Celeste Review

Celeste is a pixel-art 2D platformer of the brutal-but-fair kind popularised by the likes of Super Meat Boy. It takes the Amazon approach to videogame design: fail fast, fail often. You will die potentially thousands of times as you guide Madeline, a depressed young woman, up the titular mountain on a journey that’s as much self-discovery as a physical task.

Madeline can jump, dash and grip -- and that’s it. Keeping the control simple and intuitive allows developer Matt Makes Games to build what are essentially a series of increasingly fiendish puzzles. To conquer the mountain you’ll have to demonstrate problem-solving and planning as well as dexterity. Madeline’s limited grip keeps you from clinging to a ledge to plan your next moves, while a mid-air dash can only be used once between landing, demanding judicious usage. Floating crystals recharge both grip and dash; levels will ask you to chain dozens of precisely timed grips and dashes before Madeline feels firm ground beneath her feet again.

Death is also a crucial part of the Celeste experience. Madeline has no healthbar as such, and dies instantly when she touches an environmental hazard or falls off the map. The high level of precision needed to traverse Celeste Mountain means Madeline will die often. I burned through probably a hundred lives on certain areas, slowly identifying the right strategy. Thankfully, Madeline respawns almost instantly, ready to go again. There’s no fuss when Madeline croaks, like in Super Mario Bros for instance, no Try Again? button to press. Put it this way: if respawing took two seconds instead of one, Celeste could take a whole hour longer to complete. It’s great to play a game where the developers have focused so tightly on small but key gameplay features.

A typical room [Source: Torrents Games]

Your journey to the top of Celeste Mountain takes in eight different levels, from the city at the mountain’s foot, a spooky hotel, and some windswept, exposed mountain. Each level introduces a new mechanic to get to grips with. These range from the esoteric, such as the gelatinous oblongs that propagate your dash through and out the other side; to the more realistic, like mechanical trolleys that throw you across the screen or the strong winds that push and pull you in the exposed mountain level. Perhaps the cleverest are the blocks whose movement is linked to your dash, creating some tough predictive thinking puzzles. There’s a leap of faith element to it, dashing into previously empty space into which a block has suddenly arrived for you to grab onto.

Such elements ensure that Celeste always feels fresh and challenging in new ways. Level length is well judged -- over the course of a level you’ll master a mechanic and then move on to the next. Optional strawberries are dotted around levels, either on the main path or tucked away in hidden areas, representing extra-difficult routes. While rewarding to collect in their own right, the strawberries have a secondary function of allowing the player to expand playtime as they wish. This is doubly important given the repetition inherent in the game design and it’s easy to imagine a lesser developer getting this wrong and allowing it to slip into tedium. There were times when I was trying for a strawberry route and after a number of failures could feel my motivation slipping; I simply walked away from that challenge, no bother. That’s the story of Celeste in a nutshell: smart, invisible design decisions that combine for a special experience. (My one issue with the strawberries is that you’re told at the start they’re strictly for fun only -- but that’s not quite true. Madeline bakes a pie in the end cutscene, and the pie is better the more strawberries you collect (mine sucked). I was oddly annoyed by that.)

Madeline herself is an unusual videogame protagonist. She’s anxious, introverted, and depressed, and the plot of Celeste sees her struggling with her mental health. Some of Celeste’s best moments come when her anxieties take physical manifestations on screen. In a really effective sequence, a broken gondola triggers an anxiety attack, at which point you calm Madeline’s breathing by controlling the fluttering of a feather. The sound reduces in intensity and everything except the feather fades to black.

Celeste’s antagonist is Madeline’s alter-ego, a purple incarnation who appears at various points. Early on, she mimics your path around the level and kills Madeline if you allow her to be caught; later, she takes a more tentacle-like being in a boss-like encounter, firing lasers and other projectiles at you. In the spooky hotel, Madeline insists on helping the proprietor, Mr. Oshiro, despite him trying to trap her in the hotel; she only escapes when her less self-sacrificing alter ego intervenes. It’s a nicely written bit of metaphor. 

While I welcome attempts to write new kinds of protagonist, I unfortunately didn’t warm to Madeline at all. Madeline is stroppy, prickly, humourless and self-absorbed. It gets especially bad towards the game’s latter stages when she has some tediously sincere conversations about her mental health. Anxious and depressed people can often be paradoxically fun and vivacious so I feel there was room to make her more likeable. I found I had no reason to believe in the essential goodness that the game wishes you to see in her, and thus couldn’t particularly root for her. I also didn’t like the hand-drawn cartoon versions of her that appear in cut-scenes, which remind me of bad Flash-era Newgrounds platformers, and even her name set bad-naming bells ringing (I changed it to Mads). Celeste’s side characters aren’t much better. You encounter another climber, Theo, who appears regularly on your climb. Theo is a Seattleite who landed his dream job but cracked under pressure and speaks in the same annoying kind of way Madeline does. His calling card is taking selfies with Madeline without asking. 

Not super into this aesthetic

But that’s really the only negative. Other things worth mentioning are the soundtrack, which is rich, dynamic, and all-too catchy. And I’ve only lightly touched on just how much extra content there is. Besides the strawberries, which are a whole challenge unto themselves, there are also B-Sides to collect, which unlock ultra-difficult versions of the main levels and introduce advanced techniques. I took about 10 hours to complete the main story, but the collectibles could easily double that or more. And, satisfyingly, I still have the motivation to jump back in (comparing favourably to last week’s Okami, which I haven’t been back to).

In sum, then, industry-leading design choices in terms of movement, pacing, and level-design make Celeste a clear standout in its genre.  

NOTE: 08/02/2021

1) Subsequent to this review I continued with the optional extras...and my total play time ballooned from nine hours to fifty-five-plus. And I still haven't completed it. I mentioned B-Sides, but there are also C-Sides and even (I believe) D-Sides, making it clear that the main story should be regarded as only a small part of Celeste.

In addition, there is the whole Farewell DLC package (bundled with the Switch version), which is longer and harder than the actual main game. In Farewell the difficulty is cranked to insane levels, such that it represents a switch of audience focus from relatively casual gamers to hardcore Celeste fans with an almost-limitless desire for punishment. While I welcome the extended challenge, Farewell is a bit much. Yes, Celeste does boast extensive accessibility options, and yes, the game does take great pains to assure you that toggling said options by no means counts as failure...but as a fully able-bodied person who has persevered though countless brutal challenges, enabling accessibility options to me would feel like throwing in the towel.

It was tedium more than frustration that got the better of me eventually: About 3/4 of the way through Farewell I found I lacked the energy to tackle yet another mammoth level. I couldn't get back into the required determined, analytic mindset. Naturally, I then moved onto a much more forgiving, casual gaming experience -- Dark Souls.

2) Not long after publishing this review, Matt of Matt Makes Games came out as a transwoman and changed name to Maddy. She also announced that Madeline is also cannonically trans. You know, I think I knew all along. What vibe was I detecting? Not sure. The announcement also means that Madeline is much closer to a direct representation of Maddy herself, making me feel a bit weird about my criticism of Madeline's character. But, I stand by it.

1917 Review

Ok, I'll admit it: I hate long takes. By that I mean, more specifically, uninterrupted tracking shots, sometimes called "one-ers". Impressive logistical feats that require meticulous planning, good one-ers, used sparingly and done well as in Children of Men and Goodfellas, can heighten immersion and tension. Their technical difficulty means a successful example is held up as the sign of ultimate filmmaking skill. But that makes it a target in itself; the result is sub-par filmmakers overextending themselves and doing it badly, hurting the quality of their films.

The hallmarks of a bad one-er -- constant movement, conspicuous blocking (the movement of actors in front of the camera) and wonky angles -- serve only to draw attention to the artifice of cinema. A bad long take suggests an authorial presence desperate to prove its directorial skill, and are thus inherently immature, appealing mainly to fresher film students.

Cinema in the last couple of decades has featured a minor subplot of directors trying to one-up each other with bigger, better and more complex tracking shots. Alfonso Cuaron set the bar high with the aforementioned Children of Men, which features three extended one-ers. Alejandro Iñarritu, the worst offender, has since produced two films ostensibly comprising a single long take, the irritating Birdman and The Revenant. Sam Mendes has been dipping his toe in, notably the Day of the Dead sequence in Spectre, which to be fair is a pretty good example.

Mendes upped the ante earlier this year with First World War piece 1917. The film is presented as two continuous takes (a "two-er" if you like), with one cut mid-way through signalling a jump ten-or-so hours ahead. The scale of 1917 means Mendes can consider the ante successfully upped compared to the claustrophobic Birdman. Well done Sam, pat on the back.

Unfortunately, Mendes' determination to prove his skill scuppered what could have been a decent film. It is really mystifying why Mendes chose to tell his story in such a way. I guess he thought it seemed cool, an impressive technique befitting an impressive setting, but the approach causes a litany of problems. Mendes struggles to reconcile a two-hour run-time with events that span perhaps 16 hours.

Mendes' long takes create a confusing topology. After the plane crash, we encounter an entire squadron who have just silently appeared a few yards from what was presented as a deserted bit of map. Schofield and Baker were supposed to be one a lone mission in a race against time; how, then, have they been overtaken by a whole troop on their way somewhere else? Further, it undercuts the preceding scenes, which built tension on the pair's isolation and potential lurking Germans. No worries, here's a big truck full of unbothered men. The impression is an inadvertent surrealism, supernaturalism even. 

Distances are warped, too, with Schofield's ride in the back of the truck seeming to cover no more than a quarter-mile or so. His dip in the river appears to cover maybe 100 metres. Filmmakers, generally speaking, work hard to establish and maintain a cohesive geography by using establishing shots and following certain rules. And as an audience, we are pretty well-trained when it comes to mentally tracking film-space. But Mendes' one-ers trample all over that: it is simply incredibly obvious that little physical space has been covered either in the truck or in the river, let alone the purported nine miles that comprises Schofield and Baker's mission. Immersion is constantly broken.

What's exasperating is that all of this was avoidable by simply choosing to shoot in a "normal" way. Maybe reserve long takes for a few shorter sequences, such the bunker scene or when the first wave goes over the top. Then you can use cuts to allow time to elapse legibly and establish a cohesive geography. And it would make it more, not less, immersive, as you would not be reminded every few minutes that there's a whole team frantically running and ducking about and moving bits of scenery behind the camera.

That being said, 1917 is fitfully enjoyable. The plane crash is startling and the night-time street shootout, starkly illuminated by harsh flares, is arresting. Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden and, in particular, Benedict Cumberbatch are engaging in the limited screen time they get. But like the sucking mud of a shell crater, 1917 never escapes Mendes' overbearing directorial presence. 

Okami Review

Okami is a 3D action adventure game developed by Clover Studios and published by Capcom in 2006, originally for PS2 but since then ported to all major platforms -- including the Switch, on which I played it. The player controls a wolf-god called Amaterasu as she attempts to release a fictionalised Japan from the clutches of an evil god.

Most notable about Okami is its cartoonish (but not cartoony) cel-shaded visual design, which takes inspiration from Japanese art. Early versions of Okami had a more traditional 3D action game aesthetic, but the game suffered from performance issues. Necessity being the mother of invention, the developers switched to a less graphically intensive cel-shading approach, which both solved the performance issues and provided Okami’s most memorable feature.

Before and after of Okami's art direction [Source: Wikipedia]

Cel-shaded games often have been cartoony, such as Borderlands, or taken direct inspiration from comics -- see XIII and the “BAM!” and “BOOM!” that accompany its gunshots and explosions. Okami decidedly isn’t like that, borrowing instead from the Japanese Classical Yamato-e style of artwork. Maybe it would be snobbish to say this is somehow better than Borderlands’ and XIII’s 20th century American comic inspiration, but Okami’s visuals are certainly unique among videogames, and refreshing for it.

Clover Studios leant into Okami’s new artistic aesthetic by adding a unique and complementary gameplay feature: the Celestial Brush. The Celestial Brush allows the player to defeat enemies by turning the screen into a canvas and painting lines and patterns on it. A horizontal line forms a slash attack, an inverted “Q” shape drops a bomb, and a loop produces a powerful wind, among many others. The system also has non-combat uses, such as drawing lily pads to cross bodies of water, fixing bridges, and restoring leaves to trees; and is incorporated into the storyline in a satisfying way.

On the PS2 original the brush mechanic could be cumbersome, slowing down combat due to the ponderous nature of drawing with an analogue stick. On the Switch, however, the mechanic is revolutionised by the device’s touchscreen, allowing the player to draw brushstrokes as quickly as it takes to swipe a finger. I had some issues getting the game to recognise my brushstrokes and sometimes it struggled with interfacing the 2D canvas with the 3D game world, but overall it’s a great feature that enriches combat and exploration.

Celestial Brush in action [Source: PCMag]

Okami’s single-player campaign is its only game mode: no co-op, online play or anything else. Thankfully, it is massive. I finished it in about 35 hours, a satisfying length, and only realised after completion that I’d missed huge chunks of side quests, minigames and collectibles, which would have added another couple-dozen hours. Okami’s storyline, divided into three arcs, is a bit haphazard. The first arc is a well-realised, self-contained story about defeating an evil eight-headed being that preys on a small village. The second and third arcs see the scope of the story expand considerably but it becomes less cohesive. Friends and foes come and go in a blur as the plot lurches from one catastrophe to the next.

Clover’s desire to tell a sweeping epic folktale saddles Okami with an almost crippling quantity of dialogue, which is by far the game’s biggest flaw. There is simply far, far too much talking. Some can be sped-up by holding (A) but plot-critical dialogue trundles slowly across the screen and lasts for minutes at a time. You can skip it entirely but doing so risks missing key info. The whole script needs a severe edit: Even talking to one of the games many merchants, for instance, produces about ten lines of pointless chitchat before you are offered to buy something. Compounding matters is that there are really only two good characters among dozens -- Susano, a doofus warrior from an old bloodline, and Waka, a mysterious French-speaking prophet whose role as good or evil is uncertain until the end.

Amaterasu, the wolf you play as, does not speak; instead your talking is done by a little forest sprite called Issun. Issun, unfortunately, suffers terribly from bad writing. Not only are his colloquialisms annoying, but he’s also a pervert. Despite being a notionally sex-less story about a wolf fighting monsters, Okami still finds a way to include a teenagerish sexism that so often marrs ‘00s videogames. Most of the women characters in Okami wear revealing clothes; one in particular who plays a major role in the second arc is referred to by Issun as the “busty babe” and has her own boob physics. Issun is repeatedly and groan-inducingly awestruck by the game’s five or six beauties and the game hits a low point when you have to steal the robe of a princess bathing under a waterfall. It’s disappointing that the script and story don’t match the maturity of its art direction.

In terms of gameplay, Okami is overtly inspired by the Legend of Zelda series. The player steadily unlocks new areas that it is free to explore and contains multitudes of discoverables. The game’s main plot events take place in dungeon-style areas, and these are varied and interesting, although not matching the sophistication of the best Zelda dungeons. Each introduces one of thirteen Celestial Brush techniques, which Amaterasu works to unlock across the game. About half are environmental techniques that help you traverse and restore nature to the world; and half are fighting techniques. Amaterasu’s use of the Brush techniques are limited by an ink-o-meter, preventing the player from spamming battles with them.

In typical Capcom fashion Okami features a well-developed combat system. It combines various weapon types, unlockable tricks, dodge and block mechanics, combo bonuses and single-use power-ups to rich effect. Monster encounters take place exclusively in circular arenas that spring up around you (boss battles occur in larger designated arenas, but they're still circular). Enemies are varied, from the relatively straightforward imps of the first arc to tough elemental creatures of the later stages. Unfortunately, the fighting isn’t particularly difficult and I was never required to develop my skills much beyond hammering attack and learning a few enemy-specific Celestial Brush techniques. I completed Okami without dying once, in fact, leaving a lingering sense of waste that mastering the deep combat is ultimately inessential.

Fighting an imp in a virtual arena [Source: Siliconera]

Dialogue aside, the pacing of Okami is excellent. Its missions are engrossing and the player's attention to the main quest is constantly tested by innumerable side quests, collectables and minigames. With each save the game tracks total play-time, and I would find myself astonished when it would inform me that another 40 minutes of my life had slipped frictionlessly by. I regret ploughing determinedly through the main quest; once you enter the final area your opportunity to explore Okami’s world is locked off. The biggest miss was a series of combat arenas that pit you against wave after wave of increasingly tough monsters -- I saw none of that. I also missed all-but one of the eleven secret Celestial Brush techniques and all the non-essential special items. On the one hand it’s irritating that so much material is superfluous, and at times Okami even discourages it: in one area full of side quests you’re explicitly told not to forget about your mission; and at a certain point in the plot when the game wants to create a sense of urgency it bars you from taking on side quests. But on the other, I accept I could have been more curious, basically.

All told, Okami is if not quite the all-time classic it’s sometimes feted to be, then at least among the finest examples of PS2-era action adventure games. Tighter plotting and writing and difficulty would elevate it close to Jak II levels of excellence, but for the £7 I paid on the Switch Store I’m satisfied I got more than my money’s worth.