Lightning Round – S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Quake II, Final Fantasy VII

I thought I’d post some impressions and mini-critiques for what I’ve been playing over the last few months. I’ve also been streaming some games (Castlevania, Dead Cells, Blood 1997 coming up soon) at https://twitch.tv/rosodude

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

I recently finished the first game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy, and found it pretty enjoyable overall. There was certainly room for improvement in a lot of aspects, but I was overall impressed with the core gameplay and world design. It was pretty miserable in the beginning, and not in a particularly interesting way that tested resource management or tactics, just savescum until the AI pulls a dumb dumb and you get lucky headshots. Genuinely more frustrating than the much-bitched-about final section (though the rocket launcher guys guarding the power plant can fuck off), which was pretty reasonable with endgame equipment. I didn’t realize just how extremely dependent the game would be on gear — artifacts, armor, and better guns make a bigger difference in encounters than aim and even positioning, as I found myself needing to savescum much less as the game went on. Honestly I think the game would be better with higher accuracy on the shitty starter guns, as enemies would have them too and early combat would be less of a slapfest. After getting some decent assault rifles the combat can be pretty fun. Once I got the hang of some of the hidden mechanics (ADS accuracy boost takes time to activate, only get bonus damage on headshots when waiting between shots) I enjoyed peeking around cover and decisively popping enemy heads. Enemy inaccuracy makes it reasonable to sprint between makeshift pieces of cover, after which you have cool micro-positioning with lean and two states of crouch as enemies try to flank. There was a surprising amount of variety in how even the most linear fights could play out. Too bad stealth is unreliable — why my character has to loudly cycle the action every time I want to equip a gun is beyond me.

My biggest disappointment is the lack of genuine playstyle freedom. You’re pretty much just grabbing the best gear at any given moment and rolling with it. Sure you have assault rifles with slightly different stats, but you’re basically just choosing tweaks in a given tier. Only at the end did I feel like I had some options with at least 3 viable assault rifles and a handful of sniper rifles and shotguns — of course, I still just went with the scoped assault rifle with the highest accuracy. Weapon degradation doesn’t matter at all (rates are too “realistic”), but at least armor degradation makes it worth swapping gear from time to time. Artifacts are the same — just grab a setup with decent protection and endurance and go. No need to spec into hazard resistance. The progression is satisfying, but there’s no real choice. The economy is a complete joke — I literally bought nothing but a single loaf of bread (my player character got hungry during Lab X-16) until the end and dumped my 200,000 rubles on an Exoskeleton before slowly marching into Pripyat. I could find everything for free in the world, so there was never a need to purchase anything. Even on Master, I always had more problems being overloaded with valuable items than I ever did running low on anything. I wish I had felt a real pull to hunt for artifacts and complete jobs to survive. I appreciate that only a few traders will purchase guns and ammo, so you aren’t encouraged to sell off every enemy’s gun to nearby Stalkers.

I actually like the cache system in SoC, where stashes only contain loot after you obtain their GPS coordinates from bodies. I’m not saying you couldn’t have a more traditional system that works well, but in SoC it was honestly nice to have clear direction on when exploring was worth my time. Otherwise I’d feel an incessant compulsion to poke around every corner looking for tiny briefcases, rather than getting on with my life. I like the incentive to roam previously conquered areas and engage with respawned enemies (who can in turn drop more stash coordinates), and it’s also good in that it prevents metagaming on repeat playthroughs where you rush to the best gear from the beginning. Several of the stash locations required some thought to get to as well.

I quite liked the Zone, maybe a bit smaller than I expected but populated with memorable locations. Good variety with open outposts to assault, anomaly fields to navigate through, and linear combat setpieces, which were more enjoyable than I expected. I definitely got into the atmosphere in the underground labs, irradiated Lake Yantar, and the wonderfully spooky road up to the Brain Scorcher with ghostly apparitions coming after the player. The ambient soundscape in each area added a lot to the experience, eliciting many different shades of dread, isolation, and desolate awe. I’m interested to see what the sequels bring to the table in terms of gameplay enhancements and expansions to the Zone.

I played with ZRP 1.07 and only a handful of tweaks enabled (reduced headbob, vanilla grid square size, true accuracy display). I’d recommend it, and I’d also caution against the common myth that Master is the ideal difficulty because enemies die faster — this is completely false, and I think there’s nothing wrong with playing on a lower difficulty so you don’t have to constantly mash the quicksave/load key early on.

Quake II

Quake II doesn’t live up to the hate, but is nowhere near as captivating as the first game (which is in my top 5 and something I replay constantly). Cool level design and fun arsenal, but combat is slow, enemies are bland, and I don’t care for the music (blasphemy, I know).

Q2’s combat is molasses compared to Q1. You have to wait for firing AND pull up/put down animations to swap weapons, which severely limits creative combos. This was strategic in Doom, but Q2’s enemies can’t really threaten you while you’re swapping so it only subtracts depth. The weapons themselves are more fleshed out than Q1’s emaciated arsenal, but they’re all so SLOW. Shotgun pump is slow, Rocket launcher fire rate is slow and has a delay, Chaingun and Hyperblaster spin down are slow. So much time is spent waiting between shots. Swap animations are still present in Quake 3 Arena, but toned down reasonably so you’re not stuck for ages waiting.

Q2’s movement is quite a bit different from Q1. While the ground accelerate function is unchanged, air accelerate variables now prohibit the smooth turns of Q1 bhopping in favor of strafejumping. The end result is that you can go fast in straight lines, but not around corners. Bit of a disappointment but it wasn’t a bad move for the series overall. Ledge/stair jumping is much smoother, too.

Enemies are a major step back from Q1. They mostly stand in place or fly and shoot projectiles. It’s nice that they can’t track hitscan perfectly, but it also means there’s not much that can menace you. The only really interesting ones are the annoying laser dogs and the guys with front shields. I hear you can just pop in the gamex86.dll from The Reckoning expansion to transfer over its AI improvements, which I’ll definitely be doing on replay.

The level design is actually pretty cool. There’s good use of 3D layered environments, and I like that each unit consists of multiple maps that you can travel to and from. Secrets are pretty organic, more like Build than Doom, and I found some cool circle jump skips. Your objectives often require you to backtrack between zones and there are some scripted enemy ambushes to keep things fresh. I never got too lost, but still managed to be impressed by the scale and complexity of missions like the Jail and the Reactor.

I strongly dislike that powerups can be used at will, as it removes the map-wide optimization puzzle to their use that was especially present in Q1’s fourth episode. Also, the Power Shield makes the game way too easy; I didn’t even notice it ran on cells and left it on for the final 3-4 units, was basically invincible and lost minimal health even though I was using the Hyperblaster constantly. I’d trash this item from the game entirely. Equipping grenades from your inventory to throw them individually before you get the Grenade Launcher just extends the already sluggish combat. The Build engine games and Unreal (1998) make a decent case for inventory items in a classic FPS, but here it’s basically a complete waste.

Much has been said about the aesthetics lacking atmosphere compared to Q1, but I have to admit that I also find Q2’s music pretty repetitive and bland. I can (and frequently do) listen to Trent Reznor’s Q1 soundtrack on its own, but Sonic Mayhem’s Q2 soundtrack bored me even as background music, despite my general penchant for industrial rock. None of the tracks are bad, and some (like Descent into Cerberon) stand out when assaulting the Strogg, but I quickly tired of hearing the same guitar tone and drum patterns. It’s also a bit jarring when the music suddenly stops due to an objective completion and you fight enemies in total silence. While Q2 didn’t impress me in this aspect, I do think the game has merits and drawbacks that aren’t frequently discussed, and it’s worth a spot next to other classic shooters.

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII is most often remembered for its story and presentation, but it holds up pretty well in the gameplay design as well. I emulated it on PSX with a ROMhack that fixed the non-functional Spirit stat on armor, and it took me 39 hours (1x speed, no save states) without much deviation from the main content. I recruited Vincent and Yuffie and did the Wutai sidequest, but otherwise I finished the final area without any level 4 limit breaks, ultimate weapons, master materia, purchasing any extra consumable items, or grinding my characters at all — I frequently swapped my party around and had Cloud at level 60 and both Tifa and Vincent at level 58 when the credits rolled. In that context, I think the game’s difficulty is actually quite well-tuned, but if you’re doing a lot of side content and maxing your characters out I’m sure it’s too easy. I was quite satisfied with the challenge the game is able to provide if you’re just rushing through it, without punishing frequent experimentation and suboptimal leveling.

Most of what I’d praise about the gameplay is the character progression. In the absence of class archetypes, characters are still pretty well distinguished by stats, weapon type, and limit breaks which are special abilities your character can unleash after taking enough damage. Characters receive half experience when out of your party of three, so you can occasionally swap them around without worrying about grinding. The materia system allows for a lot of customization, as it grants access to magic spells, special commands, and summon attacks by equipping different types of materia which also raise and lower character stats when equipped, and each can be combined with support materia to enhance and modify their effects. It’s fun to experiment with different character setups, and you also rank up your materia over time so there’s still some build commitment. Gear is somewhat basic, but that’s arguably a good thing as it allows for more distinct choices about what to do with your materia, since your weapon and armor each have a number of materia slots which present a tradeoff with attack and defense stats. Each character will unlock new tiers of limit breaks by using them during battle and killing enemies; higher tiers are more powerful but take longer to charge up, and swapping resets the gauge. Between gear, materia, limit, and character selection there’s a lot of stuff to play around with and it’s all pretty meaningful.

The combat plays out in a pseudo real-time “Active Time Battle” system which ultimately just loosens up the turn order, both a good and a bad thing for allowing for different dynamics in fights but also making it a bit harder to read how encounters will play out. While combat is not very mechanically interesting on its own, the enemy and boss designs make up for it with a large variety of gimmicks that intersect pretty nicely with the character progression systems, keeping the game challenging and engaging throughout its runtime. Enemies will resist certain damage types, inflict creative status effects, surround other enemies in cover, summon reinforcements, perform setup for devastating attacks, and exhibit more unique behaviors, and the types of challenges constantly evolve over the entire game. I also thought resource management was pretty good between HP/MP concerns and various status clearing items, and I frequently tried to optimize my use of magic and tactically save limit breaks for harder encounters.

The rest of what I could call gameplay is often dull, particularly the level design which usually consists of a single linear path where the only requirement of the player is figuring out what parts of the painted backgrounds are interactable/maneuverable while random battles occur every few steps. There are notable exceptions as the game goes on; the Temple of the Ancients and Cave of Gi mazes were decent, Nibel Reactor had some genuine looping and branching with optional areas, and the Great Glacier had a great mix of nonlinear exploration and a more focused gauntlet with some light puzzle solving and a satisfying climax at the Whirlwind Maze. The game’s level content gets better as it goes on, and the final dungeon was an enjoyably challenging combat gauntlet considering that I hadn’t obtained any really powerful endgame gear and had never done any grinding. The lack of any checkpoints other than one the player can place themselves makes the final boss rush fairly tedious if you fail the first time, though. The generally lackluster level design is partially offset by puzzles, setpieces, and minigame gimmicks which introduce variety, though these are a mixed bag. The motorcycle chase, chocobo race, mountain snowboarding, and submarine dogfighting were fun distractions, while the absolute best that could be said of the gym squat, CPR, and military parade minigames is that they could be considered charming, and the Fort Condor tactics minigame was dreadfully tedious. The environmental puzzles suffer from 3D Zelda dungeon syndrome where every puzzle is brand new, so no element can be reused and built on nor combined with other elements for greater complexity. Really it’s the enemy/boss encounters and RPG systems that hold up the gameplay, which isn’t bad as they’re rather well designed, but I had expected more.

These issues aside, the game is paced excellently with new areas visited, gimmicks introduced (and thrown away), and story beats presented at a steady clip; I was still rarely bored despite wanting for much more involved dungeons. I could criticize the railroaded structure but I accept the constraints on player agency due to the narrative, which is paced out and told quite well with interesting reveals and humorous character interactions throughout, and I particularly enjoy how you get unique dialogue in some situations depending on the makeup of your party. The art direction and music is stellar; each location has a memorable atmosphere and I find the tunes stuck in my head constantly. Overall it’s a solid package but I don’t know if it measures up to my favorites, as it’s a rather story-focused experience with highly competent but not quite excellent gameplay. I don’t think it would convert anyone with a negative disposition towards jRPGs, but it’s absolutely worth playing if you’re into that sort of thing.