Beautiful Spectrum

Review

Hyper Light Drifter, Heart Machine (PS4)

Abstract: Hyper Light Drifter is a new classic. The game’s stunning art direction and soundtrack compliment an immensely satisfying gameplay experience. Combat is a perfect balance of simplicity with depth and fluidity with strategy. Hyper Light Drifter creates a world that is easy to get lost in and is filled with hidden secrets. The game does so much with so little and respects the player’s intelligence and perseverance throughout. Hyper Light Drifter should not be missed. It is easily one of 2016’s best.

Hyper Light Drifter makes me jealous. Not as a game designer, not as a critic, but as a scientist. In many ways, Hyper Light Drifter resembles the perfect kind of research manuscript. The game sets itself a goal and accomplishes it with resounding success. And, with what feels little effort. More than that, though, Hyper Light Drifter does so much with so little – it is the perfect combination of small parts that delivers an extraordinary experience. Hyper Light Drifter is simple, but underneath that simplicity (as any good research scientist knows) there almost certainly was an excruciating struggle and peerless work. Hyper Light Drifter is everything I want my own thesis project to be: intrigue, complexity refined into perfect simplicity, and something that immediately grips its audience and doesn’t let go.

A fluorescent-steeped and moody prologue begins your adventure into Hyper Light Drifter. The textless exposition sets the stage of a world destroyed by giant monsters, a deadly disease, a sealed off power, and a people forced to rebuild. The quasi-medieval setting quickly unfolds into something much deeper, with echoes of a lost technological age. Your protagonist is a silent wanderer, donning a flowing cape, glowing sword, and small pistol. He finds himself in a small town with adventure waiting on all sides. The drifter seeks to explore the ruined world and uncover its truths. Along your journey you’ll fight monsters of all shapes and sizes, tyrannical bosses and treacherous terrain. Hyper Light Drifter’s narrative leaves a lot up to the player for interpretation, but by so confidently establishing both mood and lore I was immediately sucked in.

The world calls to me.

The game’s zoomed out isometric perspective gives a great view of its gorgeous world. Usually I wait until later in the review, but I can’t help myself. Hyper Light Drifter is an astoundingly beautiful game. From its animations to its highly detailed pixel art, the game’s aesthetic shines through. Snowy mountains, verdant forests, barren deserts are all wonderfully realized through Hyper Light Drifter’s unique perspective. The world has a certain indefinable charm that exists as a combination of art, music (by the amazing Disasterpiece) and enemy design. In all honesty, the art is what drew me from the start – as early as the game’s embryonic (i.e. Kickstarter) stages. I was so relieved to see the full realization of the designers’ vision in the game’s final release.

Hyper Light Drifter is a 2D action RPG. Gameplay divides nicely into a couple key areas: combat, upgrading your character, and exploration. Hyper Light Drifter’s combat is superb. Fights occur naturally when exploring, in set combat arenas, and against bosses. The drifter has a number of tools to deal with the monsters that flood the world. Your primary weapon is the sword. Enemies can be hit with quick single blows or, if you’ve read their patterns correctly, can be punished with a three-hit combo. Firing your sidearm can damage enemies at a distance. The damage is minimal, unless charged up for a big shot, and ammunition is limited (it refills slowly upon attacking foes with your sword). Your opposition is aggressive, so Hyper Light Drifter also provides the player fantastic tools for escape. You have access to a lightning fast dash move, which can be used offensively or defensively depending on your situation. The player is invulnerable for a short time while dashing, increasing the skill threshold as whole attacks can be mitigated by a well-timed dodge.

Nothing should be underestimated. Hyper Light Drifter
keeps you on your toes.

Combat starts slow as you learn the language of the game. Fluency comes rapidly, though, as your fights become a flashy choreography of dashes and sword strikes and weapon swaps. Mastery feels always just out of reach, perfect for a skill intensive game like Hyper Light Drifter. There’s always more to learn. Your skills are put to the test in boss fights. Bosses run the gamut of shapes and sizes but they always force fluency in some aspect of combat, whether it be pattern recognition, short punishes, or chain dashes. Hyper Light Drifter’s combat also quickly opens up to player customization. You’ll unlock new guns to bolster long distance or close range engagements and new abilities that make battles even more fluid. Combat is a perfect combination of simplicity and depth, risk and reward, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

 

Time to show what you've learned.

Speaking of unlocks, Hyper Light Drifter lives up to its RPG name by featuring a nice suite of methods to power up your hero. Gearbits can be found throughout the world and used as currency to unlock new abilities. Your sword can gain a charge strike to deal massive damage, or a dash strike to attack after a dash. Your dash can gain the ability to chain into itself infinitely and the ability to reflect enemy projectiles. While there are no stats to manage, Hyper Light Drifter does allow for the hero himself to be powered up. You can unlock the ability to carry more health packs, which is essential, as health never regenerates. As you progress through the game, you’ll also come across new outfits for the drifter. These are often more than just an aesthetic change as they can grant bonus abilities like faster ammo recovery or an extra point of health. Hyper Light Drifter is a great RPG while making your RPG-experience as streamlined as possible.

Streamlined or not, I enjoyed Hyper Light Drifter's RPG elements.

Exploration is where Hyper Light Drifter truly shines. Hyper Light Drifter has a world you want to get lost in. Tranquility belies a setting rife with intrigue. Tucked into every nook and cranny of the world is something interesting to see or some new item for your playthrough. The nonverbal communication of the game to the player is fantastic. You’re never told where to go or what path to take—everything is discovered through playing. You’re never told to look for secrets, nor are you told what to do with those secrets. There is a system in place that indicates where a secret hides, but Hyper Light Drifter relies on a player’s intelligence and perseverance to find the pattern. I hate comparing one game I’m reviewing to another, but I can think of no better way to put it here: playing Hyper Light Drifter evokes the same feeling I got playing the original The Legend of Zelda on the NES. The game is a puzzle box that can be solved as rudimentarily, or as meticulously, as you desire. The joy I felt moving from screen to screen scouring for paths is unparalleled in modern gaming. Exploring Hyper Light Drifter is part epic poem and part learning a new language, and the two combine to create something spectacular. There are a precious few games I wish I could erase from my memory so I could experience them again for the first time – Hyper Light Drifter is one of them.

In the spirit of the mostly wordless Hyper Light Drifter I attempted to keep this review brief. I could go on for another thousand words about the satisfying gameplay loop, the hidden bonus challenges, or how the real world around me dissolved while playing. Hyper Light Drifter is one of the most supremely well-designed games I’ve played all year. Hyper Light Drifter not only lived up to expectations, it created a new classic. Hyper Light Drifter is a wide spectrum of excellence not to be missed.

Hyper Light Drifter

5/5

A Drop In The Bucket

Review

Risk of Rain, Hopoo Games (PS4/Vita)

Abstract: Despite sounding like a game tailor made for my gaming interests, Risk of Rain underwhelmed. Buried beneath slow platforming, mundane combat and an overreliance on finding the right items is a wealth of smart systems that demand a better moment-to-moment play experience. I appreciate Risk of Rain’s premise, aesthetics and world and wish that there were more to keep me playing. Despite my issues, however, I generally enjoyed my time with the game. Risk of Rain is not bad, I just wish it could have been better.  When looking at Risk of Rain as zoomed out as its in-game perspective is, I find enough there to recommend to enthusiasts of the genre.

Life and death is measured in pixels. The vast openness, and emptiness, of an alien planet is the only shelter for the sole survivor of a derelict spacecraft. Equipped with basic weapons and little else, your goal is simple: find some way off this deadly planet and stay alive. Turns out neither of those is as simple as they sound. Every action, every decision, carries some risk. Welcome to the world of Risk of Rain.

Risk of Rain started as a student project that grew into something much larger, the freshman outing for the independent studio Hopoo Games. The game, originally released in 2013, was met with critical success. Reading reviews got me excited too. A purchase of a Humble Bundle a couple years ago granted me a PC copy, but I never managed to get controller support to work and therefore never played it. Risk of Rain made its way to PlayStation consoles this May so I knew it was finally time to jump in. Was Risk of Rain all it was cracked up to be? Yes and no.

Risk of Rain is a 2D pixel art action platformer with randomized elements. The game is set in the distant future, in which space travel is common. At the start of the game your vessel, functionally a space train, meets a catastrophic fate—it’s blown to pieces by an alien attack. It turns out your ship was carrying some pretty special cargo, a mysterious piece of technology with untold power. The sole survivor of the attack, your character finds himself on a hostile alien planet. The setting serves as a compelling backdrop for the game at hand.

This strange alien world is a great backdrop for Risk of Rain.

When I saw that Risk of Rain is a platformer with randomized elements I got excited. Spelunky also fits that description and is one of my favorite games of all time. Unfortunately for Risk of Rain, it nails neither the platforming nor randomization in a thoroughly satisfying way. Your character moves incredibly slowly and has short jumps. It makes progressing through each stage a slog, as you know where you want to go but actually going there is slow and unfun. The slowness and heaviness is reinforced by Risk of Rain’s chosen perspective—the view is incredibly zoomed out. Your character is no more than a few pixels on a gigantic backdrop. I appreciate the mood this sets for the game, you do truly feel isolated and insignificant on a strange alien planet, but it reinforced the aesthetic at the expense of gameplay. The large environments only further drive in the fact that your character’s movement is just too stiff. Platforming doesn’t require precision or skill, just time. It’s not great.

 

That tiny little speck in the middle of the screen is my character.
Not that you could really tell.

During your journey throughout the level in search of the exit you’ll face off against a variety of alien foes that want nothing more to end your journey before it begins. Risk of Rain has a nice suite of baddies to combat: tiny lizard people, sky soaring jellyfish, ancient golems, giant ethereal humanoids. Each character you play has four attacks: one basic that can be used constantly, and three special that have cooldown periods after use. Your starting character, The Commando, has a long-range rifle to shoot at foes as well as a dodge roll, explosive shot and concussive fire. The Enforcer, another character, has a short-range shotgun, a riot shield, and a grenade. Playing each of the game’s 12 characters changes the way you approach combat and adds replayability to a game that can be beaten in about 45 minutes. Despite being only a couple pixels large, Risk of Rains cast of characters is replete with personality that lends itself to various play styles and types of players. I loved trying out each of the characters to figure out who best suited me.

Risk of Rain’s combat itself left a lot to be desired, however. Given that the platforming and exploration was not too fun, being let down by the combat felt all the worse. Basic attacks on the whole felt weak, taking many attacks to take down even the most basic of threats. This meant that you had to rely on your three special abilities to deal noteworthy damage. But because these have cooldowns I often found myself just running away from monsters until my abilities had recharged, which led to overlong encounters and a reinforcement of the game’s deliberate pace. Further, enemies chase you relentlessly with little means to escape their attacks. A few characters have mobility options or shields that prevent damage, but many others do not. Given little damage output, this design choice artificially inflates Risk of Rain’s difficulty. It isn’t fun to be swarmed to death with few means of countering the attack. My favorite play sessions happened when I turned the game’s difficulty down to easy, not because I don’t enjoy punishing games (because I do) but because it was the only difficulty in which combat felt fair. Difficult games that feel unfair to the player do not do “difficult” well.

 

Not a whole lot of ways to mitigate damage here. Especially not without
the right couple of items.

Items shape the majority of your experience in Risk of Rain. As you explore each stage, your character levels up and acquires money. Money can be used at stores, to open treasure chests, and on luck-based shrines found throughout the map. Items strengthen your character in various ways: some have passive effects like increasing health regeneration or dealing damage to enemies that come close to you, and others need to be activated, like an item that summons huge meteors down from the sky. There are things I liked about item design in the game. Items stack, increasing their effect or effectiveness, so every single one you find is useful. Acquiring a huge collection of items feels great, you go from a weak defenseless survivor into a wrecking ball of might and space magic. Some item effects are really clever and can single-handedly change the way you approach exploration and combat. Unfortunately, however, playthroughs in Risk of Rain are totally reliant on obtaining great item builds in order to succeed. I say without exaggeration that every single one of my good runs relied on finding an item called the Frost Relic. I had so many runs that I felt like giving up just because I had not found the right kind of items in the first stage or two. You will be overwhelmed by your enemies without the right setup. This creates a terrible problem, and one I have had with other item-reliant games like The Binding of Isaac. My skill should be able to get me from start to finish, items should just bolster my ability. That was never the case in Risk of Rain. It makes the player feel disempowered and like he or she is wasting their time on runs in which they don’t get lucky in finding the right items. 

Not items and fighting a boss? You're going to have a bad time. Slowly.

I wish Risk of Rain had a more enjoyable moment-to-moment play experience, because there are so many smart systems at play. The way in which Risk of Rain creates risk versus reward for exploration is brilliant. Every playthrough features a bar on the right side of the screen that starts empty and indicates “very easy.” The longer you play, the more that bar fills. The higher it gets, the higher the difficulty rises (more monsters, new monsters, tougher monsters). The system is genius in that it makes the player carefully consider how long they want to explore before moving on to the next level. Is it worth killing and exploring more to find more items, even though the monsters are getting progressively stronger the longer you take? If you want a successful run, is it better to speed through the levels or take your time to get the best build? It’s a push-pull that I wish scaffolded a more fun play experience. Risk of Rain also features some great secrets, the kind that make you want to keep coming back. From hidden artifacts, to new characters, Risk of Rain creates a world you want to learn more about. I love the idea of incorporating abilities with cooldowns into new genres (not just MOBAs and hero shooters), and I appreciate their inclusion here, even if they didn’t fit well into the game’s combat.

It is worth noting that Risk of Rain has an impressive presentation. Though small, the pixel art is incredibly detailed and vibrant. Enemies and characters alike have distinct personalities. The game’s backdrops are simple but feel perfectly alien. Risk of Rain’s gigantic end of level bosses are magnificent. The soundtrack is great, nailing that 80s sci-fi vibe that is found throughout the game. As a quick warning, however, playing Risk of Rain on the PlayStation Vita is not ideal. The zoomed out perspective on the Vita’s small screen does not work—to the point in which gameplay can become incomprehensible. Skip the Vita version.

I love the way Risk of Rain looks. I only wish I loved the way it played just as much. 

In the end, my review for Risk of Rain probably sounds more negative than it should. Looking back on my time with the game, it was a mostly enjoyable experience. There is a lot to like. So much of my criticism stems from how narrowly Risk of Rain missed for me. With a few tweaks Risk of Rain would be exceptional. A game I could play for dozens of hours. But it wasn’t, and I only played for 10 or so. Oh well. Risk nothing gain nothing, right?

Risk of Rain

3/5