-- All hail Guardians, a great ride at Disneyland and an even greater video game
I haven't written anything in forever. My lawyers suggest I blame two trips to Disney, a new job, churching, and a baby who only enjoys sleeping for two hours a night. Regardless the reason, I must press on. It's time to spill words, if for nothing else, simply to get the writing engines rumbling.
Today I rapid-fire rank the second-class video game citizens; aka, those games which were (mostly) good enough for me to buy and play to completion, yet not good enough to earn a permanent spot in the collection. These are video games from the last 5 years or so which earned a solid B- grade for their work. And because I love a good bifurcation -- or in this case, trifurcation? -- we will further distinguish this B- group into three tiers. Let's proceed in typical worst-to-first fashion.
Tier 3 -- "I liked the music and not much else"
Games: Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Jedi Fallen Order, GTA 5, Middle-earth Shadow of War
I've already littered this site with complaints around Fallen Order and Remake, so let's place the spotlight on GTA and War. These two games are opposites: one paired a genius open world storytelling environment with combat controls so worthless you have no choice but to enable autoaim; the other placed a fantastic fighting game on top of a vacant open world without a single element of notable story. Could we somehow combine these games?
Also, is the nemesis system in Shadow of War one of the most overrated ideas in video games? I've played both the original and the sequel in this series, and never once did the game manage to provide the 'legacy' component of revenging myself on an enemy who defeated me before. It never clicked for me. It felt no different than fighting a boss, losing to that boss, then trying again and finally winning.
Best in this tier: GTA 5. Although the combat was a net zero? a net negative 100? a net negative 2,000? the rest of the game was solid. There is something so immersive about cruising around a realized city in the vehicle of your choice, living out impromptu chase scenes and dramatic escapes reminiscent of movies spanning Terminator all the way to Baby Driver.
Worst in this tier: It has to be Fallen Order. That game had so much potential, but was riddled with so many stupid things: glitches, dumb control schemes (I will never get over having to use L2 to climb), inconsistent force powers ... you name it, I woof at it. And yet somehow I'm excited for the sequel. Riddle me that.
Tier 2 -- "He likes me, he likes me not"
Game: Metal Gear Solid V
Am I cheating? Didn't I write about this game already too? Yes I did. Great memory, my dear dedicated reader. Honestly, I just liked the tier name. I can picture famed Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima sitting somewhere in his office, plucking petals from a flower, whispering to himself, "My fans love Metal Gear V, they love him not."
Metal Gear V is a contradiction. It's a great game that isn't great. There's not much more to say.
Best in this tier: MGS V. At its peak, the freedom and creative play that Metal Gear lays before the alter of your controller is as good as almost any game ever made.
Worst in this tier: MGS V. At its valley, the story of Metal Gear is so awful that it would make as much sense if this game were set in the Gilmore Girls universe.
Tier 1 -- "You were this close to perfection"
Games: Spiderman, Spiderman Miles Morales, Ghost of Tsushima, Guardians of the Galaxy, Horizon Forbidden West, Astro's Playroom, Star Wars Skywalker Saga, Batman Arkham Knight
Man there are some fine moments in this group of games. Let's start by highlighting the Skywalker Saga and Astro's Playroom as being the first games my kids ever played. These aren't special games in their own right, but the accessibility they provide to a 6-year old and a 3-year old is top of class. And just because these games aren't all-NBA, doesn't mean they couldn't qualify for an occasional all-star game. What I mean is, they're good! But they wouldn't belong in this class if it wasn't for the kid factor, so let's move on.
The Spiderman twins are such great games. Set aside the excellent combat and fun story, and you remember that simply swinging through an impeccably realized New York City is one of the most fun and addictive feelings a video game has generated for me; plummeting towards the ground at full speed next to the freedom tower right before webbing your way out of danger into a vault is in the same neighborhood as recalling Kratos' axe, swinging Joel's studded 2x4, perfectly timing Madden's Hit Stick, or finishing a shootout on horseback in Read Dead. A bit of repetitiveness is all that holds the Spidermen back from class A status. For more on that topic, let's turn it over to Batman Arkham Knight!
Batman Arkham Knight is so fun. All of the actual "play" of the game is great. Beating enemies up, cruising Gotham in the Batmobile, and inflicting terror via stealth and gadgetry is terrific but there's something missing. It's the same curse that invades almost every open-world, the unrelenting drive to fill every nook and cranny with repetitive chores and challenges.
Having addressed the kid entertainment and the comic book heroes, three games ascend to the top of the class, each bringing its own unique resume. Ghost of Tsushima is the game that just makes the most sense out of these three. I don't mean "its story makes sense", I just mean it's the game that has the most cohesive product. The story works, the combat works, the music works, the open world works, and importantly, the repetitive elements of the open-world work.
Lots of open-world games are weird because for one moment you'll be completing a mission that helps you save the entire galaxy, and then the next moment you'll be completing a mission to find missing ingredients for a villager's soup. Those about faces leave me feeling unsatisfied every time. These don't exist in Tsushima. The story is that Mongol's have taken over your Japanese island, and you need to drive the Mongols out. So every time you go on a side quest to save another farm stead, or to kill another group of bandits, it works. It makes sense.
Horizon Forbidden West doesn't. This game is so stuffed with activities that one moment you'll be saving a town from an enormous dinosaur robot and the next you'll be playing a chess game? That's weird! Or to borrow a favorite buzzword of video game critics, it's dissonant. (ugh, I feel like a sellout)
Forbidden West's map is so cluttered with icons it's honestly hilarious.
I once had to do a school presentation on epilepsy and to make the event more 'personable' I brought a picture of a neighbor kid to the class, claiming he was a sufferer of said trauma, when in fact he was as healthy as a horse. This story comes to mind as I look at this map -- it overwhelms the eyes.
Also, why did they have to make the mounting of machines suck so bad? It sounds awesome to ride on a robo-velociraptor until you realize you have zero field of vision and the machine moves slower than Aloy. It sounds awesome to fly on a bird's back until you try to move the camera once to get a view of the amazingly detailed world ... and you can't. I have a 55-inch TV and the creators made these machines take up 54 of the inches.
But but but but but. Forbidden West has something to it, make no mistake. There are moments when you'll face a perfectly detailed machine, backlit by some of the most amazing environments made in gaming, and you'll slow down time and deploy an armor-tearing arrow into the perfect spot, dislodging a key weapon of that machine, that you can then use in the current battle and hoooboy is that an addicting experience. I loved jumping from weapon to weapon, fiddling with element combinations, targeting weak spots, setting traps. Forbidden West is so good when it's good, but it feels like homework when it isn't. The ho hum story, the overabundance of nonsense activities, and the grind to unlock entertaining attack combinations holds it back from valedictorian status.
And finally we come to Guardians of the Galaxy. This is technically the worst game of these three: it's combat was the least interesting and it's graphics were the weakest. But not so fast! Guardians may have lacked from a technical perspective, but it was actually the most fun of the three because the story and the dialogue choices brought the entire game to life. If playing Forbidden West felt like physics homework, Guardian's felt like the end of school carnival.
At the top of this "fun" element was the ability to converse. There have been games before that let you choose how to drive a conversation by selecting prompts or responses, but those prior installments are put to shame by what Guardians pulled off. The pure number of conversation choices you get to make, plus the impact they have on the story, plus the impact they have on the characters, plus the fact that many of the answers are hard to decide on ... makes this the most successful choose your own conversation game ever made.
By a factor of 60? Like there's no point even comparing it. Guardians stands alone as one of the most fun games I've ever played because I cared about the team I was a part of and I cared about how I talked to that team. The internet estimates that a person says between 13,000 and 20,000 words a day. Guardians made every one of them count.
Best in this tier: This is a hard one, but I think it has to be Guardians. Tsushima may have been the better all-around game, but Guardians brought me more joy. It's close, but I'll remember more fondly throwing grenades with Rocket and entrapping enemies with Groot while jamming to the tune of "Take on Me" more than I will the first time I entered the "Ghost Stance" and wrought havoc on my Mongol enemies. I'll remember choosing to throw Rocket over the ravine or selling Groot as a monster more than I'll remember liberating Tsushima.
Worst in this tier: It pains me but Batman takes last place here. The fighting and the story was equal to the Spiderman installments, but swinging through the streets of New York trumps driving the batmobile.
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