5 minutes tops, another check against 510.
The game unfolds by having you race to gain territory known as Turf (by the way, as a kid, I thought Turf was the fuel used in Ireland, so I was confused af for a while). Each territory has a series of events that can include sprints, circuits, lap knockouts, escapes, deliveries and takedowns. After completing a set amount of events, you can challenge the leader to 1-2 events to take over the territory from them permanently. Only Sprints, Circuits and Deliveries let you bring your own crew members along (I imagine if they included your crew in lap knockouts, the laps would be 6 long and if you survived the first 3, you'd pretty much win as it would just be you and your crew). It's pretty much The Blacklist system but with a bit more flexibility. I do feel Takedowns are a bit too hard early on and you need a better car for them. The events do start to feel repetitive as despite being an open world, many key areas are reused for race tracks. I feel a few "Police Chase" type events would have been a nice addition to vary things up. Escapes could also have a variant where there is no arrow and set destination, you just have to get x KM away from your starting position to win. Both these ideas use more of the open world to vary the experience.
Speaking of which, you have a crew that can race with you. You can bring up to 2 members with you (and visually customize their cars if you want) in races that allow it. Crew members can have 1 or 2 classes. The 3 main classes are: Brawler, which has the member target a car ahead of you and smash into them which has them stop for a while. Assassin, which drops a spike strip which puts anyone in hits (including you) out of action. By the way, you can change targets for these 2 guys by tapping the button which activates them before they hit. You also have Drafters. They pull ahead of you and give you a slipstream which adjusts your handling and gives you a speed boost. In addition to this, some crew members can have a secondary class as well, like Fixer who "fix the race so you earn a little more cash every time you win" and Mechanics who can give you a slight performance boost.
I really like the crew system. You have a fair bit of freedom with how you use them, they can help when the AI gets extra good so you can do something rather than just keep racing and hope they make a mistake. The speedbreaker is removed from MW but it isn't needed this time around due to the lack of cops and traffic and sharp turns. And from what I've seen, OTC's crew system seems more reliable and responsive than the main console versions. I like that crew members have a short bio in the menu and some of them are enemy drivers of rival leaders who will call you to tell you they will join you once you beat their leader. It adds a lot of personality to what were just enemy cars in prior games. There are some problems though. Firstly, sometimes your AI partners aren't the most reliable. Your Brawler may land a perfect hit or be so ridiculously inept that they never pass you to hit their target. Drafters can sometimes hit from behind giving you a bigger speed boost than the draft itself. But they can also slow down in front of you hurting your speed or make turns or racing lines that are not optimal. But by the end, Brawlers and Assassins become outclassed by enemy drivers so the best and only solution is to take 2 drafters and alternate as necessary. The speed boosts are more effective than the alternatives. Also, the performance boost from Mechanics seems negligible. All in all, it's a good system, it just needs some improvements and polish. I also feel cops could interfere in races. Maybe some of your wingmen could have an ability to help during police chases during races.
The car selection is pretty similar to MW and 510. Customization has 1 new addition in that you can add Crew paintings to your cars (also they show up as graffiti in the open world). Upgrades is the same anemic system from 510 which makes it hard to upgrade. Especially as money is rarer in this game.
Traffic is really rare. And crashes don't slow you down as much but bring AI to a complete stop.
-The Story
I'm not going to summarize the story, but here is the Wiki if you want that.
https://nfs.fandom.com/wiki/Need_for_Speed_Carbon:_Own_The_City
I am going to discuss it so Spoiler Warning.
I love the presentation of the story. The Comic Book Style art is much more appealing than the FMV like approach of the main console games. The voice acting is also much more on point. It's all great. If I had to rank this, this is probably in the best racing game stories I've ever played (not that it's a tough list).
The story also does serve as a nice way to keep the player keep on playing when they might have given up otherwise. I was willing to play more to get the nice voice message and cutscene so it was doing something right.
Now, sadly, the Negatives. I'm going to divide this into 3 sections, main issues, plot holes and nitpicks. I know it's a bit unfair due to the type of game but I feel if racing games want better stories, they gotta be more open to stuff like this.
--Main Issues:
I have 2 main issues with the story. First is that the actions of the game, namely conquering territory which progresses the story, has nothing to do with the story. Aside from a few mentions early on, conquering territory has no correlation with finding out the truth. Characters don't acknowledge your progress or your actions. This is especially evident if you just go through the cutscenes and text messages. The game could have been a short film, comic or even a Blacklist style racing game and the end result would be the same. As a result, your progress feels arbitrary. You conquer territory until the game decides to play a cutscene that doles out more details.
The Second is the ending. Sara casts judgement on the player character, saying they are a good person now. If we treat the player character as an actual character, this lacks impact because our protagonist has no personality or many distinct actions for us to judge him by to make Sara's point. If we treat him as a player avatar, that also has problems because we the player never got the chance to express our character. The game is telling the player they are a good person without the player doing anything to earn that. If the game had a karma system then maybe you could make do with just the latter and not the former. As it stands, it rings hollow either way.
--Plot Holes
The story feels like they thought up the final twist first, wrote a first draft based on it and then just made the story out of that.
For example, Why Doesn't Ex just tell the Player they hired him? He's already pretty high up and has no reason keep the secret. What was his plan then if the accident never happened and the player accomplished his plan and knew the details? We aren't given any indications of why he changed his mind.
Why does Sara stick around for as long as she does anyway at first? She was able to fake her death later so why doesn't she do that when she was with Mick? Or just after the accident? She would have been able to avoid the plot. What makes her decide the player is a good person right after the final race and not at any point before? Why does she care if the player learns the truth from Ex if she's not even there?
The Protagonist is amnesiac and is trying to find out about who killed Mick. But apparently doesn't seem to care about Mick or even himself. Sara telling him about how monstrous Mick and the player was is what triggered his memory but that means he never tried to find out about Mick or himself despite that one cutscene showing him obsessing over the accident. Even characters like Ex are vague on what he knew about the brothers before the accident. He could have dropped a "Wow, you're not a dick anymore" which would have triggered his memory. Did he not speak with anybody who knew him and Mick before the accident about what they were like?
--Nitpicks (these are "issues" that are probably too small to even matter)
How is the player able to manage the territory of an entire city with only 5 other members? Does nobody else try to take some territory? Why does nobody care how much territory the player has?
Why are the police so absent? Wouldn't they step in when they find out one of the most notorious illegal street racers of the city is currently in the hospital for a coma and amnesia?
How is the player able to race with Carter when he was kidnapped? (ok, that's a bit of a joke)
Why is the final race a massive circuit that circumnavigates the city with 6 racers total but ends with just Sara and the player?
How is MX able to keep contacts with the police, even being able to send them against Ex without himself getting implicated?
After beating MX, he offers to trace Buddy's phone and says that once he finds out who sent it, gives the player 24 hours to get his revenge before he send in the cops. Either MX took a long time to trace that text or the player conquers a 3rd of the city really quick.
<tangent time>
Feel free to skip this section if you want. Tangent Time is when I talk about something tangentially related to a specific topic that I feel putting under a "misc" header is not fitting.
My tangent is stories in Racing Games. Now, OTC has a pretty good story and pretty much one of the best of the franchise. Hell, I'd wager it's the best of all racing games because most don't even have a proper story or at most have a framing device. So while my enjoyment is increased by the narrative, I do wonder, do traditional racing games, puzzle games and fighting games even need a story? Because here's thing, these genres aren't good fits for traditional storytelling due to the specialized gameplay they have. Like, consider the following, imagine a mission in GTA V. Let's say I need to investigate a specific criminal who's hiding somewhere. I drive to my boss to get the mission, drive to the location, investigate nearby garages until I get a clue. Find out he's in a nearby gang meeting. I infiltrate the gang and sneak around, get into a shootout, the target tries to flee, I kill the target and get in a police chase as I escape. That whole sequence could be one mission and aside from cutscenes here and there and some scripted gameplay, most of the story of the mission is told through the gameplay rather than mostly through gameplay. A similar sequence could be applied to even Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty with some changes to scenery, scripting and the individual gameplay of each series but you can tell these events through gameplay. But in the genres, I've listed above, you can't. Take OTC's story for example, you can't investigate or confront people in game because the current racing gameplay can't support it. You'd need to create an entirely new gameplay sequence to allow that in gameplay and even then, it can feel tacked on like in NFS: The Run. Mortal Kombat X and Injustice have a cool story but 90% of it is cutscenes. And what's there needs to accommodate the gameplay like characters you were controlling before now becoming jobbers, and needing to fit in a fight even if it hurts the story. In addition, it needs to have fights often as that's the only gameplay. No investigations and the like. So it might be best to save the story budget for improving the gameplay and leave the story to be its own separate production be it animated or otherwise. Now, both mediums are free rather than be restricted by the other. Hell, considering even franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield have, at best, only 25% of their players finish their 6-hour campaign and dropped the singleplayer to focus more on multiplayer.
But then again, a story mode does attract a causal audience who may not be sustained through simply fighting and racing. The story may be good and mysteries are a good way to keep player attention as OTC demonstrated. So I don't know.
</tangent Time>
I wasn't a fan of the music this time as well except for one song Electric. According to a Youtube comment about the song:
"The lyrics came from short stories I'd written about what London would be like in 30 years. These machines – "friends" – come to the door. They supply services of various kinds, but your neighbours never know what they really are since they look human. The one in the song is a prostitute, hence the inverted commas. It was released in May 1979 and sold a million copies. I had a No 1 single with a song about a robot prostitute and no one knew."
So yeah, OTC is the closest to a early 2000s Street Racing console NFS on a handheld and it's pretty good. If I had to rate it, It'd give it a 7.5/10 with a "recommended" rating. The game is really fun and the story is enough to keep you playing but the limited use of the open world and repetitive events bring it down. I'd love to see a current-gen successor to this game that improves and expands on this game. Maybe you can conquer Territory in any order and enemy cars will try and hunt you down while you're doing it. Maybe you need to defend conquered territory. You can combine it with a more general respect system that governs it. I feel there is some serious potential here for something truly spectacular here.
Things would take a turn for our next entry, ProStreet.
From a Real World Perspective, ProStreet makes sense. Illegal Street racing was having some parts of it make way for legally sanctioned racing. As a game series based on an evolving culture, it makes sense to explore other parts of that culture. Bringing the arcade-y physics, customization etc to real-world venues is cool.
From a gameplay/business perspective from the outside, ProStreet makes no sense. The Underground and Most Wanted Games were their best selling entries with MW alone selling 15+ million units. ProStreet takes away the open world, the cops, the Fast and the Furious influences in favour of a more realistic style. It would be if the next mainline Elder Scrolls game was purely a dungeon crawler. Still, I am impressed with the desire to mix it up and keep it varied and cannot deny that. It would have been really easy for EA to continue what Call of Duty does and just keep trying to remix their "greatest hit" for several years until finally moving on.
For the PSP however, ProStreet doesn't feel as much of a divergence. The PSP is used to racing games in general set on tracks and not open world or cop focused. The PSP version of the game is different from its main console versions.
For what it's Worth, ProStreet PSP is a pretty good game. I've heard online many people disregard this due to a lack of customization (a fair complaint) but the game is pretty solid.
Let's talk tracks and progression and racing. When you first boot up the career mode, you're presented with 3 difficulty options, Weekend Warriour, Adrenaline Junkie and Speed King. The choice of difficulty affects how much the game assists you with braking and navigation as well as how much money you earn. Easy mode obviously gives you the most help with the fewest money. Some races don't even allow easier difficulties.
The tracks themselves are based on real-world locations from race tracks in California, Texas, Ireland, Portland, Japan and even the Autobahn in Germany (don't think it has this many curves in real life but I've never been to Germany.) with a cool video explaining them (the UI and presentation in this game is really cool even if some sound effects are taken from prior games). You race in these locations until you complete them and/or unlock what you need in future cars and locations.
Each location has 6-9 races which changes the layout and orientation of the track. Some are really straight like Portland's where you only need to make shallow turns and is really easy, Some are snake-like which I feel is the best fit for physics like this. Some are full of bad curves which gave me 510 flashbacks. The races themselves have restrictions like "sports/Tuners/Muscle cars only", or specific only cars or only use part of a track or multiple laps. Once again, in another check against 510, races tend to take less than a minute to complete with longer ones taking 3 minutes at most. I like that you can have multiple locations and races available at once. I also love that certain races will reward you with a car. It keeps grinding low and your cash more free and lets you participate in more kinds of events and experience more of the game. Especially since different cars can have different wheel drives and axels. On top of that, for every car, all the upgrades are available to purchase from the beginning. So any new car you either win or buy can instantly be brought up to viable levels. This fixes a big problem I had with prior games and deserves to be celebrated. No more having to race with your cheap Nissan or Cobalt against Sports cars because your own Sports car can't have all the upgrades yet.
I feel now is a good time to discuss gameplay. It's good (when the tracks support it). It's the same physics as before so I'm pretty used to it by now. Nitros seems more powerful. Different cars have different wheel drives. What's really new is now damage to cars. Strong impacts can damage your wheels, lowering your speed and acceleration and even causing your car to trail off in the damaged direction needing constant correction and even if you win, repair fees come out of your winnings. I like a system like this in more arcade-y games because aside from being a way to measure skill, it can result in some risky choices like choosing to ram your car into an opponent about to overtake you. Like if you miss you may crash into a barrier and thus take damage which effects your performance. But if you hit, you may get them out of your hair for a while but take damage. You could choose to ignore it and drive clean. I prefer to be more aggressive so this does add a bit more tension during races. Car damage is pretty localized and visually doesn't look that much even for serious damages. Longer races with lots of turns make this system a nightmare though.
Events include sprints and laps, time trials, but no drift or drag (thank God). There is one sorta new event and one really new event. Instead of lap knockouts, you have checkpoints that act as laps. The really new event is one where there are lots of checkpoints but each one records your speed. The winner is the one with highest sum of speeds after going through all the checkpoints. Meaning it is possible to win even if you are physically behind the pack. Between the events, locations and cars PS does have a fair bit of variety even if the environments can start to blend in like Sonoma and Texas.
There is no story, which seems to actually be an improvement over the console versions. The graphics are pretty blurry and I'm not sure if this is due to the game being rushed or if it's secretly running at 60 FPS or something.
Overall, I'd give the game a 7.5/10 with a "recommended score". It lacks customization and the curvey tracks hurt a lot but the overall racing experience is pretty good.
And that ends part 1 of the PSP NFS analysis.
So what have we learned so far from these 4 games? Well, Most are linear games likely due to the fast development cycles. The physics are on the heavy side so more wide tracks are preferred. The upgrade system is anemic and is exponentially more fun with more availability and options.
If I had to rank these games, I'd recommend OTC and PS for sure. With a Maybe for 510 and UR. I'm excited to give Shift and Undercover a shot. I don't know much about the PSP versions so it could be fun.
Before I begin. I feel I should give my history with the franchise as a whole. I would not consider myself an expert on racing as a whole. I've played Underground 1, Most Wanted on PS2, PSP and NDS. Carbon Own the City on PSP. A bit of Hot Pursuit and Undercover on PS3. Played all of Most Wanted (2012 and that game was good, fight me) and Rivals and Payback.
First up is Underground Rivals as a launch title for the PSP. I'll be honest, this game didn't really click for me. While the graphics and presentation are really great for the time, the visual customization cool and the interesting open-ended progression for events (you're given a bunch of events like races, drag, drift, Nitrous runs etc). I didn't really enjoy this game. Car performance is weak, the handling and physics are too loose for the tracks. Enemy AI is much to difficult. The tracks are repeated a lot. There is no story. This last one is subjective but I'm not a fan of hip hop, rap and the songs that are associated with underground racing. I did put on a playlist of songs from 2000 - 2009 to get In the mood.
But I can't really recommend this game. I expect there are many who would enjoy this game and I can see its appeal. I'll give it a "somewhat recommended".
Let's talk a little about Physics in racing games. As the Youtuber Whitelight puts it, your physics need to match the environment. If you take a Not Ferrari from GTA V and put it into Hot Pursuit, you'd get bored as you'd be able to take every corner and weave through traffic with ease. If you took a Lambo from Hot Pursuit and put in GTA V, you'd be frustrated as it would be much more difficult to weave through traffic and take hard turns. Underground Rivals has physics closer to Hot Pursuit's style so ideally turns would not be at right angles or even acute angles yet there are often many of them. This is a problem throughout the series on PSP.
- Most Wanted 510.
Next up is my first NFS game and the one I spent the most time on as a wee lad. 510 (police sign for a street race) was released a year after Underground Rivals. I remember a YouTube video praising UR over this due to the greater variety of events and presentation. And while I don't dispute that, I did massively enjoy 510 more.
510 doesn't have an open world, it has no voice calls or cutscenes, no Mia aside from 1 loading screen. It only has races (circuit, sprint and Lap Knockouts), and time trials and heat trials. Upgrades are handed out at an anemic rate. So it's like a really stripped down version of the main console game. That still works. The driving is fun and using the slow-mo power of speedbreaker is a nice addition though it does feel too necessary. The cars are cool. Customization is cool and varied with lots of options. (The physics of crashes at high speeds must be seen) I do like the flavour text written for races and blacklist drivers. It makes it feel there is a man on the inside helping you out. It's a bit of personality in an otherwise straightforward game. There is one new exclusive event for the PSP Version, Tuner Takedown, where you play as a cop car and ram racers until their health reaches 0. It's fun for a bit.
I have criticisms of the races. Many of the tracks are used so much they start to feel repetitive despite the high number of tracks and their backwards variation (when I beat the game. I looked over my lap records. I found there were many backwards versions of tracks I never raced. Yet the game reuses the same 4 tracks in its final 2/3s). In addition, I feel races go on for too long. The game loves its 3 lap races that can take you over 7 minutes. I feel needing to focus on one event for that long, especially when 1 mistake often means a restart, is too much for a handheld racer (tournaments, where you must race 3 of these races back to back and need to place first pretty much in all 3 with no restarts, feel the worst). I feel the next game, Carbon Own the City, manages this better with the normal races taking 3-5 minutes while boss races take 7+.
I'm not opposed to long races, but I feel that for a handheld game, needing to have to focus so intensely for so long and so frequently goes the design of games like this and the nature of the platform.
NPC AI is inconsistent. Enemy racers alternate from being competent to experts. Traffic and police roadblocks may appear in unpredictable places that may cost you the race. It's very hard to recover from mistakes in the latter half.
Speaking of Police, they will always target the racer in first place. So they can spin you out and be able to arrest you right there but immediately abandon you when someone overtakes you. In first place, they'll attack you to get you spin out in unpredictable patterns and gang up. The setup isn't as favourable for escapes and tight maneuvering. In fact, these cops would be better suited for a GTA game than a racer. I've noticed that when I get spun out and then get overtaken, the cops suddenly become less aggressive towards AI Drivers and even get left far behind them. AI drivers can get arrested but only due to crashing into a roadblock. It is possible for all your opponents to arrested so all you have to deal with are the aggressive cops.
Regarding the music, it's really subjective here but aside from Do Ya Thang and Static X, I disliked the soundtrack. I guess this kind of music really isn't for me. To get into the mood though, I put on multiple playlists of popular early 2000s Music. I've learned I have a thing for cheesy love songs though.
Now back to the tracks, one of my biggest problems, especially with later tracks is how windy and how much curves they have. Many of the tracks are also filled with turns that are at right angles, u shaped and even V-shaped. The game's physics are really heavy so even with max handling and low speed, I was still crashing all over the place. Seriously, If I had to judge the game in its last 7 members, it would easily be a 3/10. It's really really bad.
The upgrade system is simple but anemic. As you win races, especially Blacklist Races, you'll get a notification telling you performance upgrades are available. You go into a menu for the car and find the available upgrades and you can purchase them. The problem is often how rare new upgrades are available. Newer cars you unlock won't have anything beyond stock for a while, so you'll stick with your older car for longer than you should because it's a better option than technically better cars. This becomes a problem later on because you need to guess which car to unlock which will have enough upgrades available to be useful but not so old as to be useless even with upgrades. As an example, I had to use the Cobalt S, the starter car, until Blacklist 8 because by then, The Eclipse from 11 is finally viable. I bought the Corvette after number 6 because I needed a faster car than the Eclipse but still had to use the Eclipse on certain tracks because the Corvette, though faster, lacked nitrous and had worse handling so those curvy tracks were impossible with it. The Eclipse was still a better option than the Audi Quattro and Ford Mustangs that all the AI drivers were using because my Quattro and Mustang would be lacking the upgrades that made them superior to the Eclipse for me. The Corvette and later the Lamborghini Gallardo, weren't fully upgraded until you beat many Blacklist drivers later. Yet, the AI are naturally faster than you with the same cars. I dislike this style of upgrades and prefer ProStreet PSP's approach of just letting you buy whatever upgrades you want for any car you have unlocked. This system is good because it rewards players for investing more into the game without artificially locking them out for a padded challenge.
This is a weird point but Razor's BMW GTR2 has a racing car livery. I don't mind this but it is weird.
So despite my greater enjoyment, I'd rank this game a 5/10 with a "somewhat recommended". If you have the console version, no reason to get this. Compared to other PSP racers of the time, it's a decent choice. It appears the short development time limited the potential of this game.
So we're 2 games in and already the games aren't inspiring much confidence. It's a shame. Burnout, Ridge Racer, Wipeout are all running laps around a series whose console versions are killing it. Are short development times doomed to keep NFS only above mediocre on the PSP?
Enter Carbon Own the City- THE Need for Speed game the PSP deserved. The game franchise needs to stand on its own against the competition.
OTC is unique thus far in that it's open-world (Based on Rockport from MW) and has dynamic cop chases. However, with regards to exploring the world, it's not as fine. It's not intuitive to set waypoints to events (you can only set viewpoints to events for the current area in the story. And the GPS doesn't tell you if you did the event before. All in all, you'll find yourself using the Event Select in the pause menu to warp to events and play the game like 510 rather than as an open world game). You can find collectibles scattered about and they give small amount of money or concept art. Cop chases are rare but they function as you'd expect (but without MWs pursuit Breakers). During my first playthrough 10+ years back, I easily warped between races and never got in a pursuit. There is only 1 event type that makes full use of the open world, Takedowns, as you can go anywhere and enemy cars will spawn (The mode isn't that fun to play due to RNG). Other events that are listed as open-world like escape and deliveries still require you to follow an arrow but there aren't barriers. However, to the game's credit, the open-world still adds some benefits. Just driving around is fun. And events and tracks can be more varied now as they have more of a world to incorporate. The city itself looks kinda detailed and distinct. The city and its environments generally compliment the physics well (except for those really narrow and curved areas) and races tend to be 3-5 minutes tops, another check against 510.
The game unfolds by having you race to gain territory known as Turf (by the way, as a kid, I thought Turf was the fuel used in Ireland, so I was confused af for a while). Each territory has a series of events that can include sprints, circuits, lap knockouts, escapes, deliveries and takedowns. After completing a set amount of events, you can challenge the leader to 1-2 events to take over the territory from them permanently. Only Sprints, Circuits and Deliveries let you bring your own crew members along (I imagine if they included your crew in lap knockouts, the laps would be 6 long and if you survived the first 3, you'd pretty much win as it would just be you and your crew). It's pretty much The Blacklist system but with a bit more flexibility. I do feel Takedowns are a bit too hard early on and you need a better car for them. The events do start to feel repetitive as despite being an open world, many key areas are reused for race tracks. I feel a few "Police Chase" type events would have been a nice addition to vary things up. Escapes could also have a variant where there is no arrow and set destination, you just have to get x KM away from your starting position to win. Both these ideas use more of the open world to vary the experience.
Speaking of which, you have a crew that can race with you. You can bring up to 2 members with you (and visually customize their cars if you want) in races that allow it. Crew members can have 1 or 2 classes. The 3 main classes are: Brawler, which has the member target a car ahead of you and smash into them which has them stop for a while. Assassin, which drops a spike strip which puts anyone in hits (including you) out of action. By the way, you can change targets for these 2 guys by tapping the button which activates them before they hit. You also have Drafters. They pull ahead of you and give you a slipstream which adjusts your handling and gives you a speed boost. In addition to this, some crew members can have a secondary class as well, like Fixer who "fix the race so you earn a little more cash every time you win" and Mechanics who can give you a slight performance boost.
I really like the crew system. You have a fair bit of freedom with how you use them, they can help when the AI gets extra good so you can do something rather than just keep racing and hope they make a mistake. The speedbreaker is removed from MW but it isn't needed this time around due to the lack of cops and traffic and sharp turns. And from what I've seen, OTC's crew system seems more reliable and responsive than the main console versions. I like that crew members have a short bio in the menu and some of them are enemy drivers of rival leaders who will call you to tell you they will join you once you beat their leader. It adds a lot of personality to what were just enemy cars in prior games. There are some problems though. Firstly, sometimes your AI partners aren't the most reliable. Your Brawler may land a perfect hit or be so ridiculously inept that they never pass you to hit their target. Drafters can sometimes hit from behind giving you a bigger speed boost than the draft itself. But they can also slow down in front of you hurting your speed or make turns or racing lines that are not optimal. But by the end, Brawlers and Assassins become outclassed by enemy drivers so the best and only solution is to take 2 drafters and alternate as necessary. The speed boosts are more effective than the alternatives. Also, the performance boost from Mechanics seems negligible. All in all, it's a good system, it just needs some improvements and polish. I also feel cops could interfere in races. Maybe some of your wingmen could have an ability to help during police chases during races.
The car selection is pretty similar to MW and 510. Customization has 1 new addition in that you can add Crew paintings to your cars (also they show up as graffiti in the open world). Upgrades is the same anemic system from 510 which makes it hard to upgrade. Especially as money is rarer in this game.
Traffic is really rare. And crashes don't slow you down as much but bring AI to a complete stop.
-The Story
I'm not going to summarize the story, but here is the Wiki if you want that.
https://nfs.fandom.com/wiki/Need_for_Speed_Carbon:_Own_The_City
I am going to discuss it so Spoiler Warning.
I love the presentation of the story. The Comic Book Style art is much more appealing than the FMV like approach of the main console games. The voice acting is also much more on point. It's all great. If I had to rank this, this is probably in the best racing game stories I've ever played (not that it's a tough list).
The story also does serve as a nice way to keep the player keep on playing when they might have given up otherwise. I was willing to play more to get the nice voice message and cutscene so it was doing something right.
Now, sadly, the Negatives. I'm going to divide this into 3 sections, main issues, plot holes and nitpicks. I know it's a bit unfair due to the type of game but I feel if racing games want better stories, they gotta be more open to stuff like this.
--Main Issues:
I have 2 main issues with the story. First is that the actions of the game, namely conquering territory which progresses the story, has nothing to do with the story. Aside from a few mentions early on, conquering territory has no correlation with finding out the truth. Characters don't acknowledge your progress or your actions. This is especially evident if you just go through the cutscenes and text messages. The game could have been a short film, comic or even a Blacklist style racing game and the end result would be the same. As a result, your progress feels arbitrary. You conquer territory until the game decides to play a cutscene that doles out more details.
The Second is the ending. Sara casts judgement on the player character, saying they are a good person now. If we treat the player character as an actual character, this lacks impact because our protagonist has no personality or many distinct actions for us to judge him by to make Sara's point. If we treat him as a player avatar, that also has problems because we the player never got the chance to express our character. The game is telling the player they are a good person without the player doing anything to earn that. If the game had a karma system then maybe you could make do with just the latter and not the former. As it stands, it rings hollow either way.
--Plot Holes
The story feels like they thought up the final twist first, wrote a first draft based on it and then just made the story out of that.
For example, Why Doesn't Ex just tell the Player they hired him? He's already pretty high up and has no reason keep the secret. What was his plan then if the accident never happened and the player accomplished his plan and knew the details? We aren't given any indications of why he changed his mind.
Why does Sara stick around for as long as she does anyway at first? She was able to fake her death later so why doesn't she do that when she was with Mick? Or just after the accident? She would have been able to avoid the plot. What makes her decide the player is a good person right after the final race and not at any point before? Why does she care if the player learns the truth from Ex if she's not even there?
The Protagonist is amnesiac and is trying to find out about who killed Mick. But apparently doesn't seem to care about Mick or even himself. Sara telling him about how monstrous Mick and the player was is what triggered his memory but that means he never tried to find out about Mick or himself despite that one cutscene showing him obsessing over the accident. Even characters like Ex are vague on what he knew about the brothers before the accident. He could have dropped a "Wow, you're not a dick anymore" which would have triggered his memory. Did he not speak with anybody who knew him and Mick before the accident about what they were like?
--Nitpicks (these are "issues" that are probably too small to even matter)
How is the player able to manage the territory of an entire city with only 5 other members? Does nobody else try to take some territory? Why does nobody care how much territory the player has?
Why are the police so absent? Wouldn't they step in when they find out one of the most notorious illegal street racers of the city is currently in the hospital for a coma and amnesia?
How is the player able to race with Carter when he was kidnapped? (ok, that's a bit of a joke)
Why is the final race a massive circuit that circumnavigates the city with 6 racers total but ends with just Sara and the player?
How is MX able to keep contacts with the police, even being able to send them against Ex without himself getting implicated?
After beating MX, he offers to trace Buddy's phone and says that once he finds out who sent it, gives the player 24 hours to get his revenge before he send in the cops. Either MX took a long time to trace that text or the player conquers a 3rd of the city really quick.
<tangent time>
Feel free to skip this section if you want. Tangent Time is when I talk about something tangentially related to a specific topic that I feel putting under a "misc" header is not fitting.
My tangent is stories in Racing Games. Now, OTC has a pretty good story and pretty much one of the best of the franchise. Hell, I'd wager it's the best of all racing games because most don't even have a proper story or at most have a framing device. So while my enjoyment is increased by the narrative, I do wonder, do traditional racing games, puzzle games and fighting games even need a story? Because here's thing, these genres aren't good fits for traditional storytelling due to the specialized gameplay they have. Like, consider the following, imagine a mission in GTA V. Let's say I need to investigate a specific criminal who's hiding somewhere. I drive to my boss to get the mission, drive to the location, investigate nearby garages until I get a clue. Find out he's in a nearby gang meeting. I infiltrate the gang and sneak around, get into a shootout, the target tries to flee, I kill the target and get in a police chase as I escape. That whole sequence could be one mission and aside from cutscenes here and there and some scripted gameplay, most of the story of the mission is told through the gameplay rather than mostly through gameplay. A similar sequence could be applied to even Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty with some changes to scenery, scripting and the individual gameplay of each series but you can tell these events through gameplay. But in the genres, I've listed above, you can't. Take OTC's story for example, you can't investigate or confront people in game because the current racing gameplay can't support it. You'd need to create an entirely new gameplay sequence to allow that in gameplay and even then, it can feel tacked on like in NFS: The Run. Mortal Kombat X and Injustice have a cool story but 90% of it is cutscenes. And what's there needs to accommodate the gameplay like characters you were controlling before now becoming jobbers, and needing to fit in a fight even if it hurts the story. In addition, it needs to have fights often as that's the only gameplay. No investigations and the like. So it might be best to save the story budget for improving the gameplay and leave the story to be its own separate production be it animated or otherwise. Now, both mediums are free rather than be restricted by the other. Hell, considering even franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield have, at best, only 25% of their players finish their 6-hour campaign and dropped the singleplayer to focus more on multiplayer.
But then again, a story mode does attract a causal audience who may not be sustained through simply fighting and racing. The story may be good and mysteries are a good way to keep player attention as OTC demonstrated. So I don't know.
</tangent Time>
I wasn't a fan of the music this time as well except for one song Electric. According to a Youtube comment about the song:
"The lyrics came from short stories I'd written about what London would be like in 30 years. These machines – "friends" – come to the door. They supply services of various kinds, but your neighbours never know what they really are since they look human. The one in the song is a prostitute, hence the inverted commas. It was released in May 1979 and sold a million copies. I had a No 1 single with a song about a robot prostitute and no one knew."
So yeah, OTC is the closest to a early 2000s Street Racing console NFS on a handheld and it's pretty good. If I had to rate it, It'd give it a 7.5/10 with a "recommended" rating. The game is really fun and the story is enough to keep you playing but the limited use of the open world and repetitive events bring it down. I'd love to see a current-gen successor to this game that improves and expands on this game. Maybe you can conquer Territory in any order and enemy cars will try and hunt you down while you're doing it. Maybe you need to defend conquered territory. You can combine it with a more general respect system that governs it. I feel there is some serious potential here for something truly spectacular here.
Things would take a turn for our next entry, ProStreet.
From a Real World Perspective, ProStreet makes sense. Illegal Street racing was having some parts of it make way for legally sanctioned racing. As a game series based on an evolving culture, it makes sense to explore other parts of that culture. Bringing the arcade-y physics, customization etc to real-world venues is cool.
From a gameplay/business perspective from the outside, ProStreet makes no sense. The Underground and Most Wanted Games were their best selling entries with MW alone selling 15+ million units. ProStreet takes away the open world, the cops, the Fast and the Furious influences in favour of a more realistic style. It would be if the next mainline Elder Scrolls game was purely a dungeon crawler. Still, I am impressed with the desire to mix it up and keep it varied and cannot deny that. It would have been really easy for EA to continue what Call of Duty does and just keep trying to remix their "greatest hit" for several years until finally moving on.
For the PSP however, ProStreet doesn't feel as much of a divergence. The PSP is used to racing games in general set on tracks and not open world or cop focused. The PSP version of the game is different from its main console versions.
For what it's Worth, ProStreet PSP is a pretty good game. I've heard online many people disregard this due to a lack of customization (a fair complaint) but the game is pretty solid.
Let's talk tracks and progression and racing. When you first boot up the career mode, you're presented with 3 difficulty options, Weekend Warriour, Adrenaline Junkie and Speed King. The choice of difficulty affects how much the game assists you with braking and navigation as well as how much money you earn. Easy mode obviously gives you the most help with the fewest money. Some races don't even allow easier difficulties.
The tracks themselves are based on real-world locations from race tracks in California, Texas, Ireland, Portland, Japan and even the Autobahn in Germany (don't think it has this many curves in real life but I've never been to Germany.) with a cool video explaining them (the UI and presentation in this game is really cool even if some sound effects are taken from prior games). You race in these locations until you complete them and/or unlock what you need in future cars and locations.
Each location has 6-9 races which changes the layout and orientation of the track. Some are really straight like Portland's where you only need to make shallow turns and is really easy, Some are snake-like which I feel is the best fit for physics like this. Some are full of bad curves which gave me 510 flashbacks. The races themselves have restrictions like "sports/Tuners/Muscle cars only", or specific only cars or only use part of a track or multiple laps. Once again, in another check against 510, races tend to take less than a minute to complete with longer ones taking 3 minutes at most. I like that you can have multiple locations and races available at once. I also love that certain races will reward you with a car. It keeps grinding low and your cash more free and lets you participate in more kinds of events and experience more of the game. Especially since different cars can have different wheel drives and axels. On top of that, for every car, all the upgrades are available to purchase from the beginning. So any new car you either win or buy can instantly be brought up to viable levels. This fixes a big problem I had with prior games and deserves to be celebrated. No more having to race with your cheap Nissan or Cobalt against Sports cars because your own Sports car can't have all the upgrades yet.
I feel now is a good time to discuss gameplay. It's good (when the tracks support it). It's the same physics as before so I'm pretty used to it by now. Nitros seems more powerful. Different cars have different wheel drives. What's really new is now damage to cars. Strong impacts can damage your wheels, lowering your speed and acceleration and even causing your car to trail off in the damaged direction needing constant correction and even if you win, repair fees come out of your winnings. I like a system like this in more arcade-y games because aside from being a way to measure skill, it can result in some risky choices like choosing to ram your car into an opponent about to overtake you. Like if you miss you may crash into a barrier and thus take damage which effects your performance. But if you hit, you may get them out of your hair for a while but take damage. You could choose to ignore it and drive clean. I prefer to be more aggressive so this does add a bit more tension during races. Car damage is pretty localized and visually doesn't look that much even for serious damages. Longer races with lots of turns make this system a nightmare though.
Events include sprints and laps, time trials, but no drift or drag (thank God). There is one sorta new event and one really new event. Instead of lap knockouts, you have checkpoints that act as laps. The really new event is one where there are lots of checkpoints but each one records your speed. The winner is the one with highest sum of speeds after going through all the checkpoints. Meaning it is possible to win even if you are physically behind the pack. Between the events, locations and cars PS does have a fair bit of variety even if the environments can start to blend in like Sonoma and Texas.
There is no story, which seems to actually be an improvement over the console versions. The graphics are pretty blurry and I'm not sure if this is due to the game being rushed or if it's secretly running at 60 FPS or something.
Overall, I'd give the game a 7.5/10 with a "recommended score". It lacks customization and the curvey tracks hurt a lot but the overall racing experience is pretty good.
And that ends part 1 of the PSP NFS analysis.
So what have we learned so far from these 4 games? Well, Most are linear games likely due to the fast development cycles. The physics are on the heavy side so more wide tracks are preferred. The upgrade system is anemic and is exponentially more fun with more availability and options.
If I had to rank these games, I'd recommend OTC and PS for sure. With a Maybe for 510 and UR. I'm excited to give Shift and Undercover a shot. I don't know much about the PSP versions so it could be fun.
WWE SVR 08's Fighting Styles
WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2008 is considered a bit of a black sheep in 2000s Wrestling Game lineup. Which is a bit of a shame because I think this game, and what it accomplishes was a huge step forward for the series in adding interactions and abilities.
Let's talk about 08's new addition to the series, Fighting Styles. Each Wrestler can have 2 styles, one primary and secondary. The styles add additional moves and abilities to a wrestler's default moveset. The primary style also offers an additional ability when the player charges up a momentum bar from doing damage. The Styles are (from SVR 08's Wikipedia Page):
Now that we have all the styles laid out, let's talk about them and how they act.
The main benefits of the system is how they give an understanding of the wrestlers even when you haven't played them. A Player who's never played Sabu will instantly have an idea of how to use him and what he can do because of his hardcore and high flying styles. In addition, they also specialize characters. In prior games, there would be no mechanical difference between Wrestlers like The Big Show (a 400 lbs monster) and Rey Mysterio (a 200 lbs acrobat) aside from Rey being unable to lift heavy characters and having a different stat distribution. In fact, in my youth, I used to make characters like Big Show with the moveset of Rey. Both can do flips and massive jumps. So you could in theory, play these wrestlers in similar ways. The abilities now mean the Big Show Player would need to rely more on Show's strength and the Rey Player on Rey's agility and speed to use each wrestler to their fullest. Another problem this solves is Dirty characters. In prior games, when selecting a wrestler, you could choose if they were clean (i.e Babyfaces who are cheered) or dirty (i.e heels who are booed). Dirty characters would do dirty moves and be villainous which was to be expected. But it put characters like Eddie Guererro and Ric Flair in a bind because these wrestlers were (at many times) faces. They were cheered at many points as the good guys despite using heel tactics. In fact that was a part of their charm. But in the prior games, if the player wanted them to fight dirty they'd have to be heels as well. Of course, 08's styles allow for characters to fight dirty regardless of alignment. So now a dirty wrestler can be cheered or booed regardless of being dirty fighters. This also solves the other problem of say, a Wreslter in the vein of Roman Reigns who's not a heel and tries to be a face but is booed anyway.
Let's talk about some negatives. Firstly, not all of the styles perfectly fit every wrestler. Like Matt Hardy may be a showman but I don't think he ever stole a finisher or a taunt. Jeff Hardy and Edge may be extreme with weapons but they don't have the bleeding powerups of Sandman. And Vince is surprisingly strong as a powerhouse. This is something future games would fix by separating abilities from the styles and giving them rather than whole styles to wrestlers. So a wrestler in SVR09 would have 3-6 abilities better reflecting them. So Matt Hardy would have all his showman stuff plus a few others and no possum pin or finisher stealing. And the 2k Games would add more to it.
Now we get into some other side effects of the systems. From a gameplay perspective, some styles are more useful than others. Showman, Powerhouse and Brawler can be used in pretty much all match types to a decent extent. High Flyer, Technical and Dirty are also useful but are somewhat limited without the ring. Submission Artists work best in 1-on-1 matches where Submission is a thing. Otherwise they offer no extra benefits. Hardcore can either be really useful or a deadweight depending on the match type. In any matches with weapons, they are on point. But In regular singles matches, the most you can get out of them is their bleeding abilities. Which is of limited help. It's worse for them in Royal Rumbles where they're likely to be eliminated long before those abilities can even help.
The Wikipedia Page also lists the following
"This system was highly criticized as these pre-setting gave some wrestlers abilities which they cannot actually use, or stopped them from using common moves. For example, Carlito and Chavo Guerrero did not have the ability to perform any of their springboard attacks, and Mr. McMahon was as strong as some of the larger characters in the game. Also, the choice of fighting styles limited the variety of moves available in create-a-moveset.
"
Let's talk about 08's new addition to the series, Fighting Styles. Each Wrestler can have 2 styles, one primary and secondary. The styles add additional moves and abilities to a wrestler's default moveset. The primary style also offers an additional ability when the player charges up a momentum bar from doing damage. The Styles are (from SVR 08's Wikipedia Page):
"The game featured the Fighting Style System which would not appear in later games until the release of WWE 2K18, where the system has returned. With each style, the character would adopt a series of preset abilities. And, depending on primary ability, they would also be able to perform a unique move that can only be activated if the player has a stored finisher icon.
The fighting styles were Powerhouse, Showman, Hardcore, Dirty, Brawler, High-Flyer, Submission and Technical.
Wrestlers with the powerhouse fighting style can break out of a pin attempt with just one button press, unless they had sustained a large amount of arm damage. They could also do a powerful Irish Whip (later named a 'Hammer Throw'), which could cause damage if the opponent hit the corner turnbuckles. A player (regardless of weight) could be sent reeling over the top rope with the force of this move. Their special ability was called 'Rampage', a temporary adrenaline rush in which their grapple moves could not be reversed or blocked.
Technical wrestlers automatically reversed all quick grapple moves until they had taken a good deal of arm damage. They also had the ability to perform diving attacks onto opponents outside of the ring. Their special ability was an adrenaline rush that allowed them to counter every attack for a limited time.
Showman is one of the more common kinds. Performing taunts or dives from higher positions cause a faster rise in momentum. They also have 2 special abilities. One allows them to perform one of their opponent's taunts, and if uninterrupted, the opponent is be unable to gain any momentum for a limited time. They can alternatively copy their opponent's finishing move if in the correct position to do so. However, the copied move is weaker than the original.
The most common kind is the Brawler. Brawlers can sit on a downed opponent and punch their opponent's head repeatedly. They also have a special combination of 3 to 5 strikes. If the first strike connects, the defending wrestler is not able to block, avoid or counter the remainder of the strikes in the combination. Their special ability is called 'Wreck Shop', a limited adrenaline rush in which all opponent strikes are countered and all strikes become unblockable.
High-flyers can perform springboard diving attacks to opponents inside or outside of the ring. Instead of countering or side-stepping attacks, they perform an evasive roll. Their special ability is a possum pin. After recovering from being knocked down, a high-flyer can remain on the ground. If the attacker attempts a grapple move, the defending wrestler will go for a pin attempt which is difficult to break out of. However, if the opponent attempts a strike, then the pin attempt is lost.
Submission wrestlers can break out of Struggle Submissions with ease. They can also force an opponent to submit to any Struggle Submission, even if it is not a finisher or signature move.
Dirty wrestlers, like Chavo Guerrero, can perform dirty moves, which boost their momentum faster. They can also remove turnbuckle covers and use weapons to build momentum. They can also use the referee as a human shield, making themselves immune to all attacks. When they release the referee, they shove him into the opponent. This is difficult to avoid and momentarily stuns the opponent and the referee. Their special move involves an eye-poke and a low blow which causes a lot of damage to the head and torso.
Hardcore wrestlers get momentum bonuses for using weapons. They can also perform grapple moves while holding a weapon. If they try to use a steel chair with full momentum, they automatically perform the Steel Chair DDT. If they are caused to bleed, they instantly get full momentum. Their special move can only be performed with a steel chair in hand. They strike themselves in the face repeated until they bleed. While this causes full momentum, it also causes critical head damage."
Now that we have all the styles laid out, let's talk about them and how they act.
The main benefits of the system is how they give an understanding of the wrestlers even when you haven't played them. A Player who's never played Sabu will instantly have an idea of how to use him and what he can do because of his hardcore and high flying styles. In addition, they also specialize characters. In prior games, there would be no mechanical difference between Wrestlers like The Big Show (a 400 lbs monster) and Rey Mysterio (a 200 lbs acrobat) aside from Rey being unable to lift heavy characters and having a different stat distribution. In fact, in my youth, I used to make characters like Big Show with the moveset of Rey. Both can do flips and massive jumps. So you could in theory, play these wrestlers in similar ways. The abilities now mean the Big Show Player would need to rely more on Show's strength and the Rey Player on Rey's agility and speed to use each wrestler to their fullest. Another problem this solves is Dirty characters. In prior games, when selecting a wrestler, you could choose if they were clean (i.e Babyfaces who are cheered) or dirty (i.e heels who are booed). Dirty characters would do dirty moves and be villainous which was to be expected. But it put characters like Eddie Guererro and Ric Flair in a bind because these wrestlers were (at many times) faces. They were cheered at many points as the good guys despite using heel tactics. In fact that was a part of their charm. But in the prior games, if the player wanted them to fight dirty they'd have to be heels as well. Of course, 08's styles allow for characters to fight dirty regardless of alignment. So now a dirty wrestler can be cheered or booed regardless of being dirty fighters. This also solves the other problem of say, a Wreslter in the vein of Roman Reigns who's not a heel and tries to be a face but is booed anyway.
Let's talk about some negatives. Firstly, not all of the styles perfectly fit every wrestler. Like Matt Hardy may be a showman but I don't think he ever stole a finisher or a taunt. Jeff Hardy and Edge may be extreme with weapons but they don't have the bleeding powerups of Sandman. And Vince is surprisingly strong as a powerhouse. This is something future games would fix by separating abilities from the styles and giving them rather than whole styles to wrestlers. So a wrestler in SVR09 would have 3-6 abilities better reflecting them. So Matt Hardy would have all his showman stuff plus a few others and no possum pin or finisher stealing. And the 2k Games would add more to it.
Now we get into some other side effects of the systems. From a gameplay perspective, some styles are more useful than others. Showman, Powerhouse and Brawler can be used in pretty much all match types to a decent extent. High Flyer, Technical and Dirty are also useful but are somewhat limited without the ring. Submission Artists work best in 1-on-1 matches where Submission is a thing. Otherwise they offer no extra benefits. Hardcore can either be really useful or a deadweight depending on the match type. In any matches with weapons, they are on point. But In regular singles matches, the most you can get out of them is their bleeding abilities. Which is of limited help. It's worse for them in Royal Rumbles where they're likely to be eliminated long before those abilities can even help.
The Wikipedia Page also lists the following
"This system was highly criticized as these pre-setting gave some wrestlers abilities which they cannot actually use, or stopped them from using common moves. For example, Carlito and Chavo Guerrero did not have the ability to perform any of their springboard attacks, and Mr. McMahon was as strong as some of the larger characters in the game. Also, the choice of fighting styles limited the variety of moves available in create-a-moveset.
"
Tuesday 10 September 2019
Critique Against Assassin's Creed's Modern Day as an Element of the Games
Hello Everyone. The following are my thoughts on the mere inclusion of the Modern Day in Assassin's Creed Games, and why I feel they are better left to media that aren't the main games. I'll try and avoid criticizing the specific way the Modern Days were implemented and be a bit more general. I'll stick my examples to earlier AC games as those are often brought up as examples in favour of the idea. The following Work Assumes you've played All AC Games.
Before we start that, let's talk about what the modern days offers as positives on Paper.
Firstly, they allow multiple games, even those who take place hundreds of years apart, to link into one another. As an example, Assassin's Creed 1-3 built up Desmond's side by having Altair in the Middle Ages, Ezio in Renaissance Italy and Turkey, and Connor in Revolutionary America all contribute to that.
Secondly, It allows another perspective by contrasting our modern world with its secrets and conspiracies with that. It can be cool to see all that.
Thirdly, it allows some of AC's gameplay to be transplanted into a modern setting.
Fourthly, It provides the means for the past sections to contextualize game-y aspects by the way the Animus works.
With that said, I do not think these positives outweigh many of the game negatives. Let's talk about a few.
Firstly, It can limit the tension and the stakes presented as well as have severe fluctuations in tone.
Let's Take Assassin's Creed 2 as an example. After the sequence where Ezio and Leo set off for Venice, they are optimistic and cheerful, we are booted out into the modern day where everything is much more pessimistic because the Templars/Absertgo are in total control and the Assassins are really on the ropes. And this happens a lot and as a result, makes many of the actions the perform in the past feel meaningless. When Ezio and friends celebrate after killing a high profile target, Switching to Desmond And Pals is quick to keep reminding us that all this didn't help out much. Unlike more mystery based games or games that use intrigue in similar situations, AC games don't often lean into the contrast. Consider the following, God of War 2005 starts with Kratos attempting suicide then flashes back 2 weeks earlier. We see Kratos' adventure and what drives him to suicide in the first place. It creates a lot of anticipation. AC doesn't really do this. It's rare when an AC games shows us things that happen in the past that directly create the world of the present. More of than not, the adventures of the past are isolated in their story and only link up in ways involving Isu artifacts with the present. It takes the feeling of victory out when Ezio liberates all of Italy, most of Europe on 2+ (depending on those optional Brotherhood assignments) occassions only for it to mean nothing in the very next cutscene when we see where the Assassins are now. There are some exceptions, AC1, 3, 4, Rogue all complement each other tonally but many fans aren't fond of that. Often, switching to the Modern Day feels like an interruption to what you were doing.
There's also the way the tension is affected in other situations as well. Consider the following hypothetical scenario, imagine in Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio was captured and sent in for an execution in sequence 7 or something. Because of the way the animus works, we know the execution will not follow through, or that anything too bad will even happen to Ezio. Since the animus works by reading genetic material passed down by ancestors, unless Ezio gets romantic before his execution, we know he'll survive to have children because that's how Desmond is experiencing all this. The franchise has somewhat accounted for this now as any DNA from a person let's you see their and their ancestor's memories from any Animus, which adds some tension when characters get into tough situations (it also now allows characters to do stuff like parenting that we can see in the animus instead of out of it like in the case of Embers or that one scene in 4 but that still shows the limits of the system).
Here is a quote from a review of AC1 from its release: "biggest issue is really its story, we wouldn't want to spoil anything but you do play as two characters in Assassin's Creed. We won't tell you who the other characters outside of Altair but you basically switch between these two characters between every assassinations and the second character you play as; the whole storyline of all that is awful, has no purpose whatsoever of being involved in this story. In fact, the big twist of the game is revealed in the first five minutes. Imagine if you were watching The Sixth Sense and five minutes into the movie they told you that Bruce Willis was dead. Kind of makes the rest of the movie seems stupid"
Here are some quotes from the Noctural Rambler "6) The Animus Framework: The idea is that you're actually just re-enacting genetically-encoded ancestral memories through a Matrix-style computer. It's interesting because it gives a plausible explanation for the unrealistic things that are necessary in a video game like health meters, maps and quest markers, boundaries, floating messages, etc. But we're so used to these things being available that when this game reminds us it's all part of the computer simulation, it actually ends up breaking the immersion slightly. It pulls you out of the experience more often than it bolsters the atmosphere.
...
The whole "story-within-a-story" thing was a novel idea in the first game, but in practice it mostly served to disrupt the pacing by pulling you out-of-character. After completing every "memory sequence" they shifted you back to Desmond's perspective and made you mill about for a while before going to sleep....
Another side effect is that technically, the games shouldn't be able to cut away from the protagonist in any capacity. So any time an AC game shifts the camera away to show you the next room in an underground puzzle or if they shift to other characters (like for example, the villains talking), they're technically breaking the rules of the animus. Admittedly that's a small one.
Secondly, Ubi Can't Go all out for the gameplay in these sections. The Modern-Day gameplay will always play second fiddle to the past.
I'm reminded of that section in AC2 where after Desmond comes out of the animus, he has to activate those switches in the hideout. From a Narrative Standpoint, it makes sense, he's using the bleeding effect to pick up Ezio's skills and now is testing them out. But from a gameplay perspective, it's a tutorial for something players have been doing for hours. It would be if a Pokemon Game made you learn how to catch Pokemon after the 5th gym.
More on that though, we know Ubi can't create full cities like the past sections for the modern day to climb around in as we know from Syndicate the team learned that wide streets and tall buildings break the flow of parkour (and it would take development time away from the actual attraction of the games). We know that assets created specifically for the modern-day like electronics or specific gameplay can't be brought back to the past whereas past assets can be reused in the present. The lack of a hud like how the Animus provides means levels can't be extremely complex. Most of the gameplay tools and abilities from the past can't be brought into the present. We also know most casual players don't even care for all this and feel it takes away from the experience of the past. All this creates a feedback cycle where more players don't enjoy the modern-day which makes the games much more hesitant to add onto it which repeats. Not to mention that Absetrgo are everywhere so the games have to keep the players in relatively low key adventures compared to the more varied and sometimes bombastic missions in the past.
AC3 provides this dichotomy in Full. It provides the best Modern Day Gameplay, but levels feel like reskinned and diet stuff from the past. Most of the other entries have the section generally be cutscenes you happen to have control in (see AC1 and 2 especially). Brotherhood's Montergioioi and Missions feel lifeless and uninteresting as there is very little actually going on in those areas.
Not to mention, other games already do modern-day open-world action in a great way. Watch Dogs acts as more of a thriller. Spider-Man, Arkham and inFAMOUS already give the player a massive world and the means to navigate its buildings with ease. Assassin's Creed already has its niche and shouldn't feel the urge to compete with others as it was never willing to double down on its modern stuff. In gaming, it's often the case to do something right or don't do it at all.
Therein lies the problem with the Modern Day as it pertains to games. The player can spend hours in the past completely detached from the conflict and events of the Modern Day. So when the player is pulled to spend some time in Modern Day, it feels like an abrupt change that's an interruption to the game you were playing. You have to make do with sections that feel like regular cutscenes stretched into walking and talking sections with the occasional diet version of the past gameplay. What's more, is any amount of increase and decrease can add to this issue. If you increase its prevalence, you have more interruptions (AC1), you decrease but not get rid of it, you make what's left more jarring when it does come up (AC4) as well as feeling less relevant. They are also less fun in repeat playthroughs
This is where I feel other mediums might be better suited for the Modern Day. An Assassin's Creed Movie, Comic, Book etc doesn't have to worry about maintaining fun and interesting gameplay. So that example earlier where Desmond has to hit switches doesn't have a tutorial we need to play in a comic. A movie can show past and present cities and doesn't need to worry that the present city environment isn't big for the audience to explore and can even use time skips without it feeling as jarring. Books frequently make characters standing around and doing very little exciting whereas that would be considered boring in games outside of visual novels (being able to read thoughts makes even seemingly boring characters interesting). There's also the fact that casual fans of the games don't really care for the modern-day (we know from this AccesstheAnimus' surveys and Ubi's own admission) so these material designed for fans can afford to dive in more without putting off a general audience. Of course, This doesn't solve the issues of stakes and tension but I feel AC stories that are smaller and more personal rather than larger conflicts can mitigate that. And these kinds of stories are generally easier to pull off than AAA games which often require those larger conflicts unless they are visual novel-like (Many people complained that sequence in Uncharted 4 where Nate and Elena bond and reconcile was boring to play through. Telltale's Batman Games has Bruce Wayne Sequences the Arkham Games can't replicate).
Interestingly, if we absolutely need to maintain the animus and the like in an AC game, there are 3 games that minimize the downsides. Revelations, Liberation and Unity (yes, really).
In Liberation, the idea is that you're playing Liberation on your PSVita System made by Abstergo in collaboration with Ubisoft. Absetrgo has edited the game to make themselves look better. Erudito has put in targets you have to kill to hack the truth back in. In Unity, you can jump into other simulations and have much more crazy missions which can unlock documents. The benefit here is that since this all in the animus, it can carry the momentum and pacing of the past sections. Unity's missions in particular are far more exciting to play than any of its equivalents in Brotherhood and 3. I can imagine taking a few cues from Deus Ex the Breach and Brotherhood's VR Missions and making the modern-day a mix of the 2.
Revelation is an interesting case. Because on the surface, it feels like it carries all the problems I mentioned earlier. But firstly, the actual mandatory stuff are mostly brief cutscenes and are pretty uncommon so it doesn't feel as much of an interruption. And the optional gameplay of the abstract block placing puzzles has an enjoyable story and is different enough from the regular gameplay that feels like a fun change of pace the player can opt into like Gwent from the Witcher 3. This also means that playing it doesn't feel like a discount version of the main game.
Before we start that, let's talk about what the modern days offers as positives on Paper.
Firstly, they allow multiple games, even those who take place hundreds of years apart, to link into one another. As an example, Assassin's Creed 1-3 built up Desmond's side by having Altair in the Middle Ages, Ezio in Renaissance Italy and Turkey, and Connor in Revolutionary America all contribute to that.
Secondly, It allows another perspective by contrasting our modern world with its secrets and conspiracies with that. It can be cool to see all that.
Thirdly, it allows some of AC's gameplay to be transplanted into a modern setting.
Fourthly, It provides the means for the past sections to contextualize game-y aspects by the way the Animus works.
With that said, I do not think these positives outweigh many of the game negatives. Let's talk about a few.
Firstly, It can limit the tension and the stakes presented as well as have severe fluctuations in tone.
Let's Take Assassin's Creed 2 as an example. After the sequence where Ezio and Leo set off for Venice, they are optimistic and cheerful, we are booted out into the modern day where everything is much more pessimistic because the Templars/Absertgo are in total control and the Assassins are really on the ropes. And this happens a lot and as a result, makes many of the actions the perform in the past feel meaningless. When Ezio and friends celebrate after killing a high profile target, Switching to Desmond And Pals is quick to keep reminding us that all this didn't help out much. Unlike more mystery based games or games that use intrigue in similar situations, AC games don't often lean into the contrast. Consider the following, God of War 2005 starts with Kratos attempting suicide then flashes back 2 weeks earlier. We see Kratos' adventure and what drives him to suicide in the first place. It creates a lot of anticipation. AC doesn't really do this. It's rare when an AC games shows us things that happen in the past that directly create the world of the present. More of than not, the adventures of the past are isolated in their story and only link up in ways involving Isu artifacts with the present. It takes the feeling of victory out when Ezio liberates all of Italy, most of Europe on 2+ (depending on those optional Brotherhood assignments) occassions only for it to mean nothing in the very next cutscene when we see where the Assassins are now. There are some exceptions, AC1, 3, 4, Rogue all complement each other tonally but many fans aren't fond of that. Often, switching to the Modern Day feels like an interruption to what you were doing.
There's also the way the tension is affected in other situations as well. Consider the following hypothetical scenario, imagine in Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio was captured and sent in for an execution in sequence 7 or something. Because of the way the animus works, we know the execution will not follow through, or that anything too bad will even happen to Ezio. Since the animus works by reading genetic material passed down by ancestors, unless Ezio gets romantic before his execution, we know he'll survive to have children because that's how Desmond is experiencing all this. The franchise has somewhat accounted for this now as any DNA from a person let's you see their and their ancestor's memories from any Animus, which adds some tension when characters get into tough situations (it also now allows characters to do stuff like parenting that we can see in the animus instead of out of it like in the case of Embers or that one scene in 4 but that still shows the limits of the system).
Here is a quote from a review of AC1 from its release: "biggest issue is really its story, we wouldn't want to spoil anything but you do play as two characters in Assassin's Creed. We won't tell you who the other characters outside of Altair but you basically switch between these two characters between every assassinations and the second character you play as; the whole storyline of all that is awful, has no purpose whatsoever of being involved in this story. In fact, the big twist of the game is revealed in the first five minutes. Imagine if you were watching The Sixth Sense and five minutes into the movie they told you that Bruce Willis was dead. Kind of makes the rest of the movie seems stupid"
Here are some quotes from the Noctural Rambler "6) The Animus Framework: The idea is that you're actually just re-enacting genetically-encoded ancestral memories through a Matrix-style computer. It's interesting because it gives a plausible explanation for the unrealistic things that are necessary in a video game like health meters, maps and quest markers, boundaries, floating messages, etc. But we're so used to these things being available that when this game reminds us it's all part of the computer simulation, it actually ends up breaking the immersion slightly. It pulls you out of the experience more often than it bolsters the atmosphere.
...
The whole "story-within-a-story" thing was a novel idea in the first game, but in practice it mostly served to disrupt the pacing by pulling you out-of-character. After completing every "memory sequence" they shifted you back to Desmond's perspective and made you mill about for a while before going to sleep....
...The "story-within-a-story" concept starts out feeling more significant, by having you (as Desmond) escape from Abstergo with Lucy and meeting up with fellow "Assassins" who tell you about the Apple of Eden and how you have to get to it before the Templars do. But then you're in the animus for so long that you basically forget all about Desmond and lose all interest in whatever's happening in the real world. It might have been interesting to play out some more missions as Desmond, but they missed this potential as well."
Another side effect is that technically, the games shouldn't be able to cut away from the protagonist in any capacity. So any time an AC game shifts the camera away to show you the next room in an underground puzzle or if they shift to other characters (like for example, the villains talking), they're technically breaking the rules of the animus. Admittedly that's a small one.
Secondly, Ubi Can't Go all out for the gameplay in these sections. The Modern-Day gameplay will always play second fiddle to the past.
I'm reminded of that section in AC2 where after Desmond comes out of the animus, he has to activate those switches in the hideout. From a Narrative Standpoint, it makes sense, he's using the bleeding effect to pick up Ezio's skills and now is testing them out. But from a gameplay perspective, it's a tutorial for something players have been doing for hours. It would be if a Pokemon Game made you learn how to catch Pokemon after the 5th gym.
More on that though, we know Ubi can't create full cities like the past sections for the modern day to climb around in as we know from Syndicate the team learned that wide streets and tall buildings break the flow of parkour (and it would take development time away from the actual attraction of the games). We know that assets created specifically for the modern-day like electronics or specific gameplay can't be brought back to the past whereas past assets can be reused in the present. The lack of a hud like how the Animus provides means levels can't be extremely complex. Most of the gameplay tools and abilities from the past can't be brought into the present. We also know most casual players don't even care for all this and feel it takes away from the experience of the past. All this creates a feedback cycle where more players don't enjoy the modern-day which makes the games much more hesitant to add onto it which repeats. Not to mention that Absetrgo are everywhere so the games have to keep the players in relatively low key adventures compared to the more varied and sometimes bombastic missions in the past.
AC3 provides this dichotomy in Full. It provides the best Modern Day Gameplay, but levels feel like reskinned and diet stuff from the past. Most of the other entries have the section generally be cutscenes you happen to have control in (see AC1 and 2 especially). Brotherhood's Montergioioi and Missions feel lifeless and uninteresting as there is very little actually going on in those areas.
Not to mention, other games already do modern-day open-world action in a great way. Watch Dogs acts as more of a thriller. Spider-Man, Arkham and inFAMOUS already give the player a massive world and the means to navigate its buildings with ease. Assassin's Creed already has its niche and shouldn't feel the urge to compete with others as it was never willing to double down on its modern stuff. In gaming, it's often the case to do something right or don't do it at all.
Therein lies the problem with the Modern Day as it pertains to games. The player can spend hours in the past completely detached from the conflict and events of the Modern Day. So when the player is pulled to spend some time in Modern Day, it feels like an abrupt change that's an interruption to the game you were playing. You have to make do with sections that feel like regular cutscenes stretched into walking and talking sections with the occasional diet version of the past gameplay. What's more, is any amount of increase and decrease can add to this issue. If you increase its prevalence, you have more interruptions (AC1), you decrease but not get rid of it, you make what's left more jarring when it does come up (AC4) as well as feeling less relevant. They are also less fun in repeat playthroughs
This is where I feel other mediums might be better suited for the Modern Day. An Assassin's Creed Movie, Comic, Book etc doesn't have to worry about maintaining fun and interesting gameplay. So that example earlier where Desmond has to hit switches doesn't have a tutorial we need to play in a comic. A movie can show past and present cities and doesn't need to worry that the present city environment isn't big for the audience to explore and can even use time skips without it feeling as jarring. Books frequently make characters standing around and doing very little exciting whereas that would be considered boring in games outside of visual novels (being able to read thoughts makes even seemingly boring characters interesting). There's also the fact that casual fans of the games don't really care for the modern-day (we know from this AccesstheAnimus' surveys and Ubi's own admission) so these material designed for fans can afford to dive in more without putting off a general audience. Of course, This doesn't solve the issues of stakes and tension but I feel AC stories that are smaller and more personal rather than larger conflicts can mitigate that. And these kinds of stories are generally easier to pull off than AAA games which often require those larger conflicts unless they are visual novel-like (Many people complained that sequence in Uncharted 4 where Nate and Elena bond and reconcile was boring to play through. Telltale's Batman Games has Bruce Wayne Sequences the Arkham Games can't replicate).
Interestingly, if we absolutely need to maintain the animus and the like in an AC game, there are 3 games that minimize the downsides. Revelations, Liberation and Unity (yes, really).
In Liberation, the idea is that you're playing Liberation on your PSVita System made by Abstergo in collaboration with Ubisoft. Absetrgo has edited the game to make themselves look better. Erudito has put in targets you have to kill to hack the truth back in. In Unity, you can jump into other simulations and have much more crazy missions which can unlock documents. The benefit here is that since this all in the animus, it can carry the momentum and pacing of the past sections. Unity's missions in particular are far more exciting to play than any of its equivalents in Brotherhood and 3. I can imagine taking a few cues from Deus Ex the Breach and Brotherhood's VR Missions and making the modern-day a mix of the 2.
Revelation is an interesting case. Because on the surface, it feels like it carries all the problems I mentioned earlier. But firstly, the actual mandatory stuff are mostly brief cutscenes and are pretty uncommon so it doesn't feel as much of an interruption. And the optional gameplay of the abstract block placing puzzles has an enjoyable story and is different enough from the regular gameplay that feels like a fun change of pace the player can opt into like Gwent from the Witcher 3. This also means that playing it doesn't feel like a discount version of the main game.
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