Fallout: New Vegas - Thoughts

For nearly a decade now, I've heard nothing but praise for Fallout: New Vegas. Fans online crown not only the best Fallout game, but one of the best written narratives in video games period. I had always planned to jump into the old Interplay games first, curious how loyal New Vegas stayed to the classic formula, but years had gone by while I waited, with both Fallout 4 & 76 getting released while I twiddled my thumbs playing other games. One excuse or another always kept me from it, like other recent releases, or I wasn't in an open world mood, or it was just too damn long to start right now. So this year I finally said "screw it", booting up my Xbox 360 to sit down and finally play one of the best games of the last decade. And you know I found?

That it was a huge mistake to play it on the 360.

... And that the game is good, of course. But wow was this a buggy, busted experience from start to end, even with the newest patch installed. Enemies fell into the terrain, VATS would seize up, pivotal quest lines were unfinishable, and I suffered more crashes than I did radiation sickness. Worse yet is that nearly every crash wound up corrupting my autosave—of which I only had one of—so I lost progress constantly until I ingrained manually saving as a response to seeing the loading screen. I remember encountering some issues playing Fallout 3 on the 360, but New Vegas was an entirely new brand of buggy hell; either play it on PC or turn down the difficulty to blaze through the game. As for me, I'm never going to touch this game on the 360 again. Seriously, it was a miserable experience!

So, with that big asterisk out of the way, does Fallout: New Vegas still hold up? And the answer to that is a waffling, nasally kiiindaaa. The biggest problem (surprise surprise) is that it's rooted in Fallout 3—that is to say an ugly world with terrible gunplay. Had I played New Vegas back in 2010 (or on PC with mods) I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune, but Fallout 4 was a categorical improvement on the formula, so it's a little hard to go back. Not that it's "unplayable" or "trash" or anything so hyperbolic, but all the old issues are still present: spongy enemies, lackluster weapons, clumsy UI, stiff animations, shameless room reuse, and a drunk AI with pinpoint accuracy. Part of it is my fault for playing on Hardcore Hard (which only accentuated these issues), but I prefer survival RPGs with some bite to them, forcing me to be smart about stocking supplies.

And to Obsidian's credit, the changes made to Fallout 3's base are quite impressive. There's a huge amount of weapon mods, ammo types, and consumables to pour over while you're playing, along with a massive crafting system that gives a purpose to all the junk you've collected beyond just caps. Hardcore mode also establishes itself as the best way to experience the post-apocalypse, turning the game's purified water and floor mattresses into some of the best goods to come across. And giving ammo a weight ensures you can't just sit on a metric ton of mini nukes—you have to be wise about what you're bringing along and much more open to using the armaments weighing you down.

All of these are really cool additions—except for the crafting. It's great idea in theory, but there's no way to check what items you need out in the wild until you find a workbench or campfire. And given how easy it is to get over-encumbered on your journey, the last thing you're going to do is carry around weighty conductors and scorpion glands you can't use. Your only choice is to memorize what you need or collect junk like a hoarder, both of which require more work than simply ignoring crafting altogether. If you could simply look at the rubbish strewn about and see a quick list of what items could be crafted, then I'd toss all these complaints out the window. Again, it's something I'm sure PC mods easily fix—hammering home how obsolete the 360 version of the game is.

Lastly, New Vegas is an unbelievably swingy game, especially when fighting cazadors and deathclaws. Again, playing on Hard with low endurance did me no favors here, but no matter how many drugs I ingested and how heavy my armor was, I was always a few hits from death. But if I could face an enemy one on one (without them getting the drop on me), then it was a completely different story. With a number of valuable perks and a boat-load of VATS points at my finger tips, nearly every major enemy and boss melted before me, their heads dissolving into a fine and ruddy gas. It's just that as soon as VATS ended I was at the mercy of my next opponent. This problem only became worse in the DLC, as enemies became unbelievably tanky and could decimate me if left un-crippled. Fights felt neither strategic nor rewarding; battles were solely determined by who got the drop on who first, which gets pretty boring by hour 20, let alone 100.

I've blathered on for long enough that it's time to cover what makes New Vegas so truly special: its story. Despite my copious whinging, the plot of New Vegas alone makes it a must-play for RPG fans, as the amount of detail and factions is staggering. I thought Fallout 4 was pretty cool for having four different clans to ally with at the end, but it doesn't even hold a torch to the ideological divisions inside of New Vegas. Groups here are multidimensional, complete with sycophants, dissidents, skeptics, leaders, cooks, and a whole mess of internal organizational issues. There are no moral binaries in the world of New Vegas—your enemies are human, split only by ideals and circumstance, often making decisions similar to your own faction. That's not to say there's no moral compass in the world—Caesar's Legion rightfully sucks—but that you can never be confident that you're on the right side of history.

But it's not just the depth and granularity with which the world of New Vegas is portrayed (though they're nevertheless laudable)—it's how you can move through it. Besides the four main factions in the game, there's a host of other minor factions that you can befriend, decimate, or ignore altogether. And it's not the content that's surprising as much as it's the amount of outcomes. There are almost always violent and non-violent solutions to your problems, provoked by both inside and outside forces. This flow chart illustrates my point perfectly: you can stumble upon the quest in different ways, solve it through talking with different NPCs, go on a fetch quest, succeed through speech checks, or just kill the people involved. New Vegas not only understand that the world is filled with people of all different stripes, but that solutions to their problems can't be binary either, instead existing in multiple points on the spectrum between diplomacy and brute force.

There's less futuristic conundrums, less abstract debates about whether replicants are human or the krogan deserved the genophage. New Vegas asks a profoundly simple, yet unanswerable, question: who deserves to hold power? Do you support a war wherein the troops aren't fighting for their homeland? Is imperialisms justified if it's enacted to uplift the locals? Are all of our ambitious ideals doomed to failure, repeating the mistakes of our forefathers under a different name, a different brand? New Vegas pushes you to question authority without making it feel anarchic, acknowledging that lines have to be drawn but the issue is with where. It has a smart, deft script to support its messaging too.

Fallout: New Vegas is a piss-colored game that's a minor improvement over Fallout 3 gameplay-wise, but is on a whole 'nother level with its world.  is great if you want to know the history of an area. Just... y'know, make sure you play it on PC.

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Images obtained from: microsoft.com, gog.com

Chasm - Thoughts

Hearing the descriptors "Metroidvania" and "Roguelite" tend to perk up my ears, so imagine how alluring Chasm appeared when it promised to combine both. Although I didn't back the game on kickstarter it was always on my radar, inevitably worming its way into my bustling backlog. Ironically, what got me to finally dive in was seeing the number of mixed reviews for it on steam—could a game that looks this good miss the mark that badly? After delving through a lot of good games recently, I figured it was time to plumb some supposedly mediocre mines. And you know what? For a game made by such a small team, Chasm isn't all that bad!...

... buuut I'm still going to talk about a bunch of things it bungles.

The first bit to note is that while Chasm pegs itself as a roguelite-Metroidvania, it's considerably more of the latter than it is the former. I played through the game twice (once on normal, once on hard) and the only major difference between the two worlds were a handful of new rooms. Everything else is lightly shuffled around; expect to run into the same enemies, items, power-ups, bosses—you name it. Even the general map structure is identical, with save points and warp zones located in roughly the same spots. Venturing through Chasm a second time will dispel the charm of its seeded worlds, revealing a single blueprint hiding behind a maze of mirrors. Honestly, you'll find more variety in a replay of Mass Effect.

Another one of Chasm's issues is that it has a bit of an identity crisis. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night isn't just an inspiration for the indie title—it's the very foundation that Chasm is built on. Numerous fundamentals have been carefully replicated, from attack animations to the UI, to relics, to backdashing, weapons, subweapons, items, pets, afterimage sprites, and even Symphony's peculiar jump canceling. Hell, they preserved the annoying "boot back to title screen after death" too! Rather than refine any of these systems or add a unique twist, Chasm is content to simply ape them... which is a disappointment for anyone hoping for an evolution of the Metroidvania formula.

A weird quirk that demonstrates Chasm's penchant for playing it safe is found in its lore—specifically, that there isn't any. The plot is fairly bare bones, teasing a cliché, soon-to-wake evil that only you can defeat... and that's about it. Chasm could've fleshed out its world using the flavor text of the items you come across, but just like with Symphony of the Night, any text is entirely descriptive. Food, weapons, armor, gems, spells—all of them have dry descriptors and zero history. Worse yet is that the bestiary lacks flavor text entirely! It's a bare-bones concept that even Symophony of the Night included! If gameplay is all that matters to you then you can easily ignore these oversights, but considering how much attention is paid to Chasm's aesthetics, it's strange that they lack any kind of substance.

The benefit of copying Symphony of the Night is that it's admittedly a good game to imitate—and Chasm does this impressively well. Your character handles smoothly, hitboxes make sense, and your arsenal is decently varied, ranging from speedy daggers to powerful clubs. It also helps that Chasm is an unbelievably gorgeous game, packed with fluid animations and some truly impeccable background art. The visuals are hands-down Chasm's best quality, but the enemies and bosses you'll face offer a ferocious runner-up. One of the things I came to appreciate most about Chasm is that it has a fantastic difficulty curve, one that ramps up quite harshly towards the end. I personally enjoy Metroidvanias where the consumables you amass become pivotal to your success (unlike Symphony of the Night, which gives up early on and plateaus in difficulty.)

Design-wise, Chasm also has a smart blend of platforming and combat, frequently testing you on both in a number of ways (and occasionally at the same time.) Unfortunately, due to the roguelite aspect, you'll run into repeating rooms and enemy arrangements, with the worst being the monsterless vertical climbs that offer no challenge whatsoever. The game is generally well-paced though, with warps and saves placed a good distance apart and in much-needed locations. You'll often have to fight tooth and nail to make it to the next save, especially on Hard where enemies can destroy you in a scant four hits. However, I do wish there was a warp that took the player straight to town; the two screen buffer between the town and the warp hub feels like an unnecessary tax on your time, a problem that's exacerbated by how often the game wants you to check up on rescued villagers.

Lastly, Chasm's major power-ups are a real mixed bag. Most of them are your typical Metroidvania mobility upgrades (ledge grab, double jump, sliding), but a handful wind up being used a total of two to four times total. The diving gear and translation book could've had some cool uses, but they're effectively single-use keys that are hardly worth including. The lantern also feels like a missed opportunity, having only one side area dedicated to it—and considering that you can only stumble upon that zone after already acquiring the item, it feels less like you're consciously using your lantern to plumb new depths and more like the next mandatory trek is merely... darker than normal. Similar to the flavor text, this isn't a hugely detrimental oversight, but rather just another example of how Chasm fails to capitalize on its good ideas.

There's plenty of worse Metroidvanias to spend your time on than Chasm—which isn't exactly the most glowing of praise. It's undoubtedly a well-made title that hews closely to the modern Castlevania formula, potentially making it worth a play for Igarashi fans salivating for another dose of his particular blend. But in taking from both metroidvanias and roguelites, Chasm sadly fails to do justice to either. It's competent but unremarkable; clever but repetitive; sharp but safe. Chasm is a decent game for a small studio, but as a "roguevania", it's...

... well, it could've been better.

Celeste - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Behind Celeste's cartoonish art style and vivid color palette is a story about struggle. The struggle of trusting others, the struggle of accepting oneself, and most pointedly, the struggle with failure. Few games are as honest and forthcoming about their themes as Celeste, which opens by telling you that your goal is to climb a mountain. It's a daunting task that weighs on every character in the story, growing heavier and heavier as the air continues to thin. Yet there's a beautiful brutality to it in hindsight, like catching the sunset glimmering over a lake during a marathon. The catch is—like with any fulfilling activity in life—that to get the most out of it, you have to struggle.

And if you're interested in the postgame, that means struggling a lot.

Not since Super Meat Boy have I faced such an oppressive wall of difficulty in a platformer. But the good news is that if you're only interested in the main story, Celeste isn't all that bad. That's not to say it isn't frustrating at times, but if you stick with it you can clear the game in under 1000 deaths. Compare that to the postgame, where there's a chance the tally will skyrocket up to 10x that amount. If that number appears dispiriting, what helps takes the edge off is that Celeste has lightning quick restarts to keep the action rolling. It's a minor but crucial touch, one that keeps the player invested in maintaining their groove even in the most absurd situations (like at the start of stage 3's C-side).

What also helps is that your next checkpoint is always close by, as individual sections in Celeste are pretty short (besides the damn C-sides). Stages usually consist of 1-2 screens littered with obstacles and spikes, with checkpoints doled at every screen transition. This keeps its individual challenges brief and surmountable—which is ironic, given that Celeste's levels on the whole are lengthy and grueling. The shortest stage takes around twenty minutes to complete, with the rest of the levels gradually adding to this time until it culminates in the one hour endurance test that is the final level (which will feel like a joke after Farewell). Stages in Celeste are more like entire worlds from Super Meat Boy—but even then, the latter title at least lets you skip its hardest levels. Meanwhile Celeste... well, it is a game anchored in struggle after all.

Thankfully, similar to many of the best platformers, unique mechanics are frequently interjected to spice up gameplay. While you can expect genre staples like springs, wind, and falling platforms, what surprised me were some of the mechanics not seen in many (any?) platformers before: permeable star blocks, dash-activated blocks (both varieties!), gold feathers, and the entire hot/cold mechanic of the core (as well as its clever dash limitations). You won't ever find Celeste at a want for ingenuity... although there definitely are moments where it indulges in its design a little too long (specifically, the end of stage six). Still, it's impressive just how many mechanics Celeste crams into its relatively short run time.

Even more impressive than that, however, is that the game continues to teach you new things long after the credits have rolled. Within Celeste's bonus levels (cutely labeled B-sides and C-sides), you'll discover new ways to interact with old mechanics, as well as uncover two more dash maneuvers. Like with Super Metroid, what's nifty about these hidden abilities is that they've been available to you from the very start, opening up the ways you can interact with the game on a replay. But be forewarned that they're not for the faint of heart; wavedashing in particular is a fickle beast, something I could barely get to work properly half of the time. You don't need it for the majority of the game, but the spots where it is required will definitely test your resolve.

I maintain that the gameplay in Celeste is its greatest asset, but it's no slouch in the narrative department either. The story here is simple yet potent, opting to avoid the granularity of mountain climbing for a more introspective look at its characters. You won't find an in-depth discussions as to the lore of the mountain or how its magic operates either; Celeste keeps its eye squarely on the future, less concerned with the "why" and more with the "what are you going to do about it?" It has a great message about coming to terms with who you are, conveying its emotion not just through the writing but its wonderful art, music, and even sound effects. Plus thanks to Celeste's brilliant assist mode, nearly everyone can make it to the top to see how the story concludes.

Don't be surprised however, if you're initially drawn in to the story but wind up staying for the gameplay.

While climbing Celeste, don't be surprised if your palms begin to sweat, your joints ache, and fingers callus over. Despite its lighthearted exterior, Celeste is a hardcore experience that can give even the most hardened platform-savants a run for their money. But it's never flagrantly cruel or purposefully pernicious; Celeste is about keeping calm and finding a surgical solution to your problems. And more important than that, it's about knowing your limits—do you want to get all the strawberries? Finish the merciless B-Sides? The punishingly precise C-Sides? Endure the bottomless abyss of the golden fruits? To play Celeste is confront your limits, understand your capabilities, and not beat yourself up if it gets too hard. Through play you'll struggle, and in struggling, you'll cultivate the chance to succeed.

And few things are as tremendously satisfying as finally besting a challenge that had once seemed all but impossible.

Celeste is a really cool game that deserves all the praise it gets.