EPTFirst up is Inside, released on Steam about a week ago. A puzzle platformer made by the sinister Danish guys what made Limbo, a game I only really know through reputation but apparently it’s the scariest spider simulator short of living in Australia. Much like Limbo you control a small defenceless boy in his quest to travel in a rightwards direction for about 4 hours until the game ends, solving simple physics puzzles and constantly respawning after dying horribly. And it’s… ok? I think. Kinda ambivalent on this one.
Let’s start with the praise. The quality of the visuals and audio are some of the finest videogame craftsmanship you’ll probably see all year. It’s kinda hard for me to pin down the tone exactly but Inside nails it perfectly. A few parts Dark Souls, some Bioshock and a tiny bit more conventional horror and industrial dystopia. The quality of the aesthetics blends into the puzzles themselves in a rather sublime fashion and are an organic extension of the visuals. What I’m saying is that most puzzle games feel like a series of puzzle mechanics that has a game built around it. Inside is a game that has puzzles built into it. I’m guessing this is incredibly difficult to design properly, so kudos to you Playdead studios.
But then I’m left with what I don’t like and that’s mostly the story or lack thereof. A game critic I greatly admire once said that a basic rule of videogame storytelling should be that the player must be involved in some way with the game’s plot. Up until Inside’s ending sequence this isn’t really the case. There’s quite a bit of background storytelling going on in the, well, the background but there’s no indication of how we’re involved or what we’re trying to accomplish or who we are at all. My motivation to keep moving to the right is solely because that’s how I’m supposed to get my money’s worth. You don’t want to turn a book page just because that’s where the rest of the words are, you want to feel involved in the story and the character’s struggle goddammit.
As for that ending sequence, oh boy is that one drastic change of tone! Whilst I’ve seen some criticism about it I must say that at least I actually felt something. Perhaps this reflects badly on me that a game that features an innocent child being destroyed horrifically isn’t enough to make me go “oh that’s fucked up” but for what it’s worth that ending sequence was genuinely incredible in the field of making me go “oh, wow, that’s fucked up”. It’s difficult to recommend a game just because I liked the last bit but that’s sort of where I’m at with Inside. Or perhaps you could just watch the last 40 minutes of a let’s play on Youtube.
I also got around to playing Evolve now it’s turned Free to Play. I’ve gravitated away from multiplayer shooters ever since I stopped regularly generating acne but some mates roped me in so I figured I’d give it a look. And I must say it’s fucking incredible that this game was a full priced game with microtransactibles on top. Fucking hell, who do these people think they are, Blizzard?
Getting a bit ahead of myself here, let’s start from the top. Evolve is a game where one player takes the role of a big scary monster and another four players are hunters hunting said monster. The monster spends most of the game avoiding combat and eating local wildlife and generally minding it’s own fucking business but eventually the humans find it and a brief skirmish ensues. If the monster’s still alive then he can run off to begin the process anew. If the monster eats enough then it’ll evolve into something harder for the hunters to handle so they’re incentivised to keep on the big fuckers’ tail and never stop. After about 5-10 minutes one side is dead and the other declared the winner. That’s basically it.
It’s good that it has gone free to play, not just because an influx of new players is what any multiplayer game requires, not just because a game built around quick rounds that you can hop in and play in a light and breezy manner is perfect for F2P but because spending 70 bucks on something so insubstantial is frankly fucking insulting. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but multiplayer only experiences these days trend towards the cheaper side of pricing scale. Hearthstone, Clash Royale, all mobas are fucking free and games like CS:GO, Rocket League and Starcraft aren’t that expensive.
I suspect that Evolve cost so much (with DLC on top too!) on release simply because of the budget. My understanding of how AAA publishing operates is that ideally you spend 10’s of millions on a product in order to hopefully make 100+ millions of sweet delicious revenue and pricing something so expensive to make so cheaply was probably not even considered. We’re AAA, you’ll pay full price to play the same 8 minutes of game over and over and like it you fucks.
That said, I guess we live in a time where shooters are allowed to be different. Battlefields and Call of Duty’s routinely sold in the 10’s of millions per instalment despite being full priced and while they allegedly contain single player function that’s not quite what people are looking for. Evolve is up there with shit like Titanfall, Overwatch, Battleborn and Star Wars Battlefront and in such an over saturated market it couldn't maintain the interest of its players and I can definitely see why.
I tried out the different hunter classes and the monster a few times but nothing really held my interest. As the monster I just whack my 4 ability buttons and left click when they’re on cooldown, switching between a few targets while trying to focus down the healer first (natch). The thrill of being a big scary monster is undercut somewhat by being incentivised to avoid combat and the hunters being surprisingly resilient to large boulders and breathable fire. Playing as a hunter’s not much better, the monster is an easy target to hit and the battle such an incoherent mess of shit happening it feels impossible to coordinate properly even when I’m on mumble with me teammates.
Evolve sucks because it’s trying to cater equally to two very different sorts of experiences and neither feels ultimately satisfying. If you want to play a fun 4 player coop team game then just play Left 4 Dead or Vermintide (left fur dead?). If you want to play a game about being an all powerful shit ruiner then there's roughly half a million games that cater that desire, or perhaps Dead by Daylight maybe that's good.
