melonbreadreviews-blog

[melonbreadreviews-blog]

Feathers

I thought I could mend parts of me,

All the tethered bits hung out to dry.

I saw them, floating red feathers that fly,

My finger the string, whittled away, cracked bone.

I’ve tried to sink, down to the bottom,

Past the dregs of coffee, unheated powder.

I thought the ocean was soft, but it screams louder,

I’ve hit rock, and can sink no further.

I thought I could mend parts of me,

I wanted to jam a molded puzzle back together.

It seems my kite has been pushed into the ether,

My hand I give away, worn down ring finger.

My feet tangle with the weeds and I tumble down,

And I laugh at these untethered feathers,

These dried out parts of me.

- Melon

[melonbreadreviews-blog]

My Winter with Celeste

Noel Berry - Matt Makes Games 

Matt Makes Games’ Celeste creates a beautiful, honest atmosphere the moment its soundtrack begins to play over the title screen. The simplicity of its mechanics, the rhythm of its level designs, and the emotional depth of its title character are deeply intertwined and introspective, and that connection makes Celeste a journey through the bittersweet emotions of the player. There is a biting nostalgia at the core of this game, and the mechanics reflect that, but Celeste also creates a narrative that is hidden in tucked away corner rooms and extra bits of dialogue. Celeste is proof that narrative can exist without the explicit presence of a layered story that bogs down a beautiful platforming experience. 

Keep reading

[melonbreadreviews-blog]

My Winter with Celeste

Noel Berry - Matt Makes Games 

Matt Makes Games’ Celeste creates a beautiful, honest atmosphere the moment its soundtrack begins to play over the title screen. The simplicity of its mechanics, the rhythm of its level designs, and the emotional depth of its title character are deeply intertwined and introspective, and that connection makes Celeste a journey through the bittersweet emotions of the player. There is a biting nostalgia at the core of this game, and the mechanics reflect that, but Celeste also creates a narrative that is hidden in tucked away corner rooms and extra bits of dialogue. Celeste is proof that narrative can exist without the explicit presence of a layered story that bogs down a beautiful platforming experience. 

Of course, Celeste was actually released in January of this year, and much of the praise I’ve just heaped onto this game isn’t something unfamiliar to audiences. Still, I think it’s important to recognize games as they come to matter in our own lives; just because I missed Celeste in January doesn’t mean it matters less to my life experiences this year. My own journey through 2018 has been split into two halves, and I often myself interpreting the meaning of the earlier half of this year through the art I’m enjoying now. Celeste at its very core is a mix of the normally disjointed parts of ourselves, like self-confidence and empathy, through a fluid art design that combines classic platforming graphics with stills that act like animation cells, plucked from modernism and inserted into dialogue. 

Through the journey of Celeste’s main character, Madeline, players are tasked with unearthing narrative and further hours of gameplay through bits of Madeline’s personality, like floating strawberries and abandoned cassette tapes. Through the game’s beginning levels, these sorts of things feel like a novelty, but as the game progresses, and as Madeline herself begins to realize more about her own self-doubt and the people around her, the objects themselves take on a new meaning. They serve as reminders of the pieces of ourselves that we have to look for on our journeys of self-discovery, and how incredibly difficult but necessary it is to search for those pieces. 

The characters Madeline meets along the way are incredibly unique and flavored for the ambiance Celeste invokes. They are visions of the world we live in, with dialogue we relate to, and insecurities we sympathize with, but they remain fragments that we aren’t able to understand because Madeline can’t understand them herself. Celeste is a journey in self-discovery, and that journey is a mirror for our own vulnerable adventures. 

Celeste has become synonymous with a throwback style of difficult but fair platforming that is native to new age independent titles. That sort of system is nostalgic for gamers of a generation before mine, and refreshing for the generation that succeeds my own, but in some ways it has remained incredibly uninteresting to me. I know what my limits are when playing a game, and the painful repetition associated with throwback platformers has never really stuck with me as a positive method of learning game mechanics. Celeste, though incredibly fair and consistent, is a game I find immediately accessible for consumers of every genre, because its mechanics are well conceived and simple. While each level presents new challenges that have evolved from the last, it never requires some new gimmick to be hammered into the hands of the player. Dashing, wall climbing, and jumping are clean because they remain the same through the entirety of Madeline’s journey. 

Equally important to the ways in which the player navigates the environment of Celeste is just how punishing the game is for new players. Celeste is a game that begs its audiences to make mistakes while jumping, not because it wants to shame them, but because Celeste, more than anything, is a game about learning. In a fashion that mirrors Madeline’s journey of self-discovery, players are often tasked with the duty of failing a screen, over and over, until each part of its puzzle is learned. This isn’t something new to Celeste, but it feels incredibly natural in the narrative flow of the game. Failure is something Madeline must experience in order to become more self-confident, but Celeste never punishes players for that failure. A death simply drops the player at the beginning of the screen, and the world turns again. 

I will make the disclaimer, though, that I played Celeste exclusively on my Switch, and more specifically only on a handheld. The intimacy of the narrative felt incredibly special and entrancing when held in my fingers, and I wouldn’t trade that experience. I do think that titles like Celeste represent something different for everybody, and the ways in which players experience the game should reflect those differences. Regardless of platform, I think it remains a personal reflection of its own audience. 

I will say that I didn’t find the Pico-8 portion of the game to be particularly interesting, but not because of its gameplay or aesthetic. It appears out of context in a particular level on the game, and after interacting and playing through some of it, it becomes unlocked and can be accessed through the title screen. In the flow of that level, playing through Pico-8 felt disjointed, and it made me want to take a break from playing for a while. There wasn’t another moment of the game that felt as off-putting as that, though when I returned to play the mode after completing the level, I found myself having a lot of fun. 

Ultimately, Celeste is a personal journey that means something entirely different to every player that crosses its path. Madeline is a gateway for players to experience their own self-doubts without being tied to a story-driven immersion. Celeste drops players into immersion through simple but consistent mechanics and a beautiful aesthetic that reflects its own emotional journey. Months later, Celeste is still a must-play for audiences this year, and acts as a lens through which the community will view  the emotional narratives of upcoming releases. 

[melonbreadreviews-blog]

Playing ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ Three Years Later

I’ll admit, I’m often late to the party on major title releases in gaming. I’d like to tell you that it’s an intentional choice of mine, that it’s in my best interest to let the best and worst parts of these landscape altering pieces of art simmer in a pot together. I picked up Bloodborne on a whim three years after its release, and after about a two hour play session, I decided it wasn’t for me; three months later I was glued to my TV every night after work searching every nook and cranny that the hunter’s dream had to offer me.

My point is that buying a game upon its initial release is a commitment to either loving or hating that game. I often feel compelled to shower praise on the solid parts of games that I love, and pressure to explain with hyperbole the games I just couldn’t vibe with. Playing Bloodborne years after its release at a much lower price allowed me to put it down when I didn’t enjoy it, and pick it back up when I needed it. The parts of it that I didn’t like weren’t exacerbated by a pressure to validate my own experiences relative to the gaming community. Likewise, when i picked the game up again, I loved it not because I thought I should, but because the experience itself was legitimately breathtaking.

Three months later, set against the familiar hum and drum of my slowly dying Playstation 4, my experience with CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt begins. I tried to begin this same journey a few months earlier, but that run died on the starting line in a messy tutorial and a post-Bloodborne haze. One enormous Dragon Quest XI run later, and I’m finally ready to give this journey three years in the making a chance. My expectations are a mixed bag; I carry with me the influences of a thousand burning reddit threads and the weight of an inescapable question: Has this game aged well?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Witcher franchise (I’ve never read the series or played a mainline game before touching The Witcher 3, so you’re not alone!), the main plot of the game follows the journey of a Witcher named Geralt as he searches for his protege and ward Ciri while also fending off the primary antagonistic force of the game, the Wild Hunt. Witchers serve as bounty hunters of the region, often dealing with the monsters and villains ordinary folk are incapable of handling themselves. Throughout the game, players can feel the tension in the air between Geralt and the people around him, often including the ones he saves. Witchers exist outside the realm of normalcy in this universe, and to some extent the amount of agency the franchise gives you over the lives of the people who exist around you is a direct cause of the aforementioned tension. Though the social world Geralt inhabits mirrors the dangers of the physical world around him, there are romantic options in the game that allow for a deeper understanding of his character and The Witcher universe. The lore aspect of this game really separates it from similar titles in the same genre.

My first memories of the game still hold true, though my feelings about them have changed. I love the comic style art that flashes across the screen as the game loads, not because it matches the aesthetic of the game, but precisely because it does not. If I compare The Witcher 3 to other iterations of the same genre like Skyrim or Fallout, I find myself enjoying that not every moment of The Witcher is something that I need to take seriously. Sometimes, it’s okay to be reminded of the fact that I am actually playing a game and not living and dying by the decisions I make in this world.

That isn’t to say that decisions in this game don’t matter, though; I find that The Witcher 3 places weight on its decisions in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, rather than Skyrim or Fallout. There are several moments in the game that require a timed quick response in conversations or during action, and those quick responses sometimes dictate both the flow of ongoing dialogue and possible relationships with the characters around Geralt. There are even dialogue options that seem quite diplomatic on the surface, but end in brawls or even death for characters that the player did not expect. These moments are meant to teach the player just how much agency they have over the lives around them; sometimes Geralt feels like a god, and sometimes he feels just as vulnerable to the whims of the world as the people around him.

Normally, worlds that freely give that sort of agency to the player overwhelm me. I feel paralyzed by just how much my choices matter, and my love for the friends I’ve made throughout the story keeps me from playing the game as intended. Through the use of guides and reddit threads, I orchestrate my game in order to keep those characters alive, and that leaves me with less of an experience in the end. The Witcher 3, however, doesn’t leave me paralyzed in the same way. Because much of the main narrative is decidedly linear, Geralt is free to explore the world around him, which includes contracts to kill creatures and free spirits and occasional games of a fairly fun but not too complex card game called Gwent. Not every decision has a role to play in the main story, and the ones that do feel natural in the game’s flow. Geralt is both insanely powerful and incredibly vulnerable, but I never fear for the outcome of his story while enjoying the fun of making decisions.  

The skippable tutorial of the game remains not so skippable considering the amount of experience I have with The Witcher 3’s combat, but I appreciate that I have the option of ignoring it if I decide to run through new game plus. It’s here that the meat of the game comes to the forefront. The reason I initially put down The Witcher 3 was because I didn’t enjoy the flow of combat, which includes the two primary slashing attacks with two variants of weapons, a myriad of magical powers called Signs, and the use of items like bombs, crossbows and oils which can be applied to Geralt’s main weapons. If you’re just judging the combat of the game on the first few hours, The Witcher 3 may not meet your expectations of a major title release. When disjointed in the name of learning, the combat feels clunky, and the first few contracts in the region, especially on higher difficulties, are a major challenge for the uninitiated.

But in the same way I came to love Bloodborne, I’ve come to adore The Witcher 3 because of my journey with it. Sitting through the first few hours of the game, especially in 2018, can be sort of a grind. The story has yet to materialize, the combat is underdeveloped, and Geralt himself can seem unrelatable, but as the hours move on, the game opens up in parallel fashion to the world it encompasses. The combat itself feels incredibly fluid, each piece of it tied together in a way that challenges the player to learn how to be a Witcher, while also rewarding enough to encourage growth and not detract from the side-questing and story that make this game fun. The Witcher 3’s systems include a hearty dodging mechanic that feels clunky outside of battle, but seamless in it, and a parry system that is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties. Geralt’s magic, Signs, interact with objects in the world, but they can also be morphed and shaped into crowd control devices. The ability tree is extensive, but in a way that represents a mixing of action and role-playing. Each playthrough can be different, but Geralt remains much of the same, just upgraded.

Though not combat in a traditional sense, I think The Witcher 3’s in-game card system, Gwent, represents an entirely different method of fighting for players. Though not required, there are various quests given to Geralt in different regions of the game which involved beating skilled Gwent players at cards. While the game involves a little bit of strategy, it’s never overwhelming, and because Gwent isn’t a major factor in the story, it’s skippable for fans who don’t enjoy it. I found myself going from inn to inn, challenging keeps to games for their best cards, and I really came to love a part of the game I didn’t enjoy all that much at first. It’s a missable portion of the game, but it definitely adds dimension to the gameplay without requiring too much effort on the part of the player.

Much of the game’s story is very compelling, and it isn’t saddled with an extensive lore that the player is forced to grapple with. There is lore, yes, but that lore is discoverable all over the world, and it’s the player’s choice to explore it, or not. There is a distinct moment in the first 20 hours or so of the game that allows the player to learn about about Geralt’s relationship with Ciri through dialogue options with another character. The player can listen to all of the heavy lore in the dialogue, or simply skip it. The Witcher 3 is chalk full of story, but it never asks the player to share the burden of that story. In much the way you can flow in and out of the narrative of the story through side-questing and contracts, you can simply choose not to pay attention to certain parts of the main quest line.

That isn’t to say that the story is lacking or is unfocused. There are reasons to want to stay on track, including a wide array of characters who are, though not as interesting as Geralt, incredibly complex. The Witcher 3 does a fantastic job of presenting its best qualities though, and those qualities encourage players to explore the world around them and creative a narrative journey that varies significantly from player to player. Whether or not a player values that storytelling approach, though, depends on their own taste. Personally, I found that I could have my fill of Gwent and monster hunting, and then pick right back up where I left the main story.

The Witcher 3 is not without its faults, despite my glowing praise up to this point. While the world itself is rendered beautifully, I found the interactions with other characters to pose the biggest problems for the game’s graphics. There were times where Geralt’s face would simply teleport all over the screen until the game was able to settle into the set animations for the dialogue, and I distinctly remember an interaction between Geralt and Triss Merigold which involved Triss pressing a hand to her face that was stuck in the Igni battle animation for fire. While these graphical glitches don’t detract from the overall product, they are wrinkles on the surface of the game that begin to show its age. I was surprised that the world remained incredibly stable, save for a few times I found my horse could fit between a clustered group of trees better than I could, while the dialogue options proved incredibly difficult for the animations in the game. It reminded me a lot of my time with Mass Effect, in both good and bad ways. There was a certain novelty, but maybe that novelty is a bit too dated for a Playstation 4 title.

I’d like to end this review where I started, and that is on the subject of playing games years after they’ve already debuted. I wish I was a strong enough person to not feel the pressure that comes with making a commitment to a new title, but I often let reviews and recommendations, either positive or negative, affect the way I experience games. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a near perfect example of my current status as a consumer, because I’ve been able to enjoy all the good that the game has to offer without taking the bad bits too seriously. I did expect the game to be great, of course, but I didn’t expect it to be perfect, and that’s partly because I don’t have a need to be justified in having purchased it. I haven’t tasked myself with deciding The Witcher’s place in history; that’s already been decided. So, for now, I feel quite content to stroll along cobblestone city roads and swampy marshes, living life as a Witcher.