168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor doesn't have a drop of yellow paint. Maybe it should.
One of 2023's biggest online gaming debates centered on whether modern games were too handhold-y. Specifically, the argument focused on whether triple-A video game environments were dripping with too many buckets of primary colored paint.
That probably sounds strange if you've never noticed these lemon splashes before, but the practice is all over modern games. I first noticed it about a decade ago in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted games, which used color-coding to make it easier for players to navigate their way through frantic, linear action sequences without needing to attempt them over and over again. For example, in a sequence where Nathan Drake is running along a city's rooftops, a yellow canopy or a bright light near an important ledge might be used to bring some order to the chaos.
But, as games have become increasingly detailed, the practice has become widespread. This year, Capcom's remake of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4 was the game to kick the discourse hornet's nest. Unlike in its 2005 predecessor, Remake had yellow paint everywhere, with smears along the rungs of usable ladders and handprints on the sides of breakable barrels. The game is highly legible, as a result, but you don't get to enjoy the same sense of freeform exploration. You know what the game wants you to do and where it wants you to go.
So, as the year draws to a close and I spend time with games I missed earlier in 2023, it's been interesting to see that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the rare modern triple-A game to not use this technique at all. In fact, at points, it badly needs it.
Much of that is down to the Jedi series' penchant for line-straddling. A game like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dark Souls, where you expect to explore with complete freedom until you hit a wall, needs to be designed differently than a game like Uncharted, where you expect to move like a river between its banks. Survivor is both. It's a linear game in the Uncharted mold, but it has several sprawling maps that you're free to explore. Respawn has often chosen the signpost-less Dark Souls route, but much of the game still plays like Uncharted.
For example, at one point in the game, you reach Cere Junda's hidden base on Jedha and are confronted with a door that is needlessly tricky to open. You enter a chamber and notice a door ahead of you. The map tells you your objective is behind it, so you walk forward, expecting it to open when you get closer as other doors in the game do. But it doesn't. So, you look around for a switch that you can press or have BD-1 slice. Nope. Well, the map says you're supposed to be there. Maybe on the floor up or down? I explored the base for 20 minutes before realizing there was a groove in the wall that you needed to Force pull a metal ball along to open the door. I like exploration and puzzle-solving as much as anyone, but Survivor seems to ladle it in at strange times. Navigating a friendly space to accomplish a basic task didn't seem like the time for a brain teaser.
Similarly, I've often run around an area for 20 minutes looking for a path forward before discovering that the game just wanted me to slip between two unmarked pipes. This has probably happened a half-dozen times at this point. The pipes never look special, and they also don't look like they're far enough apart to let Cal pass. In a brown and gray environment, they're brown, gray, and unremarkable.
Jedi: Survivor is fun, but like Tatooine, it's a bit too drab. It needs a splash of yellow, like the twin suns rising over the desert, to point the way to adventure.
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