Today was an interesting day. I got to hang out with a bunch of friends, talk to someone I haven't in over a year, and got to play some games. Two in fact: Street Fighter V, or as I like to call it "Hadouken for Days" and the PS4 demo for NieR: Automata, which is what we're talking about today. I'm doing so mainly for two reasons.
First of all, is because NieR: Automata seems like a good place to start looking more deeply into in-depth combat systems that are not somehow reminiscent of Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, and a proper introduction into Platinum Games after Bayonetta went to the back-burner indefinitely and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance kicked my ass on normal because I didn't want to be a pussy by going to easy.
The second reason is because this may be a good opportunity to experience a story by Yoko Taro first hand rather than experiencing it vicariously through the Youtubers I watch. So, without further ado, let's get started.
I'm not going to be talking about the story much because this first impression is on the demo 2-3 months before the game even comes out so talking about the story may come heavily down into speculation, which I want to try to limit when I do these. But also because story is not the reason I play games. I play games for gameplay and combat systems. A bad story can be saved with good gameplay and a fantastic story can be ruined by shitty gameplay, and with me, that will never change.
Now, the first thing I want to bring up with this game because it seems like an obvious high point is the dodge and parry system. Platinum games has a reputation for two things: the first is dodge offset, which was pioneered by Bayonetta, and Parry/Evasion Systems, which are probably a lot more notable.
In Bayonetta, dodging at just the right time will activate Witch Time, which slows down time around you so you can deal damage to opponents that are too slow to react. Metal Gear Rising had an omni-directional parry, where you point the stick at the direction of an attacking enemy and press Square to perform a parry. Witch Time I got a hold of relatively quickly. Practicing Parries, however, proved to be a lot more difficult.
In NieR: Automata, the dodge button serves two purposes, both of which I like. The first is to hold the dodge button and move the analog stick forward, which will result in an evasive dash and if you hold it after the dash is over, 2B will perform a sprint, which I like a lot. Though the dash is faster and covers more ground, I like that the sprint is reliant on the dodge. I just wish the run were faster and covered more ground than the dodge so there would be a reason to maintain a sprint over just spamming dashes. However, if you press the dodge button right as an attack is about to hit, you'll perform a sort of defensive maneuver where 2B will move out of the way and take no damage.
The reason I like this is because, at least for me, it takes the implementation of Witch Time and the mechanic of MGR's parry to make something that I think is a lot more intuitive. Even if people disagree with me, I think tying the parry to the dodge makes using it a lot easier but it also makes parrying a lot safer because, if you hit it too early and you perform a dodge, you're still out of harm's way 9/10 of the time.
One thing that doesn't really sit right with me are the enemy implementation. Bearing in mind, I was playing on Normal so I could have a proper Lock-On, the enemies I was fighting took way too little damage to kill, which made building combos hard and between that, and the parry/dodge implementation, most mob enemies are just completely useless.
This is a bit of a case of Ninja Gaiden II versus Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Ninja Gaiden 2 had a lot of enemies that were easy to kill but a lot of them spammed shuriken and used I-frames to avoid damage. In Sigma 2, there was a lot less shuriken spamming and enemies could take more punishment.
In this game, the enemies are a bit like the ones in NG2. Easy to kill but rely on projectiles. The projectiles are easy to knock out of the air with the melee attacks and the pod in the Bullet Hell sections and, because I'm generally good at both those types of games, these enemies proved to be interesting in terms of abilities but not really durable enough for it to make an interesting encounter.
One thing I also have to say, which is not really a critique but more of an observation is that, this game gives you different attacks depending on what action you use before the current one and, when I heard this from VashTSB, I thought this would make for a really free-form, customizable combat system. However, while I was playing, every attack was the same until I used the parry, at which point the light attack became a launcher. And, because I was playing on someone else's PS4 Pro, I didn't get the chance to experiment with the weapon swapping or anything like that.
Outside of that, the light attack is fast, the heavy attack has more range, light attack can do air combos, heavy attack is a downward dive slash in the air. This effectively makes 4 unique attacks, which is not bad in and of itself but, at least for my experience, it left little in the way of experimentation. Bearing in mind, I'm not an expert on this demo so take that however you like.
There were also two notable decisions that I like about this game, not about the gameplay necessarily but just two aesthetic choices that made the game feel more rewarding to play. The first was, swiping the touch pad left to right caused you to pet the pod, which made for a nice taunt. The other thing, 2B will swipe the camera away if you try to look up her skirt, gives her a feeling of 4th wall awareness that most characters generally don't have if they're not Bugs Bunny or Deadpool. It doesn't necessarily mean she knows she's in a video game but it does mean that she knows what you're up to and will agree or disagree with it at her leisure.
I'm not entirely sold on the camera types this game uses. The behind the back 3D camera is fine and the 2D side-scrolling camera is tolerable as long as you know you're still playing a 3D game. The top down camera, though, is a bit hard to deal with in terms of the combat system. It's a bit late in the development cycle to ask them to remove it but I hope, if anyone working on that project is reading this, that that camera style is put to best use instead of just restricting air-combat viability.
One thing I liked and disliked at the same time was making the Level the enemy you had to beat. What I mean by that is I think it's a really cool concept to have a boss be a level you have to traverse, it's not something that's explored in a lot of games and making a boss a level in its own right is pretty interesting. However, if the boss is too heavily scripted or too much of a set-piece, this novel idea can work against it.
Thankfully, there's not a whole lot in the way of scripted set-piece segments and the only time it happens is in a Bullet Hell section with 9S' Mech, so it's not that much of a hindrance. However, this is worrisome because these set piece segments may be what the game ends up being known for when the core combat system is a lot more praise worthy.
So I'm stuck in a weird middle ground with the enemy design: the enemies that make full use of the core mechanics don't last long enough to fully utilize them and the bosses that do have the proper amount of health are too big and dumb to use the combat system to its fullest either. I'm hoping that the final game has more humanoid or human-sized boss enemies to really test how far players can go.
No comments:
Post a Comment