It's one of the most thrilling openings in all of video games. As warrior-turned-deity-killer Kratos, you climb the Titan Gaia, who functions as a colossal, moving level upon which you battle Poseidon, the god of the sea. Gaia herself is one of Kratos' few remaining allies; her cries of pain pierce the air as you swing your chained blades, launching ghoulish soldiers into the air and slicing away at Poseidon and his many-legged steed. It is all sound and fury, almost unparalleled in its sense of scale and its translation of a protagonist's anger into bloody, brutal interactions. When Kratos strikes his final blow, you see it not from his perspective, but from his victim's point of view, in the first person. It's a striking and vicious design choice that sets the tone for the game to follow. You are no longer conquering the Greek gods as an enraged antihero, but as a full-on villain.
The question, then, is this: How could God of War III hope to top this sensational introduction? It doesn't, though it certainly tries, and allows God of War II to retain its position at the peak of this beloved series in the process. That's not to say that the game isn't terrific fun, only that its unimaginative final encounter has nothing on the phenomenal opener. Gaia casts a long shadow over the hours that follow, and even a similar battle upon Cronos' massive body can't escape it, though it, too, remains a technical marvel in this remastered edition.
60 frames per second and 1080p resolution aren't game-changers for Kratos' adventure, though they are certainly nice attributes to have; God of War III Remastered is simply another chance to admire a game that we admired five years ago. At a $40 retail price, however, it doesn't make a strong enough argument for buying a game you've already bought, particularly when the lower-resolution pre-rendered cutscenes stand out all the more next to the in-game visuals. Character skins and arenas released as downloadable content make appearances, as does a new photo mode that allows you to capture sumptuous moments and share them with friends, enemies, and mythical beasts, but where remasters are concerned, this one belongs in the "barebones" column.
Taken on its own merits, however, God of War III maintains the high bar its predecessors set for combat. Kratos is responsive to every input, swinging the blades of Olympus and the claws of Hades with a slickness and strength befitting a protagonist whose muscles have muscles. Using light and heavy attacks, you hack away at a gorgon before flinging her into the air; once she is close to death, a prompt appears, and you perform a series of button presses while Kratos yanks her body towards him with his blades, pulls her head back, and decapitates her. Quick-time finishers cap each violent dance with a gruesome climax, and you then return to the mythical slaughter, all while the game finds new, gorgeous backdrops that remind you how enormous this world is, and how puny you are within it.
Four melee weapons means four times the fun. Well, maybe not four times. But a lot of it, anyway!
God of War III's greatness relies not just on its combat, however, but on the way it strings battles, puzzles, and traversal into an ever-varied chain of enjoyment. Sequences that might have felt like filler in a lesser game (see: Dante's Inferno) retain their sense of fun because you aren't just faced with another onslaught of warriors, minotaurs, and scorpions, but because clever level design, smart camera angles, and visual centerpieces hold monotony at bay. Pressing a stick forward to climb a lengthy chain is not, in and of itself, reason for celebration. But when the camera pulls back and a miniscule Kratos patiently scales upwards as you watch through an opening in the nearby cliffs, you feel awe. Each thrust upwards fills the cavern with metallic echoes; you both see and hear the chasm's enormity.
Even the seemingly straightforward combat benefits from playful presentation and mechanical diversity. Cauldrons filled with flammable bramble explode when you fire flaming arrows at them, much to the dismay of nearby foes. Snarling dogs attack as an elevator rises, making it hard--but not impossible--to appreciate the beauty of the temple in which you fight. Then there are the puzzles, best represented by an extensive one in which shifting perspectives enables you to climb staircases and cross walkways that would not seem connected. It's the most thoughtful section of a game that requires more intuition than it does intellect, notable not just in its wit, but in the way it requires you to use the limp body of Kratos' high-profile victim as a weight.
Definitely not God of War III's biggest boss. Still big, though.
This isn't the first time you use a corpse in such a way in the God of War series, but it's more striking in God of War III because Kratos has no shred of mercy remaining within him--not at this stage. Previous games allowed Kratos his humanity, Chains of Olympus' Elysium Fields sequence being an excellent example. While Kratos has never been a hero in the usual sense of the term, we have seen the source of his torment, and watched Athena refuse to set him free from his nightmares. Here, Kratos is a one-note killing machine, and we are left only with what we know from previous games to provide context. The smidgen of mercy Kratos shows towards a daughter figure in the final hours, and the accompanying message of hope, is not earned given how little development the character shows in God of War III up to that point--and reminds us that for Kratos, women are whores, wives, daughters, or paperweights. Full-on cruelty was always in the cards, but it makes Kratos difficult to root for, particularly if this is your first God of War experience.
Then again, this is not a series known for its sophisticated storytelling. Kratos is the vessel for an instinctive kind of gameplay that is rarely this successful. Your rewards for following God of War III's linear trail are genre-defining combat, excellent pacing, and the innate joy of watching enemies spew forth clusters of glowing red orbs when they fall. It's the ever-compelling quest for shinies, accomplished by slamming your cestus into the ground, then gutting a centaur and watching its viscera spill onto the floor. Your reward is more power, which you use to earn more shinies and to see more entrails. That the game finds so many ways to stay consistently fresh within this traditional structure is a feat worthy of the gods.
When we think of high-budget games, we may think of the cinematic experiences that drag you along a roller coaster-like ride through scripted set pieces and quick time events, like Call of Duty or Uncharted. Or we may think of the glut of open world games we've seen flood the market, all complete with minimaps covered in dots of things to do or collect, compelling you to comb the landscape and visit every single one. The Lego series of games by Traveller's Tales has perfectly embodied these conflicting design philosophies across the many franchises it's taken on and put them in a kid-friendly package. That's why setting a Lego game in the Jurassic Park world is such an enticing prospect: it's a series that naturally combines the cinematic with the sprawling. Lego Jurassic World encompasses just that with style and undeniable charm that will melt your cynical heart, but the boring things the game makes you do hamper the joy.
If you've played any of the recent Lego games, you know exactly what you're getting into: solidly designed platforming amidst a world made of bricks. Combat takes a back seat to simple problem solving as you find ways to clear environmental obstacles, which often takes the form of building new things out of loose bricks that are lying around. Cooperation is also encouraged thanks to hop-in multiplayer and a cavalcade of characters to take control of, each of which has special abilities you need to use to progress through the game. Tying everything together are hub worlds that you can wander around in and collect red bricks (which unlock the ability to buy certain perks) and gold ones (which unlock certain optional sections once you have enough of them), so you get a little bit of structural variety as you progress, which is a nice counterpoint to the very linear levels proper.
Several boss fights pit you against some of the larger dinos, but they play out the same as the regular levels.
A big part of the appeal of the Lego games is the fact that you can switch between characters at will and play around with them. The characters' special powers also go with their personalities quite well and in unexpectedly hilarious ways. Ellie, for instance, can water sprouts to make them grow (because she's a paleobotanist, you see) and jump into giant piles of dino poop to find useful things (because other characters can't stand the smell). And the open world bits fit right into the theme park conceit perfectly, though it doesn't work quite as well in The Lost World and Jurassic Park III since the settings are just more wilderness. But the big draw with Lego Jurassic World is the fact that you can play as the dinosaurs themselves. Here, you get to embody the famous dinos we all found so fascinating as kids, like the velociraptor and, of course, the star of the franchise, the T-Rex. It's great to be given go many options to play, especially once you get through the main game and just want to unravel as much of what's still out there as you can.
The problem is that you can't actually experiment with anything in any real sense. The different abilities are simply keys to unlock progress or secrets. You never get the chance to noodle around with the mechanics or improvise since there's always just one solution to every obstacle the game puts in your way. Another unfortunate side effect of this approach is the fact that the things you're doing in-game aren't nearly as interesting as the things your in-game avatar is doing. She might be performing a high-pitched scream to break some glass in your way or building a giant replica of a hot dog to distract a rampaging dino. In reality, you're moving from one spot in a level to another, where you activate a thing that lets you move on to the next thing, and so on. Granted, this is the baseline for how game levels are built at their core, but Traveller's Tales does nothing to hide this pattern, nor does it add any complexity to how scenarios play out. It's all focused on throwing exactly one obstacle at you at a time with very little stopping you in between.
Lego Jurassic World is four games in one.
This makes for adventuring that is bereft of tension and friction, leading to a game you just stroll through with very little resistance. Iconic scenes are replicated as Lego-built levels, like when Lex and Tim try to evade hungry velociraptors in a kitchen or a T-Rex stampeding through San Diego as Jeff Goldblum speeds in front of it. While it's quite pleasing to stroll through these set pieces as you progress through the game, you never feel like you're in danger in the slightest. The reason the velociraptor scene is timeless is the ever-present danger of the kids being found, the unsettling purring noise the raptors make, approaching closer and closer until the children are right under their noses. In Lego Jurassic World, no such tension exists. Again, you have to find the right thing to fiddle with to move on to the next section to find the next thing and repeat the process until you make it to the end. In the meantime, the two raptors are "looking" for you, but they never actually move from their pre-determined spots except to pace uselessly until you trigger their next movement. If you attempt to move close to them, the kids back away looking cautious and frightened--an inelegant cover for the dreaded invisible wall. Suddenly, you're not playing Lego versions of your favorite scenes but instead find yourself as the cast of a badly-acted Lego play where you can see the stagehands changing the scenery.
The only potential source of tension that the game tries to throw at you is when it occasionally sends a swarm of tiny dinos (or occasionally other Lego people) to attack you, but even this is hollow. Your punch attack is a pathetic wiggle that you have to be right next to an enemy to use. But everything goes down in one hit, so when things swarm at you, you merely have to mash the button as you move around and try not to get hit--and even that doesn't work, as an enemy might land a lucky shot on you as you're moving. The tepid combat makes any enemy encounter annoying, especially when they start pouring infinitely out of a hole until you plug it up. Notably, only the first movie's set of stages is completely bereft of combat segments, and it's all the better for it.
One-on-one dinosaur battles use quick-time events, but the cinematic payoff is one of the game's high points.
Don't get me wrong, though: Lego Jurassic World absolutely has its heart in the right place. Every scene is injected with the now-trademark Lego sense of humor. Events like seeing Chris Pratt gleefully play with toy dinosaurs during a tense scene or seeing someone's hair fall off and land on a raptor's head always produce a chuckle at worst. It helps that you have the very serious lines from the original movies juxtaposed with your silly Lego people doing ridiculous things. Unfortunately, the audio from the movies wasn't mixed very well with the game audio, which sounds jarring next to the pristine, polished sounds and voices recorded for the game. Luckily, the funniest aspect of the game requires no voice acting at all: the dinosaurs. They don't talk, so all their humor is relayed in pantomime, a trick not seen in Traveller's Tales Lego games since their earliest efforts. Since so much of the Lego multimedia experience relies on visual humor, the dinosaurs make up the lion's share of funny moments, like raptors chasing a tiny ice cream truck or the hybrid T-Rex from Jurassic World forming emoticons with bones from its pen. It really speaks to the strength of the game's charm and humor that the non-speaking dinosaurs steal the show, but then again, they are the stars of the Jurassic Park franchise, so it's appropriate.
The Lego games set out to create an accessible, joy-filled romp through our favorite pieces of popular media with as few barriers stopping the fun as possible. They are part of one of the few franchises that can get by on charm alone. But Traveller's Tales take this approach to extremes, focusing on the visual and thematic experience almost entirely while letting the actual gameplay languish. Jurassic Park in particular doesn't suit this design because flattening the mechanics removes all notions of tension from the game, an essential part of the film series. Lego Jurassic Park is a nice, pleasant nostalgia trip, but it won't be long before you're asking to leave.
Let us for a moment consider the idea that, one day, the sun might poof out and that the surface air of the earth will vanish in the process. Let us suppose that the remnants of humanity will flee below the earth's surface, where the core remains surprisingly warm. Furthermore, let us imagine that humanity will embrace a vaguely steampunk aesthetic straight out of Dishonored in the process and that, even with all that's happened, some folks will find the time to express the desire that their home be painted in garish hues of red, green, and blue. Considering the circumstances, it's a pretty uplifting message, isn't it? That's the world that Traverser presents us, and it has all the ingredients of a scrappy adventure that can grab the hearts of millions in a way that the most blockbusters never could. It's such a shame, then, that this isometric 3D platformer and puzzler becomes such a stark reminder of the fact that good concepts amount to little if they don't have good gameplay to match.
It's a concept that works well in part because it's so surreal. At the heart of the world, so to speak, stands a city called Brimstone that floats suspended above a sea of lava and below a cavern roof studded with crystals, and the rich and the poor occupy the top and bottom sides, respectively, through a trick of gravity. Breathable air is the society's main commodity, and the poor denizens of the undercity must trot about in masks to stay alive. Lately, they're not so happy with the arrangement, and a rebellion is at hand when the action kicks off.
You can learn more about the world through recordings, but don't expect much storytelling depth.
The story itself centers on young Valerie, who has to find out why her father has disappeared on the same day that she becomes a traverser, a type of secret police in the employ of the company that controls the air supply. She travels between the two cities by pounding on platforms at specific points. She earns tools and information from the populace, and she picks up more lore from scattered recordings in the style of BioShock. Her main tool? A gravity glove that lets her sling around crates and other objects with some precision. It's in this very concept, though, where the first signs of trouble show up. Valerie is told that she has to wear her normal clothes to blend in with the populace, but everyone already seems to know what she is, and many Brimstonians even have the audacity to ask her to perform tasks such as pickpocketing fellow citizens or flinging trash into the void. Whatever else the traversers do, they don't seem to inspire much fear.
However, despite the prevailing dark tone of the story, there's plenty of evidence that we're not meant to take all this too seriously and that it may even be aimed at children. The villains, for instance, have a Snidely Whiplash air about them that all but screams that we're supposed to boo and hiss when they amble on screen. Deep in the sewers, there's a diploma on which a mad scientist has scrawled his name as "Nicholas Cage." When simply hitting shift to sneak past guards isn't enough, Valerie can hop into a comically oversized barrel and hope her adversaries won't notice. Toss in some jaunty music and an exaggeratedly angular visual design, and it's easy to spot the influence of Tim Burton pervading the whole.
This isometric 3D platformer and puzzler becomes such a stark reminder of the fact that good concepts amount to little if they don't have good gameplay to match.
All of this would work in Traverser's favor if Valerie's gravity gun were more fun to use. She can use it to smack some enemies out of the way by slamming boxes on them, Magneto-style, but most of the time, she merely uses it to stack boxes to craft makeshift ladders or plop them on buttons or in front of lasers in the style of Portal.
That's all fine, but actually using the glove isn't. Grabbing an object and hoisting it up or down requires using both the left mouse button and the mouse's scroll wheel, which can be a bit of a feat when you have to direct the object you're holding with mouse movements as well. Adding to the awkwardness is Traverser's fixed camera, which often prevents you from accurately seeing how high or low an object you're holding is since the camera often ends up perfectly aligned with the beam. The crates and other objects often don't fall into place as easily as they probably should (which, again, might be the fault of the camera), leading to creations that tumble over just when you think you're almost done.
The puzzles themselves are usually simple, introductory affairs, although Traverser does manage to generate some excitement when Valerie has to use a number of techniques in quick succession. These moments are especially prevalent in the few boss fights and when Valerie has to switch between the top world and the bottom world to overcome obstacles. Never once, though, does Traverser present a challenge that's truly memorable or satisfying, and other aspects of its gameplay are complicated by the lack of a minimap or the occasional vague entry in Valerie's journal that leaves little clue as to what to do next. Traverser's at its best when it requires Valerie to use stealth, but even that's complicated by unwieldy objectives and guards who can apparently see through walls.
Most puzzles are predictable, but a bit of dynamite makes everything fun.
Still, there are worse ways to spend four hours, which is the amount of time you'll spend on a full playthrough, and the game's personality is generally strong enough to forgive some of its shortcomings. But it's a shadow of what it could be. Were it better able to traverse the gap between an attractive presentation and engaging gameplay, Traverser would be a game to remember.
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