Gluttons for Punishment

So I won’t be the first person who admits to being somewhat of a machoist when it comes to difficult games.

From Dark Souls to Survival mode in Fallout 4, people seem to love playing with the deck stacked against them.

There’s just something super satisfying about defeating really hard enemies and getting amazing gear as a reward, there’s also that

Beautiful EXP you use to increase your stats or unlock perks.

Today I’m going to talk about two fantastic Indy games that love to bust your balls, but you always come back for the thrill.

There’s Rogue Legacy, and then There’s Hell Divers! Two totally different games when it comes to genre, but they share similarities

when it comes to kicking your teeth in while you grind yourself to greatness.

Rogue Legacy.

Well the name says it all, LITERALLY!

A Roguelike Platformer Developed by Cellar Door games in 2013.

The premise of the game is that you begin as a hero and progress as far as possible into a castle defeating enemies, collecting money and

Searching for bosses.

if the player dies, rather than restarting the game entirely, or from the last point where you died; the player arrives at a character selection screen

of Hero’s three randomly generated descendants. This loop occurs every time you die for the entirety of the game.

Each descendant is born with different character traits, some are fantastic like ADHD that increases the player’s movement speed, and awful ones

Like Alzheimer’s that removes the map from the game for the duration of playing as that character. For masochists like myself this is fantastic, after a

Certain point in the game you may actually enjoy the challenge of selecting the heir that has the worst traits to choose from because, well you’re crazy.


Another way the game likes to punish you is the castle lock-down system.

Because of the RNG nature of the game, the castle becomes randomly regenerated the same way your heirs do. However, the player is given the option

To “lock down” the castle by giving an NPC (The Architect) 40% of the gold you earn within the castle for that loop.

There’s also Charon, a phantom who stands at the castles drawbridge and charges you a toll. How much you ask? ALL OF YOUR GOLD!

That’s why players want to die as rarely as possible, and spend all of their gold on weapon, or character upgrades BEFORE you re-enter the castle.

After reaching the point where levelling up costs within the thousands; players are much less likely to lock-down a castle in favour for keeping their gold.

Rogue Likes, the genre you love to hate to love.

Now most of the time people love to play co-operative games, From team based challenges in battlefield, to 1 V.S. 1 bouts in Street fighter.

But what happens when not only the onscreen enemies can kill you; but your teammates, their equipment, and you, yes even YOU can kill

the character you play as? Well you get Helldivers! the most butt clenching co-op game this side of the Galaxy!

Helldivers was developed by Arrowhead Studios of Magicka fame, and released on March 3^rd 2015 exclusively for the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 4,

and the PlayStation Vita. The game was later released on Steam in December losing its PlayStation exclusivity. The game is an isometric, co-op,

twin stick shooter, for up to 4 players online. You take control of a Helldiver, whose sole purpose is to spread managed democracy across the galaxy

and acquire resources for “SUPER EARTH”.

The game is very satirical and draws heavy inspiration from Aliens and Starship Troopers. Both of those films featured brutal over the top gore

and this is directly reflected in the game. The game is very unforgiving when it comes to friendly fire, and calling down “stratagems”. Stratagems

Are powerful; weapons, vehicles, and tools deployed from your command ship in orbit. The only problems are; not only can the pod you deploy,

Kill you, but you need to correctly input a long sequence of directional buttons like a phone number, or deployment code. If you make a

mistake however you need to re-enter the entire sequence. This can be quite frustrating, especially when there’s 15 enemies on screen,

two of your team-mates are dead and you need to call down both of them but your stratagem is on cool down.

So if it’s so punishing why play? Because you need dat gear. Just like Rogue Legacy you can upgrade your character with new weapons, armour (and
unlike Rogue Legacy) Stratagems.

The loot and level up grind on these punishing games is probably why people like me keep coming back.

Action Heroes and Super Heroes

From Action Heroes to Super Heroes

A lot of people tend to feel that the action hero has gone the way of the dinosaur, a product of their time in the 80’s and 90’s. Guns, Bullets, explosions, and more explosions.
But have they actually been replaced by Super Heroes, or have they simply moved to an environment where they can still thrive in contemporary times. But what about super heroes?
how can they share a marketplace with the action hero and not step on each other’s toes?

In order to better understand what each genre archetype is doing to stay relevant, fresh and exciting;
we’re going to take a look at a particular year that showcased both hero types crushing it (ha see what I did there?).

What can I say other than 2009 had some amazing games; two of which came from some of my favorite franchises. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
One critically acclaimed for being the first game to actually do a “Liscenced property right” becoming the king of super hero games, and the other praised for its never before seen:
elaborate set pieces, gameplay, storytelling, graphics, and technical innovation.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a third person action adventure “metroidvania” game. It came to fruition through a collaborative effort between several parties that actually cared about the I.P. The game was first revealed to the public in 2008. After Edios Interactive obtained the license for a Batman Game in 2007. Edios approached little know British developer Rock-Steady to create the game after seeing their prototype. Once full production finally began, DC comics approached Emmy award winning writer Paul Dini (Batman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics) to create
An original story for a Batman Game due to his
amazing track record (have you seen BTAS!?).

Stories written by some of the most revered comic book authors(who wrote Batman Comics Specifically) such as Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison were influential to the games overall design. The most important factor that contributed
to the immersion of the game was the design team’s commitment to make the player feel like Batman.  They isolated each component that makes Batman BATMAN and exaggerated them until it felt just right. The game also heavily enforced Batman’s no kill
rule but provided a multitude of ways to incapacitate enemies.

Due to the fact that the developers really cared about the IP, and wanted to include the most iconic aspects of the Batman Mythos; Rocksteady ended up casting two most iconic voices for Batman and The Joker ever. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil (Batman: The Animated Series, The New Adventures of Batman and Robin, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited). This alone was able to give any 90’s/00’s kid nostalgia fever to the point that the hype train left the station as soon as it was announced.
 

The linchpin to this masterpiece however was the combat. Rocksteady developed the free flow combat system. Flashy, full of gadget abilities (that can be used to chain combos), and the acrobatic grace of a master ninja were all key components in making you feel like the real Batman (you know the one from the comics and animated films/series, not that silly movie one “where’s the trigger?” please.)  

What I’m really getting at is that Rocksteady did EVERYTHING right, and doing everything right lead to 3 additional sequels and more critical acclaim than you can shake a stick at.
For the kid in all of us who always wanted to be THE BATMAN, Rocksteady gave us the ultimate Saturday morning cartoon fantasy on steroids.

So... with all of this: swinging in the night, taking out baddies by bursting through the floor grates, and fighting 12 enemies at once; surely there couldn’t be any room left for globetrotting and gunfights right? WRONG!

Uncharted 2: Among Theives; the smash follow up to 2007’s Uncharted Drake’s Fortune released only a few months after of Batman: Arkham Asylum, to just as much critical and commercial success. Arkham Asylum put you in the
shoes of an established character, and made you feel like them. Uncharted on the other hand puts you in control of a much less established character and presents them more like an archetype; The Indiana Jones everyman who’ll
break your neck without even thinking twice about it.

Where Arkham Asylum strictly enforced Batman’s no killing policy, Uncharted encourages you to leave a sea of bodies in your wake. If Uncharted Drake’s Deception was an 8 on the intensity level and wow factor, Among Thieves cranks it up to 11
from the moment you press start. I mean come on, you start by waking up in a destroyed train car, hanging off the side of a cliff, in the Himalayas.

Upon Uncharted 2’s release, the game was revered for its highly elaborate set pieces, character design, storytelling, graphics, technical innovation and gameplay mechanics (try saying that on one breath). Clearly Naughty Dog cracked the formula with
Among Thieves and turned us into the murderous treasure hunter we never knew we wanted to be.

Here’s hoping Uncharted 4 A Thief’s End will be the Swansong Nate deserves.