This month kicked off with the PS+-free Destruction AllStars, a destruction derby game developed front and center for the PS5. Driving and wrecking is only half of it: you constantly ditch your car to run around the arena, dodging your psycho opponents and doing parkour stuff to collect pink diamonds. The pink diamonds fill each character's special ability gauges. The 'hero car' pictured below has an ability that magnetizes the metal particles that come off hitting other vehicles to act as armor. The armor has an added bonus of also absorbing any points an opponent gains from hitting you.
In addition to having a hero car, the on-foot character also has their own special ability. So, Muna, the driver of the above vehicle has a magnetic ability that collects those pink diamonds from a distance, as well as activates traps for other cars. She's pretty overpowered and underappreciated. What's also cool is that Muna is Somali and is one of the few existing characters with that background in video games at all. The cast of Destruction Allstars is pretty diverse, and they're all wonderfully animated. Whoever designed the models made the women blessedly fit. I mean, just look at how thicc Tw!nkleR!0t, the (Japanese?) extreme cosplayer who drives Mr. Sparkles, a tiny car that bounces other cars away from it. I, uhh...stay on foot with this character a lot. Her on-foot ability allows her to punch other on-foot players faster, which comes in handy when trying to collect diamonds or hijack someone else's vehicle.
So the whole point of the game is to wreck other vehicles by slamming into them, but there's been a glaring issue from day one with the actual collisions. The vast majority of trophies in Destruction AllStars involve getting in your hero car, activating the special ability and hitting/killing 3 opponents with it. About half of those trophies are to do this in one 6 minute match, which is fine, even with collision errors. The other half involve you getting these hits/kills in a single activation of the ability, that usually lasts 3-8 seconds. The last two that I need require you to hit the entire enemy team with your ability in one activation, which is plain silly. A full lobby is 8 vs 8, and the odds of cars grouping up AND the collision detection working out is a stretch.
Trophies are important in this game because the sense of progression is minimal. Offline mode has you do some related challenges as a character and the free episode can be done in about 30 minutes. The other episodes are behind premium, pay currenct. Playing nets you these coins that unlock basic color changes on characters/cars and some emotes that are rare to actually see because of how small you are on-foot vs camera distance. There are currently four game modes. In the free-for-all Mayhem mode, you're simply trying to hit, wreck and kill other players. Gridfall has a dozen of you trying to be the last one standing as parts of the arena collapse. The problem with Gridfall is that matchmaking and postmatch statistics and rewards take up way more than your potential play time. I hate this mode because the 5 times I played it, I got eliminated within 20 seconds of the match start. Carnado, my jam, is 8 vs 8 where you hit/wreck/kill other players but have to keep your car intact to turn in team points in the (car-destroying tornado) center of the arena. The maps in this mode are all the right size for 16 players to hit each other for the matches. The last mode is called Stockpile, which is very similar to Carnado, except you have to exit your vehicle to collect and bank points, as opposed to just dumping your car into the center. I played it once in the 30 hours I've put into this game.
That returns me to the point of this game's trophies being what kept me going for the 30 hours. Otherwise, as evidenced by my repetitive descriptions of the modes being hit/wreck/kill, gameplay is pretty simple. If the game had more detailed damage and crash physics like the GLORIOUS Burnout: Revenge, new modes and bumped up the player count to a number that would ensure more crashes, it might have some lasting power. Unfortunately, this takes a lot more development time and money, plus a decent amount of the community earned their trophies and left. The PS5 library is still small and Destruction AllStars has a smooth framerate, crisp graphics, great art direction and animation, nice...erm...figures, and fast loading time, but I'd really like to see more of a payoff to it all.
Also on my plate this month is an isometic WindWaker...alternative. Oceanhorn is by a smaller developer and features a silent protagonist that follows NPCs from island to island in his boat to try and save the world. The view is fixed isometric and that doesn't make combat, finding secrets, or solving puzzles too difficult. Some of the music tracks are surprisingly by Nobuo Uematsu, who left the Final Fantasy franchise over a decade ago. I got the platinum trophy in about 13 hours, and an un-assisted run through this great offbrand Zelda game might take you 10 hours if you ignore trophies.
Lastly, I'll be wrapping up the month with Spiderman Remastered on the PS5. This is my second time doing a platinum run through the game, and so far Photo Mode hasn't sucked up more than 10 minutes in the 20 hours I've put in. I guess I was sated the first time around, and again with Miles Morales? The game was securely in the top 10 best looking PS4 games, and the PS5 version looks even better. I'm warming up to the higher framerate mode, though I still think it ruins the cinematics. 60fps combat and swining look pretty cool, though.
Both this game and Spiderman: Miles Morales really nailed the person-to-person relationships. Aunt May is so sweet and earnest in her care for Peter as he goes through rough times. The scene that ultimately choked me up was after Miles loses his father (I guess this is a spoiler if you missed the first game, the movie Into the Spiderverse, or the comics), he volunteers at a shelter to take his mind off of things. Miles is serving coffee to a client who sees a news report of how Officer Davis died a hero, scoffs and says something smart ass about the dead cop. Miles bottles up his rage and is about to move on when Peter saunters up and so politely introduces Miles, whose father just died and highlights how great it is that Miles is putting in service despite losing his father recently. This of course makes the client apologize for his behavior, makes Miles feel better, and really shows that Peter is a stand-up guy. There are a few other moments in the story that are sweet shows of affection that build relationship and character integrity.
The other thing I like about this game is the various minigames you do in the form of science experiments around the city. For one mission, you are analyzing pollution in the city and linking it to a specific model of car and getting it recalled. One that's obviously not practical is that a science lab is about to lose its data, so Spiderman swings around and poitns satellites at each other to physically redirect the data to some backup servers. Insomniac still needed to make a game, but at least there's purpose attached to your tasks, and that sets Spiderman on a higher shelf as a video game.
Lastly, look at these graphics. The console is rendering all of this in real time and it's ridiculous.
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