Let’s just admit it: Open worlds suck half the time
Plus why Apple Arcade is good, how to have big hobbies in a small space, and Tim reminds us of the passage of time.
Welcome back Button Buddies!
It’s the last week of September 2022. How did that happen? Where am I? Who am I? What does the passage of time mean?
Aside from triggering an existential crisis, it also means that we’re one week out from PAX and are barrelling towards the pointier end of Game Season. Already we’ve had a few of the big annual releases and are poised to see more come out soon. We’ll tell you all about them once they’re on sale and the bugs have been ironed out.
This week Alice unleashes a controversial opinion and gives tips on how to build Lego when you live in a shoebox. Meanwhile, Tim dishes the dirt on Shovel Knight Dig and celebrates the anniversaries of retro games.
Open worlds are (usually) bad, actually
By Alice
“This game will feature a lush open world, the largest ever included in the series” is a sentence that gamers are well familiar with. Sometimes, it’s an exciting phrase that means a beautiful open world will be available to live in and explore, filled with lots of secrets to discover, side quests to be distracted by and stuff to do.
Usually, though, it just means it’s going to take a lot longer to get from one place to the next while seeing slightly different trees.
In games like Forza Horizon 5, the largest open world ever means opportunities for skill points galore, while finding new terrains.
In NBA 2K23, a large open world means things that used to take seconds to choose from a menu, now take 5-10 minutes as you walk (or slowly skateboard) across The City so you have more opportunities to interact with sponsors.
It’s the same in RPGs and narrative games. Horizon Forbidden West takes a long time to get anywhere in a way that often feels like padding, but the world looks so good and there’s so many crafting materials to collect that I forgive it. But there are so many other RPGs that I refuse to play because the world is only that big and open so it sounds better on the box, rather than providing players with an experience they’ll enjoy more.
“But an open world is more immersive!” I hear the marketing directors cry. And, like, yeah. Sure. In the real-world walking long distances also takes a long time and involves seeing many similar trees. That’s why I’m inside playing video games.
I wish Gamerz[tm] and marketers stopped trying to equate “bigger” with better.
It’s time to start advertising games like cities instead of suburbs: “There are more things closer together” is better than “there’s the same or less, but it takes longer to get around”.
What to play
It’s the end of the month, which means you only have a couple of days left to claim your Xbox Games With Gold, PlayStation Plus Essentials freebies and whatever Epic has free this week. You’re paying for these games anyway, may as well enjoy them. On Xbox the headline stealer is Portal 2, which is obviously wonderful. My pick from PlayStation Plus is Need For Speed Heat. Is it good? No. But I like it that way. And it’s free (if you’ve already paid for it).
This Friday’s new Apple Arcade game is Gris+, which is a beautifully devastating game about grief. This was released by Devolver years ago to much critical acclaim, and now it’s finally part of Apple Arcade, this is a great opportunity to play a game critics and people who like being sad and then experiencing hope have been recommending for ages.
On Game Pass this week Grounded sees its 1.0 release after two years in early access. It's a charming co-op survival game where you're kids who find themselves shrunk to tiny size and have to survive in the backyard. Now's a great time to jump in if you haven't already.
A big sale on Switch has some really good savings. At around $3 you can get indie excellence like Overcooked, Inside, Limbo or Steamworld Dig. At $15 to $20 there's Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, Rayman Legends, Streets of Rage 4, or Assassin's Creed III. And at $30 there's the Spyro or Crash Bandicoot trilogies, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Shredders' Revenge and Hot Wheels Unleashed.
Arcade digs deep
By Tim
Apple Arcade is such an interesting service. On one hand it seems ideal for casual gamers, offering heaps of ad and microtransaction free games for a low price. On the other hand, around once per year it will randomly drop an incredibly hardcore game like Shovel Knight Dig, and I’ll remember how great it is that I can play across my Mac, phone, iPad and Apple TV with my progress synced in the background. It kind of sucks that you can only enjoy the experience to its full potential if you’ve filled your house with Apple stuff, but that’s kind of how Apple rolls.
Anyway, if you’re paying for the service you need to play Dig. It’s got most of what I love about the original Shovel Knight, including challenging platforming, adorable deadly critters, sick retro visuals and an incredible soundtrack. Except the aesthetic has been brought forward to the mid-90s, and it’s now a roguelite in the vein of Spelunky or Steamworld Dig 2.
What gives a game like this its life-suckingly addictive loop is the fact that you know virtually nothing at the start, and generally get your butt handed to you immediately. Instead of starting easy and ramping up the challenge like most games, roguelites tend to stitch levels together from a finite pool of elements, and each run you make gives you more familiarity. Eventually you’re flying through the first area, not because your character’s more powerful but because you’re mentally better equipped. And that rules.
More than most, Shovel Knight Dig also gets massively less daunting as your ability to play skillfully increases, as getting good gives you the tools to go further. If you’re quick enough to play without getting hit you’ll be able to hold on to items like keys and eggs which can bring big benefits further down. And if you’re skillful enough to grab all three golden gears in each level you can make sure you’re always stocked up on health and weapons.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
The problem with enjoying hobbies that take up a lot of space is that I’m a Millennial in 2022, so I live in a tiny apartment. I don’t have a dining table or a hobby room at home, and that can make Lego construction and board game playing a bit of a challenge. Here are some of my tips on how to enjoy large scale hobbies in a small space:
First up, when it comes to board games, there are a couple of ways to go about it. We have a low coffee table which almost accommodates a whole large game board, with just the edges coming off. This is fine if you have limber guests who are ok with sitting on the floor. But the best solution we’ve found is using the kitchen island with some stools. The stools are easy to move out of the way when we need to cook, and they can easily be adjusted to the right height for a couple of different spots.
When it comes to Lego, that’s a bit trickier, because some older sets (looking at you, giant Sydney Opera House that I will one day build when I have access to a large table) don’t have the bricks separated into numbered bags, but are instead pure chaos. Some older, more “hardcore” Lego builders prefer it with all the chaos and think of those who like numbered bags as weak. I don’t like those people. Having sets separated by numbered bags means it’s easy to build on an Ikea lap tray, which is what I do.
Those Ikea lap trays cost about $20 and mean you can build on your lap on the couch, and then move it elsewhere when you’re not building. Constructing the giant World Map and Colosseum sets on it was a bit of a challenge, but a manageable one. For sets that aren’t as broken down, you can sort pieces into little hardware drawers from Bunnings to make it a bit neater.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
With September now all but over, it’s time to look back at some of the games that celebrated significant anniversaries in the last month. Try not to feel old.
Now 20: Kingdom Hearts Beginning as a roleplaying game that featured characters from both the Final Fantasy and Disney pantheons, Kingdom Hearts has gone on to become an insanely complicated original universe in its own right. But now that the series has lost most of its Final Fantasy influence, has visited franchises from Aladdin to Toy Story, and has the potential to touch on Star Wars and Marvel licences in the future, it’s almost quaint to go back to the original game where the story is weird but digestible and worlds are limited to classic Disney animated fare. Also you can fight Cloud.
Now 25: Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee An icon of the PS1 era, albeit one that hasn’t held up terribly well, Abe’s Oddysee was a lightning in a bottle type scenario. A darker, ruder, more mature take on the platformer that also integrated a lot of PC adventure game flair and complex-seeming AI opponents was exactly what the PlayStation’s young adult audience wanted in 1997, and it didn’t hurt that it looked incredible and was chock full of impressive computer animated cutscenes. Revisiting it now, however, reveals it to be mean and brutally unfair.
Now 30: Art of Fighting Odds are you’re completely lost when it comes to parsing SNK’s convoluted Fatal Fury / King of Fighters / Art of Fighting universes and their various dramas, which is completely understandable. But Art of Fighting is an interesting prospect in its own right. Clearly inspired by Street Fighter 2, but also offering an origin tale of sorts for its predecessor Fatal Fury, it’s a rare 90s fighter with a decent story and the characters appear massive and beefy on screen. Some innovations, like the clever sprite scaling that let the camera go in and out, are brilliant. Others, like the spirit meter you use for special moves that leaves you weaker as a result, not so much.