It might seem like the fighting game market of the current day is crowded with games looking to stand out, but it's nothing compared to the early '90s. While Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat ruled the roost, everyone was trying to find a way to set their game apart. Among the competition was SNK's Samurai Shodown, a weapons-based fighting game that emphasized careful movement, high damage, and rewarding patient, careful reading and reacting to your foe's attacks--along with some fountains of blood from downed opponents for good measure. Over 25 years later, history is repeating itself as a new Samurai Shodown draws its blade, offering many of the same things that made it great all those years ago--only now it feels even fresher.
The Samurai Shodown series is one of SNK's most beloved properties, but also among its most inconsistent; the series has had some very high highs (Samurai Shodown II, Samurai Shodown V Special) and extremely low lows (Samurai Shodown III, Samurai Shodown Sen). Thankfully, the developers at SNK have understood the franchise's mixed legacy, and worked to really focus on what makes Samurai Shodown special in the world of fighting games: the thrill of being in a high-stakes, life-or-death struggle where one wrong step could take you from a comfortable lead to lying on the ground with a sword in your gut.
If you haven't played Samurai Shodown before, the first thing you'll notice is the relative simplicity of the game's controls. You have four attack buttons (three strengths of weapon attacks and a kick), each of which has a very distinct feel when pressed; you'll really feel the weight of a heavy slash's slow, powerful arc as opposed to the quick hilt-smash of a light slash. Combinations of the buttons allow you to perform dodges, overhead slashes, and throws and even a special desperation-style mode. Special moves vary for each character, but are almost all easy-to-perform semi-circle, half-circle, and Dragon Punch-style inputs.
Playing around with the various characters and seeing their unique moves and abilities really establishes just how good everything feels to control. The various attack weights feel substantial, and even basic standing, crouching, and dashing moves are a lot of fun to see executed onscreen as blades whoosh around in beautiful arcs--to say nothing of the flashy special moves. Simply doing things with your chosen fighter feels inherently enjoyable, even if you're just getting the grasp of their moveset.
Pressing buttons mindlessly might feel good, but you'll soon discover that restraint is of the essence. Samurai Shodown was known in its heyday for extremely high damage, and if you're coming off other fighting games, you'll have a bit of a shock once you see how much life a well-placed heavy sword strike can chop off. Strong moves hit hard, and if you leave an opening for your opponent to take advantage of, you can very quickly find your life bar melting like butter in a frying pan under the pressure of their blade. If you try to go in furiously swinging, you'll likely find yourself left open to a very, very painful counterattack as you're stuck recovering from that heavy sword slash you just whiffed.
To offset the high damage, there are a lot of defensive options that you can utilize. There's good old-fashioned high and low blocking, but there's also a special "Just Defend" block you can execute right as the opponent's attack is about to hit that will very briefly stun them. There's also a dodge attack, a universal parry, and multiple means to disarm your foes, leaving them weaponless and at a severe disadvantage. (Be careful, though--some characters are more capable when disarmed than others!) You also have forward/backward recovery when knocked down, allowing you to avoid a lot of pressure when getting up if used well.
The big, flashy attacks and myriad defensive options combine to make a game with a much different focus than most other fighting games currently out there. Rather than mixups and combo strings (you'll only rarely see double-digit combo hit counts), Samurai Shodown heavily emphasizes pacing, carefully reading and reacting to your opponent, and patiently waiting for the ideal opportunity to capitalize on your foe's vulnerability. There's not a lot of complex layered-on systems here, but that doesn't matter; this isn't about lengthy combos or executing multiple super attacks, this is about finding out how to make your opponent dead in the most effective way possible.
The core gameplay, great as it is, is only part of a bigger package--one that might be a bit disappointing to those looking for a strong single-player experience. The roster is small in comparison to some other fighters, but it offers a lot of variety. Fans will appreciate seeing old favorite characters like wild-haired samurai Haohmaru, determined Ainu warrior girl Nakoruru, and even somewhat more obscure picks like the multi-sword-wielding Yoshitora and ethereal trickster Shiki. The game also introduces new characters to the franchise: hard-drinking, razor-sharp shipwright Darli Dagger, clumsy but deceptively cunning Wu-Ruixiang, and the bird-themed, aerial-attack-heavy Yashamaru.
The big, flashy attacks and myriad defensive options combine to make a game with a much different focus than most other fighting games currently out there.
But even though there's plenty of characters, the story mode is pretty weak, giving each character only an intro, ending, and few simplistic cutscenes, along with a final boss who doesn't seem to have anything to do with a lot of the cast. (Said final boss can also be incredibly challenging if you don't find an AI exploit with your chosen character--the term "SNK Final Boss Syndrome" exists for a reason.) There are training modes, along with gauntlet (fight every character) and survival (fight a bunch of characters on a limited lifebar), but beyond that, you're going to need to either invite a friend over or hop online to truly enjoy what Samurai Shodown has to offer.
[Editor's note: As of this writing, the online is just going live, so we're currently trying out network combat and the online-enabled Dojo mode. We'll be finalizing this review once we've had more time with the online offerings.]
Samurai Shodown is a great reboot. It captures what made the original fun and unique, but also at a time when high-damage, high-stakes fighters like this are a rarity, making its combat feel both fresh and familiar. Its accessibility and easy-to-grasp gameplay belie a lot of strategic depth that makes for very intense, bloody struggles. While the single-player experience is a bit lacking, it doesn't drag down the whole significantly. We'll update soon with more about the online experience, but for now, Samurai Shodown is a fighting experience well worth taking up the sword for.
Mario is a video game icon not only because he's a plucky and affable dude, but because he's the face behind some of the best platformers of all time. Nintendo has carefully guided his adventures for decades, but something happened in 2015: It gave players the keys to design and share stages in Wii U's Super Mario Maker, and the Mario we thought we knew took on a whole new light. He was no longer a laidback high-jumping hero; Mario became a hardened speed demon, a death-defying daredevil forced into unruly gauntlets crafted by evil geniuses who know his every hop, skip, and jump like the back of their hand.
With the Wii U and 3DS versions of Mario Maker abandoned by Nintendo at this point, Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch brings us back to that heady time from years past. The game itself is largely familiar, though the more you play and create, the more you notice all of the little additions tucked inside and appreciate how they elevate the potential for creativity in new ways. Mario Maker 2 is a robust level creation tool and a fantastic open-ended platformer that will no doubt spur a new era of competition among players and creators alike.
Due to the fact that so much of Mario Maker 2's potential success lies in the hands of its players, we are going to give the community time to acclimate and a chance to show us what it's made of at large before weighing in with our final verdict. But so far, it's amazing what the right players can do when given the tools to craft Mario's world.
The intuitive drag-and-drop system is back--you don't, however, have the luxury of a built-in Switch stylus, so consider buying or devising one before getting into the game as using your finger alone can cause you to occasionally misplace objects. You can create while your Switch is docked, though ultimately that should be a last resort considering how quickly you can place objects in handheld mode, even with the lack of stylus. Picking and placing ingredients for your level, or painting wide swaths of land, is a quick and painless process, and there are intuitive means of copying, pasting, and undoing your work as needed. You are once again given access to the components of games including Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U, along with their numerous enemies, objects, and mechanisms. You select a game theme and work within that toolset, but you can easily switch to another one on the fly and retain most of your work--only occasional elements aren't transferable.
The big exception is the newly included set based on Super Mario 3D World, which can only be used in isolation. Lest you mistake the "3D" aspect to suggest you're breaking free from side-scrolling Mario, you aren't--you're just given access to unique elements from that game, such as the never-not-strange Cat Mario power-up. Far from being the only notable addition, the sum total of which are too numerous to list here, the Cat Mario suit is up there with the ability to make slopes, craft custom scrolling for stages, and set level-clear conditions as one of the most impactful additions to the Mario Maker formula. That's just judging by our pre-launch experience, but time will tell what seemingly average element gets twisted into a diabolical weapon in the hands of the craftiest creators. In Mario Maker 2, as in the original, even the smallest variable can have a huge ripple effect
For new creators, there's the chance of becoming overwhelmed with the number of options available at the start, but that's where Yamamura's Dojo comes in. Yamamura is a pigeon, but a very wise and insightful pigeon at that. If you need help wrapping your head around the basic concepts that go into conceiving and creating a level, Yamamura's your bird. His catalog of 45 lessons (divided into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced sets) walk you through everything from laying tracts of land and placing Goombas to the more philosophical side of level creation, even navigating the meta side of being a creator unleashing their work for others to judge.
These lessons will help get a novice creator up to speed, and the fact that there's nothing holding back knowledgeable designers from the start was a smart move by Nintendo, too. As mentioned, the limited pool of creators has thus far made some truly impressive stages that utilize Mario Maker 2's robust toolset well. The overall level of logic inherent to a Mario game remains largely the same--no digging under the hood to rewrite traditional cause-and-effect rules, for example--but the spirit of Mario Maker 2 comes alive when familiar elements are combined by masterful players, often in ways that Nintendo would never employ in a traditional Mario game.
So far, that unexpected creativity often manifests itself in oddball stages packed with an unreasonable number of enemies, diabolical platforming tests that demand superhuman reflexes, or clever contraptions that move Mario and key items around an environment with calculated chain reactions. Not every stage is a winner, but because the fundamental controls and elements of the world are tried-and-true, it's rare that you run into a custom stage worth getting upset about. Ultimately, dozens (soon to be hundreds, if not thousands) of alternative stages are seconds away, a convenience that's easy to take for granted. It's not an understatement to say that the speed at which you can browse, download, and play levels are key factors that make exploring Mario Maker 2 so easy and enjoyable.
Discoverability plays a part in what levels you find, and beyond basic lists such as popular, new, and trending courses, there's a detailed search function that lets you narrow stage selection by attributes like theme and difficulty. You can also sort by tags that indicate the type of stage at hand, be it an auto-scrolling level or puzzle-centric challenge. After playing, you can leave feedback on the level for other players to consider--a simple but meaningful chance to contribute to the community and learn from your peers. This is all to say that Mario Maker 2's online stage selection is both organized and catered to the wider player base. You don't have to involve yourself in every aspect of it if you just want to play a bunch of random Mario levels, but it's great to see that you can become deeply involved with your fellow makers if you desire.
One of the hotly contested elements pre-launch was online multiplayer, which comes in both co-op and competitive forms. Nintendo's initial plans to limit these modes to random matchmaking drew the ire of some fans who quite reasonably expected to be able to play with their friends. Nintendo has since made it clear that feature will come, just not in time for launch. While we'd like to weigh in on the current stage of playing alongside strangers, this is a key feature that we were unable to test as needed prior to launch. Keep an eye out for the full review after launch for our analysis of the game's multiplayer components, including the co-op level creator mode.
The other major addition to Mario Maker 2 is a proper story mode, a campaign of 100 Nintendo-made levels ostensibly designed to show you the breadth of the game's potential, so far as Nintendo's creators see it, anyway. The story is typical Mario fare set in an overworld with NPCs and a few fun surprises, taking things a few steps further than The Super Mario Challenge from the 3DS Mario Maker. It's not an amazing addition in light of the countless levels sure to come from other players, but it's an enjoyable alternative if you prefer a more coordinated campaign. There's the slight missed opportunity to give you creative tools as a means of solving purpose-built puzzles, to give you that hands-on learning in a practical scenario, but they are given to you as options to overcome stages that you repeatedly fail. It's not as if there's a drought of custom stages online, even before release, though Nintendo's batch of stages are nice to have if you want to dig into stages handmade by the developers themselves.
With the story mode and dozens of custom-built stages under my belt, I'm anxiously waiting for the floodgates to open upon Mario Maker's 2 release. What I've played so far has proven, once again, that the Mario series is worth all the admiration it gets, and Mario Maker 2 is an excellent tool for picking it apart by pushing its enemies, mechanisms, and Mario, to their limit. I've yet to make a stage of my own that I think is worthy of sending out to other players, but I'm committed to getting there. Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I've got the itch to join the creator's club. And thankfully, even if you aren't an instant success (like me), Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable.
In the fall of 1945, in the pages of the New Yorker, Edmund Wilson lambasted H.P. Lovecraft as a peddler of "hack-work" who was, in short, "not a good writer." His most cutting (and famous) remark has dogged the author's legacy since: "The only real horror in most of these fictions," Wilson quipped, "is the horror of bad taste and bad art." I was reminded of the quote as I played The Sinking City, a supernatural-horror mystery game inspired by Lovecraft's fiction. Faced with this game's crude visuals, monotonous storytelling, and graceless mechanics, I knew exactly how Wilson felt.
The Sinking City is a pastiche of Lovecraft lore that draws heavily on the characters, settings, and themes of some of his most celebrated stories. The game especially draws from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," about a young man's perilous visit to a mysterious port town on the coast of New England overrun by a race of fish-people. You are Charles Reed, a shell-shocked veteran turned sullen private investigator, newly arrived in the fictitious town of Oakmont, Massachusetts to learn more about the disturbing visions that have been troubling you since the war. The town, however, is beset by its own eerie problems, and naturally you are tasked, the moment you step foot in the place, to solve these and others as you look to uncover the truth.
From the outset, the game presumes a lot of interest in Oakmont and the various political machinations of its inhabitants. You'll hear all about warring families, fraught racial tensions between factions of mutated denizens, long-vanished naval expeditions, unexplained natural disasters, plundered historical artifacts, arcane regional dialects, infestations of deadly critters from the sea, and a whole suite of murders, extortions, mutilations, and conspiracies--and that's all just in the first two missions. This information is conveyed in long, dull expository monologues and conversations that are entirely one-sided and feel endless. These interminable data-dumps are grueling to click through and are the primary means of proceeding through your investigations. The order in which you choose to ask questions is irrelevant, and there's nothing you can do to alter or vary these talks at all.
Your missions are a series of convoluted, interconnected cases, a bit like LA Noire, in which evidence must be gathered, suspects must be "interrogated" (that is, listened to), and conclusions must be drawn. These moments are punctuated by rudimentary moral dilemmas, such as whether a perpetrator ought to face justice or be allowed to walk free in light of extenuating circumstances. The length of these missions is irritatingly protracted by how far apart relevant clues, characters, and other mandatory waypoints tend to be from one another, as well as by backtracking, repetitive searching, and an overall lack of clarity about where you need to go next and what you're meant to do there. Oakmont is an open world, and it is enormous--way too huge, plainly, for how little one section is differentiated from another and how little there is in it worth seeing.
By contrast, there is a frankly huge number of game mechanics--so many that the tutorial is mapped to one of the controller keys. One of the game's more unwieldy features is the "Mind Palace," which takes the form of an ungainly submenu cluttered with information collected from clues retrieved and interviews conducted during a mission. You have to combine different pieces of information with related facts, which in my experience was achieved mainly by sticking them together at random until I found two that fit. By connecting the pieces successfully, you create inferences, which can then be connected to reach conclusions. It's simplistic, vague, and a poor approximation of the process of solving a real mystery.
Some of this information must be unearthed from archives, which can be found in various places around town, such as the newspaper office and the hospital. Searching the archive for info about a particular event or incident involves selecting search criteria from among different categories, including the period of time, people involved, and location, based on your best guess of what might be relevant to the matter at hand. For example, if you want to learn about an expedition to discover the origin of an outbreak of mass hysteria, you can narrow your search to when the expedition took place and from which port the ship embarked. None of this info is visualized or actually browsable in any meaningful way, and the archives are as robust as a bill of fare. Like so much in this game, it seems designed to give you something to do, but it feels like busywork, with no clear purpose.
Your hero has certain supernatural powers, and from time to time you must avail yourself of them in the course of an investigation. You can use "retrocognition" to witness a glimpse of the past--a blurry, blue-tinted silhouette of whatever event happens to be on your itinerary--and, if you can correctly guess the order of these past events chronologically, you'll find out some revelation about the case at hand. Another power works as a kind of Batman: Arkham-style Detective Mode, allowing you to see things that aren't visible to the naked eye; yet another allows you to accept guidance from ghostly figures, who will kindly point you in the right direction. None of these powers make for dynamic gameplay, and aesthetically they tend to be lumpy, lurid, and goofy. Your supernatural gifts mostly amount to a lot of shimmering gelatinous blurs.
And there's more. You can drive a motorboat, clumsily--the boat turns slowly and gets stuck on junk all the time. There's a very simplistic, entirely pointless crafting system, which seems to follow no logic at all--coil springs and alcohol can be combined to craft a health kit, even though just finding health kits lying around would surely do. You have a camera, for reasons that were not quite clear to me, and you can take pictures of things. There is a meter that tracks your sanity, which falls if you spend too much time around monsters--though it only makes your vision a bit blurry.
This drab, lifeless town lacks any of the slow-burn dread or looming menace of the towns in Lovecraft's stories. Wandering through, you might encounter small spider-like creatures, called Wylebeasts, which you can dispatch by negotiating the awkward, clunky combat system to execute a pistol or melee attack. Or you might encounter a more formidable foe: loading screens, which are even more treacherous. The game loads if you walk into a building. It loads if you prompt a cutscene or chat with a passerby. It loads if you walk too fast and see more of this unsightly town than it can handle revealing to you. Between missions, or after dying, these loading screens can last several minutes, after which a message to "press any button to continue" appears rather unobtrusively.
There's tension in Lovecraft's fiction between the terrifying and the absurd, and of course tales of fish-people and nefarious amphibian monsters are bound to at least verge on the ridiculous. The Sinking City has a tenuous control of tone; it frequently seems less nightmarish than farcical. Grim encounters with the darkly macabre, depicted without the requisite gravitas, elicit laughter rather than fear, and ironically the game's stern humorlessness makes it all the harder to take seriously. Finding the fresh corpse of a local sailor with a pair of axes buried in his chest, your hero simply muses, "You've got to be out of your head to do this to a man," delivered with roughly the feeling of a mundane answering machine message. These sights ought to be harrowing. Instead, they're just flat--or worse, silly.
The Sinking City has a tenuous control of tone; it frequently seems less nightmarish than farcical.
The Sinking City's problems aren't only technical, but conceptual. It's one thing to clip through objects that are meant to be impassable; it's another to feel, when the game seems to be working, that its design is inelegant, or that its writing lacks wit. Despite the outrageously long conversations you're asked to endure, characterizations are paper thin--what's said conveys plot but expresses no psychological shading. A brewing conflict between different species of human-animal hybrids, while containing some of the overtones of allegorical prejudice found in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, shys from engaging seriously with Lovecraft's noted racism.
It's hard to resent a game as unapologetically dweeby as The Sinking City. It's an old-fashioned, bookish mystery rooted in the mythology and mysteries of a pulpy, cult-favorite mid-century American novelist--an effort not without charm, to be sure. But no matter how fond your affection for H.P. Lovecraft and the idea of a wide-eyed, slow-burn literary adventure, the poor design, cliched writing, and lumbering pace make this far more tedious than delightful, let alone unsettling or terrifying.
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