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Preview: Babylon’s Fall beta impressions

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Earlier this week I took part in the Babylon’s Fall beta that ran from November 15th to November 17th, giving me an opportunity to finally find out more about the nature of Platinum’s forthcoming action RPG. You may remember me talking about this game in my E3 2018 coverage, when it was first unveiled during Square Enix’s showcase. Since then, I haven’t seen a lot of information revealed about the game – we were treated to minor blog updates and a few images and gifs, but I don’t really feel like there was anything of substance to enjoy until Square Enix’s E3 2021 presentation, where they reminded us that the game still existed. I was still intrigued about the game in the years that passed, but I never felt like I was given enough information to really justify publishing any kind of “progress update” article on this site. Consequently, I was quite pleased to receive an invite to the recent Babylon’s Fall beta session – not least because it would finally give me a chance to understand what kind of gameplay Platinum would be going for, and whether or not it was even worth maintaining my interest in this title.

Beginning the Babylon’s Fall beta

Babylon's Fall beta

The experience I had with the missions in the Babylon’s Fall beta mainly reminded me of old 3D Phantasy Star games, but only if those missions were accessed via the kind of elaborate hub seen in some hunting games, or maybe certain F2P MMOs I tried many years ago. The hub here is known as the meeting area, and whilst it felt like a few parts of the meeting area were disabled for beta purposes, you were still able to buy and sell equipment at a vendor, visit a different character to see daily challenges (defeat 100 enemies, complete a quest using Quick Match, etc.), go and talk to someone who could change your character’s appearance, and find a chest which acts as storage for your character’s excess belongings. I had just set up my character and I didn’t exactly have currency to spend, so instead I found a billboard that I could interact with to start my first quest.

This is where the Phantasy Star comparison comes in. My memories of Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst and Phantasy Star Portable 2 amount to recollections of time spent in walled arenas fending off waves of samey enemies – the Babylon’s Fall beta isn’t a massive improvement. You’ll step into an open area and then you’ll be locked in, as foes begin spawning in. You can attack with light and heavy swings (or bow shots, or whatever you’re using) to build up a meter, and then spend that meter casting magic projectiles (not unlike the magic seen in the original Nier.) The catch is that the magic attacks feel more effective than the regular weapons in terms of dealing damage, but you’re spending meter to use them. So I assume the intention is to alternate between building meter with your equipped weapons and casting magic to cause significant damage. It’s a nice idea in theory and it encourages a certain “rhythm” when playing, but (like Phantasy Star) you have to work through a lot of spawning enemies before you’re allowed to move forward. Consequently, what begins as a fun exercise can lead to your patience waning.

Sponge life

If the respawning enemies were the only disappointing aspect of the combat in the Babylon’s Fall beta, it might still be excused – after all, this is a Platinum game, so you’d expect some exciting combat. Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed when it came to the moment-to-moment action as well. I found that health bars of regular enemies were long enough to make them feel like damage sponges – not only that, but a lot of enemies had “super armour” where their own animations couldn’t be interrupted with your attacks. I feel like this is another misstep in the general experience: if they were damage sponges that could be interrupted more, the player’s attacks would feel satisfying… and if they had super armour but could be dispatched quickly, they’d be less of a nuisance. However, the combination of these two things leads to a slightly dull experience, and this feeling is exacerbated by the amount of new enemy spawns that arrive before you’re allowed to move on.

Babylon’s Fall beta – room for change

Babylon's Fall beta

Things are made worse when you’re playing a beta and you can’t find enough available players to fill a party – leaving you slogging away on your own – so the game really wants you to go in with a full team. Completing a mission rewards you with new gear that can increase the stats and level of your character, allowing you to take on harder missions. However, if missions tuned for characters at the “intended” level are this much of an ordeal, I can’t imagine the core combat loop becoming that much more satisfying. Hopefully I’m proven wrong, but we’ll only know after more tuning and tweaking is done by the developers.

Find out more about Babylon’s Fall at Square Enix’s website

Samurai, gods, big rosters – notes from my E3 2018

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Stepping out into the mid-June sunshine, away from the hype and noise that follows any series of E3 press conferences, I couldn’t deny that some of that hype may be rubbing off on me. Before we even get to my E3 2018, let’s remember that we’re already in the middle of what people are claiming to be a new golden era of gaming – one where modern classics are being released with uncommon frequency. Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Cuphead, Sonic Mania, Celeste – the list just keeps going, and it looks like the list will grow even more if my E3 2018 was anything to go by. Rather than one platform holder emerging as a clear winner or loser (and let’s not pretend that there haven’t been clear winners and losers in the past), my E3 2018 had Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo revealing exciting and interesting new games.

Microsoft favourites from my E3 2018

my E3 2018

The biggest reveal of Microsoft’s show was undoubtedly Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. A new IP from revered developer From Software, it promises polished third-person action with a samurai flavour. The trailer was only about two or three minutes long but showed the mechanical arm first seen in the “Shadows Die Twice” trailer, and its owner – a character who can go toe-to-toe with swordsmen, use said arm in a grappling-hook fashion to ascend to higher positions or cross chasms, and supposedly rise to his feet after being “killed”, which seems appropriate given the subtitle. Elsewhere, it was revealed that the once PS4 and PC exclusive Nier Automata would receive an Xbox port with the release of Nier Automata: Become as Gods Edition (perhaps to make up for Scalebound’s demise), so hopefully more people can enjoy the weird and wonderful combination of slick Platinum gameplay and distinct Nier quirkiness. Also of note was the first true reveal of Cyberpunk 2077 and news that Devil May Cry would be getting a new numbered sequel, but the lack of substantial gameplay footage for either game suggests that these are very early announcements.

Sony familiarity in my E3 2018

my E3 2018

By comparison, many people criticised the lack of new reveals in Sony’s conference; there were many games we already knew about from previous shows (such as Spider-Man, The Last of Us Part 2 and Death Stranding), and with the remake of Final Fantasy VII still early in development, there was little hope of seeing anything new from that game. Despite this, we did get confirmation of an exciting new PSVR title with From Software’s Deracine, reaffirmation that Mizuguchi’s The Tetris Effect still looks superb, and more gorgeous footage of Sucker Punch‘s Ghost of Tsushima. (As an aside, it seems that samurai games were the general theme of this year’s E3, with Tsushima, Sekiro and a trailer of Nioh 2 all making appearances somewhere amongst the conferences.) Another notable surprise was Remedy’s Control, a game that seems to combine shifting geometry with conventional gunplay and creative mind control mechanics. It was a fun looking title, even if it did make me wish for a sequel to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy…

Nintendo’s contribution to my E3 2018

my E3 2018

As is to be expected these days, Nintendo combined the bizarre with the exciting, from making me question the need for a Pokéball peripheral used in conjuction with Pokémon Go (which will transfer Pokémon data from the mobile game to a new console game) when you already have wireless communication technology in your primary gaming devices… to the surprise reveal of Daemon X Machina, an exciting action game from Marvelous Entertainment that boasts bright and colourful visuals and shows off the kind of gameplay that brings to mind games such as Omega Boost and Transformers Devastation. Elsewhere in the show, the unveiling of a new Mario Party was hardly a massive surprise – at the same time, the immediacy and social nature of the series is an obvious fit for the Switch hardware – and the new Super Smash Bros seemed hell-bent on including every character from previous games in its roster, to the delight of series fans. It was also revealed that these characters will all be tweaked slightly, hopefully resulting in a balanced game and some exciting re-learning of old favourites.

The highlight of my E3 2018

my E3 2018

All of the three main shows succeeded in giving fans something to look forward to, but the reveal that interested me the most was Babylon’s Fall. This was one of the new announcements from a very short Square Enix showcase scheduled separately from the three main conferences – a new IP being developed by Platinum Games, Babylon’s Fall only revealed a glimpse of CG at the end of its trailer, but was introduced with text-heavy stills that promised a tale of clashing ideologies, of gods striking down against mankind, and of huge armoured characters and electric (or perhaps arcane) powers. It was perhaps the only trailer I went through frame by frame as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing, and it’s definitely something I intend to keep an eye on between now and its 2019 release.

Obviously, I saw some criticism levelled at the three main conferences as people collected their own thoughts on discussion boards and in social media – people claimed that Sony’s show repeated the same announcements as last year and didn’t have enough new reveals, or that Nintendo’s show needed to give fans more details about known games in development (precious little was seen of Metroid Prime 4, Yoshi, or Starfox Grand Prix)… Microsoft’s show was perhaps the most refreshing, but I noticed people claiming that their conference pushed 4K and the Xbox One X a little too much for owners of older Xbox models. Despite all of this, I’m remaining optimistic about the future of all three platform holders – there’s something for everyone to look forward to in the near future, and the absence of any big new hardware reveals (certain optimistic individuals expected the unveiling of a PlayStation 5 before the show commenced) suggests that the current generation still has some life left in it for the time being. As ever, let us know if there were any reveals that stood out for you in the comments below.

Nier Automata review (PS4)

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As I finish the last of the three main campaigns of Nier Automata and chapter-select my way to the other conclusions (there are about 26 endings to the game but only a handful of them are “proper” endings) I was left with so many thoughts and feelings. The true ending wraps things up perfectly and is sublime from a gameplay, narrative, and emotional standpoint. When I realised what was going on, and the implications of what was going on, I was left speechless. And it almost makes up for the varying quality of the gameplay.

Nier Automata is a truer follow-up to the 2010 game than we could have ever hoped for; the gameplay is tightened, the combat is slick, but it hasn’t been streamlined into a character action game and instead retains the RPG tenets of the original. You’ll do fetch quests, gather materials, go from A to B and quick-travel across several unique regions. More notably, you’ll level up through play and face enemies that are at a much higher level than you; enemies that will decimate your health bar in one hit if you try your luck. Through levelling and player customisation, the typical skill barrier associated with character action now has a number of RPG elements to support you. Take plug-in chips for instance – they offer various buffs and effects but take up a certain amount of “storage” depending on how good they are. Certain chips offer typical buffs like increased damage, better healing effects etc, but other chips can turn it into a completely new game – there’s one that grants health after every enemy kill (think rally in Bloodborne) and another that slows down time whilst retaining character speed after a successful dodge (hello Bayonetta). It’s one of Platinum’s most rewarding systems yet, and it means that a bit of levelling or chip tweaking can turn defeat into victory.

Nier Automata – split personality

Nier Automata

Plug-in chips and levelling aren’t the only deviations from the character-action formula; Nier Automata has more of the classic shoot ‘em up action seen in the demo as well as a new gameplay feature introduced after the first playthrough that adds an interesting new dynamic to much of the rest of the game. (This isn’t the only time this happens as you go through the three campaigns, but I found that it was the biggest gameplay shift.) And even though the world and town may feel small-scale compared to other RPGs you play, there’s still enough going on to prevent you from feeling like you can’t progress. Enemy levels are displayed as you fight them (this may be optional based on interface plug-in chips; I’m not sure) and so you instantly know if you’re going into an area that will be too challenging, encouraging you to level up and do sidequests until you’re ready.

There’s also a lot of variety in the environments you’ll explore – the 2010 game had the likes of Façade, Seafront and the Aerie peppered around its central hub, and Automata has its own desert in addition to an amusement park, a forest and more abstract areas later on. Even though the shifts feel a bit disjointed as you speed from place to place, each one feels distinct in its culture and identity. And remember that a lot of time spent in the areas will involve a finely-tuned combat system that is satisfying in itself but transformative when plug-in chips are involved.

Nier Automata – rough moments

Nier Automata

It is, however, a Nier game. Even with Platinum at the helm there’s always the risk of some dodgy moments when Nier is involved, and Automata isn’t without its problems. Some platforming can be fiddly, camera shifts can come at the worst possible time, you can end up underlevelled if you hurry through things, and the 3D map – as good as it is – can still be hard to wrap your head around at first. At the same time, just like in the original Nier, you’ll forgive these blemishes just to see where the story takes you, and the underlevelling only happens if you try and treat it like a straight character-action game rather than embracing the RPG roots of the series. (On a personal note I’d also recommend rotating your saves and/or backing up saves to the cloud, just in case you over-use the manual saves and wind up in an impossible situation. Ahem.)

There is a risk that with all the genre-bending Nier Automata shows you all of its tricks too soon, and that certainly begins to ring true in the third playthrough. That said, even when you think it’s running out of ideas the gameplay is so satisfying that you’ll want to keep going anyway. Finish the three main routes and a chapter select opens up, allowing you to see alternate conclusions for the third route and, ultimately, one of the most majestic ways a game has been wrapped up in some time. In that moment, it’s easy to gloss over the flaws you noticed along the way – it’s easy to let emotion drown out cold analysis. At the same time, don’t we spend evenings with videogames for moments just like the gameplay and narrative highs of Nier: Automata? So yes, this is a recommendation. If you enjoyed the original Nier, you shouldn’t let the Platinum logo put you off. If you want to see character action in a more fleshed-out world, this is worthy of your attention. And I can only hope that this gains enough attention to make up for the first game’s niche status.

Nier Automata

Nier Automata is out now for PS4 and will be released on PC on March 17th

Nier Automata demo released this week

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The Nier Automata demo represents a first look at what could either be the biggest squandering of a golden opportunity or the refinement of a flawed gem. The first Nier game – Gestalt on Xbox 360 or Replicant on PS3 – had a fantastic story, great world-building and character arcs, and a beautiful soundtrack. However, it was let down by flabby gameplay sequences, woolly combat and rough edges. As soon as it was announced that Platinum would be helping out on Nier Automata, fans of Gestalt and Replicant were delighted, as it potentially meant a game that delivered on both its gameplay and story. More than a year after the announcement of the new Nier game, a gameplay demo has been released. And, naturally, I’ve spent some time with it already.

Nier Automata demo – slick moves and orb shooting

Nier Automata demo

Let’s begin with the obvious point – as soon as you get your hands on the controls this feels like a Platinum game in terms of movement and combat; movement is fast and fluid, you have a dodge which goes far and in multiple directions, and you can cancel from attacks to dodges. Furthermore, the Nier Automata demo starts you off with an air-dodge and double jump, and attacks have light and heavy variants, as well as special enders. Meanwhile, your “pod” droid fires for as long as you hold down the trigger and its shots can be aimed in multiple directions. So far, so Platinum, but the Nier DNA makes itself known soon enough; waves of red orbs are shot from enemies and can be destroyed with shots or melee attacks. Additionally, enemies have lifebars and damage numbers fly off as they take hits, so the RPG roots are clear.

Nier Automata demo – a fresh perspective

Nier Automata demo

What’s also clear is that Platinum liked the original game’s perspective shifts – the Nier Automata demo is constantly going between side-on, overhead and conventional 3D views; at times it almost feels like it beats the player over the head with these camera tricks, shouting “hey, remember? Remember when Nier did this?” but maybe the full game will relax things a little. There was one moment where the perspective shifts worked against the gameplay – enemies can spawn from small containers in one top-down sequence and it’s possible for 2B to enter one of these containers and be in a bad spot whilst the player can’t see what’s going on – but for the most part It was fine.

Nier Automata demo – promising combat and unproven questing

Nier Automata demo

The Nier Automata demo is all about showing off the combat – it’s at its best when mobile enemies approach 2B at close-quarters whilst shots from wall-mounted cannons also head towards her, as it forces the player to manage the crowd and switch between melee and ranged attacks on the fly. In the previous game you generally had to deal with one threat or the other – removing the bullets of an enemy so that you could close in on that enemy and deliver melee damage. Later on, one phase of the Nier Automata demo’s boss showcases some similarly impressive bullet hell, where clusters and waves of projectiles are belched out and rockets rain from the sky. This is where the gameplay truly feels like Nier Deluxe – a more refined version of the original formula – and I would welcome more of it.

The one aspect of the game that’s never really shown off during the Nier Automata demo is the RPG and story side of the game – the character arcs, the settlements, the quests to pick up, the jaw-dropping twists. Just like Gestalt and Replicant felt like missed opportunities with their rough combat and platfoming, Automata could feel like a waste if it’s “just” another Platinum game with none of the hybrid gameplay of the original. However, it’s understandable that Taro might want the story and RPG elements to be kept under wraps if the narrative is anything like the original’s. From what I have played now, I feel confident that Platinum will do what Platinum does best, but I appreciate that we’re still in the dark about the bits that made the original Nier so special in the first place. If the slick combat is there but the questing and story are afterthoughts, we could find that Automata and Gestalt/Replicant are two halves of the one of the finest games ever made, neither one delivering on both gameplay and narrative.

Nier Automata demo

Nier Automata will be released on PS4 in March 2017. A PC release has also been confirmed but not yet dated.

Transformers Devastation review (PS+)

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Transformers Devastation represented a unique kind of exciting moment for me. Generally I don’t tend to buy every home console and handheld as soon as it’s released, because I simply wouldn’t find the time for all of those games. Consequently, I’ve never owned a Wii U… and as a result it had been a long time since I had enjoyed anything from Platinum. Transformers Devastation might not appear to match the heights of Bayonetta or Vanquish, but it’s still representative of the uniquely entertaining character-action fun that only Platinum can produce, and even if you’ve come back to this kind of game after being distracted with other titles, it still feels comforting and familiar.

Transformers Devastation: strings and slow-motion

Transformers Devastation

For instance, if you’ve played Bayonetta and pick up Transformers Devastation, you’ll instantly recognise the way in which light and heavy attacks can be stringed together in a variety of ways. You’ll notice that enemy attacks are heralded by a glint of light on the incoming weapon (or limb), helping you to focus during the chaos, and you’ll find that a last-minute dodge delivers the resulting slow-motion payoff you would expect. The latter mechanic bathes the screen in a blue tint and allows you to pile on the damage – something that’s incredibly useful against bosses – and it never stops being satisfying. Also returning from Bayonetta is the panther run – in that game, Bayonetta would transform into a panther and run at speed if the right trigger was pressed twice. Here, it serves as the iconic car transformation and allows you to speed around the environment. Transformations aren’t just limited to this move, however; they also serve as enders for combos, named “Vehicle Attacks”. This makes for a unique way of using the heroes’ most recognisable ability as a signature Platinum gameplay trope.

Transformers Devastation: padded action?

Transformers Devastation

This tried and tested system of custom combos and satisfying dodges is as enjoyable as ever, and it’s just as well, because the game structure and progression can be slightly wearing. There are hidden verses and the maps branch out allowing you to explore other areas, but at times it feels like you’re going through the motions, waiting for the next moment of excitement from whatever boss is at the end of the chapter. For some people that’s not such a big deal – certainly, I could do the same battles against the same enemies for ages and still be having fun – but others might be looking for a little more substance. There is depth to be found outside of the main gameplay; tech can be crafted for random buffs, new weapons and moves can be obtained, certain weapons have status effects and elemental properties that you can see when arranging equipment. There are also multiple Autobots to play as, each with unique movesets. However, the missions themselves can sometimes feel a bit like padding, with recycled bosses or recycled areas.

Transformers Devastation: familiar fun

Transformers Devastation

As mentioned, however, that’s not always a bad thing. I welcomed more of the same because I was keen to try out new combos with the weapon I had just purchased, or find out if the unlockable parry ability is as satisfying as Bayonetta’s Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa (spoilers: it is.) If you like Platinum’s character action games and don’t mind going through another series of battle arenas with another satisfying combat system, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Even after you’re done, you can also try one of the other two available difficulty levels if you want further challenge, and there are more unlockable difficulties beyond the initial three. In summary, Disposable Media recommends Transformers: Devastation. For some people the cut corners may have been a bit disappointing in a £44.99 release, but on PlayStation Plus you can still have plenty of fun with it.

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