Tag: wayforward

#oneaday Day 95: Yars Rising – First impressions

My copy of Yars Rising, the new game from WayForward and Atari, arrived today. I’ve been playing it for the last three hours or so and I really like it. It’s a solid exploratory platformer with a great soundtrack and the interesting wrinkle that in order to unlock new abilities, open doors and acquire upgrades, you have to play numerous variations on the Atari 2600 classic Yars’ Revenge.

I’m disappointed by how some people I know have been reacting to this game, though. Today I’ve seen people writing it off without trying it on the grounds of its anime-inspired art style, the dialogue in its trailer and even its price. (For the record, it’s £24.99, which I think is an eminently reasonable price for a good quality game with decent production values, which is what this is.) I also saw people prepared to write it off based on its first two published review scores, which both happened to be low.

This is one of those situations where, I suspect, review scores will be utterly useless. I defy anyone to play it and conclude that it is a “4/10” game, which is what those first two publications suggested. Yes, one of them was the notoriously stingy Edge magazine and can thus probably be ignored by most people. The other complains of “poor execution”, which is simply nonsense however you look at it.

Anyway, I am satisfied with what I have played so far; it is very much in line with what I thought when I tried the demo in a Steam Next Fest a while back. It’s a smooth, slick exploratory platformer with satisfyingly weighty combat, a wisecracking heroine who manages to be cocky without going full Marvel movie about it, and some interesting mechanics. The soundtrack, featuring music from some very cool artists including frequent Atari collaborator Megan McDuffee, Moe Shop and more, is excellent, and the voice acting is of very good quality.

Most of all, it just plays well. Anyone who has played a WayForward platformer will know what to expect from this one: an expansive map that frequently teases you with areas that you can’t reach yet and thus will have to come back to later. One of the best things about Yars Rising is how these areas are marked on the in-game map: not only are “blocked off” areas marked as such, they also indicate what the “problem” is when you select them. The map also updates to show you newly accessible areas when you acquire new abilities, too, so you can always quickly see at a glance any areas you might want to return to in order to investigate.

The game invites this sort of exploration pretty much from the outset. While there is always a big flashing beacon on the map indicating where the next major story event is, at any given moment there are usually some other areas you can go off and investigate. The game doesn’t specifically point you at them so in theory you could “miss” them, but anyone who has played this sort of game before knows how to be thorough, I’m sure.

Yars Rising also resists the temptation to make getting around too easy. There is a “fast travel” system of sorts in the form of the elevator in the QoTech building, but accessing each set of doors (which becomes a fast travel point from thereon) is generally behind a relatively challenging platforming sequence that you’ll have to overcome. The game strikes a good balance in this regard, though; while you will have to redo some tricky platforming sequences when backtracking or exploring, any particularly time-consuming sequences such as avoiding patterns of lasers are usually a “once and done” sort of affair, with the lasers turning off after you’ve passed through or activated the terminal beyond them.

And the Yars’ Revenge-themed hacking sequences are excellent. I was concerned in the demo that they might run out of ideas pretty quickly, but so far there have been no direct repeats. As you progress through Yars Rising, more and more individual mechanics are introduced to the hacking sequences, and the more challenging hacks (particularly those in optional areas) combine these different elements together in creative ways. Of particular interest to longstanding Atari fans will be the way in which these sequences pay homage not only to the original Yars’ Revenge, but also other Atari classics such as Missile Command and Centipede. There’s even some non-copyright-infringing Space Invaders-style sequences, which acknowledges how the port of Space Invaders to Atari 2600 was something of a “killer app” for the console in the early days.

This is a game that has been made with love and respect for both the modern exploratory platformer genre, and Atari’s heritage. It disappoints me to see how many people are refusing to even contemplate it based on something exceedingly superficial — with some coming annoyingly close to the usual casting of aspersions on anyone who likes games with an anime-inspired art style.

But anyway. I’m enjoying myself, and ultimately that’s what really matters. If you enjoy a good exploratory platformer and have a love for classic Atari, I encourage you to check it out; it’s a good time.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

2358: I Whip My Hair Back and Forth

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Shantae is a series I’ve been meaning to explore for a long time. Specifically, ever since I reviewed the iOS version of second game Risky’s Revenge a few years ago and was absolutely enamoured by the graphics and overall presentation before being almost immediately put off entirely by the atrocious controls, proving once again that you should never, ever make traditional console-style games for platforms whose only input method is a touchscreen.

As part of the retro gaming and emulation kick I’ve been on recently, I decided I’d check out the Shantae series from the beginning, starting with its Game Boy Color incarnation. Shantae, as the first game is simply called, is widely regarded as one of the most impressive titles to be released on the GBC, as well as being a great game and the start to a marvellous series in its own right.

The eponymous Shantae is a half-genie girl who is the self-appointed protector of fishing village Scuttle Town. One morning, the voluptuous pirate Risky Boots shows up, bombards the town with cannon fire and then makes off with a Steam Engine, a new invention from local crackpot Mimic based on blueprints he found on an archaeological expedition. Frustrated with herself that she was unable to stop Risky’s attack, Shantae pledges to try and get one step ahead of the pirate and find out what she’s really up to, and thus begins your standard video game quest of “find the shiny doohickeys before the bad guy does”.

In terms of gameplay, Shantae is a fairly simple Metroidvania-esque platformer in that it isn’t really divided into discrete levels. Instead, there’s an overworld which wraps around on itself, meaning you can start walking in one direction and eventually end up back where you started, and a number of small caves and larger “labyrinths” that can be accessed. There are also five towns that act as waypoints; completing a sidequest where you collect “Warp Squids” enables you to teleport back to that town at any point; the towns also each house various facilities such as shops and minigames.

Shantae definitely plays extremely well, with responsive controls and well-designed, well-paced maps that are challenging but rarely cheap, the odd “leap of faith” aside. As you progress through her quest, you unlock various transformation abilities, each of which are used by playing a rhythm-based minigame and pressing particular combinations of buttons in time with the music for Shantae to make use of her considerable (and frighteningly erotic) bellydancing skills. These transformations, in true Metroidvania tradition, enable you to reach otherwise inaccessible areas through various means: the Monkey form, for instance, can climb walls, while the Harpy form can fly.

While the gameplay is solid, where Shantae’s main appeal lies is in its presentation. Although limited by the low resolution and limited colour palette of the Game Boy Color, Shantae is a gorgeous-looking game, with attractive, atmospheric backdrops and excellent sprite work. The star of the show is, appropriately enough, Shantae herself, who is animated with an amazing degree of fluidity and personality — and unlike previous games which had particularly fluid animation, such as Prince of Persia and Flashback, Shantae doesn’t sacrifice responsiveness for smooth animation.

Shantae’s visual appeal comes from the sheer range of animations she’s been programmed with. Rather than simply being built with traversal animations in mind — walking, running, jumping, falling — Shantae has plenty of unique animations only seen in certain situations. There are the dance animations, for starters, one of which can be found on every direction on the Game Boy D-Pad and its two action buttons. When using these for gameplay purposes, you only see them for a brief moment, but they’re so visually compelling that it’s more than a little tempting to just switch into Dance mode by tapping Select and admiring Shantae’s moves for a few minutes before continuing on your quest. On top of this, Shantae has a number of “mood” animations used during dialogue sequences that give her a great deal of visual character, and her personality is backed up by some snappy, witty but brief dialogue that gives you the important information you need to proceed while keeping things light and breezy in tone.

So far I’ve cleared the first “Labyrinth”, which was a delightful delve into a well-designed dungeon with some interesting, creative puzzles involving memory, precision jumping and carefully exploring the environment. I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of the game has to offer — and beyond that, finally playing Risky’s Revenge on a platform that can do it justice, followed by its sequel Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse.