Tag Archives: Cooperative

Surviving Survival

Despite playing some relatively hardcore games, my partner had seemingly always been opposed to the concept of gaming on a computer. On one hand, I understand wanting to keep some kind of separation between work, school, and innumerable other “serious” activities you might use a computer for, and pure entertainment, like gaming. On the other hand, several of her favorite genres, city building and adjacent strategy games, for example, are quite PC-centric. It has also been a struggle to find good opportunities for “couch” cooperative play, regardless of genre, on consoles over the years, yet there is what seems like a constant drip of intriguing online co-op games being released on PC. At some point in the last year she had a total change of heart and decided she wanted me to build her a gaming PC for her birthday. Once completed, we almost immediately dove into the deep end with one of her other favorite genres, open world sandbox survival.

“Zombie horde, meet Iron Fireaxe!”

I’ve talked about 7 Days to Die a little bit on here before, as we’d played the Xbox One version of it split-screen years ago, but the console ports lagged behind the development of the PC version and were eventually entirely abandoned. Once we had our fill of that version, we left and never went back, though often lamented not being able to play the supposedly superior PC version. Playing it on PC promised a lot more content, better graphics and performance, and, as luck would have it, the ability for us to jump in with family who were already fans of the game for a much more lively 4 player romp. Did it deliver? Well, yes!

While I still can’t escape the slightly janky look and feel of 7 Days to Die, it’s undeniably a vastly superior experience all around on PC. One of our team was quite seasoned at the game, so with his guidance, we immediately found ourselves a home base and began gathering equipment and leveling up our characters via the game’s traders and their dynamic quests. We played at least two whole campaigns, and though the game doesn’t really have a true ending, we progressed through all of the quest, gear, and skill tiers in both. In fact, we spent so much time in the game that I think I’ve had my fill for a while. While there’s always fun to be had with the emergent quality of playing these types of open world games, especially with other people, survival games like this tend to be the most fun while first figuring them out, and maybe an additional time after you have a better understanding of the systems at play. After that, the best reason to jump back in is a big new patch that overhauls systems and adds new content, which thankfully 7 Days to Die does yearly or thereabouts. On top of the basic gameplay loop and systems therein becoming a known quantity, I found 7 Days to Die’s character and tech progression to be just a bit boring.

“Sniping zombies as they funnel into our compound during a Blood Moon.”

Moment to moment gameplay isn’t particularly exciting either, and although there’s always a bit of tension when exploring a new building to clear out a zombie infestation in order to complete a quest, for instance, it doesn’t quite pull off the same feel of desperate scavenging that made me love State of Decay so much. Where it does succeed magnificently is the “Blood Moon” horde night mechanic which the game is named after. That is, every 7th night a massive horde of zombies spawns, relentlessly focusing on the players. At first this usually plays out like the end of the grandfather of the entire zombie genre, Night of the Living Dead, wherein a ragtag group of survivors has to hole up in a loosely reinforced building and fend off a seemingly unending number of increasingly violent attacks with little to no resources, counting the minutes until the relative safety of sunrise. Later, you’ll have hopefully found (or built) a compound more capable of surviving such attacks, with multiple walls, trenches, tripwires and other traps, automatic turrets, sniper towers, and maybe even a safe room or emergency evacuation route if things totally go off the rails. In either case, thanks to the game dynamically adjusting the difficulty of these events as you progress, the stress of these chaotic nights is real, and the loop of preparing for, participating in, and recovering from them makes up for just about all of the game’s other shortcomings

“The locals sometimes get a little feisty.”

At around the same time that we were playing 7 Days to Die the most, I’d also hopped into a Valheim server some of my coworkers setup after the release of the Mistlands patch. While I had briefly checked out Valheim solo a few months prior, for all intents and purposes, this was my first time playing the game. It was fun to play these two games so close together, since they’re quite similar, but diverge in some very interesting ways, with Valheim coming across as having much more carefully designed, less punitive systems, seemingly in response to earlier titles in the genre. Most notably, Valheim is less focused on “surviving” which means the fiddly bits (and therefore much of the hassle) of things like eating and drinking, repairing your gear, watering crops, feeding animals, upkeep on buildings, etc. are mostly eliminated. That’s not to say they’re not there at all; the comfort awarded by a good warm, dry structure and a full belly come in the form of increasingly large buffs, and these buffs are as essential as upgraded gear as you get further into the game.

As for gear, progression largely comes in the form of the typical material to tool to material loop, which is somewhat gated by individual biomes. That is, while you’re technically able to explore the entire map from the get go, and exploring is definitely compelling, each biome also has a “boss” which rewards you with items and abilities that will often be required for getting certain resources from the next biome. It’s a simple but clever progression mechanic. Likewise, enemies in each new biome serve as something of a soft gate as well. Heading into an area more than one above where you’ve progressed is likely a death sentence until you have better gear and better buffs. While it feels more natural than level-based “zones” of theme park style MMORPGs, it has a similar effect.

“Finishing off The Elder, the Black Forest’s boss.”

Construction, along with the systems and physics around it, is quite nice too. Like 7 Days to Die, Valheim has a voxel-esque engine which allows for fairly robust terrain deformation and reasonably free-form building (like Minecraft, to use my usual reference) and while It does have less realistic, far simpler graphics, it makes up for that by the use of a combination of a nice art style and quite few effects, resulting in a unique, cool aesthetic. Your home base will grow, especially in multiplayer games, into full on compounds, and these will need some defenses due to the denizens of whatever biome you’re in, and more importantly, enemy raid events which tier up along with your biome progression. These tend to be more of a minor annoyance than the session defining white-knuckle Blood Moons of 7 Days to Die, but I appreciate that they at least give me another reason to build new things and improve old ones.

On the other hand, building and crafting is where the game can get a little grindy. The more ambitious you are, the more material you need. Upgrading our little town from mostly wood to mostly stone wasn’t so bad, but when we decided to add stone basements to all of our buildings and connect them with a tunnel system, and then later build a massive wall and moat around the entire thing, we were suddenly spending a lot of time mining and hauling stone. The move to higher tier metals and other materials was even worse, with hours on end spent mining ore and rows of smelters cranking out ingots like some kind of Victorian factory.

It’s around that time that I fell off of Valheim. We made it as far as the mountain biome, and while there was definitely more to see, by then I felt like I had gotten to know what to expect from the gameplay loop. There’s a lot more I could talk about, like sailing, the cool fire propagation system, portals, the boss battles themselves, and the mini dungeon crawls, but in summary, Valheim was absolutely excellent, and I’d guess I’ll return to it as more content continues to be released for it.

“Meet Bruce. You’ll probably spend more time with him than your co-op partners…”

While playing 7 Days to Die, I wanted to start a game with my partner that we could play on our own time, separate from organizational constraints of playing with a larger group. I also wanted to play something a little more “chill” than 7 Days. We ended up settling on 2022’s Raft.

Raft is, well, it’s kind of all in the title. The basic premise is that you start on a tiny raft floating in a more or less endless ocean. You need to gather material from debris floating around you, on islands you’ll randomly encounter, and in the reefs around them, to expand and improve your raft, take care of your hunger and thirst, and of course, improve your gear. I almost immediately found the simplicity of most of the mechanics around gathering and crafting, as well as the amount of interesting tools and purely cosmetic items (furniture, etc.) to be quite fun, giving the game a really solid foundation that thankfully lasted throughout our entire playtime. Additionally, Raft has some great aesthetics. Likely thanks in large part to now classics like World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2, it seems like slightly cartoony, minimalist art styles are quite prevalent with sub AAA games these days, and ever since falling in love with Firewatch, I’ve been a big fan of this kind of look when it’s done competently.

“Home sweet home, near endgame.”

That all said, this game definitely isn’t quite as chill as I’d originally expected. From the get-go, you’re nearly constantly harassed by a huge great white shark who seems to have a personal vendetta against you. While you’ll need to stop it from taking chunks out of your raft fairly regularly, it’s at its most annoying when you’re diving for resources. There are also other aggressive animals, such as bears, on some of the islands, and both they and the shark seem to have fairly aggressive respawn timers to boot. Combat is really simple, and while it won’t blow anyone away, I didn’t find that it detracted much from the game either. Survival has even less chill, as with little in the way of tutorialization to go on, we found ourselves having to restart our first several games due to running out of food, losing our raft entirely, and one time being stranded in an area with next to no wind to sail by and broken oars – we’d run out of material to build new ones, and there wasn’t any floating debris in sight. Even once we had a pretty good grasp on what we were doing, it took us forever to discover the blueprints for the receiver and antenna, upon which your progress for the rest of the game depends. That was probably just a bit of bad luck with “RNJesus”, though.

One thing that had initially really intrigued me about Raft was that, unlike the almost completely absent stories of 7 Days to Die and Valheim, it supposedly had an actual narrative. Unfortunately, I found that aspect of the game a little disappointing. There are “story islands” that you progress through linearly which are special handcrafted locations featuring puzzles, backstory in the form of audio and text logs, and sometimes special items and even boss fights. There is also a way to guide yourself from story island to story island (the aforementioned receiver and antennas) which hopefully means you’ll never get too far off the beaten path. While there’s definitely a bit of mystery there, like why the planet flooded or, hell, why our characters are floating around on a tiny raft with no supplies at the start of the game, I don’t feel like Raft capitalizes on it anywhere close to well enough. The whole thing, particularly the end, felt a little rushed. Was I the only one who found the repeated references to “Forward Scouts” on the last story island when I think that term had only been used once or twice prior in the entire rest of the game to be a bit jarring? Besides, how am I a “scout” when I don’t seem to have relayed any of the information I’ve gathered back to anyone, and who am I scouting for, exactly? It’s not distracting while playing, but upon further reflection, it just all feels just a little half-baked.

That all said, we did eventually beat Raft, and I think in the end, we both really enjoyed the experience.

“Stand aside insects, we have a huge quest list to complete.”

Once our 7 Days to Die crew reluctantly decided to move on, I urged them to check out Grounded. Grounded follows a lot of the same open world sandbox survival tropes as the other games in this list, but two things immediately made it stand out to me.

First, the theme. Grounded is essentially Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Set in the early 90s, you play as one of 4 teens shrunken down to the size of a bug, lost in a backyard. It’s a pretty damn cool concept for a game, especially to an old man like me who played countless “giant” deathmatch maps in Unreal Tournament. I’m sure it won’t appeal to everyone, but hopping across clover leaves, sawing down blades of grass like they’re towering trees, and battling huge stink bugs, it’s quite compelling to me, and it’s executed extremely well to boot. Unlike large parts of all three of the above games, the world in Grounded is completely handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, which means, while maybe it is a little less replayable, it’s full of interesting touches.

That’s actually the second thing. Grounded is developed by a studio that a lot of people reading this will be very familiar with, Obsidian Entertainment. I don’t mean to be disrespectful in any way to the developers of these other games, but Obsidian is in a different league, and thanks to their acquisition by Microsoft, one with a bigger budget too. Obviously this isn’t an automatic selling point for everyone, as Obsidian is mostly known for their CRPGs. That, and for putting out… ummm, quite often less than finished games. That said, while I’ve not played many of their more recent titles, Grounded is by far the most polished Obsidian game I’ve ever played. It looks fantastic, sporting a minimalist art style not unlike the sort I mentioned admiring in Raft. It also sounds great, the UI feels well designed, and the whole thing is responsive and smooth. Thanks to its Microsoft association, it’s also on Gamepass and supports crossplay with consoles to boot!

“Cornered by two massive, deadly spiders. Ugh!”

Like Raft, it also has a narrative. Thankfully, I think it succeeds a lot better than Raft on that front, taking an approach similar to many single player open world games, with cutscenes, info dumps, and new missions punctuating the completion of old ones. It has the obligatory text and audio logs too. Of course, like a lot of other open world games, you can tackle many missions in whatever order you want, but my crew quickly discovered that, as an example, you should maybe clear each of the science labs in order rather than attempting to clear out the last one first just because you happen to be near it. Speaking of having less than expected levels of chill (another trait it shares with Raft) I suspect the difficulty of Grounded is one of the main reasons the game isn’t more popular. Despite its cartoony graphics and kid-focused plot, this game is brutal as fuck! It wasn’t uncommon for some of us to get two-shotted by hostile insects early on in the game, and I had a particularly harrowing round of cascading drowning deaths as each subsequent attempt to recover my backpack from a long, dark, underwater tunnel failed spectacularly. Oh, and absolutely turn on that “arachnophobia safe mode” if you’re not down with spiders because, frankly, fuck those things! We narrowly avoided some rage quits and eventually learned a few tricks that really helped us out, and after that, quickly made progress.

Beyond the typical open world survival game gathering and crafting loop, there’s something of a currency called “raw science”. RS is awarded for completing missions, discovering and analyzing new materials, killing certain larger enemies, and can even just found placed throughout the yard. RS can then be used to purchase sets of new crafting plans, recipes, and even mutations. Mutations are a form of character customization perk mostly found when completing certain milestones in the world, which you can then apply a couple of to grant your character special abilities and buffs. There’s also “milk molars” – big teeth you can find in the world and harvest, rewarding you with points you can use to upgrade your stats, including the ability to raise your active mutation count as high as 5. After we hit that aforementioned rough spot when trying to clear the labs, we spent a whole multi hour session farming molars in the world to give ourselves a bit of an edge.

“Surveying our WIP preparation for the final battle.”

As we progressed, the missions eventually focused into a more linear path, culminating in a huge final battle which was sort of a more hardcore version of the much smaller MIX.R wave defense side challenges scattered around the map. I suppose we never took those MIX.R challenges all too seriously, and we failed the final battle in an utterly humiliating fashion the first time around, despite thinking we had a winning strategy. This caused us to over prepare for the next attempt, spending quite a while grinding out more advanced (and stronger) material so that we could build multiple layers of fortifications, ultimately leading to a glorious victory the second time around. It was actually quite fun, looking back, though we were surprised to find the end cutscene representing something of a “bad” ending. It turns out, the bad ending is the normal one, and the better ending is only available to players who defeat some not-at-all signposted side objectives before the final fight. A slightly disappointing end to an otherwise excellent game.

That’s it for now. Next on the list: Enshrouded!

Deep Ones, Repetition, and Divorce

While there have been posts about other games hidden amongst the deluge of Halo Fest 2020 related content here, I’ve actually played a lot of other things I’ve yet to post about. Here’s a quick catch-up of random things I’ve actually finished, with several others coming in future posts when I eventually wrapped them up.

“In the midnight hour though, I have as many friends as I like.” – Online Gamer”

First up is The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker. I’ve had most of Wales Interactive’s more notable FMV games on my wishlist ever since playing Late Shift. Doctor Dekker, however, is something a bit different from my first foray into modern FMV games. While Late Shift is very cinematic, playing something like an interactive movie, Doctor Dekker mostly consists of very short clips, almost always focusing on a single subject from a static first person perspective. This works well with the premise of the game, as you’re supposed to be a psychiatrist interviewing various patients in your office. A patient sits on your couch. You ask a question, and you get an answer. Simple.

Mechanically, just choosing questions from a dialog tree might be a little too simplistic to be entertaining, and Doctor Dekker attempts to solve this by having the player freely type their questions. Or, at least, it does in the PC version. You see, I played this on my Xbox Series X, and from what I understand the console versions of Doctor Dekker largely dumb this feature down, allowing you to select most of the more obvious questions and follow-up questions from a list. This works… okay. In fact, what I took issue with was when the game indicated that there was more to learn without showing me any new questions, meaning I was forced to type one in. Call me spoiled by 40 year old text adventure games, but man, this game’s text parser is hot garbage. I’d ask very obvious questions, even some I was absolutely positive were follow-ups to previous answers, yet 9 out of 10 times I’d get back a short FMV sequence equivalent to “huh?!” Still, other times I might get a wildly random response that didn’t seem related to what I asked at all. It seems like it’s looking for a limited number of keywords and keyword combinations rather than understanding grammar or at least having a massive list of acceptable synonyms. I also strongly suspect there was some degree of intention behind having us play “guess the keyword” as something of a puzzle. Regardless, fighting a bad parser is never fun.

“Interviewing the ever popular Marianna.”

While the format is a little limited, there’s a larger murder mystery plot with some (not at all subtle) shades of Cthulhu mythos, including a very minimal insanity system, all unraveled by questioning these patients to learn more about their backgrounds, their relationships with the victim, and ultimately investigating if they, or another of your patients, might be the killer. The actors were mostly pretty good, or at the very least fun to watch as you get to know what are ultimately all pretty wacky characters. The way the story unfolds day by day also did a good job of stringing me along as I learned more. The ending was a little unsatisfying, in that there seemed to be multiple equally viable candidates for who the killer could be, and it felt like the game simply picked one of them at random to be valid for this playthrough. That said, doing a little reading, it does seem that there can be a decent amount of deviation for each patient depending on how you choose to answer certain questions they ask of you along the way. Neat.

Overall, I definitely didn’t find The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker to be as enjoyable as Late Shift, but I certainly didn’t find it objectionable enough to steer me away from checking out other similar games in the future.

Moving on, I picked up Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on PC at its launch. For those that don’t know, Darktide is something of a sequel to the two Warhammer: Vermintide games. Being based in the far flung grim-dark universe of Warhammer 40k versus the high fantasy world of Warhammer Fantasy, it still follows Vermantide’s Left 4 Dead influenced style of character/class-based cooperative action. While there are a ton of systemic differences, both minuscule and quite large, I feel like comparing it to Left 4 Dead alone does a pretty accurate job of summing up the gameplay of these titles.

“My Orgryn Thudd and his beloved Ripper.”

I haven’t played a lot of cooperative games like this outside of playing L4D with friends way back in the day, and despite being a huge Warhammer fan, I’ve yet to play either of the Vermintide games since it seems most of my gaming friends have moved on from the genre. Playing Darktide with randoms is incredibly easy though, and I found people purposely being assholes, trolling, or otherwise not playing the game properly to be quite rare. Of course, teamwork with a bunch of random people, usually without voice communications, is nowhere near as fun, but I found it to be enjoyable enough. Perhaps my favorite part of Darktide though, was simply how amazing of a job Fatshark did with representing the gritty violence of the Warhammer 40,000 setting in first person. It’s a great looking game absolutely bursting with atmosphere. The classes are all pretty fun, as is customizing and upgrading your characters.

That all said, I found the gameplay loop to get a little repetitive. Progression is reasonably fast, but still, slogging through the same (or very similar) oppressive feeling maps over and over again feels a bit too much like a treadmill. I might have stuck with it if I were playing with friends, and while I ultimately still like the game, I put it down after only around 15 hours of playtime. Perhaps I’ll return if I see some compelling updates though.

“Spoilers: She dies.”

Speaking of grinds, I briefly returned to Destiny 2 (PC) late last year, just long enough to catch up from where I left off, and finally played through The Witch Queen campaign. I had a great time as usual, but the start of my burn out just happened to coincide with the announcement of the Lightfall expansion, which didn’t look too appealing to me for numerous admittedly petty reasons. From the current community backlash, perhaps I dodged a bullet?

Another repetitive online FPS that I bounced off of recently was Meet Your Maker. How do I describe Meet Your Maker? Hmm. Well, imagine a very Quake 1+2 influenced FPS (in terms of visuals, some of the enemy and weapon designs, and having a sweet grappling hook which my brain will apparently always associate with old Quake mods) in which you “raid” random procedurally designed dungeons / bases (called outputs) filled with enemies and traps. Your goal is to make it deep into the outpost, grab the loot stash therein, and then make your way back out alive (which is easier said than done, since some new monsters and traps might show up after you nab said loot.) The loot you gain from these raids can be used to upgrade your character, weapons, etc.

“With only one shot left, I better not miss.”

Now imagine that these dungeon base things aren’t actually procedurally generated, but designed and constructed by other players, using some of the loot from their own raids to add and upgrade more traps and enemies, expand and redesign their outpost, and build secondary outposts, and of course, you can do the same. I personally love the idea of these sort of dueling asymmetrical gameplay systems, and I’m always down for systems where players can get creative by adding their own content to the world (providing they’re not abused too much.) Building your own outpost maps, while understandably a little limited, is pretty fun, but watching replays of other players raid my outposts and navigate my traps? Amazingly entertaining! I don’t think of myself as a cruel or particularly vindictive person, but Meet Your Maker had me practically falling out of my chair, literally laughing out loud on more than one occasion after watching some hapless player wander into a particularly diabolical trap. Pure, albeit slightly evil, joy.

Personally, I always tried to make my outposts some degree of “fair” and I feel like others do as well, though when raiding you do occasionally wander into a outpost that was designed to be almost impossible, making them painstakingly slow to navigate through. Raiding in Meet Your Maker tends to lead to a uniquely cautious approach to exploration and navigation anyway, at least until you learn a lot of the more common tricks players use and how to deal with them, so if you make your outpost too stupid most players will probably just bail on it after a few deaths. I tend to get obsessed with conquering them though. Back at the hub area, which is something of a diegetic, in-game world menu, you get a taste of the fiction around all of this, which I actually found pretty interesting. Just as with Darktide though, it’s largely just set dressing to make the grind of the gameplay a bit easier to swallow and as far as I can tell there’s nothing in the way of a plot to advance through.

“A fav, vertical shaft with multiple traps at each end. No one can resist a shortcut!”

I really love the game, but after 25 hours or so, that grind is ultimately why I’m not still playing Meet Your Maker. The resource requirements to upgrade your character and particularly to keep your outposts up and running seem far too punitive, even if you really enjoy the raiding gameplay. Even ignoring that, just like Darktide, the gameplay is definitely repetitive, so some degree of burnout is bound to happen. I will surely return to it in the future, though I’m afraid its player count might have dwindled precipitously by then, which would be a huge problem for a game so heavily dependent on player made content. A game with a strikingly similar design, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, had the same struggles, and was shuttered before ultimately being reworked into an almost entirely different game, leaving the hardcore fans of the original feeling totally abandoned by Ubisoft. I hope Meet Your Maker has a better fate.

And now for something completely different… *desk blows up*

It Takes Two was a hot topic on some of my favorite gaming podcasts, and coming from Josef Fares and the rest of the team that brought us the impressive A Way Out, it was an easy addition to my backlog. Somehow my partner also found out about it and wanted to play it just as much as I did. Definitely a good omen for a cooperative game, no? Like A Way Out, It Takes Two is a dedicated co-op game (I mean, hell, it’s in the name!) and has been designed from the ground up to be played that way, either split screen or online, and generously even offers a free pass for the latter scenario, meaning only one of the two players has to own the game. Awesome.

“Your tormentor, Dr. Hakim.”

The two players fill the shoes of Cody and May, a husband and wife in the midst of a divorce who are magic’d into their daughter’s weird little toy doll versions of themselves. They need to work together to escape the terrifying Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-esque massively scaled version of the world and break their daughter’s evil curse, all while being taunted mercilessly by Dr. Hakim, an anthropomorphized relationship advice book. While I’m being slightly hyperbolic here, that’s about the gist of it.

You can probably already guess that by working together, the couple will slowly rediscover their feelings for each other and end up reunited, and while that’s how it goes down on paper, I don’t think their reconciliation is quite as smooth in the game itself. That is, there were tons of opportunities to show Cody and May growing closer, dealing with old wounds, rekindling passions, etc. but I don’t feel like it does a great job of presenting this gradual process. Instead, there are moments, specific lines of dialog, etc. that relay some of this, but you don’t really see the characters progress all that much. Despite this, the game ends as predicted and (sarcastic spoiler warning) the family ends up sticking it out and living happily ever after. While sweet and all, the game did actually do a pretty good job at showing us that the couple has some major compatibility issues and that maybe their divorce was actually warranted. Oh well!

I’m being pretty critical here, because that might be my only real complaint about the entire game, and it’s not even that notable. Honestly, the story could just be a total contrivance to set up the game, and while there were some interesting, even slightly emotional narrative moments, it largely takes a backseat to the incredibly fun gameplay. Unless you utterly hate the story or the characters, I don’t think this is likely to factor heavily into your enjoyment of the game.

“Classic co-op action, with one player flying and one gunning.”

As far for that gameplay, It Takes Two fits the classic 3D platformer mold pretty cleanly. I don’t even think I remember the last one of those I played, but as an Nintendo 64 owner in the 90s, trust me when I say I’ve played my share of them. The genre has always been a mixed bag for me. Light narratives featuring wacky characters, with some puzzle solving, exploration, and adventure? All pretty fun stuff. Difficult platforming, however, can be extremely frustrating to me, and lots of it? Tedious. No worries though, as the basic mechanics of It Takes Two are great. It’s smooth, responsive, and just the right level of forgiving. That’s not to say there aren’t some potentially challenging moments, and I was worried that my partner might have difficulty as, while she plays plenty of games, platformers aren’t really her wheelhouse, but there were few if any moments in the game where she struggled. It’s all fairly intuitive, and always being able to figure things out with another person further helps this (which I suppose is appropriately meta.)

The game isn’t all just jumping around though. Many of the puzzles and other obstacles to navigating the world rely on some pretty clever mechanics, and It Takes Two takes the unusual approach of adding new ones and mixing up or replacing old ones constantly. In fact, the major stages and numerous smaller sections of the game have their own set of puzzle solving and/or navigation mechanics, from things like grinding on rails, riding on creatures and objects, to shrinking yourself and reversing time. Cody and May usually have their own distinct sets of abilities on each stage too, and they can typically be combined. For example, in one area early on, Cody gets the ability to shoot sticky sap which damages and slows certain enemies, and can be used to hold or weigh down objects. May gets the ability to shoot an incendiary projectile, which she can use for pinpoint shots, but more importantly, causes Cody’s sap to violently explode. These abilities need to be used both separately and in-conjunction in a variety of creative ways. Even if one of these mechanics doesn’t gel with you, it’s not usually long before you’re onto something else, which given the game’s length, clocking it at somewhere around 14 hours, is definitely a good thing.

“Using their special magnets, one player has to push the door open while the other has to pull it.”

In addition to the variety of mechanics, there’s also something like 25 minigames hidden throughout the stages. These minigames really just serve as a bit of a fun distraction, further breaking up the gameplay and interrupting the cooperation with some brief moments of head to head competition. Once you find a minigame it unlocks it to be played from the main menu any time you want, too. Sure, not all of them are amazing, but my biggest complaint about the minigames is that some of them are a little too hidden, and missing out on one entirely just because you didn’t happen to stumble across it is definitely a bit of a bummer. I think we missed several during our playthrough, actually.

I’ve used the word “variety” several times now, and the aesthetics of the different stages and sub areas of the game are equally as diverse. Honestly, the entire game looks absolutely fantastic; stylized just enough, featuring great animation across the board, and all running silky smooth on my Series X to boot. Voice acting (and the writing) of individual lines is great too, as are the sound effects. It’s one of those great games that feels almost like a AAA title while it clearly wasn’t one. I honestly think we need a lot more of those; there seems like there’s plenty of fertile middle ground between tiny indie projects and massive, big budget AAA hits for games with good budgets and talented teams to be able to produce quality titles with modest sales goals (which, indubitably, will occasionally be shattered.) It Takes Two is a fine example of this, winning several GOTY awards and apparently selling over 10 million copies so far.

Anyway, off my soapbox for now. It Takes Two might just be one of the best co-op games ever created, and it should be on literally everyone who enjoys even the occasional co-op experience’s list. How’s that for a summary?

Screenshots from Doctor Dekker and It Takes Two swiped from Steam Community posts because I forgot to take my own. Ooops.

Halo Fest 2020 – Spartan Assault

The Story So Far: 6 months after the Didact was defeated the UNSC Infinity embarks on a mission to return to the Forerunner Shield World Requiem and reclaim it from Jul’Mdama’s rogue Covenant faction. As part of a massive combined force, including over 300 SPARTAN-IVs led by Commander Sarah Palmer, Spartan fireteams engage in various operations on Requiem’s surface. During one such mission, fireteam Crimson recovers a mysterious Forerunner artifact. Later investigating it aboard the Infinity, head engineer Dr. Glassman appears to be disintegrated by the artifact. In his absence, Dr. Catherine Halsey is temporarily released from custody after being arrested for war crimes, including her role in the SPARTAN-II program, and brought onboard to continue the investigation. During her research, Dr. Halsey begins communicating with an unknown entity who she eventually pieces together is Jul’Mdama himself. Caught in the act, Halsey is placed back into custody though not before reaching out to Jul’Mdama to offer her assistance with unlocking the Librarian’s AI imprint. As a result, combined Covenant and Promethean forces lay siege to the Infinity, appearing to abduct Dr. Halsey in the process. Brought to the Librarian’s shrine, Halsey is able to unlock and enter it before Jul’Mdama can intervene. ONI learns of Halsey’s betrayal and orders her assassination with Commander Palmer departing to handle it personally. Captain Lasky orders fireteam Majestic, who are already on Requiem, to rescue the doctor instead. The Librarian shows Halsey another artifact called the Janus Key, which can provide the real time location of all Forerunner technology, and gives it to her in hopes that it can be used to propel humanity’s evolution forward. Pulling her out of the shrine, Jul’Mdama snatches one half of the Janus Key from her just as Palmer and fireteam Majestic arrive. In the ensuing chaos Halsey passes the other half of the Janus Key to Majestic, Palmer wounds her, and Jul’Mdama absconds with her. As his fleet begins to jump away, Jul’Mdama deactivates the slipspace anchors holding Requiem in place, pulling it into a nearby sun. The Infinity is able to free itself from the artifact’s hold and jump away just in time.

With 343 Industries continuing to grow Halo as a full “transmedia” franchise, more of the type of spinoffs Microsoft first tried with Halo Wars seemed inevitable. Unlike Halo Wars though, 2013’s Halo: Spartan Assault wouldn’t be limited to a niche genre on a single platform; Spartan Assault was an easy to pick up and play twin stick shooter that was eventually available for Windows and iOS mobile devices, Xbox One and Xbox 360, and Windows. I’m not sure whether Spartan Assault’s sales actually reflected being both more approachable and more available but, given that it was quickly followed up with a sequel the following year, it seems likely.

“While the gameplay is a little repetitive there’s plenty of variety in the maps.”

I can’t say I have any particular fondness for twin stick shooters myself but these kinds of genre spinoff games are always intriguing to me. Still, never much of a mobile gamer, Spartan Assault flew completely under my radar and I honestly didn’t know that it was released on anything other than mobile devices until spotting it in the Xbox Store just a few years ago. Indeed, it’s that version I played for this playthrough; the Xbox One version on my Series X. Notably, this also marks the first time I’ll be covering something entirely new to me as part of Halo Fest 2020 and that remains the case from here on out. Kind of weird given how rooted in nostalgia this whole thing is, eh?

Spartan Assault actually does a fairly good job at taking a great deal of the core Halo formula and cramming it into a twin stick shooter mold. You play as a single Spartan wandering around on foot spraying down Covenant forces en masse with a variety of weapons. Included are staples like your Mjolnir armor’s recharging shield and a two weapon limit, with many of Halo’s iconic weapons showing up, and even armor abilities making a prominent appearance. One of the bigger twists to the genre is the lack of unlimited ammo, though scavenging from weapon racks, ammo crates, and fallen enemies should keep that from ever being more than a minor inconvenience. You’re sometimes given a UNSC Scorpion or Grizzly tank (though oddly no Warthogs) and hijacking Ghosts and Wraiths is an option as well. Overall, it all feels sufficiently “Halo”.

“Everything is better with tanks!”

Developed as a mobile game first, each mission takes no more than 10 or 15 minutes to complete, with many clocking in closer to 5 minutes. Between that and the lack of anything more than simple objectives like “destroy this emplacement” or “hold this point” there really isn’t a ton of challenge here. While there is a stripped down but otherwise familiar skull system, there isn’t any kind of selectable difficulty level either. Instead, the challenge is in earning a star rating based on your score at the end of each mission. In most missions earning a bronze star is effortless, though you’ll need to intentionally chase as many kill streaks and multikills as possible to get beyond that. The other way of doing this is via in-app microtransactions in the form of score boosts and temporary special weapon unlocks. Thankfully, these microtransactions (and indeed chasing high scores in the first place) can be easily ignored if you prefer, and purchasable with in-game experience points if you’re desperate to use them without laying down cash for the privilege.

Graphically Spartan Assault doesn’t come close to representing what the Xbox One can do. While serviceable, I’d argue that the Halo game it shares the most in common with, Halo Wars, shows a much higher degree of polish. The soundtrack fares better, with the original Halo trilogy’s soundtrack being an obvious influence. It’s just a shame you don’t get to hear more of it. A bigger complaint I have is that certain button assignments and other UI choices make it obvious that the controls definitely don’t appear to have been designed from the ground up with a gamepad in mind. That’s not to say they’re horrible, but they never clicked with me in a truly satisfying way which is kind of make or break for a twin stick shooter in my opinion. I also find it shocking that, despite being a common feature of both the Halo series and this entire genre, the campaign completely lacks cooperative play. There was a mini cooperative-only campaign that introduced a Firefight-like wave defense mode against our old friends the Flood added to the console releases, but even that lacks local co-op. Definitely a huge missed opportunity.

“The dryness of the mission briefings makes sense in context.”

Taking place sometime before the Infinity returned to Earth after the end of the Requiem Campaign (as described above) Spartan Assault is framed around a TACSIM training simulator that lets Spartans experience historical battles. The campaign covers the events of the Battle of Draetheus V, and follows the exploits of SPARTAN-IVs Edward Davis and Sarah Palmer. A motion comic style cutscene (similar to some of the ones we’ve seen in the terminals of earlier games) narrated by the Infinity’s quirky AI Roland sets up each operation, while each mission therein is presented by a strategic map and a couple of paragraphs of text that dryly describe each scenario.

Given that this is a side story that actually takes place out of chronological order, I’ll go over the plot here. While I’m fairly vague in these summaries they do still contain spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid them.

The Story: A splinter fleet of Covenant forces led by Sangheili Merg Vol appeared over the research colony of Draetheus V and launched an assault on its moon, X50. Spartans Edward Davis and Sarah Palmer rallied the UNSC defense, fortifying its primary research facility as well as setting up anti-air defenses to target incoming Covenant dropships. While successful in slowing the attack, Meg Vol’s fanatical forces still quickly overwhelmed them and established a solid foothold on X50. Spartan Palmer departed for Draetheus V to assist with its defense which soon escalated to targeted strikes against Covenant officers and an organized counter offensive resulting in a large armor engagement in which both sides suffered great losses. Meanwhile Meg Vol’s true goal became clear as it was discovered that X50 was not a natural moon but a massive Forerunner structure capable of building and destroying entire planets. With the support of the UNSC Eminent Domain and its marines, Spartan Davis was able to fight through the Covenant’s lines to the Forerunner control structure. UNSC technicians successfully disabled the weapon, though not before Merg Vol had already begun to unleash its devastating power against Draetheus V itself. Back on Draetheus V, Spartan Palmer’s efforts shifted to assisting with the evacuation of the planet, commandeering numerous Covenant troop carriers. With Meg Vol still at large on X50 and not being able to contact Davis who had been killed in action in a ferocious Covenant counterattack, Palmer headed back to X50 to hunt for the rogue Covenant leader. After a vicious battle, Palmer subdued and killed Vol. With his faction now leaderless and in retreat, the survivors were able to evacuate the system.

“He’s no Master Chief, but Spartan Davis did save an entire planet.”

Spartan Assault’s plot retreads a lot of familiar ground, especially on the heels of playing through Halo 4 and its Spartan Ops campaign. I can’t say it adds very much either; I’d personally hoped to learn a little more about Sarah Palmer given that she was already an established character but, as was increasingly the trend, 343 saved that for elsewhere. Still, the details of Palmer’s heroics during the battle of Draetheus V are certainly impressive and surely contributed to how she ended up as the Commander of Spartan Operations on the Infinity. Overall, while not all that significant to Halo’s overarching plot, the story of the Battle of Draetheus V at least doesn’t feel out of place in the canon.

In the end, Spartan Assault feels like a fairly typical budget spinoff game. It’s decently executed and relatively fun to pass the time with, but ultimately a fairly mediocre experience for anyone who isn’t a big fan of the twin stick shooter genre (who I’d imagine would have a heap of their own criticisms beyond the ones I brought up.) Still, as a unique experience within the franchise that’s quite quick to play through, it was an enjoyable enough diversion. I wouldn’t say you should avoid it, but it’s entirely skippable.