GAME REVIEW: Celeste (Switch)
(The Ecstasy Of Gold - Metallica)
Oh, Super Mario U. How you disappointed me.
There's no way to sugar-coat this: Mario did me wrong, and I needed help recovering. As usual, when a AAA title completely fails to live up to expectations, I turn to the most reliable source for excellent games:
Indie titles.
Because SMU's platforming was so soggy and depressing, I immediately started looking for more excellent 2D platformers to help me along my path to recovery. The top of the list in my searches was frequently held by the same title, released in January of 2018: Celeste. The reviews all said the same things:
- Amazing gameplay
- Amazing story
- Amazing soundtrack
Sign me up!
Yet, even in my excitement, I was cautious. I've been burned before on a sure thing. Was a right to be paranoid?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Nope. Let the healing begin!
THE LONG VERSION:
I wrote the introduction to this article without considering how appropriate it was to the subject material. As it turns out, it's quite fitting. We'll get to that in a moment.
Celeste started out as an experiment. During a Game Jam, a festival that involved the building of a game within four days, the base concept for Celeste was developed, and after a decent reception, the developers elected to flesh it out. In early 2018, Celeste launched on all of the major consoles and rapidly became a stand-out hit for all of the reasons I listed above. Let's dig into them a little more.
GAMEPLAY
There's not much to say here. Celeste is a 2D platformer that demands absolute precision. Fortunately, that's exactly what the controls are capable of offering you. It's cliche to use the expression 'Razor-Sharp' every time I talk about how great this game's controls are, but it happens to be true. Even more than sharp though, Celeste also manages to play incredibly smooth. There could have been plenty of opportunity for jerky controls here that were actually -too- sensitive, but the developers clearly found the butter zone and stuck to it tight.
Your character doesn't have many tricks up her sleeve, so mastering movement with her comes quickly for anyone who puts in even a modest effort. She can move left and right, crouch down, and jump. She also has an omni-directional air dash that you gain access to shortly after the game begins, and she can cling to and climb walls for limited amount of time. That's pretty much it. This might sound boring, but the developers came up with so many creative environments for you to employ these skills in that you typically move on to something new and fresh before you can even start to get burned out.
Dying carries almost no penalty, since all it really does is throw you back to the beginning of the room you're currently exploring. With very few exceptions, each room is reasonably bite-sized, so you'll almost never get frustrated with a massive loss of progress.
Celeste's gameplay feels -GOOD- when you're on a roll. Stringing together jumps and dashes along with clever wall jumps and the various movements assists found within the environment is a huge rush, not unlike the original Mirror's Edge free-running game.
Scattered around the various levels of the game are flying strawberries.
Yes, you read that right.
These items serve as collectables, but that's literally all they do. They're an enticement for the player to test their skills and explore, and it's almost always effective bait. I'll talk more about these later.
AUDIO/VIDEO
Celeste's gameplay can best be designed as 16-bit gameplay designed with 8-bit pixel art. You can catch the launch trailer here to get a good idea about what to expect in terms of art style.
The music for the game is chip-tune in style, so its complexity is somewhat more limited than other indie titles like Hollow Knight, but anyone familiar with 8 bit titles will certainly get the sense that the audio is being pushed about as far as it can go. The soundtrack is pleasant and up-beat without being annoying, and when the game shifts to more somber themes, the soundtrack adjusts itself incredibly well. The replay-ability of chip tune scores is frequently low, but Celeste's score is certainly one of the best of this style that I've ever heard.
STORY
This is a game about a girl that decided to climb a mountain.
The 'Why' is what makes this game remarkable, but I can't tell you about it without spoiling it. Take my word for it, the story here is deeper than you think. It's told through flashbacks, sharp dialogue, and several gameplay interactions that explain the motives behind the main character, a red-headed young woman named Madeline.
Celeste's story deals with heavy topics like depression, listlessness, wanderlust, and self-doubt. It does this skillfully, and without pandering to you. Anyone who has ever suffered from these things may find Celeste's story to be remarkably knowing. Anyone who knows someone who has suffered through these things may find the story eye-opening. It's an engaging tale that will have you eager to make your way up the mountain to see how it all ends.
Celeste is one of those rare titles that knows its own limits, and pushes itself to them in every way. The story is compelling without being over-reaching. The gameplay is sharp without becoming jittery. If you're looking for a great way to spend $20 on the switch, this game is a no-brainer. The mountain is calling.
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
I have to take a minute to bitch about two things that very nearly ruined the whole game for me. Some people might have the same experience. Others might not.
Thing The First: The boss fight against your dark self that you get into just before you make your final climb to the summit? That was about four times longer than it should have been. I was done with it after about 5 minutes of gameplay, but it just kept going on and on. Every other room in the game was bite-sized, so failure wasn't really a huge setback and you could rely on skill to get you through if you just slowed down and thought a little. You can't do that in most of the rooms for the boss fight though because they occupy several screens. The fight wasn't ever difficult, it was just time-consuming. You had to discover how to handle the room each step of the way rather than relying on your skills to get you through it. It almost single-handedly ended my gameplay run through Celeste. The reward for this? A double air dash. Which is a huge piece of the second item on this list, which is....
Thing The Second: After the main boss fight in the game, once you've gotten the double air dash, the game's side paths for strawberries just get stupid. The rooms become even more complex and difficult to maneuver through. This would be a problem on its own, but I was so burned out from the boss fight that I wasn't even interested in exploring. I went straight into 'Can this please be over now? Can I please have beaten the game now?' That's a huge failure for a game, and doubly a tragedy for this one because of how AWESOME the rest of the game was right up until this point.
Honorable Mention: The fucking hotel. Fuck you, Oshiro. I was so happy to be done with this game, and so PISSED OFF that I had to revisit it during the last stage of the game that I almost put the game down again.
Oh, Super Mario U. How you disappointed me.
There's no way to sugar-coat this: Mario did me wrong, and I needed help recovering. As usual, when a AAA title completely fails to live up to expectations, I turn to the most reliable source for excellent games:
Indie titles.
Because SMU's platforming was so soggy and depressing, I immediately started looking for more excellent 2D platformers to help me along my path to recovery. The top of the list in my searches was frequently held by the same title, released in January of 2018: Celeste. The reviews all said the same things:
- Amazing gameplay
- Amazing story
- Amazing soundtrack
Sign me up!
Yet, even in my excitement, I was cautious. I've been burned before on a sure thing. Was a right to be paranoid?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Nope. Let the healing begin!
THE LONG VERSION:
I wrote the introduction to this article without considering how appropriate it was to the subject material. As it turns out, it's quite fitting. We'll get to that in a moment.
Celeste started out as an experiment. During a Game Jam, a festival that involved the building of a game within four days, the base concept for Celeste was developed, and after a decent reception, the developers elected to flesh it out. In early 2018, Celeste launched on all of the major consoles and rapidly became a stand-out hit for all of the reasons I listed above. Let's dig into them a little more.
GAMEPLAY
There's not much to say here. Celeste is a 2D platformer that demands absolute precision. Fortunately, that's exactly what the controls are capable of offering you. It's cliche to use the expression 'Razor-Sharp' every time I talk about how great this game's controls are, but it happens to be true. Even more than sharp though, Celeste also manages to play incredibly smooth. There could have been plenty of opportunity for jerky controls here that were actually -too- sensitive, but the developers clearly found the butter zone and stuck to it tight.
Your character doesn't have many tricks up her sleeve, so mastering movement with her comes quickly for anyone who puts in even a modest effort. She can move left and right, crouch down, and jump. She also has an omni-directional air dash that you gain access to shortly after the game begins, and she can cling to and climb walls for limited amount of time. That's pretty much it. This might sound boring, but the developers came up with so many creative environments for you to employ these skills in that you typically move on to something new and fresh before you can even start to get burned out.
Dying carries almost no penalty, since all it really does is throw you back to the beginning of the room you're currently exploring. With very few exceptions, each room is reasonably bite-sized, so you'll almost never get frustrated with a massive loss of progress.
Celeste's gameplay feels -GOOD- when you're on a roll. Stringing together jumps and dashes along with clever wall jumps and the various movements assists found within the environment is a huge rush, not unlike the original Mirror's Edge free-running game.
Scattered around the various levels of the game are flying strawberries.
Yes, you read that right.
These items serve as collectables, but that's literally all they do. They're an enticement for the player to test their skills and explore, and it's almost always effective bait. I'll talk more about these later.
AUDIO/VIDEO
Celeste's gameplay can best be designed as 16-bit gameplay designed with 8-bit pixel art. You can catch the launch trailer here to get a good idea about what to expect in terms of art style.
The music for the game is chip-tune in style, so its complexity is somewhat more limited than other indie titles like Hollow Knight, but anyone familiar with 8 bit titles will certainly get the sense that the audio is being pushed about as far as it can go. The soundtrack is pleasant and up-beat without being annoying, and when the game shifts to more somber themes, the soundtrack adjusts itself incredibly well. The replay-ability of chip tune scores is frequently low, but Celeste's score is certainly one of the best of this style that I've ever heard.
STORY
This is a game about a girl that decided to climb a mountain.
The 'Why' is what makes this game remarkable, but I can't tell you about it without spoiling it. Take my word for it, the story here is deeper than you think. It's told through flashbacks, sharp dialogue, and several gameplay interactions that explain the motives behind the main character, a red-headed young woman named Madeline.
Celeste's story deals with heavy topics like depression, listlessness, wanderlust, and self-doubt. It does this skillfully, and without pandering to you. Anyone who has ever suffered from these things may find Celeste's story to be remarkably knowing. Anyone who knows someone who has suffered through these things may find the story eye-opening. It's an engaging tale that will have you eager to make your way up the mountain to see how it all ends.
Celeste is one of those rare titles that knows its own limits, and pushes itself to them in every way. The story is compelling without being over-reaching. The gameplay is sharp without becoming jittery. If you're looking for a great way to spend $20 on the switch, this game is a no-brainer. The mountain is calling.
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
I have to take a minute to bitch about two things that very nearly ruined the whole game for me. Some people might have the same experience. Others might not.
Thing The First: The boss fight against your dark self that you get into just before you make your final climb to the summit? That was about four times longer than it should have been. I was done with it after about 5 minutes of gameplay, but it just kept going on and on. Every other room in the game was bite-sized, so failure wasn't really a huge setback and you could rely on skill to get you through if you just slowed down and thought a little. You can't do that in most of the rooms for the boss fight though because they occupy several screens. The fight wasn't ever difficult, it was just time-consuming. You had to discover how to handle the room each step of the way rather than relying on your skills to get you through it. It almost single-handedly ended my gameplay run through Celeste. The reward for this? A double air dash. Which is a huge piece of the second item on this list, which is....
Thing The Second: After the main boss fight in the game, once you've gotten the double air dash, the game's side paths for strawberries just get stupid. The rooms become even more complex and difficult to maneuver through. This would be a problem on its own, but I was so burned out from the boss fight that I wasn't even interested in exploring. I went straight into 'Can this please be over now? Can I please have beaten the game now?' That's a huge failure for a game, and doubly a tragedy for this one because of how AWESOME the rest of the game was right up until this point.
Honorable Mention: The fucking hotel. Fuck you, Oshiro. I was so happy to be done with this game, and so PISSED OFF that I had to revisit it during the last stage of the game that I almost put the game down again.
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