Tag Archives: open world

One-Shots

The Good Life: SWERY’s Lake District holiday

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Hidetaka Suehiro, better known as SWERY or SWERY65, is one of the few people in game development that one can honestly call an “auteur”.

His work is immediately recognisable and well worth exploring — and like all good works of art, it doubtless has a different impact on different people, ranging from enthusiastic adoration to outright disgust. While his most famous work to date remains the wonderful Deadly Premonition, the title which made him a (sort of) household name in gaming, his other work is just as intriguing.

Which, of course, brings us to The Good Life, a 2021 release for Windows PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. It’s a game that actually has a fair bit in common with Deadly Premonition, so if you enjoyed that you may well dig this — but it’s also very much its own beast. So let’s delve right into this goddamn hellhole.

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Did Final Fantasy VII Rebirth need to be a humongous, obscenely long open-world game?

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I’m not going to bury the lede here: yes, I firmly believe that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth did need to be humongous, obscenely long open-world game. So let’s spend a bit of time talking about that.

It’s become fashionable to bash open-world games in the last few years, at least partly because for a good long while now, big-budget developers and publishers have been using them as something of a crutch. Rather than providing a carefully structured, well-paced experience, a lot of developers seem to believe that offering the player what they consider “true freedom” (which in practice is rarely anything of the sort) will make up for the game’s shortcomings in other areas.

While there are a lot of companies out there who are very much guilty of that, when Square Enix has made an open-world game — particularly, but not exclusively, one in the Final Fantasy series –it has usually come out rather well. And Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the best to date. Let’s take a closer look.

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Some spoiler-free early impressions from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

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I’ve been eagerly awaiting Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and it actually arrived at my house a couple of days early! As such, I’ve been playing it for the last couple of evenings, and wanted to share a few initial thoughts.

I’m not going to spoil anything about the plot in this piece, because I’m not very far into said plot, and there are seemingly some very interesting things going on. We’ll talk about all that another time; today I wanted to focus particularly on the gameplay that unfolds after about two or three hours: the point at which the game properly “opens up”.

And yes, in a marked contrast from its predecessor Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth really does open up. So let’s take a closer look at that.

Continue reading Some spoiler-free early impressions from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth →
Atelier Mysterious

Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey – Taking a Trip

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cropped-atelier-megafeature-header-1-8868334This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey isn’t the first time that the Atelier series has attempted to focus on a protagonist going on a long journey. Far from it, in fact.

While the “modern” Atelier games are typically associated with the structure of being based around a “hub” location and then radiating out from there, this style of play only makes up some of the series. Atelier Totori and Atelier Ayesha are both explicitly about going on a journey, while Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny, Atelier Meruru and Atelier Shallie all have a significant “journey” component to their narratives, even if they also feature a “hub” location to call home.

But Atelier Firis manages to be a bit different by virtue of the way that it is constructed. Its “open world” nature gives a very different feel to the protagonist’s journey — and makes it stand out amid its peers in a very interesting and positive way. So let’s take a closer look at this idea.

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short;Play, Videos

short;Play: Fuel

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As you’ll know if you’ve listened to our episode of The MoeGamer Podcast on the subject, I love me a good arcade racer.

One of my recent discoveries in this genre was Fuel, a game developed by Asobo Studio and published by Codemasters. If Asobo Studio’s name sounds familiar, it’s because they’re the developers behind the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator. Turns out they’ve been making spectacularly huge, fully explorable open worlds for quite a long time now — although Fuel “only” offers a play area roughly the size of Connecticut rather than the whole Earth.

Check out the action in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Infestation

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The early days of polygonal 3D gaming were gleefully experimental, even though the technology of the time wasn’t quite up to realising the grand vision of many creators.

Infestation from Psygnosis is a particularly interesting example, as it provides a level of interactivity that we don’t tend to see even in a lot of modern games. It was certainly ambitious — though perhaps a little too obtuse for its own good at times.

Get an idea of what it’s all about from my own attempts to stumble about (and get lost in a ventilation system) in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Damocles

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It takes guts to show up for a job you were hired for several months late… particularly when that job is saving an entire planet from destruction by a comet.

Unfortunately, your considerable tardiness (thanks largely to a delay on the planet Targ, as depicted in the original Mercenary) means that there are just three hours and ten minutes before the planet Eris is obliterated by the eponymous comet, and of course the solution to this rather pressing problem is anything but straightforward.

Along the course of your journey through this spectacular polygonal 3D open-world solar system, you’ll have to deal with the aftermath of eccentric professors having a spat with the head of state over a chess game, a severely incompetent post office, an overenthusiastic prison service and that most fearsome foe of all: British parliamentary politics. Damocles is a classic, and in this video I fuck it up completely. Enjoy!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

The Zelda Diaries

The Zelda Diaries: Part 3 – I Wonder What’s Over There

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“I wonder what’s over there” has been an aspect of game design that creators of open world games have been grappling with for some time now.

Ideally, when playing an open world game, the player should be able to find a definitive answer to “I wonder what’s over there” simply by… well, going there. “You see those mountains in the distance? You can actually go there” and all that.

Not every open world game gets this quite right, but Breath of the Wild presents an excellent example of how to do it very well indeed.

Continue reading The Zelda Diaries: Part 3 – I Wonder What’s Over There →

The Zelda Diaries

The Zelda Diaries: Part 1 – A New Beginning

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I’ve had The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sitting on my backlog for a long time now, and I’ve been trying to work out the best way to cover it, because I knew that I definitely wanted to cover it in one form or another.

Was a Cover Game feature right for it? Perhaps, but with one or two exceptions, I tend to prefer to reserve the Cover Game slot for games that don’t get much attention from the mainstream press. And Breath of the Wild has certainly had plenty of mainstream attention.

The other consideration was that Breath of the Wild is a massive game, so doing something a bit more… “long term” was perhaps in order. With that in mind, then, I welcome you to the first installment of The Zelda Diaries, chronicling my journey through this ruined Hyrule, and the thoughts that occurred to me along the way.

Continue reading The Zelda Diaries: Part 1 – A New Beginning →

Features, MoeGamer Awards 2018

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Game of the Year 2018

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more here, but you’re out of time to leave suggestions, I’m afraid!

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Well, here we are once again on the last day of the old year, awaiting the arrival of the new. And, of course, that means one thing for anyone interested in games: the completely arbitrary declaration of “Game of the Year”.

Everyone has different criteria for selecting their own personal Game of the Year. For some, it’s simply the game they enjoyed the most or which took over their life to the greatest degree. For others, it’s to do with technical or artistic achievement. For others still, it’s all about sales figures.

For me, it’s quite simply the game I played this year that I feel was… “best”, across all its various aspects. A game that is a real showcase of just what is out there today, and which I feel is a shining example of what being interested in video games really “means”.

And the winner is…

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