Tag: undertale

Old Game Of The Year 2019

Last week we covered my game of the year for 2019 but being a cheap person most of the games I play end up being from previous years, so today let’s give out the awards for my old game of the year.

Bronze: ZHP Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman

If you want to play a dangerous drinking game go on the Switch eshop and take a drink for every game that describes itself as rogue lite or rogue like. Having tried a few of these I’d come to the decision that they weren’t for me, having to replay the whole of a game and lose all your stat progress when you die ends up being frustrating to me.

But then I played through a game from the backlog ZHP a game with gameplay more in the actual style of Rogue itself and surprisingly really got into it. The advantages this game has over the current crop of indie titles is that a) it is split into multiple separate levels so if you die you only have to redo that level rather than the entirety of the game. The other advantage is that when you die you lose your current level but it also keeps track of all the levels you lost and these permanently affect your base stats and how much they increase when levelling up, so even in death you are still maintaining some of the progress you’ve achieved. Further to this the story ties back into this gameplay loop as the basis over it is persevering through adversity and becoming a better person.

ZHP has basically revitalised some interest in a gameplay style that I thought was dead to me.

Silver: Batman the Enemy Within

The first season of the Telltale Batman game was willing to play things out differently to the established lore of Batman and was interesting. I had thought I’d lost the chance to play through the second season after the Telltale closure but found out it was still on the Playstation store and jumped at the chance to play it.

The big marketing push for season two was the Joker and that can go one of two ways; some of the best regarded Batman stories feature the Joker, but on the flip side due to the characters popularity there’s many stories with him that just end up derivative and forgettable. Thankfully Telltale pulled it off with there own spin on the character that explores the nature or nurture argument that the Joker himself made with the one bad day statement of The Killing Joke.

I’ve kept this deliberately vague since it is a story focused game but if you are a Batman fan this is well worth checking out for an actually unique take on the Joker.

Gold: Undertale

Fandoms on the internet are a tricky thing, Undertale had shall we say some passionate fans that would not shut up about the game and go as far as attacking people streaming or doing a let’s play of the game because they were “playing it wrong”. Ironically these people who love the game turned off myself and many others from the game, but I finally tried this game after a friend’s recommendation and I now get how it generated such a passionate fanbase.

There is so much to love about the game; the shmup/RPG hybrid combat that plays out differently for every battle with extra layers in boss battles, the way it handles the impact of choices and how these choices aren’t just picking from a list of options, the relatable characters personally I could relate to Papyrus pretty much immediately (which might not reflect well on me), the way playthroughs can vary so much and tie back into each other, and of course some excellent music that has caused the creator Toby Fox to go on and produce tracks for Game Freak.

If like me you were put off by the fanbase just try the game and see if it clicks for you, if you don’t like it you’re probably same to have that opinion now years after its originally release.

Undertale – Impressive Combat

I like to keep up to date with all the biggest gaming trends and crazes. So today let’s take a look at the biggest indie game… of 2015.

Undertale has a bit of an intense fanbase and ironically that intensity ended up turning me off the game for a long time. I finally picked up a while ago but a friend who isn’t normally into this kind of game talked about how much they enjoyed it and that was the final push I needed to give it a go. I’m only a couple of hours in and I’m already so impressed that I get why it drew so much attention and I just had to write about it. There’s been a lot of praise thrown out there for it around areas like it’s humour, story and long term choices, instead what I want to talk about is how well it handles its unique combat mechanics.

At its core Undertale seems to be a turn based RPG but one unique part is what happens when you are attacked, you don’t just take damage instead you play a twin stick shooter section without the second stick or the shooting, essentially you move around a box (with you represented by a heart) dodging attacks that could come from anywhere. They can come from anywhere because what is really interesting is that very enemy has their own unique attacks, with the different patterns and modifications keeping the battles feeling fresh.

With most battle systems the best execution and experience comes from the boss battles, and Undertale’s first proper boss fight was no exception so let’s break down the Papyrus fight. Prior to this point Papyrus has been an unthreatening joke so his first attacks are just a few bones moving across the lower part of the box that you can easily avoid by staying put where you start. His next attack is far more complicated with bones of heights coming across the top and bottom moving at different speeds, except these are all light blue and previous fights have taught us that by not moving these attacks don’t damage you, so again is totally unthreatening and you do nothing. But something weird happens at the end of this attack, your heart turns blue and falls to the bottom of the box.

This battles twist is that gravity is applied to you making these previously unthreatening attacks a danger. Now you have to jump over his attacks instead. From here on the attacks start developing new complexities every attack, first the bones vary in height, then some come from the top that you utilise the gravity effect to dodge, next it adds back in the blue bones and attacks coming from both directions. It then throws in attacks that come from the top and bottom at the same time as well as strings of bones together making you consider your height and positioning during you jump more. From here it iterates on these mechanics by utilising them in varying and more complicated patterns, though it will still throw in another curve ball during these with bones that change height as they move to make sure you aren’t getting too complacent.

What I love about this is how it introduces the basic setup for attacks, then preemptively shows you several of the complications to come all within a safe environment. It then changes up the mechanics especially for this fight, introducing new complications throughout the fight that work with his new mechanic and develop how you utilise it. You see many games where their mechanics stagnate over their play time and don’t develop, but Undertale pulls it off within a single battle and this is so genuinely impressive.

Given that I’m very early into Undertale and felt compelled to write about it, I’m really looking forward to what the rest of the game has to offer, maybe I’ll have to rebrand this as an Undertale blog.