Adventures of a new, old gamer

Tutorial: Days 1 and 2

Before picking up the console, I was worried about hooking it up. I remember the many wires and switch boxes of the 8 and 16 bit era. Happily, this was as simple as just plugging in an HDMI cable and a power lead. The only surprise annoyance was discovering that PS4 games can’t simply be played direct from disc. Spider-Man took about 40 minutes to install itself, but the rest of the games I had for day 1 were much faster.

Maximum Carnage: The last Spider-Man game I played

The first thing I tried was Spider-Man, and it seems to have been a great choice. I remember playing the Maximum Carnage game on our Megadrive. Looking at it again today (via an online emulator), it’s a pretty repetitive button masher, but fun for its day (1994). The graphics do a decent 16 Bit rendering of the comic and there’s at least some variety in Spidey’s moves: you can wall crawl, you can fight, you can use webs to swing, make a shield and draw enemies towards you. 24 years (the PS4 Spider-Man came out in 2018) is a long time in any art form, but in gaming it appears to be several lifetimes. I’m not far enough into the game yet to know how the story will develop, but immediately, this just feels like Spider-Man, and Yuri Lowenthal’s voice reminds me somewhat of the 90s cartoon version I grew up on. Already it’s clear that the script has Peter’s personality down and Lowenthal has the timing for it. 

One of the things that always annoyed me about the games I played as a kid was the life count. I was never great at games. I remember finding that having only so many lives and constantly going back either to the start of a level or even the start of the game meant I never got the trial and error down, almost always ending up stuck at a part I couldn’t beat. PS4 Spider-Man hasn’t, so far, had that issue. I used a PS1 controller a handful of times because a few friends had them when we were teenagers, but I’ve not touched one in 20+ years, so a part of this process has simply been familiarising myself with the layout. I actually had to google the location of the R3 button (you press the right hand stick down) because it wasn’t labeled. The fact that Spider-Man is very incremental, auto-saving after every fight, and allowing (seemingly) unlimited lives has meant that I’ve been able to make progress even as I’m still figuring out the controls and combos, and getting quicker at deploying them. I learn a bit each time I lose a fight, and I get closer to beating that part of the game each time round. It’s not pretty, you won’t be seeing me on Twitch anytime soon, but it does feel satisfying.

Even when I’m losing, Spider-Man is FUN. It does manage to give you the feeling of creating the motion the comics illustrate. Spidey flips and webs his way around, he can fight in the air, dive under opponents to throw them off, use his spider-sense to dodge, throw items at enemies. From the first moments, as the game teaches you to swing through a beautifully rendered New York to your first fight, it strikes a good balance between storytelling cut scenes, instruction on how to control Spider-Man and fast paced action. It’s infectious, and at least for me I think it was an ideal choice for a first game to load up and play. Even if I get frustrated in my progress, I want to come back and have the satisfaction of finding new things I can make Spidey do.

The characters of Persona 5 Royal

After loading up the rest of my day one titles, though I knew I’d probably focus on just one or two to begin with, I wanted to make sure I sampled them all. The next thing I put in was Persona 5 Royal. As I said in my last piece, I set out to pick up some contrasting games, and this was one that I got for its reputation as an immersive piece of character-driven storytelling. It’s a reputation I’m already finding well-deserved. First of all, it looks incredible, from the 2D animation of the titles and cut scenes to the 3D engine that powers most of the game. It was, however, a slow starter. Persona 5 Royal apparently adds a whole third semester of school (where much of the story, so far, unfolds) for its protagonist to go through and runs for roughly 120 hours. By the end of day 2, I had made it 4 ½ hours in. Much of that time, it has to be said, is spent clicking through dialogue boxes. The mechanics of the game are taught slowly, largely by a talking cat I encountered early on. There is a dense plot, and characters are introduced regularly, the game advancing their stories through a great deal of talking. Early on, some parts do feel long-winded—for instance, everyone restates how much trouble your character will be in if he violates his probation so often that it does get wearing. However, I was completely drawn in by the look of the game, the overarching story, and the approach to character development and interaction.

If the interaction is minimal early on, what there is, is promising. The real-time combat of Spider-Man requires fast coordination of button combos, something I’m very much still developing. P5R, on the other hand, has turn-based combat that allows for time to consider your approach and tailor it to your enemy. It’s a different kind of rewarding, as you see your character level up and gain new attacks and other abilities, though it slightly lacks the punchy immediacy of getting to web up Kingpin and kick him in the face. It’s an incredibly promising game, assuming it continues to develop and become more player-led as it goes on.

The Last of Us Remastered

On the first day, I also sampled Shadow of the Tomb Raider and The Last of Us Remastered. Each, in its own way, has a very cinematic feel. Camilla Luddington provides the voice and model for this iteration of Lara Croft. She’s a far cry from the pyramidally boobed character I remember from the PS1, and even in the first few minutes, Luddington has given her some personality. In-game, I had some issues (entirely mine) controlling the character. I’m not sure if I headed in the wrong direction or if I just haven’t mastered the button combos, but an early jump and rappel sequence had me confused as to whether I was doing the right thing, as even when I seemed to get to a low drop-down, I kept dying. The Last of Us is also, again at least for me, not super intuitive, and also a bit tough to control. You have to bear in mind that I’m used to a D-Pad or a mouse, so using one of the sticks to move is still unfamiliar, never mind the way TLOU asks you to use two at once. I haven’t quite got my brain around it. This is why I decided to focus, initially, on Spider-Man and P5R. Both, even as dense as Persona clearly is, balance helping you navigate them with fun and challenge in a way that works as an introduction, and that’s what I need right now.